All scripture is given by inspiration of God …
(2 Timothy 3:16 KJV)
No!
Not according to Dr. Michael R. Licona, an evangelical apologist darling in English speaking world. He admitted that the bible he is holding in his hand is not inerrant word of God. In other words it contains forgery, errors and falsehood..
Another Yahya Snow YT video. Published on 9 Aug 2016
Categories: Bible, Biblical scholarship, Christianity
Blogging Theology 
“In other words it contains forgery, errors and falsehood..”
The quran was heavily edited by men – your own sources record how Uthman destroyed hundreds of thousands of quranic materials. In other words, the quran you have now can in no way be the word of god – unless you want to go apostate and claim that Uthman or the anonymous men who wrote your book received divine revelation that the words that they destroyed were not from god.
LOL!!!! You guys have to get off these attacks on manuscripts – yours don’t make the grade. I’m still waiting for someone to post a copy of any complete pre-11th century bukharis, or direct me to where I can find a complete and full complement of the original manuscripts he drew from.
All I’ve gotten so far is the sound of crickets.
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D, this post is not about the Qur’an. The Qur’an is an ORAL “recitation”. This recitation is always in the heart and mind of Muslims public. Muslims memorized this recitation by heart since it was revealed to the Prophet till now. So Muslims don’t rely on written materials (mushafs) to safeguard the integrity of the Qur’an. We have man, women, kids from all sort of professions and age who memorized the Qur’an (recitation) who can spot any mushaf which was wrong/defective Caliph Uthman only destroyed defective mushafs which weren’t conformed with the correct recitation in the heart and mind of Muslim public at large. There’s no way he can manipulate the mushafs.
Btw, do you agree with Mike Licona?
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LOL, deflecting yet again! Boy, Fido is so predictable. He knows he cannot defend his Bible, so out of frustration, he rants about the Quran.
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Eric
In all truth, you have absolutely no idea which quranic “revelations” were destroyed because they no longer exist. Your own sources say that some quranic material was lost because the men who had memorized it were killed in battle. And your sources record significant disagreement between companions about content and length of the quran.
Even if I accept that your book is the direct word of god (which it literally is not because it came via an angel), the book you have now can in no way be the precise and exact revelation since it was entirely Uthman’s decisions what it should contain.
There’s no magic about it – some guy in the 7th century decided what later generations would believe.
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We Muslims know the Qur’an by heart, Muslims memorized the Qur’an either different portions of it or completely. The process of burning the Qur’an by caliph Uthman were never seen as an effort of suppressing the original recitation. Muslims burnt unused of defective Qur’anic manuscripts as an act of respect from time to time, only at the time of Caliph Uthman. The Qur’anic recitations were and always in the heart and mind of Muslims public at large. Qur’anic recitation never kept by certain individuals, there is no way any individual can destroy or “control” the Qur’anic transmission, it will take to completely annihilate the whole Muslim population in the planet in order to do that.
I myself and my kids memorized portions of the Qur’an and continue to progress to as much as We are able to achieve. Everyday I assume role as a makeshift Imam in the Mosque near I live in, whenever I recitated wrong, there were always brothers who corrected me during prayer or after.
I personally know people who memorized the Qur’an completely from cover to cover. This is an unbroken tradition in Islamic history, there were never a generations without those who memorized Qur’anic recitation, the recitation we have now is always the same as it was revealed from God through Angel Gabriel.
You don’t have this tradition, I have never seen any christians who memorized either portions let alone complete bible not in English not in original language (if there is such a thing). They are helpless without reading the actual works of human printed translations.
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Eric
“We Muslims know the Qur’an by heart, Muslims memorized the Qur’an either different portions of it or completely.”
So what?
non-sequitur I’m afraid. You Can’t know if what you are memorizing is exactly the same as was intended 1400 years ago – there’s no way of checking because there are so few manuscripts. That aside, there was no standard quran 1400 years ago, so different regions would have developed differently altered traditions, hence the factionalism in early islam that led to so much intra-muslim killing, civil wars and rebellions.
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Of course we know. The recitations were memorized right from the time it was revealed until today. It’s unbroken traditions. Even manuscript evidence dated back to the time of the Prophet conforms with modern Qur’anic mushaf and the recitation memorized by muslims today.
Muslims fought each other over many things mostly political, but not over the disagreement of variations of Qur’anic texts or recitations.
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Eric
Your oral tradition is unreliable. Your own sources record factional conflicts arising out of the existence of additional materials that did not make it into the quran because they were eaten by livestock, the men who had memorized it had been killed in battle, or simply because Uthman made the decision to destroy them.
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No it does not work that way. Our oral tradition is ironclad reliable. In order to earn legitimacy as a genuine memoriser of the Qur’an He has to acquire the “sanad” (ijazah) -a certificate of legitimacy passed down to his teacher which is ultimately linked to the Prophet Himself who has the final authority . This certificate also implies that the student has learned this recitation through face-to-face transmission “at the feet” of the teacher.
This what sanad look like for a memorizer
So Qur’anic oral tradition is outmost reliable
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Eric
“Our oral tradition is ironclad reliable.”
Rubbish. Like I said, your own sources cite factions in early islam who disputed Uthman’s quran. You have no way of proving that what you memorize today or 200 years ago, or 1000 years ago, is what the profit revealed, or intended to be written down. He never left any indications which materials Uthman should destroy and which he should reveal.
In other words, you don’t really know what mohammed taught because the message was corrupted by Uthman.
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It is Prophet not profit. How can not we be confident that this Qur’an we have now the same as the original recitation of the Prophet, while we have the narration link (with names) to Prophet himself in the presence of those who had witnessed the original revelation.
You don’t have that with regards to the text of the bible, you dont have names they were just anonymous but representing them as spoken by others ie. forgery and many obvious errors, surely the work of ghost not God.
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Oh sammy Islam will endure and prevail until the final day, all glory to our Lord Allah Almighty!… Christianity is withering sam..come and embrace Islam before its to late….
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Hi D,
Just a few points as I’m in a rush.
The post is not primarily about manuscripts – neither the video nor thist post by Eric.
You’re comparing apples with oranges. Muslims aren’t reliant on manuscripts to reconstruct any text – be it the Quran or the Ahadith books. Yet Christians are reliant on manuscripts to do so – to the extent that they call the Bible they have today a theoretical construction and the manuscrpts they collect are called “witnesses”. In our tradition, the witnessing is done orally through transmitters. That’s a key difference here.
Sahih Bukhari was heard and transmitted by 90,000 Muslims from Imam Bukhari himself (as mentioned by one of his students). The way the early Muslims did transmission of Hadith was the teacher having the student read from the student’s text back to the teacher or vise versa (the names of both individuals were known). Again contrast this with the way the “witnesses” of the Bible came into being, there was no checking – an anonymous person was just writing the text himself (in fact we don;t know the name of ANY scribes of the NT).
