Good afternoon. Welcome along to Premier Christian Radio. I'm Justin Briley with you for the next hour and a half for Unbelievable, the show that gets Christians and non-Christians talking. And a big thank you to everyone who turned out for our expelled screenings and debates at Imperial College last Saturday. The events went very well. I'll be bringing some of your feedback from those events. So do stick around for the end of the program where we'll be hearing some of the attendees and what they thought of the screening and the debates of that controversial intelligent design film. Right now, though, it's time to launch into the program. This is, as I said, the show that gets Christians and non-Christians talking. Two special programs coming up in the next two weeks with one of our guests. He's in conversation with a Muslim today. Let's find out what they're talking about. You're unbelievable. And today we're doing a Quran versus Bible sort of show. We often bring in a Christian and a Muslim on this program, but today's no exception. James White, the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, our Christian in the studio today, he's over from the States, and he's gonna be with us for the next couple of weeks. Adnan Rashid is from the Hiten Institute, and we'll be finding out about that. And they're gonna be asking, which is more trustworthy, the Quran or the Bible? What about the different ways that these manuscripts have come to us over the centuries? What about alternative readings and versions of them, other scriptures that have been around in the past? What about particular events? Perhaps we'll touch on the different ways that they see the crucifixion of Jesus, very pertinent as we approach Easter. Do hope you can stay with us right through to the end of the show. Well, a very warm welcome, gentlemen, to both of you. I'll start with you, James, because you've come the furthest distance, in some sense, to be with us, all the way from across the pond. You were with us in the studio here a year or two ago, and you joined us very kindly just last year by ISDN, the Wonders of Modern Technology. But you run a ministry out in Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, I think, and Alpha and Omega Ministries. Tell us about that, what it exists for, what your role with them is. Well, Alpha Omega has existed since 1983. I'm the co-founder and it's a Christian apologetics organization. We initially started off dealing primarily with the subject of Mormonism, which is very large in our area being the state immediately south of Utah with Salt Lake right there. But that has expanded out over the years and as I completed my education and began the teaching and preaching in the church. We've expanded out to a number of other subjects, especially due to my study of Greek and textual criticism, teaching and writing in that area. And then starting about 2005, as I started to prepare for a debate with Shabir Ali at Biola University, I really began my serious studies of Islam because I saw that a lot of the key areas that I had studied—church history, textual criticism, the doctrine of the Trinity—were the primary areas of concern there as well. That, combined with my study of the persecuted church, is what really gave me a passion to engage these particular subjects. Fantastic. Now, last time you were over, you were doing some debates with Muslims. And again, similarly, on this occasion, you've been doing a debate or two. What is it about, you know, why particularly are you engaging with Muslims here in the UK? What's your particular rationale for that? Well, it's honestly difficult to arrange these things simply because a lot of the Muslim debaters want to address political issues primarily, and I want to address theological, historical issues primarily. And there are a limited number of folks who have experience in doing debates. In November of 2008, In studio, we had Abdullah Al-Andalusi, and then I debated Adnan Rashid at a church. This time, we reversed it with Adnan in studio, and I just debated Abdullah. So, you know, there are people here who are willing to engage the issues. It's how did that debate go down that you thought was very enjoyable? We had a very good turnout And I think it was done the way it needs to be done That is I think the people in the audience could tell that Both of us were doing everything in our power to understand what the other person was saying and I think that's when real communication actually takes place is when you When you seek to hear what the other person is saying, not in the sense of trying to find a means of compromise, but so that at least you're speaking the same language and you're addressing the same issues. I think very often we end up talking past each other if that type of communication isn't taking place. Well, thank you for coming in and for making time in your schedule to come in and contribute to a couple of programs. I'm a regular subscriber to the podcast. I listen all the time. Well, thank you. You've got a guy riding along out there in Arizona in the heat listening to Justin Varley's Unbelievable Word program. Well, I get more emails now than I've ever done before from Arizona, and I just think it must be something to do with Alpha and Omega Ministries. We've got some listeners thanks to your being on the show. Thanks for coming in. Our other guest, Adnan Rashid. Adnan, welcome back to the programme. You've been in before. I think we were debating Jay Smith and Beth Grove last time, which was a long time ago actually. But tell us a little bit, because I've said you're from the Hitton Institute. All I know that as at the moment is something on the bottom of your email, but tell us a little bit about what the Hitton Institute is and what you do there. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Alhamdulillah. Thank you very much, Justin, firstly for inviting me to this positive interaction between me and Dr James White. I'm privileged to be here with such a scholar. Hattin Institute is an institute which was initiated to tackle some of the misconceptions about Islam deliberately or unconsciously pumped against Islam and Muslims in the media. So the role of this institute is to demystify those misconceptions about Islam and clarify the position of Islam as it stands. I mean, a lot of people obviously do pick up a negative view of Islam from certain aspects of what the media broadcast. I mean, today we're doing particularly theological debate. Do you think people are aware of the theology of Islam, what Islam stands for generally, or do you think that's an area that needs demystifying as well? I agree with you, that's another area which needs to be elaborated upon by the scholars and the preachers in general. We need to see each other, we need to converse, we need to interact so that we can learn about each other to have better understanding and consequently to coexist with each other in peace. If we don't understand each other, it would be very difficult for societies to come about and live in peace as they were living in the past. during the golden age of Islam in Islamic Spain, which I have spoken about on many occasions. Yeah. Well, thank you for coming in and I'm looking forward to today's discussion. We are inevitably going to have disagreement here in the studio. That's really, to some extent, what the program is about. But we're about airing those disagreements in a frank and open and honest way. And it should be a very interesting interaction. As we ask today, which is more trustworthy? the Quran or the Bible, and we're going to be touching on a few different areas in the course of the programme. If you want to get in touch with anything you hear today, you're more than welcome to drop me an email. That's unbelievable at premiere.org.uk. You can phone and leave me a voicemail message on 08456 525252 and select option 8 to do that. And don't forget, you can find us online and many, many podcasts in our archive there at premiere.org.uk forward slash unbelievable. Well, I mean, should we maybe kick off with with you, James? I can guess what your answer is going to be, which is more trustworthy, the Quran or the Bible? What's your view overall of the state in which we find the