C  H  R  I  S  T  I  A  N  I  T  Y 
through the lens of 
CHRISTIAN & MUSLIM SCHOLARS
Part Two

Mohd Amin Yaacob

al-Firdaus.Com

CONTENTS

Preface            

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE   

CHAPTER TEN  

The Authenticity Of The Bible

10.1   The Word “Bible” Is Not Given By God

10.2   The Books Of The Bible

10.3   The Original Gospel Or Injil Of Jesus No Longer Exist

10.4   Different Version Of The “One Bible Claim”

10.5       Martin Luther Rejected Part Of The Present Books Of The New Testament

10.6   Prophet Moses Didn’t Wrote The Christian “Torah” Or “Taurat"

10.7   The Canon Of The Christian Bible Was Completed Four Hundred Years After Jesus

10.8   The New Testament Books Were Not Written By The Apostles Whose Name They Bear

10.9   The Church Fathers Rejected Some Of The Present New Testament Books

10.10 The Inspiration Of The Holy Spirit

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TEN

The Authenticity of The Bible

 

“Let it be here in Agra where the Muslim scholars have been reading the Bible, and reading my books [1] , and other books written by Western scholars in order to prove that the Bible was false as it contains alterations and that my books are also false…”

 

     Reverend Carl Gottlieb Fonder,
head of the Christian Mission of India
[2]

 

For nearly two thousand years Christians have been reading the Bible. Ministers, priests and scholars spend their lives studying and teaching it in Universities and seminaries. Some of them even lived by it and died for it for they claimed that the Bible from beginning to its end to be the authentic Word of God The Almighty. [3] The Catechism of the Catholic Church put it thus:

 

“God is the author of Sacred Scriptures. The divinely revealed realities, which are contained and presented in the text of Sacred Scriptures, have been written down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” [4]

 

Muslims meanwhile claim that the Bible is no more than historical accounts containing both true and false accounts of past ages. The present Bible is certainly not the Injil or Evangel referred to by Allah the Almighty in the Holy Quran. What the Christians now hold in their hands is not the Evangel which the Qur’an refers, but they do contain parts of that text, which according to the Qur’an is lost. [5] Maulana Rahmatullah Khalil al-Rahman al-Kairanawi al-Hind, said in his book “Izharul Haq” in the chapter on Distortion and Abrogation in the Bible:

 

“The present gospels, chronicles and epistles are certainly not the Evangel (Injil) referred to by the Holy Qur’an and so they are not, as such, acceptable to Muslims. The Islamic teaching regarding the Pentateuch (Torah), the other books of the Old Testament, and the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament Books is that any biblical statements which are confirmed by the Quranic Revelation will be accepted and respected by the Muslims and any statements rejected by the Holy Quran will be rejected by the Muslims. Any statements about which the Holy Quran is silent, the Muslims too would remain silent about without rejecting or accepting them.” [6]

 

The Maulana further said:

 

“We strictly denied that the original Torah (Pentateuch) and the original Evangel existed at the time of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and that they were not changed until later. As far as the Epistles of Paul are concerned, even if we grant that they were really written by him, they are still not acceptable to us because it is our well-founded opinion that Paul was a traitor and a liar who introduced a completely new form of Christianity, absolutely different from what Jesus himself preached.” [7]

 

Allah the Almighty addressed His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in the Holy Quran in these words:

 

“To thee we sent the Book (Quran) in truth confirming what came before it of the Book, and assuring its safety.” (Surah al-Ma‘idah 5:51)

 

Imam Abu Farra al-Baghawi, in his famous commentary on the Holy Quran, “Ma‘alim-u-Tanzil” contains the following comments on this verse:

 

“According to Ibn al-Jurayj, [8] the last phrase of this verse ‘assuring its safety’, signifies that any statement produced by the People of the Book (the followers of Christianity and Judaism) will be accepted, subject to its confirmation by the Holy Quran, otherwise that particular statement will be considered as false and unacceptable. Said Ibn Musayyab [9] and al-Dahhaq [10] said the word ‘muhaimin’ in this verse signifies ‘the one who judges’, while Khalil [11] gave its meaning as ‘protector and guard’. This different shades of meaning, however do not change the general implication that any book or statement confirmed by the Holy Qur’an should be considered as the word of God; the rest are obviously excluded as not being the word of God.” [12]

 

Imam Ibn Hazm, the great Muslim theologian said in his book “al-Fisol Fi al-Milal wa al-Ahwa wa al-Nihal”:

 

“The Muslim acknowledge the Torah and the Gospel, they do not in any way deny them. Moreover, we consider anyone who denies them to be an unbeliever, and we believe also that the disbeliever’s among the Children of Israel have changed the Torah and the Psalter. They added to them and took things away from them. And Allah the Almighty protected some parts of them against corruption to serve as evidence against them according to His will…and in the same way the disbeliever’s among the Christians changed the Gospel, adding to it and taking away from it, and likewise Allah protected some parts of it to serve as evidence against them according to His will”. [13]

 

According to Imam Ibn Hazm, God the Almighty protected those parts of the Injil that he wished to stand as a testimony against corruption, and as proof of the truthfulness of Islam. This falls within Ibn Hazm’s general outlook, which states that the existence of negation or falsehood necessitates the existence of truth. The differences among the people “of the religions” do not prove that there is no truth at all in their utterances, or that their true utterances cannot be distinguished from those which are false. He says that Jews and Christians necessarily have both truth and falsehood in their scriptures. [14]

 

In addressing this issue, the writer believe that critical examination as well as careful and unbiased approach is necessary to find out the truth. By doing so, we can find sufficient bases to judge the authenticity of the Book concerned. For this purpose, significant role can be played by reflections of the Bible through the mirror of its history, the originality of the language in which it was revealed, its compilation and writing down, the consistency of its contents and if it has been safeguarded against changing and distortion of words (Tabdil and Tahrif).


 
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[1]           Mizanul Haq, Miftahul Asror, Tariqul Hayah and Hal al-Ishkal

[2]           Izharul Haq, Part 2, iv

[3]           Friedman, Charles Elliot, Who Wrote The Bible (HarperCollinsPublishers, USA), 1987, 15

[4]           pg 36

[5]           The Qur’an and The Gospels, 93

[6]           Izharul Haq, Part 3, 31-32

[7]           This opinion of the Muslim community should not be misunderstood as the produce of prejudice and slander. Paul was considered a traitor even by the family of Jesus and his disciples. We reproduce below the opinion of a modern French scholar Dr. Maurice Bucaille. He says on page 52 of his book The Bible, The Qur’an and Science:

“Paul is the most controversial figure in Christianity. He was considered to be a traitor to Jesus thought by the family of Jesus and by the apostles who had stayed in Jerusalem in the circle around St. James. Paul created Christianity at the expense of those whom Jesus had gathered around him to spread his teachings. He had not known Jesus during his life time and he proved the legitimacy of his mission by declaring that Jesus, raised form the dead, had appeared to him on the road to Damascus”. (Waali Razi, in the footnote of Rahmatullah Kairanawi Izharul Haq, Part 3, 30)

[8]           One of the Hijaz Imam and  commentator of the Holy Qur’an

[9]           A renown Tabi’in scholar of Hadith

[10]          A renown Tabi’in commentator of the Holy Qur’an

[11]          An expert Scholar of Arabic Language and Literature

[12]          Izharul Haq, Part 3, 32

[13]        The Quran and The Gospels,  39

[14]          The Quran and The Gospels, 116