You also asked for manuscripts of Sahih Bukhari. As I’ve alluded to the finding ancient manuscripts aren’t important for the Muslim methodology BUT I want to point out that according to the article I read Manjana (an Orientalist scholar) said the oldest manuscript he came across was written in 370AH. This, with respect to the tradition of Bukhari, is earlier than ANY complete Bible (NT) we have!!!
You mentioned you want an extant and complete manuscript of Bukhari prior to the 11th century (roughly 300-400 years after Bukhari) yet this date is roughly on par with the earliest complete NT (which I believe is Sinaiticus, mid 4th century CE). So if you want something earlier for Bukhari albeit Muslim methodology not reliant on the manuscript tradition I’m sure you will want something much more earlier for the NT – earlier than Codex Sinaiticus. Thus, I believe you will not trust the NT until you discover something much earlier.
For more info, see the article on IslamQA: He is asking for the original copies of Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. [Sorry I’m having tech probs here and am in a rush so cannot link it – may link it later if I check back on this thread]
NB. I find your comments about the Quran to be absurd. How can Uthman’s destruction of manuscripts mean that the Quranic text we have today mean the Quran we have today is not the one which we had at the time of Uthman? You do realise all the companions were in agreement with Uthman’s actions – thus we can certainly be confident that the Quran we have today is the same as the companions verified and agreed upon it. What more can one ask for? Be consistent, who agreed and verified the NT texts? The original authors never even believed what they were writing was “inspired” thus nobody was walking around with the same care, urgency and respect for those texts as that of the Quran. Not only that, we know the idea of inspiration for those texts began to spring up decades or even centuries afterwards – so much so that Sinaiticus contains books (epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas) which aren’t even considered inspired to this day – there was huge debate over Revelation and the shorter epistles of Paul. This dispute was around at the time of Eusebius where books such as James and Jude were still being debated (amongst others).
Look, it’s obvious Christians would love to have had companions of Jesus agree on their text – it’s not the case. In fact, they don;t even have the companions of the authors of the NT books (some anonymous authors) agree upon and control the dissemination of the text. It’s not the case.
PS Don’t bring up Ibn Masud. It’s been done to death and it’s tiring continually explaining this to Christians.
BE sincere, ask yourself which is Book is more certain.
Peace
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yahya
“Muslims aren’t reliant on manuscripts to reconstruct any text – be it the Quran or the Ahadith books. Yet Christians are reliant on manuscripts to do so – to the extent that they call the Bible they have today a theoretical construction and the manuscrpts they collect are called “witnesses”. In our tradition, the witnessing is done orally through transmitters.”
I think you are engaging in special pleading here. It is more accurate to say that muslims cannot rely on manuscripts because you don’t have many. This means that whatever oral tradition you have is suspect and can in no way be checked to see how far it has diverged from the original message. Bart ehrman has shown that even over the short term, oral tradition can alter drastically.
That’s why islamic tradition cannot be trusted – your sources clearly state that there was conflict amongst early believers and the companions over what should be in the quran and there are hadiths which record surahs being too long, too short, or having been destroyed. There is also a shia tradition in which the they claim the quran was corrupted by jibril and that Ali should have been the recipient of some of the revelations. Why shouldn’t we believe their traidition? what written documents do you have that say otherwise?
As for the hadith, it is completely irrelevant how many people claim to have heard it – especially since there are practically zero written documents to back it up. Bukhari and Muslim both have next to nothing when it comes to early manuscripts.
One of the issues that skeptical scholars have is the phenomenon of hadith inflation – ten years prior to bukhari’s supposed compilation, there were mere hundreds of hadith, but when he began work on compilation, that number had swelled to hundreds of thousands. That is dodgy, to say the least. the further away you get from an event, the fewer first hand accounts become available.
As for the inclusion of biblical materials into the canon, I see no problem with early church fathers debating the subject. All it means is that even from the earliest times, there was an intellectual approach to the sources in which authenticity was a major consideration. This makes the bible even more likely to be authentic since when these debates were going on, no one thought about removing or editing out embarrassing passages from the texts.
And why don’t you like Ibn Masud? We can never know the truth about his claims because your manuscripts were destroyed. No one can fully disprove his allegations for this reason, which in and of itself, casts major doubt on not only the quran, but the entire process that you are championing.
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I have here in my country a kid as young as 6 years old who memorized the entire Al Qur’an front cover to cover and large number of hadiths.
Musa bin La Ode
Watch how Islamic scholars were testing this kid Qur’anic and and hadiths memorization level taking random portion of recitation from Al Qur’an and hadiths yet he is able to complete the rest of the recitations. This kid does not even speak and understand Arabic. But he is somehow able to correctly perform Qur’anic recitation from memory. And there are many like him I can tell you.
This is the living miracle of the holy Qur’an . God Himself promised its preservation through human memory, this is how God ORALLY preserved Qur’anic revelation through the heart and mind of the believers, something any other man-made text are impossible to accomplish their preservation through oral tradition.
“Surely, We have sent down the reminder (the Qur’an) , and We will most surely be its guardian”. (Qur’an, 15:9)
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D,
Seriously you’re just being insincere now or you’re utterly unaware of Muslim responses. The Ibn Masud stuff has been done to death. Just seek it out and read up – after doing so you will see why I’ve dismissed it. The same applies to the Hadith you refer to.
The reason why we don’t make a big deal about the manuscript tradition of the Quran as it was never important. Manuscripts were just used as aids for memorisation. Nobody was thinking, hold on folks we need to preserve these manuscripts so people in the future can have a Quran. It was and still is a living transmission. With the Bible it’s different and now you guys are scratching around in rubbish heaps (yes the one in Egypt where the majority of MSS were found was a rubbish heap) trying to RECONSTRUCT (yes, the scholars say they try to theoretically construct the NT using available MSS) so much so that even your scholars like Dan Wallace don’t think the current manuscript tradition contains the autograph readings!!!!
As for your claim about NT books being debated; they were being debated because originally the authors didn’t think their books were inspired and/or the immediate audience. These books ended up being included in the canon based on majority rule and it was all finalised in 397 at the council of Carthage. This actually militates against the belief the Holy Spirit guides Christians in Scripture as there were generations of Christians who did not even know what to consider inspired or not in those days where the Church was debating and deliberating.
In summary, we have a book which all Muslims accept as being complete and having been agreed upon by the companions (yes all of them) and agreed upon by every generation of Muslims thereafter coming to us through mass transmission. That’s the Quran. Whilst on the hand the Christians have a book that none of the companions of Jesus nor their subsequent companions ever saw nor sanctioned. The subsequent generations never agreed upon what the Bible was (i.e. what should be in included) and it has never been considered complete since modern textual criticism – even to this day. Schoars look for new MSS every day trying to add to the Bible or at the very least find new “witnesses” to help verify the current text as the current text is not considered to be reliable nor complete. That’s the Bible.