Bible to start with, perhaps? You did a very, quite a high profile debate with Bart Ehrman, who of course has been noted, has been on this program talking about whether the Bible is transmitted in a trustworthy way down the centuries. I hope you saw, Justin, that your program got quoted in my debate with Bart Ehrman. Did you see that? I didn't catch that. I've only watched the snippets. One of my slides was a direct quote from Unbelievable. I listened when he was on the program and quoted him. I wonder if he regretted coming on. I don't think so, but no. Obviously, I think in this particular conversation, the primary thing that we have to deal with is the fact that people don't understand where their sacred text came from. They tend to think, most Christians tend to think the Bible floated down out of heaven in a calfskin cover with gold edges and thumb indexing and replete the first time it appeared. That's not how it came to us. That's not how it's been transmitted to us. And that's the same thing with the Quran. It's not like there was a – Muhammad left a perfectly inscribed codex and said, here, just photocopy this and everything will be fine. That's not how it works. Any book that has come to us from antiquity has a history to it. And the primary difference between the New Testament, and I'm focusing on the New Testament especially, and the Koran is the methodology by which it has been transmitted to us. One is a controlled methodology with the Koran. The other is an uncontrolled methodology with the New Testament. And that has a lot to do with the fact that the early history of both religions is very different. That is, Christianity is primarily a religion of the poor, the slaves, and it is illegal from the time of Nero in the 7th decade of the 1st century up until the Peace of the Church in 313 under Constantine. And while that persecution is not consistent during all that time, It's actually the worst at the end of that time period. And what does this have to do with the transmission of the text? Well, it was illegal to even copy or own the Christian scriptures, and especially at the end of that period of persecution. We know historically from records that have only recently been translated that literally thousands of codices of the Christian writings were destroyed by the Roman Empire. They knew that Christianity was a religion of the book. There was some connection here. There was a transmission of the text, not by controlled scribes, not by professionals, but you'd have portions of the text that people would literally risk their lives to copy. Can you imagine, Justin, if next Sunday morning at your church, Everyone was asked only to bring a handwritten copy of the Bible that they themselves had copied out. It'd be pretty difficult, don't you think? And yet that's what the early Christians had to do. It was a tremendous risk on their part. But that creates this rich manuscript tradition. The important part is it's not controlled. There was never any one person, group of people, group of churches, anything else that controlled the text of the New Testament. It had multiple authors. writing to multiple audiences at different times. The books of the New Testament had a life of their own before they became collected into one edition. And what's important about that is that we've all heard the claims that, well, the Bible used to contain reincarnation, but the Council of Constantinople took it out, and things like that. That kind of claim is just, from a historical perspective, completely fallacious. It never could have happened. Because not only do we have texts that predate those councils so we could compare to see if any type of major changes took place. But it would simply be impossible for a persecuted minority to gather up manuscripts and be making changes as they did. So you have this free, open transmission, which results in textual variation. They didn't say, show me your scribe card, your training institute card, that you're going to make a perfect copy here. Instead, if someone came into Christian fellowship and you heard someone reading from a book, I've never heard that before. Well, these are Peter's epistles. We don't have that in our fellowship. Can I copy that? Manuscript P72 is a good example of that, one I've seen myself. That's obviously a guy who was not trained as a scribe. I think I would have beat him in penmanship back in first grade. But he loved the Word of God, and so he makes this copy. The result is there are textual variations that we have to examine. Spellings of words, skipping a phrase because you're copying from one thing to another. That's very different than a controlled transmission of a text where you have a powerful organization that, in essence, can gather up the materials, create a formal version, and then promulgate that version. Because once you have that kind of editing going on, If you don't have access to the previous materials, that becomes the earliest point you can trace the text to. And that then becomes the locus of inspiration and authority at that point. And this, presumably, is the way you see the Quran as having developed. Well, the hadiths themselves record in Al-Bukhari 6519 and 510 the process by which this takes place. And that's not the only place. We find from other historical sources the same story being told. Just for those who aren't immediately aware, the hadiths are, as it were, a commentary on the Quran. The traditions that are collected over the 200 to 300 years after the time of Muhammad, they're not commentaries on the Quran. That's Tafsir literature. The Hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Muslim, are probably the two best-known collections of Hadith. And in 6519510, you have narrated there what happens under Uthman, two different time periods. And to make it just as simple as possible, there is a real concern that the Muslims would end up arguing about their scriptures like the Christians and the Jews did. And so there is a collection, initially a collection very shortly after the death of Muhammad, And then about 20 years later, approximately, there is a renewed concern about differences in how people are reciting the Quran. And so there is a gathering together of all the materials. Both, interestingly enough, record sections that were found with only one person at that particular point in time. Even 20 years later, one verse is found with only one person. But an official version is made. It is distributed to the primary centers of Islam. And then, most importantly, according to Sahih al-Bukhari 6.5.10, there is a burning of the previous materials, a destruction of those materials. Specifically, quote, Uthman sent every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied in order that all the other Quranic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burned. That's massive for a textual critic. For someone who is studying the transmission of the text, that's massive. That has a big impact on what scholars discover when they examine the earliest manuscripts of the Quran. palimpsest manuscripts where you've had the original washed off because they're the leather manuscripts. And then something written over top of it, you can frequently read what's underneath it by ultraviolet light. They give evidence that there were other streams of readings, specifically coming from Ibn Masud and Ubaid Ibn Ka'b. that persisted in the manuscript tradition for 100 to 200 years after that period of time. So it does have a textual history, but it's a very different textual history. It results in significantly fewer variations as you would expect. It's a much younger text, first of all. The New Testament has to go approximately 600 to 700 years longer in handwritten form. than the Quran does. But still, you would expect because of that editing that it would be a much narrower range because it's been controlled from the beginning. The question is, is that the best way to transmit a text or not? Fascinating stuff. Do you broadly agree with the way James has sort of outlined the two different ways that you might see the transmission of the two texts there, Adnan. I agree with parts of what James actually said. Firstly, coming to the Bible itself, because James talked