There’s a world of difference. Christians would love to have a similar situation for their Bible as Muslims have for the Quran. This envy does not work both ways – Muslims would not want to be in the position of the Christian.
Be sincere brother. You’ll admit this to yourself at the very least.
Peace
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Yahya
“In summary, we have a book which all Muslims accept as being complete and having been agreed upon by the companions (yes all of them) and agreed upon by every generation of Muslims thereafter coming to us through mass transmission. ”
LOL! All this after arguing that the bible is deficient because human beings agreed upon its contents. You are going round in circles. The most important figure in your faith had no say in what was put into the quran, so at est you have the opinions of companions who subsequently formed factions that disagreed with each other. I think you are straining through rose coloured glasses here.
You still are relying on special pleading to make your case – and even worse, you are asserting your beliefs on the circular basis that the quran contains the original content because its contains the original content.
That is the whole point – your basis for faith is weak if the best you can muster is “everyone who came before us says its true, so it must be true!”
It is irrelevant that muslims don’t hold early manuscripts to be significant – objective investigators do and because both the quran and hadith have scant source materials you simply have no way of proving your case other than empty assertions of miraculous oral transmission. I again refer you to Bart Ehrman as a beginning source for how flimsy the oral tradition can be.
You are being insincere by not acknowledging that you simply have no objective method by which you can study the whether the quran you have today is the one mohammed intended for you to have.
The hadith are simply a joke – the lines of transmission could so easily have been redacted for political or religious reasons hundreds of years after the events they supposedly record – you simply have nearly zero paper trail to support most of the verses recounted in them. Again the earliest complete bukhari dates from the 11th century, and there are scant written source materials prior to that.
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Very good points Yahya Snow. You completely destroyed D!!
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“In other words it contains forgery, errors and falsehood..”
Licona did not admit that, he did not say there was “forgery” or “falsehood”; The “errors” he admits are there in Bibles today are copyists errors. He along with everybody else (Geisler, White, Wallace, etc.), is admitting that there are copyist errors in the copying of manuscripts. (especially the numbers issues between the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.)
The official doctrine of Inerrancy is that the Bible is without error in the original manuscripts. See the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy.
Dr. White’s point about the tenacity of the text is about the New Testament textual evidence that we have, and that is an excellent point. Glad you included that part, about having extra pieces in doing a jigsaw puzzle. (Robert Bowman’s point)
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Official fact: You don’t have the original manuscripts.
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Not just so called copyist errors, Licona elsewhere admitted that gospel writers deliberately changed the text, compressing stories, displacing them from their original context and transplanting them in others, transferring words spoken by one person and representing them as spoken by others.. That constitutes forgery and falsehood in everything but name
Licona dont seems to appeal to Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (CSBI) definition of inerrancy anywhere, He simply stated the bible he has now is not inerrant word of God. You make it like CSBI as the 5th gospel or something.
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Licona elsewhere admitted that gospel writers deliberately changed the text, compressing stories, displacing them from their original context and transplanting them in others, transferring words spoken by one person and representing them as spoken by others..
Where is all that?
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Read here in Licona’s site: http://www.risenjesus.com/chicagos-muddy-waters
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Ken Temple
Mike’s honesty is so devastating to Ken Temple so much so that he does not believe what he is reading. My dear Ken, we have been saying for year what Mike has now able to accept. Hope you will accept it one day and finally convert to Islam.
Thanks
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Not really. Not devastating at all. But interesting.
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Oh Kenny:
Licona suggested that the appearance of angels at Jesus’ tomb after the resurrection is legendary. He wrote:
“It can forthrightly be admitted that the data surrounding what happened to Jesus is fragmentary and could possibly be *mixed with legend*, as Wedderburn notes. We may also be reading poetic language or legend at certain points, such as Matthew’s report of the raising of some dead saints at Jesus death (Mt 27:51-54) and the angel(s) at the tomb (Mk 15:5-7; Mt 28:2-7; Lk 24:4-7; Jn 20:11-13”
Licona also claims to believe in the general reliability of the Gospel records, “even if “some embellishments are present.” He adds, “A possible candidate for embellishment is John 18:4-6” (306, emphasis added) where, when Jesus claimed “I am he” (cf. John 8:58), his pursuers “drew back and fell on the ground.”
Licona said clearly, “there is somewhat of a consensus among contemporary scholars that the Gospels belong to the genre of Greco-Roman biography (bios).” Then he goes on to say that “Bioi offered the ancient biographers great flexibility for rearranging material and *inventing speeches*,…and they *often included legend*. Because bios was a flexible genre, it is often difficult to determine where history ends and legend begins”
Mike Licona’s book on The Resurrection of Jesus
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corrections
for years
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Thanks for the link Eric – very interesting. I did not know about the details of a lot of that. I knew Geisler was writing against Licona for his view of Matthew 27 and the saints who were raised from the dead; but I did not know about many of the other details. Although I see no problem with Matthew’s way of framing / organizing the genealogy of Jesus – since the number 14 is an emphasis showing Jesus Christ the Messiah is from the line of “David”; and it is not a problem with telescoping a passage, as Dr. White pointed out in his debates with Shabir Ally. Those are not problems with inerrancy.
Some of the other details was good for me to learn about. Thanks.
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Following top evangelical apologist like Licona over the years it is interesting to watch how he starts abandoning the inerrancy of the bible. There are many in the same trajectory like him.
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D
You said;
D
August 12, 2016 • 11:36 am
Eric
“We Muslims know the Qur’an by heart, Muslims memorized the Qur’an either different portions of it or completely.”
So what?
non-sequitur I’m afraid. You Can’t know if what you are memorizing is exactly the same as was intended 1400 years ago – there’s no way of checking because there are so few manuscripts. That aside, there was no standard quran 1400 years ago, so different regions would have developed differently altered traditions, hence the factionalism in early islam that led to so much intra-muslim killing, civil wars and rebellions.
I say;
So what? It matters to memorise a scripture of God and continue to recite it everyday through prayers and recitation as it is the tradition from Angel Gabriel to our prophet and to his disciples and to their disciples and students and to their disciples and students till today.
The are factions in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and even idol worshipers have factions and republicans have factions. Donald Trump supporters have factions some say he is going too far and some say he must stay the way he is and some say he must insult Muslims, Latinos, blacks, minorities more and more.
Because Allah says He will protect the Quran, He made us memorise it to serve as a yardstick to correcting the written text and that is why Othman was alerted that some new Muslims are pronouncing wrongly. How was it known? during the prophets disciples time? Because Allah said He will guide the Quran.
Those committee who scribed the Quran to be distributed were all memorizers and Zaid Ibn Thabit the head of the committee has memorised the Quran and most of the committed members as well and Zaid was a personal scribe of our prophet.
So, the factions of Muslims do not have any problem with the Quran because they believed it is well preserved by Allah as Allah said so.