about Bible first and then the Quran after, and I'll do the same. We have many issues with the Bible. Firstly, how the Bible was written down, number one. James is a man who believes in a concept called Sola Scriptura and he also believes that the Bible is the infallible word of God as he stated in one of the debates with Pastor Sabian. He had a debate some time ago. So for him to believe in the infallibility of this word, this word must be proven to be infallible, otherwise his claim, his belief is worthless. So once we go to the Bible itself to scrutinize it, to see the text and see the authenticity and the transmission of the Bible, we come to realize that there are major problems with the text of the Bible. Firstly, Bibles are attributed to four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The manuscript tradition tells us that the manuscripts which we have today at our disposal could not have come from them because they are so different when we study them. How do I know this? Major scholars in the field such as Bart Ehrman whom James White has debated and he states in his book misquoting Jesus page number 89 to 90 with this abundance of evidence what can we say about the total number of variants known today scholars differ significantly in their estimates some say there are 200,000 variants known some say 300,000 some say 400,000 or more We do not know for sure because despite impressive developments in computer technology, no one has yet been able to count them all. Perhaps, as I indicated earlier, it is best simply to leave the matter in comparative terms. There are more variants among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament. This is a major issue. This is a big problem. Now, another Christian source, the Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible states, it is safe to say that there is not one sentence in the New Testament in which the manuscript tradition is wholly uniform. There is no comparison between the Quran and the Bible in this sense. Before we go on to the next issue, those are obviously two big things, and we'll allow James to respond to them in a moment. Moving on to the Quran, did you feel James sort of represented the way that that kind of... I think James had a lot of time to address the issue of the Bible as well as the Quran, so I would like to have, to be fair, the same amount of time. So let me finish with the Bible first, and then we can go on to the Quran. Now once we look at the manuscript tradition, we come to realise that there are major problems there. If there are so many differences, almost 5,700 manuscripts in Greek are to be found today. If there are so many differences in the manuscripts, we need to find out which manuscript comes from Matthew or Luke or Mark or John. If they were inspired, firstly, we have to establish whether they were ever inspired. If they were inspired, which manuscript is the inspired word of God because they all differ and then the dilemma is that the editors must decide which word goes into the Bible. Now I have a book here, Nestle, famous Nestle and Allent, Greek, English, and New Testament. If we open the book, it's got English translation with the Greek text, side by side. And if we look at the footnotes, it gives us the variant readings, what the text actually says, okay? And there are thousands of variant readings. So, My question is, my contention is, who made this text? The Greek Testament, who made it? If the manuscript tradition is uniform, then we would have one uh... bible coming from the evangelist themselves but it's not uniform why do i say this bruce metzger one of the leading scholars in this field uh... in his book a textual commentary on the greek new testament on the page number eleven he states of the approximately five thousand greek manuscripts of all or part of the new testament that are known today no two agree exactly in all particulars confronted by a mass of conflicting readings editors must decide which variants deserve to be included in the text and which should be relegated to the apparatus. Although at first it may seem to be a hopeless task amidst so many thousands of variant readings to sort out those that should be regarded as original, textual scholars have developed certain generally acknowledged criteria of evaluation These considerations depend, it will be seen, upon probabilities and sometimes the textual critics must weigh one set of probabilities against another. The range and complexity of textual data are so great that no neatly arranged or mechanically contrived set of rules can be applied with mathematical precision. I'm finishing. Each and every variant reading needs to be considered in itself and not judged merely according to a rule of thumb. So Metzger is saying that it is the editors who decide what goes in the Bible, not God or not Matthew, Mark and Luke. And effectively you've told us essentially what James did, were inevitably a number of variations in the manuscript transmission over time. So just to conclude... But my contention is not about the variation, my contention is that we don't have what Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote. Even today... Okay, so we're too far removed in terms of the copies to know what they originally wrote in their original manuscript. That's right, because it is the editors who are deciding what goes in the Bible, not the evangelists. Just briefly, kind of to bring in the Quran aspect, do you feel that therefore the Quran has some kind of superior way of transmission because you have this kind of in a sense this quite controlled type of transmission where Older versions were destroyed and when you know, it was Ottoman was it Brought together in one if you like that the official versions It's a very good question. Firstly, there is no comparison between the Bible and the Qur'an as James pointed out because these two documents are completely distinct documents. They're independent documents and they don't share a similar history. Bible was compiled during chaotic three centuries of Christian experience under Roman persecution and the Qur'an was compiled under So the caliphs came together. Who was Uthman? The question is who is Uthman? And is he copying the Quran from himself? Is he making it up? Or is he copying an earlier source? Now James already pointed out and in the time of Abu Bakr who came to power immediately after Prophet Muhammad He was confronted by Omar and Omar came to him asking him to compile the Quran. And then they came together and they decided that Quran should be put in one codex. because at the time it was written on many materials such as bones, rocks, leaves. So they collected the Quran in the time of Abu Bakr which is immediately after the death of the Prophet. And Abu Bakr was one of the earliest companions of Prophet Muhammad. Imagine if the Christians had this claim. Imagine if the Christians had Peter or James or one of the disciples of Jesus Christ writing the Bible himself. That would be a superior claim. I would accept that claim. However, we don't have that claim coming from the Bible. Coming to the case of Uthman, when he burned the copies. Uthman's compilation was purely to do with the text. and its standardization rather than changing the text or adding or subtracting. He had nothing to do with that. All he did was he unified the Arab tribes on one mode of recitation and that was the purpose of his compilation and the variant copies which were written by illiterate Arabs for their own convenience and which were full of mistakes. He asked them to burn them. Not that he sent armies out to burn them. He never forced anyone. There is no report suggesting that. He asked people to burn them for the sake of unanimity on the text of the Quran. We've had quite a long introductory section there and in fact it's almost taken us to the end of this first part so what I'll do is we'll end slightly early here and allow James, so that I don't have to break you in mid-flow in your response, to come back on that in the next section and we'll be able to have a little more time. to do that in the next section. You're listening to Unbelievable. We're asking today, which is more trustworthy, the Koran or the Bible? We've been hearing about the different views from our guests James White and Adnan Rashid on how both texts have been transmitted down the centuries. And we'll be asking questions like, what about the different accounts that both have of Jesus' crucifixion? What about other writings that were floating around at the time? We'll be finding out more from our guests in just a moment's time here on the show that gets you thinking. You're listening to Unbelievable on Premiere Christian Radio. Welcome back to the show. It's the Koran and the Bible under discussion today. Which is more trustworthy, we're asking. And we've got with us Adnan Rashid from the Hittin Institute, a Muslim on the show. James White, director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, also with us. I'll send links to both these gentlemen's websites where you can find more information about their ministries with the podcast of this show. That's at premiere.org.uk forward slash unbelievable. So coming back to you, James, obviously, Adnan, a lot of information there. But I mean, a lot of it you've obviously come across directly before through a primary source of Adnan's there was Bart Ehrman and what he has to say about the transmission of the boat. And Metzger. And Metzger. So I think to sum up your contention, Adnan, it is that The Bible has arrived in this fashion where we can't get back to the original text, therefore we can't know if they were inspired anyway. We don't, we certainly don't have the inspired version now. Whereas the Quran, you know, had this kind of, as you described, controlled form of transmission, which makes it a lot more reliable in that sense. So your responses, James. Well, one thing is for certain, Bruce Metzger did not come to that conclusion. Bart Ehrman has, but Bart Ehrman is not a believer in God any longer. I lecture on this all the time and we just had I think a classic example of giving only part of the information. When you tell people there are 400,000 variants in the New Testament, I start off my lectures giving that same information, and I say, well, think about it. There's only 138,162 words in the Nessian Greek text of the New Testament. That's three variants per word. And we just had the quote, there is not one sentence uniform in the manuscript tradition. These are statements that really do not deal honestly with the text of the New Testament for a couple of reasons. First of all, 99% of those variations cannot be translated into another language. They have to do with spelling, orthography, the movable new, things like that, that in no way, shape or form can even be explained to someone who doesn't read Greek in the first place. There are approximately 1500 to 2000, meaningful, that is they changed the meaning of the text, and viable, which means that they could possibly be original. A scribe in the 15th century who had a bad morning and introduced a reading no one had ever seen before is not exactly relevant to actually the establishment of the text in the New Testament. That number also needs to be understood on another basis, and that is the more manuscripts you have, the more variants you're going to have. If you have only one manuscript of a book, how many variants are you going to have? None. But how much... James, we have thousands of manuscripts of the Quran. We don't have that same problem. But I'm not addressing the issue of the Quran at this moment. I'm pointing out that if you have, 5,759 manuscripts cataloged today. That's approximately 1.3 million pages of handwritten text. Remember the New Testament existed almost twice as long as the Quran in a merely handwritten form. Now when you actually look at the number of meaningful and viable variants, it adds up to about one per three pages. It's a very different story than the numbers that were just presented. The reality is, however, that has nothing to do with either the authorship of the New Testament, and it's not a matter that editors just sit around and determine what's in the Bible, because the very same text that Adnan has there gives you all that information. And so, for example, as I'm preaching through the book of Hebrews right now in my church, I examine all the textual variants that impact that, even though the book of Hebrews has some of the fewest textual variants of any New Testament book. But still, I'm going to examine those textual variants. And if they're relevant, as they were in Hebrews 2.9, I will raise those issues in my explication and exegesis of the text. So it's not the editors that have come along and said, This is all you get to see. We Christians are wide open with this. I mean, we publish these things. Last evening, I gave to my Islamic opponent a copy of the NET-NE27 Diglot that has even more textual information than that volume has. Here's our information. I would like to have a critical edition of the Quran that likewise provides, and we're starting to get close, the recent publication of the top copy manuscript from Turkey does have a list of textual variants between the major manuscripts produced within it. But not to the point where you have, for example, what's in this text, what's on my screen, where I have the same information. You can click on any of these manuscripts. You can see where they're housed, when they were written, what they contain. And eventually, I think you're going to be able to click on all those and see images of them, high-resolution images yourself, so that it's not a bunch of editors telling me what's there. I have the ability to look at this information myself. And that's, I think, a very important aspect. Scholars are already working on that, James. Just to comment on James' point, I know a German scholar personally, he's a friend of mine, his name is Michael Marx. who is dealing with one of the collections of some of the earliest copies of the Quran and he has thousands of photographs coming from a collection which was done in the early 19th century by one of the German scholars and was lost and he studied these manuscripts and when he studied the text and I spoke to him personally he assured me personally that there are no shocking revelations in my findings there is no new verse there is no old verse there are no major variants there are spelling mistakes common spelling scribal errors and apart from that there are no shocks but in the Bible is a totally different story now James is trying to put it very eloquently and he's trying to put the main issue aside what I read from Metzger was he shocking for me when I read it for the first time I was amazed that how can scholars like James White claim the infallibility of the Bible when Metzger is very clearly stating and he's one of the major authorities in this field he's stating editors must decide and the text is based upon probabilities So there are heavy probabilities in the book of Inconstructed Texts. If you read Metzger's own conclusions, he does not come to Adnan's conclusion. And I would like to point out that if we do... Well, he continued to believe that the Bible is the Word of God, sir, so it's just simply a matter of recognizing the difference between what's the main reading of a text and what's placed in the footnotes. My contention is, did Metzger believe that the Bible is the infallible word of God? This is my contention and I don't think he ever believed that. I guess you will get into a discussion on the whole area of what does infallible mean, I suppose. I mean, without wanting to go too much down that road, I do want to hear as well, James, your response to the way that the Quran is transmitted. I mean, now Adnan makes this point that As far as he's concerned, you know, Mohammed's right-hand man was basically able to pick up from where Mohammed left off in giving us a sure account of what Mohammed had done. Actually, Mohammed told us, at least if you trust the Hadith, that if you want to know what the Quran says, you go to Ibn Masud, not to those that actually did the compilation. That's one of the reasons that Ibn Masud did not appreciate what Uthman did. And there's a lot of sources that indicate there was strong friction there. And the fact that his readings continue, For example, if you look at the Fogg's Palimpsest manuscript of Sura 2, 222, you see evidence there