Every Muslim recite Quran in its original language from the time it was revealed till today and Paul Williams, an English man and his country men who are Muslims, Portuguese Muslims, Italian Muslims, German Muslims etc. have memorized some part of the Quran.
If any Imam recite some verses right now wrongly, I bet Paul Williams the English man will correct him in Arabic. That is what happened during Othman’s time. We know our Quran by heart and will correct any mistake.
Can you recite the Lords prayers in Greek? Most pastors cannot do that. Paul Williams the English man and his country men who are Muslims can recite Al Fatiha and so many verses by heart and no one dares change anything from the Quran.
Thanks.
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D
If someone changed something in the Christian Lords prayer in Greek, most pastors will not know let alone lay Christian like you. But if some one change not only Al Fatiha in Arabic but many verses in Arabic, Paul Williams will correct him because he like all Muslims have memorized some part or all the Quran by heart.
Because there was no memorization in Christian tradition and the scriptures was used to be controlled by some people and is not accessible to the Christian or Jewish public some time in history, it is easy for them to add, subtract, delete etc. in the Bible as can be seen from the blockbuster ghosts coming from their graves during Jesus crucifixion and snake stories that led to snakes biting and killing pastors in the Apalachian USA.
No one can add this nonsense in the Quran.
Thanks.
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Intellect
“It matters to memorise a scripture of God and continue to recite it everyday through prayers and recitation as it is the tradition from Angel Gabriel to our prophet and to his disciples and to their disciples and students and to their disciples and students till today.”
Circular reasoning. Whatever you are reciting is probably not the complete, or even the intended, version of your book. You don’t know what the original said or was supposed to say because any source materials were destroyed.
“If any Imam recite some verses right now wrongly, I bet Paul Williams the English man will correct him in Arabic…..Can you recite the Lords prayers in Greek? Most pastors cannot do that. Paul Williams the English man and his country men who are Muslims can recite Al Fatiha and so many verses by heart and no one dares change anything from the Quran.”
Shrug. So what? You don’t whether what you are reciting is the complete, or what was the intended version. Your quran was only standardized in the early 20th century and written sources from the very early days of islam are almost non-existent. the earliest copies of the quran are incomplete, and the earliest complete quran dates from around 2 centuries after the event.
the hadith are a joke when it comes to historical credibility.
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“Muslims burnt unused of defective Qur’anic manuscripts as an act of respect from time to time,”
Eric or anyone else, why were there defective Quranic manuscripts in the first place? If we are to assume what you’re saying about the perfect preservation of the Quran, I don’t see how defectives would pop up in the first place, let alone the need to burn them.
Besides that, the numbering and naming of the Quranic chapters wasn’t done or dictated by Muhammad. Muhammad isn’t the one for example who wanted chapter 4 to be named “the woman” or chapter 2 to be named “the cow”. That was done after he died, so was the ordering of the verses and chapters which is one of the reasons why the Quran isn’t in order. The Muslims who collated it after he died, mostly arranged them by length rather than chronological order.
This raises a question similar to the Biblical one in the video. Did God inspire the Muslim collectors to arrange the Quran in such a way or was He simply uninterested? If He God inspired them to arrange the Quran in such a way then I don’t see the problem of God inspiring the Biblical authors to write within the context of their own understanding. If however, God was simply uninterested then my conclusion is, the Quran is on the same playing field as the Bible i.e neither are the direct verbatim word of God, but simply scriptures written by human hands with human thoughts. This is more problematic for the Muslim than for the Christian (unless they are hardline believers of the inerrancy and unfallibility of the Bible), since it is the Quran itself that claims to be the actual word of God.
I can understand your point about Muslims preserving and memorising the Quran but for me and for many other scholars and historians who study the Quran that is nothing special. If I told a group of people one day that 2+2=4 and it was written down in 2 manuscripts, one which had the correct sentence and one which had 2+2=3 but the correct one was burnt and people only memorised and wrote down 2+2=3, despite how many people memorise that one perfectly over the centuries it would still be incorrect and no one would ever know because the original copy was burnt or destroyed. I don’t know if you understand the analogy but what I’m trying to say is the memorisation of the Quran is nothing special about whether it comes from God or not. What’s more important is whether what you’re memorising is actually how it was from the very beginning, I believe D mentioned that already. Plus people memorise all kinds of texts and song lyrics today, there is nothing divine about that. I’m pretty sure I can orally quote plenty song lyrics that I have memorised in my head today even if the original work was to be lost. That doesn’t make the song or the lyrics divine, it just means it’s either easy to remember or I’ve reinforced it strongly enough in my brain to recollect it from memory. On top of that, despite being able to memorise the text, even if we assume it was the original that Muhammad recited, there are still further questions such as whether what is within the text itself is actually correct, in context of history, science or just plain statements made in the Quran.
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Oops
Defective Quran means just like every book that is used everyday, wear and tear will set in and depreciation of the ink, paper torn apart etc. and needs for replacement. That is what Eric means and he does not mean defective in reading or memorization. I hope it is clear since no Christian has ever asked this question even D never asked this question.
With regards to memorization, the Quran is called recitation in Arabic and the Angel recited the Quran as it is called the Quran to the prophet and he recited it to his companions and they memorized and wrote it down and the tradition continued till today. From disciples, teachers to disciples students and through prayers and recitations everyday and we know it is the same verses we are reciting from the time or our prophet.
The Church choir and their members have memorized Church Hymns and they know it is correct from when it was recited and they recite it today in memory and any one who makes a mistake will be corrected by Church choir. I hope the Church must have memorized their Bible in Greek rather than Church Hymns.
That is what Muslim did from the beginning through Angel Gabriel and our Quran is our Hymn and its recitation is sometime in poetic form and it is correct from the beginning till today like the Church hymn is correct from beginning and today.
From God? The Quran just like the Bible says the God of Abraham is One, Only and Alone. It calls for idol worshipers to stop their practice and come and worship the only one God of Abraham and away from Satan. It corrects the Christians to stop worshiping a man because a man was made and God was not made as so the contents of the Quran will tell any wise person that it is from God.
Most Jews from then till today accept the message of the Quran is divine just like their scripture. They do not want to abandon their tradition so they will not convert but respect the message of the Quran. Some converted anyway.
Thanks.
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With the name of Allah the Gracious the Merciful,
Hi Oops,
Manuscripts defects can happen. Human can err in producing the written materials, especially in those days there were no computer powered word-processor who can easily manipulate text the way we do it now, those who erred in the oral memorisation they can rectify and “learnt” the correct recitation from those who know the correct recitation who has sanad or certificates passed down from the Prophet himself, but for written manuscripts it got to be burnt as an act of respect not suppression because part of those defective manuscripts also contains the correct “word of God”. This act of burning happen not only in time of Caliph Uthman but until this very day. Even in my Mosque, ( FYI I am a member of Mosque committee in our neighbourhood as well as a makeshift Imam) we burnt old, unusable torn printed Qur’an to prevent any use in any disrespectful ways.