by comparing the Fogg's manuscript with the current rhythmatic version of not only total editing, but the word order's changed, grammatical terminations are changed, clear editing has taken place between those two versions. Now, I'm hoping that the kind of work that he was just making reference to would indicate these things, would go through the early Tafsir literature, which lists many variant readings. They didn't have any problem with that at that time. The theology hadn't developed to the point where that would be an issue. It was acceptable to discuss those things. In modern context, that has changed. But that needs to be a part of any type of critical edition of the Quran that would come out. Now, I would expect that there would be, again, because of the mechanism of transmission, fewer of those than you have in the free transmission. But again, this takes us back to In the hadith itself, we are told that there are certain ayahs mentioned specifically in those texts. One is in Surat al-Tawbah, in Surah 9, that was found with one person, only one source. Now we already know that many of the Quraysh had died in the battle of Yamama. And so this sort of brings us, I think, maybe transitionally to the discussion that you had also mentioned. There's only one ayah in the Quran that denies the crucifixion of Jesus, Surah 4, verse 157. How do we know that there were not others that had been lost? There are early sources that specifically said that there were things that were lost because many of those Qur'an had died. How do we know, in light of Surah 4, verse 157, which has no hadith commentary, Just so people can follow, Sura 157 is this somewhat controversial part of the Qur'an which claims that Jesus did not die on the cross. There are different, as I understand it, interpretations of what it could mean whether he swooned and came back to life or there was someone else was crucified in his place. We'll come to that very quickly. Firstly, let me deal with James, some of the contentions he raised. He said Ibn Masud is the man the Prophet asked his companions to go to if they want to learn the Quran. The Prophet never said Ibn Masud is the only man to go to. He pointed out four personalities and Ibn Masud was one of them. Ubaid bin Ka'b was another one. So there are other people you can go to learn the Quran from. So Ibn Masud is not the only authority. James pointed him out because he is a convenient reference that Christians use for their assertions. Now James has demonstrated very poor knowledge of Islamic history unfortunately and I don't expect James to know the Islamic history accurately because his field is biblical theology and textual criticism. So let me educate James on the history of Islam. Ibn Masud never had a problem with Uthman when it comes to the text of the Quran. His contention was that I was one of the earliest companions of Prophet Muhammad and I wasn't consulted in the codification of the Quran which was codified by Uthman. And what do the scholars have to say about this? If James did his homework and he looked at some of the major scholars in this field, he would have He would have been very careful in making these claims. Watt and Bell, Montgomery Watt was a practicing Christian scholar and he states in his book Introduction to the Quran that the Quran as it stands today is essentially Uthmanic. and the companions of Prophet Muhammad carried out a very good job in transmitting the text of the Qur'an. And the manuscript variation he's talking about, James is talking about, they are to do with vowels, marks, diacritical marks, and most of them are to do with the recitation of the Qur'an rather than the text itself, rather than the missing verses, added verses, what we find with the Bible. The Bible has chunks missing and chunks added, we know that. I mean, Gospel of Mark, chapter 16, verse 9 to 20, It's an addition, later addition. If we look at the textual tradition, Gospel of John, chapter 7, verse 53 to 8, 11 is another later addition. John in comma, another example, 1 John 5, 7, another addition. So we don't have these problems with the Quran. If James can pull out one of the manuscripts, early manuscripts which we have hundreds of them, we have hundreds of them and I can give you the source as well islamicawareness.org is a website where you can find the pictures of these manuscripts coming from the mid first century of Islam. You can go and check whether there are any variants or whether there are any new or old verses. Now James made a point that maybe the verses pertaining to Jesus' crucifixion went missing. It's like Bible or the Quran for that matter was transmitted by one or two people. No, it wasn't the case. Prophet Muhammad had 100,000 companions. Every single of them had to recite the Quran five times a day, every single day. For the Quran to go missing would have been a major issue. There would have been wars over this because the companions of Prophet Muhammad, they argued with each other on minor issues. For example, praying two rakats, two units of prayer or four units of prayer. They argued over these issues. How do we recite this? How do we recite that? Verses going missing is out of question. No scholar ever asserted this. And yet, Surah 2, 222 is not just vowel pointing because vowel pointing hadn't been introduced at that time. It is specific editing. Ubaid and Kab had a different number of surahs. It's unfortunate that we have to say, well, if you just do your homework. Actually, if we do, we discover that there are other variants involved in these very early manuscripts, which I do have in my library, and I've taken the time to obtain those things. But the reason I brought up Surah 4, verse 157 is because of the fact that it's the hadith that say, it's not me saying, it's the hadith that say, that in both those compilations, in 6, 509 and 510 from Sahih al-Bukhari, that there were particular portions of the Quran that were found with one person at each time. And the one that was found the second time had been missed in the first compilation. Those verses have nothing to do with Surah 4, verse 157. The point being that... Okay, it may be a separate issue, but you want to say that this has happened. The point being that since we only have one verse that denies the crucifixion. You see, Christian theology, you don't build upon one verse. But here you have the entire... Let's allow James to finish his point. But here you have the entire presentation of the denial of the historical belief of the crucifixion based upon a single verse. That, I think, is what raises concerns. Can you read the verse for us? Yeah, I have it right here. It says that they, speaking of the Jews, said and boast, we killed Christ Jesus, the Son of Mary, the Apostle of the Law. But they killed him not, nor crucified him. But so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no certain knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not." Then the next ayah, 158, says, Now, nay, Allah raised him up unto himself, and Allah is exalted in power and wise. There are many interpretations of what that means. Now for me, this one interests me in the context of this program because this is a clear issue where there's a difference between the Quran and the Bible in terms of a historical event and The question, if we're applying it to this example, which is more trustworthy? Now, why do you say the Bible has to win on this particular issue that Jesus was crucified, as the Bible tells us, and died, rather than the Koran? The only reason that Islam denies the crucifixion is based on 40 Arabic words. written over 600 years after the event in a completely different language, separated by over 700 miles from the actual events themselves, with no connection to first century sources of information. Any source of information that can reasonably be said to originate in the first century supports the crucifixion of Jesus. And at this point, Bruce Metzger, Bart Ehrman, all of them would all be united on this. Even the liberals, like a John Dominic Crossan, who I've also debated, says that one of the most basic facts of history that we can ascertain is the crucifixion of Jesus. Now, of course, he believes Jesus was taken out from the cross, buried