The Qur’anic preservation through memorisation is indeed a living miracle, is not as simple as you illustrate. The “correct” recitation comes first not the written materials. As I mentioned, Qur’anic oral tradition goes back to the Prophet himself. In order to earn legitimacy as a genuine memoriser of the Qur’an (or the rightful passer of oral tradition) He has to acquire the “sanad” (ijazah) -a certificate of legitimacy passed down to his teacher which is ultimately linked to the Prophet Himself who has the final authority to decide the correct recitation. And the Prophet recognised not only one type of recitation but several ways of recitations. This certificate also implies that the student has learned this recitation through face-to-face transmission “at the feet” of the teacher.
Given the high coherence of the Qur’an and its arrangement I dont believe about the speculation that the arrangement was done after the Prophet died, I would like pay your attention to the work of Qur’anic specialist, a book by Prof. Raymond Farrin“Structure and Qur’anic Interpretation: A Study of Symmetry and Coherence in Islam’s Holy Text” which focus on other miraculous aspect of the Qur’an that is its astonishingly coherence and unity in its structure and contents.
Professor Farrin explores patterns of symmetry which are found in the individual chapters, chapter pairs, groupings of chapters, systems of chapters, and then the entire corpus. This structural analysis provides him the opportunity to explore the overall connectivity of messages throughout the Qur’an.
Seeing in this arrangement a coherence that is suitable for all people and for all times to come. We can only conclude that the arrangement of the Qur’an was determined by the Prophet himself, under guidance from God.
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“Human can err in producing the written materials, especially in those days there were no computer powered word-processor who can easily manipulate text the way we do it now”
Eric these same things are said about the Bible. Besides all this ijazah stuff you’re taking about is the same kind of tradition that Christians have used to trace back the authenticity of the NT. For example the tradition for the gospel of John says that John taught and influenced many others such as Polycarp, who then influenced Ireneaus and so on. By Ireneaus’ time which was the 2nd century, the Biblical tradition was already well in place, there are many more names before Ireneaus that I can site. Because of these people we have more certainty that the gospels were written by who they say they were.
This is the problem I have with double standards, why is it ok for Muslims to make sense of their traditions in such a way but everything Biblical has to be seen as a corruption? Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not trying to accuse you because I find double standards by Christians too, probably more so when it comes to interpretating Islam.
By the way it is your own Hadith traditions that say the prophet died before the Quran was even written down in its entirety. For that reason there was a panic after the people who memorised most of it were dying in battle (they have a name but can’t quite remember). And so the Quran had to be collected from all different kinds of material in which is was written down in. Therefore I highly doubt that Muhammad oversaw the final structuring of the Quran. As great as all the so called patterns may be it was still done by the hands of others. So once again were the quranic scribes inspired or was God uninterested?
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With the name Of Allah.
Hi Oops,
The problem is you lost oral tradition, there is no way you can verify which part of text of the Gospels is authentic utterance of Jesus, nobody memorised the text.
Qurʾānic memorisation on the other hand started from day one right from the Prophet Muhammad himself. It is a living phenomenon which continues to happen till today. And I argue this is a miraculous nature of the Qur’an. The memorizers came from all sort of background, ages, and culture. There are many young kids who barely speak his non Arabic mother tongue but can committed the Qur’anic recitations to memory flawlessly. They are not adult arabic speaker or islamic scholars. There must be divine works involved here. That’s why we have confidence about the textual integrity of today Qur’anic texts. There’s never time In Islamic history without living memorizers of the Arabic Qur’an recitations.
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Eric we’re about to go in circles here with the memorisation issue, I’ve made my main points above already so I will probably end my responses here.
1st I’d like to say Jesus didn’t have a book that he came with like Moses or Muhammad. His ministry was based on teaching and being a living example of the Torah. It was others around him who memorised his words and actions which were eventually recorded into the gospels. Even Bart Ehrman says that despite the fact we don’t have any 1st century manuscripts from his time we can be pretty certain that many things recorded in the gospels are what Jesus actually said or did. If we ever find 1st century manuscripts it is unlikely that they will differ wildly than what we already have. Besides that, the earliest tradition we have of Jesus Christ is recorded in Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians in chapter 15: 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
Even sceptical scholars who aren’t Christians such as Geza Vermes and Gerd Ludemaan acknowledge that this tradition is no later than 5 years from Jesus’ crucifixion, with Gerd going further and saying it is within 2 years and no later than 3 years after the crucifixion. This is important because like Mike Licona says in the video, even if there were errors or mistakes in the NT, as long as Jesus was actually resurrected then Christianity would still be true regardless. It’s also important because it tells all of us that the belief in Jesus’ resurrection wasn’t just some hearsay that people were talking about which eventually became mainstream, it was the belief of the earliest church all along, coming straight from the 2 leaders in Jerusalem: James the brother of Jesus and Peter the apostle of Jesus.
Galatians 1:18-20 – Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas (Peter) and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.
Now back to the Quranic memorisation, as I mentioned above, as great as it may be the bigger and more important question that you have to ask yourself is whether what you’re memorising is 100% what Muhammad said. And despite that there would still then be questions about how true the Quran really is, such as questions on science, history, internal inconsistencies or errors and other such things. The memorisation of the Quran is only a subjective miracle in the eye of the Muslim since you already believe the Quran to be from God, therefore you don’t feel the need to ask the 1st 2 questions. For the non-Muslim questioner, this so called miracle is more secondary rather than primary, in that the Quran would first need to be seen as the true word of God before someone else can appreciate the so called miracle of memorising it. Because for all we know you might just be memorising incorrect information that was simply copied down from every manuscript since the Uthman recession. And because of that, memorising the Quran will only be seen as great as memorising any other piece of text such as song lyrics or even large poems which people in the world have actually memorised.
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With the name of Allah
Hi Oops,
Very briefly here, as I am travelling. I really appreciate your respectful engagement with us. May Allah the Most High guide us to the truth.
Muslims dont claim exclusive revelation, Islam is the continuation and the last revelation from series of earlier revelations. Jesus prophethood has legitimacy in Islam and it consider his early followers as genuine monotheists.
Now the irreconcilable differences between Islam and trinitarian Christianity lies in the claim that Jesus is 3in1 God and he somehow killhimself to save people from hell based on New Testament stories. Muslims can never accept this claim as this is at odd with the teaching of earlier prophets in Torah. Furthermore there’s no way we can verify the truthfulness of this claim knowing the situation, as Licona put it, that NT writers changed the text, compressing stories, displacing them from their original context and transplanting them in others, transferring words spoken by anonymous person and representing them as spoken by others.. It other words NT Writers made things up We can never be certain what Jesus said and meant in this state.
The Qur’an rejected this claim in clear term and we have good reason to know this rejection is valid 1) This is in sync with the teaching of earlier Biblical prophets, 2) Qur’anic recitation dont come from anonymous men who merely claim inspiration. The Qur’an is memorized from day one and it has the sanad system meticulously recorded the memorizers information back to the Prophet himself as the first memorizer, NOT after Uthmanic recension. There’s never a time when there is no living memorisers of the Qur’an since it was revealed until today.