in a shallow grave, and then eaten by dogs. So that doesn't really help a whole lot in the Jesus Seminar perspective, but the point is, The first century witness, all of anything that comes from the first century, the first hundred years after crucifixion, speaks of Jesus being crucified. And yet you go six centuries, over half a millennium away, and one verse becomes enough to overthrow all of that? I think that illustrates the anachronistic nature of Islamic theology. That looks backwards through the lens of the Quran as the final authority in all things. And anything that's contradictory to that is simply dismissed. Okay, just quickly I would like to deal with James' point to do with two missing verses of the Qur'an. If James read the Hadith, Volume 6, Book 61, Hadith number 509, carefully, you would come to realize that Zaid bin Thabit is talking about collecting the Qur'an and the Qur'an has been collected entirely. In its entirety, the Qur'an has been collected. Only two verses are missing. What does he mean by missing? He has memorized the Qur'an himself. He knows the Qur'an by heart. When we go to another report, reported by Ibn al-Hajar al-Asqalani in his book of Fatwa al-Bari, we come to realize that Abu Bakr, the caliph at the time, had ordered him to take the Qur'an in its written form with two witnesses who saw the Quran, that very parchment written in the presence of the Prophet himself and that is the only way he can accept the Quran and put it down in writing in the Codex. So Zaid knew that verse by heart. He knew that this verse exists but what he was lacking was two witnesses with a written parchment and only one man came forward with that parchment. and the other hadith clarifies this issue. This is why I insist that James' knowledge about the textual preservation of Quran is superficial. I would refer James to go to another work known as the History of the Text of the Quran. done by Dr. Mustafa Al Azami, an amazing piece of work and he breaks everything down beautifully and James can go back to that work and probably come up with some more impressive arguments in future. Coming back to the point of 157 that every single source, Christian source from the first century talks about the crucifixion and it's one of the established facts. and historians agree upon this and I accept that. I accept the major biblical historians are in agreement as far as the crucifixion of Christ is concerned because that's what the information states. This is what the text states and the other text is quiet. For example, Gospel of Thomas which is another point I wish to raise in this friendly interaction. James in one of his videos which he posted on YouTube titled Adnan Rashid and the New Testament and in this video James asserted that I made obnoxious claims about the Gospel of Thomas and other issues which we have already covered. So, Gospel of Thomas, what was my obnoxious claim about the Gospel? I stated that Gospel of Thomas originates from an earlier tradition than the Synoptic tradition. This is the claim I made, which is based upon the scholarly opinion, which I will come to address in a minute. So, Gospel of Thomas doesn't talk about, as it stands today, it doesn't talk about the crucifixion. Crucifixion is not to be found anywhere. majority of the scholars believe that Gospel of Thomas actually originates from a tradition which was parallel to Q tradition. You see Q tradition... Q being the source that Mark and others draw on. That's right, not Mark, Matthew and Luke. So it was a parallel tradition which came from an earlier tradition than the synoptic tradition. It doesn't talk about the crucifixion. So what the scholars have in front of them is the four Gospels. And then some of the later texts written by the Romans, Tacitus. Then we have Josephus, which was interpolated by later Christian hands. So this Gospel of Thomas, you believe, comes from some earlier source that doesn't mention the crucifixion. However, the Quran still mentions the crucifixion. It just says he doesn't die. Because Christians have, through these centuries, Christians have come to believe in crucifixion as a source of redemption. Christians see the crucifixion of the Christ as an act done by God himself to come on earth and kill himself for the sins of mankind, to pay for the sins of mankind. So it's a central issue for the Christians. This is why the Quran addresses the issue. Does this Gospel of Thomas and where it might have come from have any bearing on this, as far as you're concerned? No, none whatsoever. The Gospel of Thomas is a sayings collection that, amazingly enough, we only know it from two Greek papyri that disagree from one another, no earlier than around 200. and then a Coptic version that is much expanded from about 150 to 200 years later. It's interesting that we don't trust the New Testament because of text variation. The Gospel of Thomas has the worst possible textual history you could possibly have. So if we're going to be consistent, we wouldn't even be discussing it, because if we can't know what the New Testament says, then we certainly can't have a clue what the Gospel of Thomas said. But it is a collection that grows. It is very deeply influenced by Valentinian Gnosticism. The idea that it has anything to do with the first century is pure speculation based upon form criticism. You will not find any shred of information historically to substantiate this. It's all based upon, well, I think that Syrian Christianity was made up of people who didn't marry and things like that, and so I find parallels here. And you will find literally dozens of theories being promoted in scholarly literature today. about the origination of the Gospel of Thomas. The fact of the matter is, you can't trace it back that far. There's no evidence of it. And as to what it has to do with the crucifixion, well, absolutely nothing whatsoever. Because once again, when we ask the simple question of the centrality of the crucifixion to anything that we can trace to the first century, it is all through there. And that based upon, Justin, I just want to point out, a text that the Quran claims to be Mubinun, clear, perspicuous, easy to understand, and yet Surah 4, verse 157 is one of the least Mubinun texts you could possibly ever encounter. We have the majority of Muslims in the world believing that Surah 4, verse 157 teaches that someone was substituted for Jesus. Someone else was crucified in Jesus' place. And yet in the United States, you can look up Assad's publication, his commentary on the Quran, and he points out there's no reason to believe this whatsoever. And that in fact, Surah 158, when it says Jesus was lifted up, most Muslims believe that means that Jesus was taken up to Allah. And yet, rafahoo that is used there is never used of physically lifting someone up, it's exalting someone. So there's all sorts of lack of clarity. should be a rally on this program with his own version which is that Jesus swooned and was laid and then he was raised up. He actually understands sort of 427 to say that crucified and killed are two separate things, that he was crucified but that he was not killed and that he was raised up after being laid in a tomb. From your point of view, and I will let you respond to this Adnan, is there a theological reason that you would put as to why this verse made this point that Jesus wasn't crucified? What would have been the theological reason for that? I think it's the same theological reason that we see in Muslims today. You can walk down a street in sub-Saharan Africa and talk to a Muslim who has never had almost any education at all. And their first objection to your presentation of the gospel would be Allah would never allow one of his apostles, one of his sent ones, one of his Rasul to die in that way. I think that remains, there is a misunderstanding that people do not understand that Jesus said, no one takes my life from me. I give it of my own accord. I give it freely. The crucifixion was a horrible thing. The crucifixion, the very term was not used by many people in proper society back then because to speak of it was spoken of in hushed terms because it was such a vile way to die. No Roman citizen could be crucified. That was beneath them. And