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D
You said;
Circular reasoning. Whatever you are reciting is probably not the complete, or even the intended, version of your book. You don’t know what the original said or was supposed to say because any source materials were destroyed.
I say;
The source is recitation from Angel Gabriel to our prophet and the Angel continued to train our prophet to memorise everything and the prophet will train his disciples to memorize everything in recitation because the Quran in Arabic means recitation not manuscript.
The original Quran is recitation from the Angel to our prophet not manuscript. Our prophet recited what the angel said and his disciples wrote them down. They have their copies and may add their notes in their copies but no one can add any notes in the memorized Quran and would be corrected instantly and that is what happened to the new comers in Islam. They were corrected.
The original written one was in Quraish dialect and was kept by the Father of our prophets wife and later she kept it and it was used by Othman and his committee toghether with memorizers to verify and scribe the standard written one.
You said;
Shrug. So what? You don’t whether what you are reciting is the complete, or what was the intended version. Your quran was only standardized in the early 20th century and written sources from the very early days of islam are almost non-existent. the earliest copies of the quran are incomplete, and the earliest complete quran dates from around 2 centuries after the event.
I say;
We know what we recite is the correct one because all our ancestors use to recite them in prayers and after prayers and we continue to do that today.
The Quran came as a recitation and continues recitation during prayers and after prayers and so we know it is correct. Some Christians have memorised all the lyrics of Adele, Hymns, songs etc and cannot memorise their Bible in Greek. We Muslims have memorised our Quran in and some in a poetic form and from the time of our prophet till today and we know it is correct.
You said;
Eric
Your oral tradition is unreliable. Your own sources record factional conflicts arising out of the existence of additional materials that did not make it into the quran because they were eaten by livestock, the men who had memorized it had been killed in battle, or simply because Uthman made the decision to destroy them
I say;
You have twisted this like how you twisted nudity to be civility in the other thread and you cannot answer all my allegations to you as uncivilized person who supports naked ladies like the Amazonians who are naked because they are uncivilized against civilized Egyptian volley ball players who are civilized and will not expose their private parts to be seen like the strip club type that makes them sex slaves by playboy and porn industry.
Back to topic. There was no factional conflicts because of the Quran. You lied. Not all men who memorized the Quran were killed. The committee of Othman and Othman himself memorized all the Quran. If even a livestock ate some written Quran the livestock did not eat the recitation in thousands of Muslims at that time. We do burn Qurans that are worn out and it does not mean we have lost the recitations in peoples mind, memories and heart.
Thanks.
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Intellect
“The source is recitation from Angel Gabriel to our prophet and the Angel continued to train our prophet to memorise everything and the prophet will train his disciples to memorize everything in recitation because the Quran in Arabic means recitation not manuscript.”
Nonsense. where are the eyewitness accounts supporting this belief? Where are the early written materials?
“We know what we recite is the correct one because all our ancestors use to recite them in prayers and after prayers and we continue to do that today.”
At best, your quran is incomplete, at worst, it has been deliberately corrupted. Again, your own sources record the destruction of materials and men who had verses memorized before they could be copied.
When you recite the quran you are reciting according to the will of Uthman.
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Lol, the denial in Fido and Ken’s posts is hilarious. Fido can’t handle the evidence against his Bible, so he just changes the subject, in the hopes of deflecting from the embarrasament.
And Ken, well Ken just does his usual thing which is to try to play it cool. Here, we have a well known Evangelical scholar who says that the Bible is quite errant, something most people have known for a long time. But Ken thinks that this is merely “interesting”. Hmmm, denial much? 😉
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History of the Qur’ānic text: from revelation to compilation : a comparative study with the Old and New Testaments
http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=11&ved=0ahUKEwj6wvf03rzOAhWFopQKHQkPDysQFghRMAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.islamicbulletin.org%2Ffree_downloads%2Fquran%2Fhistory_of_quranic_text.pdf&usg=AFQjCNF6v29555q4Fz1GRH8j4cb2dP78XA
Professor Mohammad Mustafa Al-A’azami is one of the world’s most accomplished scholars of Hadith. Born in Mau, India, in 1932, he was educated at Dar al-Ulum College in Deoband (India) and Al-Azhar University in Cairo; he obtained his Ph.D. from Cambridge University (UK).. A’azami started his career as a teacher of Arabic for non-Arabic speakers and Curator of the National Public Library in Qatar. After receiving his Ph.D., he moved to Saudi Arabia, teaching first at the Sharia College in Makkah, then at King Saud University (College of Education) in Riyadh. He was granted Saudi citizenship for his distinuished scholarship.
Professor Al-A’azami authored numerous keynote books, editions, book chapters and scholarly articles in Arabic and English. One of his books, Studies in Early Hadith Literature, is a classic; originally written in English and then translated into other languages and has been used as a teaching text in many universities worldwide. Al-A’azami’s list of major books includes: Kuttab An-Nabi, Manhaj an-Naqd ind al-Muhaddithĩn, Hadĩth Methodology and Literature; On Schacht’s Origins of Mohammadan Jurisprudence, Al-Muhaddithun Min al-Yamamah, Dirasat fi al-Hadith an-Nabawi wa Tarikh Tadwini, and al-ilal of Ibn al-Madini. His critical editing includes: Kitāb al-Tāmĩz of Imām Muslim, Maghazi Rasulullah of Urwah ibn Zubayr, al Ilal of Ibn al-Madini, Muwatta Ibn Malik (8 volumes), Sunan Ibn Maja (5 volumes) and Sunan Sahih Ibn Khuzaimah. His later work is The History of Qura’nic Text from Revelation to Writing and The Qur’anic Challenge: A Promise Fulfilled. Al-A’azami has also discovered and reviewed authentic ancient manuscripts of Hadith, such as Şahih Ibn Khuzaima (4 volumes) and As-Sunnan al-Kobra of an-Nasa’i.
Al-A’azami is currently Professor Emeritus at King Saud University. He was Chair of the Department of Islamic Studies in Riyadh, Visiting Scholar at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), and the University of Colorado (Boulder), Visiting Fellow of St. Cross College at Oxford University and King Faisal Visiting Professor of Islamic Studies at Princeton University. He is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Wales.
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This is an excellent book. I read it a few years ago after a Catholic friend recommended it to me. He eventually converted to Islam after several years of research. Alhamdulillah.
Another book I recommend is “Variant Readings of the Quran: A Critical Study of Their Historical and Linguistic Origins” by Ahmad Ali Al-Imam.
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I have this excellent book. May Allah the Most High rewards Professor Azami.
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D
You said;
D
August 12, 2016 • 2:36 pm
Intellect
“The source is recitation from Angel Gabriel to our prophet and the Angel continued to train our prophet to memorise everything and the prophet will train his disciples to memorize everything in recitation because the Quran in Arabic means recitation not manuscript.”
Nonsense. where are the eyewitness accounts supporting this belief? Where are the early written materials?
I say;
The evidence of the source of the Quran is the Angel Gabriel reciting the Quran to our prophet and our prophet reciting to his disciples and his disciples to their disciples and written and memorized till today. You have all the evidence above where children and adults have memorized the whole Quran. That is the evidence you “dandyhead” who supports nudity like the uncivilized Amazonians who open their private parts for everyone to see in naked day like against civilized Egyptian ladies who covered their private parts like how Jesus and his mother did.
Playboy and multi-billion porn Industry in the west has brainwashed you to think people in nude are civilized because the expose their body like the Amazonians who are so primitive and has never seen an air craft.
Will Mary and Jesus open their private parts like the German volley ball players? Are you not an eye witness to people of all walks o life memorizing the Quran? Here is Imam John who has memorized the entire Quran and Eric has been providing a lot of them here for years.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndaZriN5WME
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmVDTMnKi2g
Paul Williams and any new comer to Islam has memorised some Quran when praying they used the verses as it is in Arabic and the tradition is an eye witness back to our prophet Mohammed.
Ask Paul Williams and he will recite Al-Fatiha and most verses in memory and the tradition goes back to our prophet and no one can change them. What you keep repeating about Hadith, is the standardization of one dialect and yet so many Muslims knows all the dialects and Chuck Hafis can recite all the dialects for you.
CAN YOU RECITE THE LORDS PRAYERS IN GREEK? NO. MOST PASTORS CANNOT DO THAT BUT CHILDREN AND ADULTS CAN MEMORISE THE ENTIRE QURAN IN ARABIC FROM THE TIME OF OUR PROPHET TILL TODAY.
Thanks.
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Intellect
“The evidence of the source of the Quran is the Angel Gabriel reciting the Quran to our prophet and our prophet reciting to his disciples and his disciples to their disciples and written and memorized till today. ”
There is a shia tradition that the quran was corrupted by jibril and that this angel perverted your god’s plans by withholding revelations from Ali and giving them – against the will of your god – to mohammed instead.
This sounds equally plausible to your assertion above.
And they question the authenticity of sunni hadiths.
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The riwaayah of missing qur’an from the shia tradition is rejected even by mainstream and authoritative shia ulaama (mu’tabar) as being weak and false. You have no case.
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Eric you prove the point: Fabricated Hadith plague Islam, yet without them there is no sunnah and thus no Quranic interpretation.
In other words, the entire religion is built on the sand- hundreds of thousands of fabricated Hadith.
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No, Islamic scholars have system put in place to classify which is false or not. On fundamental doctrines and laws there are no disagreement. We don’t have trinitarian Muslims as christendom has unitarian Christians.
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Eric
LOL!!
Poor Yahya asserts biblical deficiency because humans made decisions about authenticity, but then he – and now you – appeal to human authority to support your claims about authentic islamic sources. You guys are making stuff up as you go along – adding to your religion, in other words. LOL!!!
Your head must be swimming right now.
That aside, shia skepticism about the authenticity of the quran and sunnah carry some weight – they arose early in islamic history at a time when those who knew your profit personally were still alive. It cannot be easily brushed aside.
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LOL Lassie, your laughable suggestion that “fabricated hadith plague Islam” belies your ignorance! You and Fido swallow the pseudo-scholarly rants of like-minded fools, but what you don’t realize is that even western scholars of ahadith accept their historical reliability! I have told Fido on numerous occasions in the past to look up scholars like Harald Motzki and Fuat Sezgin, but the little mutt seems to be scared of doing so! Maybe you should look them up instead, that is if you are brave enough to have your a priori views challenged. 😉 Here, I’ll get you started. In criticizing Orientalist scholars like Schacht, Motzki has stated:
“The outcome is that several crucial conclusions of Goldziher and Schacht are much too generalized. Schacht, for instance, constructed a schema of development of legal traditions in which references back to the Successor generation are the earliest, then follow traditions ascribed to Companions, and only later, from the middle of the second century H. onwards, traditions ascribed to the Prophet are brought into circulation. Schacht held that the traditions ascribed to the Prophet and to his Companions are to be regarded as generally fictive, and the traditions of the Successors largely inauthentic. My study of `Abd Ar-Razzaq’s Musannaf shows, however, that all three types of traditions circulated already at the turn of the first century and that some of them can be dated even earlier. This is only one of several new insights into the development of Islamic traditions. My results are based on reconstructions of the most important sources used by `Abd Ar-Razzaq for his compilation, and on reconstructions of the sources of `Abd Ar-Razzaq’s sources. Isnads and texts (Matns) of the traditions are the basis of these reconstructions” (http://en.alukah.net/World_Muslims/0/2028/).
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You deceptive little rascal you. As you well know,
“Motzki’s works are highly valued amongst Muslim circles as it comes close to the findings of their own scholarship.”
In other words, it’s a minority position and rejected by the majority of non Muslim Hadith scholars.
I think we all know who’s a priori assumptions need challenging little taqiyya expert
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No it is not minority view , you dont seem to be conversant with current state of westen hadith scholarships. Hararld Motzki and other western hadith scholar like David Powers were in fact the fresh new objective approach of western scholars challenging the hyper-sceptical standing assumptions from old Orientalists and Revisionists view had made about the overall authenticity of hadiths using the ‘large-scale’ identification of Common Links which means when one collects all the available transmissions of a hadith, analysing the isnad and the matn together, its Common Link is much earlier than those supposed by old school orientalist criticism like Schacht and Juynboll shedding positive light to early Muslim critics like al-Bukhari use the matn of hadiths as wel as the isnad to filter out truthfulness from falsehood.
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Fail
Hold your horses little britches.
Motzki has been criticized for circularity in his approach. He first presumes that the hadith are authentic, then sets about filling in the gaps. I actually have some sympathy for his method, but at the end of the day, the most significant problem doesn’t go away.
he has scant early manuscripts by which to check his theories. Because of the hard science of archeology (and Motzki’s method cannot in any way be considered to be hard science), we know that the city of Petra played a huge role in early Islam. Yet, all the Muslim sources are silent on this fact.
This speaks to the likelihood of significant redaction centuries after the events. Motzki rejects wholesale the possibility of major redaction, yet the archeological evidence swats those presumptions aside.
That aside, mini-man, there are many more scholars who hold opposing opinions to Motzki, so I wouldn’t be so quick to become a fanboi..
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D
You said;
D
August 13, 2016 • 6:38 pm
Intellect
“The evidence of the source of the Quran is the Angel Gabriel reciting the Quran to our prophet and our prophet reciting to his disciples and his disciples to their disciples and written and memorized till today. ”
There is a shia tradition that the quran was corrupted by jibril and that this angel perverted your god’s plans by withholding revelations from Ali and giving them – against the will of your god – to mohammed instead.