so to say that the Messiah, the sent one, would die in this way, well, as Paul said, to Jews, a stumbling block, to Gentiles, foolishness. But to we who are being saved, Christ, the power of God, the wisdom of God. We'll allow you to respond, and I'm afraid we're just getting towards the end of this section, so rather than interrupt you in mid-flow again, I'll give you a little more time in the next section, Adnan, to respond to that. Fascinating discussion thus far, and we've gone into areas of the transmission, the different traditions that obviously the Bible and the Koran come out of. I'm sure you've been as fascinated as I have to kind of hear the different perspectives represented here in the studio. James White is director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, And do check out them at aomin.org, and I'll put a link up with the podcast as well. Adnan Rashid from the Hitting Institute. I haven't got an address for that, Adnan, but perhaps by the end of the show you can write that down for me and we'll let the listener know. And if you want to respond in any way to anything you're hearing, love to hear from you. As usual, you can email unbelievable at premiere.org.uk. You can also phone and leave me a voicemail message for me to play out on a coming program. That's 08456 525252 and select option 8. Don't forget, there's a vast archive now of unbelievable programs and I'm going to link to a couple of them that have particular reference to our topic today with this current podcast. So do check that out at premiere.org.uk forward slash unbelievable. Thank you for listening this afternoon. We're going to be concluding this debate in a couple of minutes time here on Premiere. Welcome back to this, the final part of our show. Don't forget lots of other things to come here on Premier Christian Radio. If you've never listened, if you're only a podcast listener, I do urge you to check out the fuller website of Premier Radio and see the other programmes we have on offer at premier.org.uk. If you are enjoying today's programme, I'm sure you'll want to be here next week at the same time because James White is returning to have an interaction with Sir Anthony Buzzard, and Anthony is actually someone who denies that the earliest Christians believed in the Trinity in the way that Christians today would say they do. We'll be having that discussion on the Trinity. This is a particular area that James has spent a lot of time looking into, so it should be a fascinating discussion on whether the Bible supports the Trinity, whether the earliest Christians believed in the Trinity, in Jesus being Jesus the Son, God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and those all being part of the Godhead. So do join us again at the same time for that on the show next week. You're listening to Unbelievable on Premiere Christian Radio. But today's topic is the Quran and the Bible. Which is more trustworthy, we've been asking. It's been a fascinating interaction. We've been going at it just in the last section, gentlemen, on the question of Surah 157, the crucifixion. Did Jesus die on the cross? Different interpretations is what James was saying on this. No consensus among Muslims about what exactly that verse means. And obviously very different to what we believe are the sources we have in Christendom, the Bible, and James dismissed very quickly the Gospel of Thomas there at Naan. Anything you were wanting to respond to as far as that goes? Yes, I'll come back to Gospel of Thomas in a minute. First, I would like to say something about James' claim that crucifixion is the point which somehow proves the errancy of the Qur'an. The Qur'an is in error as far as the crucifixion is concerned. No, that's not true. In order for you to prove Qur'an wrong, you must prove the Bible to be infallible. You must prove the Bible itself is giving the accurate story about Jesus Christ. Even if we look at the Gospel of John, we see it presenting a high Christology. Gospel of John somehow, excuse my language, sexes up the life of Jesus Christ and it turns him into a demigod from a prophet from a messiah. So you feel it's like a progression, it's more theologised? That's right. This is what the scholars have to say. Paul and Anderson, one of the scholars on the Gospel of John, he states that the Gospel of John, it was edited, it has been touched by many hands and it's a progressive text. It doesn't come from one mind or one hand. The issue of crucifixion in the Quran is very explicit in stating that the Jewish claim that we killed him. Now how does Muhammad know that the Jews make this claim? They don't make this claim in the Bible, they make this claim in the Talmud. Now I don't believe that Prophet Muhammad had a Hebrew scroll of Talmud in front of him or a Hebrew codex of Talmud in front of him and he was copying from that. And then he was coming back to the Christian theology to correct everything. Prophet Muhammad was an illiterate shepherd in Mecca. He could not have been a theologian, let alone someone who would be commenting on delicate issues such as crucifixion and trinity and so on and so forth. So Prophet Muhammad couldn't have made this up. So Quran tells us that the Jewish claim which is made in the Talmud is false, that we killed the Messiah. And Quran states, he was not killed, he was not crucified. So would that then leave, the only option is that it was simply divinely revealed to Muhammad that this is the case? regardless of any texts that might have been out there, regardless of any history that he might have known. There is no evidence whatsoever for the claim James made that there may be a verse about crucifixion which went missing. This is an obnoxious claim. Not even a child can make this claim. Now coming back to the issue of a sub-Saharan nomad who would be asked about the crucifixion, he would simply say that a prophet of God or a messiah or man of God couldn't have been killed like this. Quran clearly states that many prophets who came before were killed. A prophet being killed is not a big deal. If he was crucified, it wouldn't have been a major issue. It's interesting because when I've done this before, other Islamic scholars have taken a different line to you and have more or less agreed with what James said which is no this this would have been a terrible you know this god would never do that to jesus because of the the status jesus has in islam is seen as it couldn't be that way but you would disagree i disagree because the quran clearly states that jesus did not die he wasn't crucified that's why i have a problem with the assertion that he was crucified but if he was crucified should the Quran have said that he was crucified or he was killed, I wouldn't have a problem with that because I can establish the Quran to be the word of God through other means. Let's get a quick response from James and then we'll come back to Gospel Thomas and then we'll have to wrap up. Yusuf Ali in his commentary on the Quran, this specific point, says the Orthodox Christian churches make it a cardinal point of their doctrine that his life was taken on the cross, that he died and was buried and on the third day he rose in the body with his wounds intact and walked about and conversed and ate with his disciples and was afterwards taken up bodily to heaven. Notice how he puts this, this is necessary for the theological doctrine of blood sacrifice and vicarious atonement for sins, which is rejected by Islam. That almost sounds like he thinks this is something that was created because of a pre-existing belief in this concept of vicarious atonement, so on and so forth, rather than flowing forth from this. The fact of the matter is that what I've said about Sura 417, it's not that there are lost verses or something. My point is when you base things upon a single verse, when we know that other verses have been missed, that raises questions about that method of transmission of the text which is controlled because you have to believe that that committee that did it got it right. And here we have a situation. Think about the standards that are being used here. Adnan is taking the words of a single person who had no direct connection with the issues surrounding Jesus' life and death that lived 600 years later and using those to overthrow the eyewitnesses of the actual events. And I've often asked my Muslim friends, would you take the words of someone who lived in the 1200s or 1300s? that comes along, doesn't speak Arabic, comes from another place far removed from Mecca or Medina, and he says, I'm a prophet. And guess what? The Hijra never took place. Are you simply going to accept what he says because he claims to be a prophet and overthrows a very central part of your faith on that basis? When the Quran puts words in Jesus' mouth that there's no historical evidence he ever said, and yet that is accepted on the basis of one person, And yet the entire manuscript tradition in the New Testament that goes back to the very origination of the faith is overthrown. I see that as a clear example of the anachronism of the Islamic approach to these things. And it's a use of double standards, and that's the real problem. You did want to move on to the Gospel of Thomas, so what did you want to clarify on that issue? The issue of the Gospels being infallible themselves, I mean, if Christ was really crucified, this assertion is based upon the Gospels which were written after the writings of Paul. Paul died in 60 CE, that's what the scholarly opinion suggests. the first Gospel was written, the Gospel of Mark in the year 60 to 70, between these 10 years. So, Gospels were written after the writings of Paul and Paul is the first person who asserts the significance of this crucifixion. He died for our sins, he must have resurrected if his crucifixion didn't exist, if his resurrection didn't happen, what we preach is vain, right? So, In my opinion, my personal humble opinion, I'm a student, I'm not a scholar like Dr. James White is. In my personal opinion, my studies lead me to believe that these four Gospels were theologically driven. They were written for theological purpose to substantiate a theological case. Why was the Gospel of Thomas rejected as a canonical document? Why? James's contention would be that because it is Gnostic but what do the scholars have to say first of all about his dating which James contested in his video according to I mean this is what the scholar who's writing this document. His name is April D. McCormick. I'm not too familiar with some of the Western names. I do apologize for that. According to this school of thought, the Gospel of Thomas was a Gnostic gospel. The school of thought she's talking about is Helmut Koester, James Robinson, and then their students. Marvin Mayer is one of them. Marvin Mayer is one of the leading scholars in this field when it comes to the Gnostic scriptures. and then according to them, the Gospel of Thomas is a Gnostic document. Not in the sense of a fully mature Gnostic system but in some proto-Gnostic sense. However, it was not dependent on the New Testament or composed late because the genre of the Gospel of Thomas was earlier and more primitive than the New Testament Gospels. The scholars such as Robinson, Koister and their followers such as Marvin May are stating clearly that the Gospel of Thomas was written earlier than the Synoptic Tradition and the date they allocate to this Gospel is Approximately 50 CE. We'll get a quick response from James and then we're going to have to go to final thoughts because we're out of time. Let me quickly finish my point, the point I'm trying to make. Very quickly. Gospel of Thomas, if the tradition originates from as the gospel stands today, because it's definitely not the original form, The scholars argue that the original gospel of Thomas doesn't exist today. We don't have a copy of that. What we have today is a protonostic gospel and some other scholars actually dispute that claim as well. James likes to put it as a black and white issue. It's not black and white. The gospel of Thomas is not Gnostic by default. There are scholars who have disputed this claim, such as this lady herself. April the Connick. Yeah, that's right. She actually asserts that Gospel of Thomas is not Gnostic at all. So the scholars need to come out of that hold. The final thought, I'm sorry, I apologise, it's very important. This is what I'm leading to. Why was the Gospel of Thomas rejected? Why? because of its non-conformity with the legal thought of the church at the time. For example, Bruce Metzger in his book, The Canon of the New Testament, on the page 251 he states, a basic prerequisite for canonicity was conformity to what was called the rule of faith. That is the congruity of a given document with the basic Christian tradition recognized as normative by the church. So you're saying there was a closed system and you couldn't get in if it was sort of outside that remit. In other words, the Gospel of Thomas presents a different God and a completely different worldview than the rest of the Bible. Therefore, no one ever took it seriously as being an actual part of the canon. It presents a God that the Muslims would never believe. And it shocks me, really, when Muslims promote this material because Gnosticism is so far removed from Islam and presents such a God that would be reprehensible. I did not interrupt you. We must finish up here as well. Let me finish this. black and white. Let me let me let me just let me let let the word speak for themselves. Jesus said, if those who lead you say to you, see the kingdom is in the sky, then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you it is in the sea, then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside you and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known and you will realize it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, know is the word gnosis. That's where we get Gnosticism. You dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty. That's from the Gospel of Thomas. It is very clearly tinged very deeply with narcissism. There is no documentary evidence. Deconic is pushing a feminist agenda. And you will find anything in feminist theology and any ancient work is subject to be used in this way. Again, I think we have massive double standards here. We have Deconic being used on a foundation that Adnan Rashid would never allow anyone to do anything in regards to Mohammed, Mohammed's wives, the Quran, the Hadith, anything anywhere near this. There's a gross double standard that's being used here. And I just simply want to- You can bring it and I will deal with it. I just simply- If you bring a contention, I will deal with it. We're going to have to draw it to a close, I'm afraid. Very quickly. I just simply would point people to reading the rest of these citations. Read the rest of the Connick's article. You'll see those things. I have it here on my screen. Look at what Metzger actually said about the trustworthiness and realize one thing. Bart Ehrman in our debate, I asked him, if you create your own Greek New Testament, how much would it differ from the current Nessie-Aland text? And he agreed it would differ less from the current Nessie-Aland text than the King James differs from the New American Standard Bible. So anyone who thinks that this is just this wholesale revision just simply hasn't delved deeply enough into what even Bart Ehrman is saying, radical a scholar as he is. Well, it's been a fascinating show and, well, I don't think we probably need to, in a sense, know where you guys finish up on the end of this, but it's been fascinating for me to have this interaction. The material you're drawing on, Adnan, is obviously contested a great deal by James there in terms of this Gospel of Thomas. But I'll certainly be happy to post up any links you gents might have to relevant information on that. And thank you both for joining me on the show today. It's been a fascinating discussion. And if you want to get in touch, I'm going to be giving you the details of how to do that as we look at some of your feedback in the last few weeks. So my thanks again to my guest, James White, Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries. and Adnan Rashid of the Hitton Institute have joined me on today's programme. And you can find details for them both with the webcast, with the podcast, I should say, at premier.org.uk forward slash unbelievable. Unbelievable with Justin Brierley.