This sounds equally plausible to your assertion above.
And they question the authenticity of sunni hadiths
I say;
Where is their evidence that the Angel made a mistake? You are primitive like them who can read the mind of an angel because you believed nudity, sex, drunkenness, stripping naked is civilized. No wonder you believed in primitive people who can read the mind of an Angel Gabriel and decided he made a mistake. You “dandyhead”.
I know it is not your fault but the fault of Christianity whose adherents keep lying they are saved and will go to heaven. If you ask them for proof and evidence they cannot provide it. Have you been to heaven and back and know you have a spot there? No.
You believe. Believe is not evidence.
ANGELS DO NOT HAVE FREE WILL LIKE HUMANS WHEN IT COMES TO DISOBEYING GOD. ANGELS DO NOT DISOBEY GOD, SO JIBRIL WILL NOT AND CANNOT GO AGAINST THE WILL OF GOD.
HELL ARE FOR HUMANS TO BE PUNISHED BECAUSE OF OUR FREE WILL AND CHOICE TO DISOBEY GOD NOT FOR ANGELS TO PUNISHED. IS THERE IN YOUR BIBLE THAT, ANGELS WILL BE PUNISHED IN HELL FIRE?
Thanks.
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Intellect
“ANGELS DO NOT HAVE FREE WILL LIKE HUMANS WHEN IT COMES TO DISOBEYING GOD. ANGELS DO NOT DISOBEY GOD, SO JIBRIL WILL NOT AND CANNOT GO AGAINST THE WILL OF GOD.”
Not so loud cowboy.
Are you saying that the quran is wrong when it says that your god commanded the angels to bow before adam and they all obeyed except for iblis?
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D
Iblis is not an angel but Jinn-another creations of Allah and the west might call them UFO, demons etc. Just like humans some are good and some are bad. Jesus Christ cast the demons out of people and Christians follow the example by casting demons out of people.
Exorcists casts these Jinns out or people an Muslim exorcists do Rukiya to cast these Jinns out of people.
Ken Temple is a Christian here I educated on this and ask him he will tell you the Quran clearly said Iblis is not an Angel but Jinn who like humans can obey or disobey God.
Some learning for you.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3dqV9q_8oU
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U7iFwQSVAs
Thanks.
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Intellect
https://quran.com/2/34
“And [mention] when We said to the angels, “Prostrate before Adam”; so they prostrated, except for Iblees. He refused and was arrogant and became of the disbelievers.
https://quran.com/15/28-31
And when I have proportioned him [adam] and breathed into him of My [created] soul, then fall down to him in prostration……So the angels prostrated – all of them entirely……Except Iblees, he refused to be with those who prostrated.
There are more verses saying this as you know.
So you agree with the shia that the quran is corrupted? These verses should say that the “jinn” were ordered to prostrate themselves and they all complied except for Iblis?
So much for this miraculous transmission that yahya and eric have been banging on about.
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D
This is English translations of the Quran. The experts in Arabic have said in Arabic “Angels except Ibliss” does not mean Iblis is an Angel.
And there is a verse that said Iblish is not an angel but a Jinn created from smock less fire. He is arrogant. The Angels are not arrogant to God.
Learn Arabic well before you can challenge this. Most Arab Christians never challenged this.
Thanks.
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Intellect
Weak, very weak.
““Angels except Ibliss” does not mean Iblis is an Angel.”
LOL!!! You must be joking?
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D
You said;
D
August 14, 2016 • 10:50 am
Intellect
Weak, very weak.
““Angels except Ibliss” does not mean Iblis is an Angel.”
LOL!!! You must be joking?
I say;
I mean in Arabic, and you omitted the “In Arabic”. The Quran is written in Arabic and nobody including you can interpret it unless you have mastered the classical Arabic.
For centuries till today no serious Arabic or Jew has challenged this except few people like you. They know it is non starter.
Thanks.
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D
Besides, no Muslim believes Iblis is an angel, including your shite who believe Jibril did not obey God. So the sentence is not interpreted they way you like it because it is Arabic and not English and those who knows Arabic knows better than you. You cannot argue on this because you do not know the Arabic language.
Thanks.
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Salam brother Abbas,
While essentially you are correct, that the Qur’an in 18: 50 identifies Iblīs as a jinn, not an angel, I must add that some Mufasirun such as Ibn ʿAbbās have opinion that Iblīs was a member of a separate tribe of angels called al-ḥinn (a word related to jinn) based on the phrasing of Q 2:34. While All the angels were created from light, except al-ḥinn tribe, which was created from “smokeless fire” (Q 55: 15).
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Eric
Thanks. How about Angels are created to obey God?
Thanks.
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Yes, Angels have a simple existence that is obeying God assignment and various tasks to which angels are commanded by God.
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Eric
But if Iblis is an angel he did not obey God to bow down to Adam.
Thanks.
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D
Arabic grammar
“And (remember) when We said to the angels: “Prostrate yourselves unto Adam.” So they prostrated themselves except Iblis (Satan). He was one of the jinn; he disobeyed the command of his Lord. Will you then take him (Iblis) and his offspring as protectors and helpers rather than Me while they are enemies to you? What an evil is the exchange for the Zalimoon (polytheists, and wrongdoers, etc).” [18:50]
D, if you are cooking rice with one bean in it will you waste time and invite your buddies to come and eat rice and beans?
Thanks.
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I submit to the understanding that since Ibliis and Malaaikat are from different creation they are not the same albeit they belong to ghaib (unseen) world.
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Lassie barked:
“You deceptive little rascal you. As you well know,
“Motzki’s works are highly valued amongst Muslim circles as it comes close to the findings of their own scholarship.”
In other words, it’s a minority position and rejected by the majority of non Muslim Hadith scholars.
I think we all know who’s a priori assumptions need challenging little taqiyya expert”
LOL!!! The rabid dog is getting angry again!
The fact that you would refer to “taqiyya” only further exposes the limits of your “knowledge” about Islam. Ironically, your rabid rant only highlights the phenomenon of Christian “taqiyya”! LOL!!
I also find it laughable that you refer to the “majority”, but when Muslims point to the majority view on the Bible, idiots like you dismiss it since it does not conform to your asinine religious beliefs.
But since I highly doubt that you are actually familiar with the scholarly literature, I am not going to take your assumption that the ahadith are “rejected by the majority of non-Muslim Hadith scholars”. It’s nothing personal Lassie. I just think you are an idiot, who cannot be trusted with the facts. So let’s look at what actual scholars say, shall we?
According to Herbert Berg, modern scholarship on the Sunnah can be classified as follows:
1. “Early western skepticism”, represented by views of Goldziher and Schact,
2. “The more sanguine reaction against this skepticism”, represented by the views of Abbot, Sezgin and Azami.
3. “Those who search for a middle ground”, represented by the views of Juynboll, Rehman, Schoeler, Motzki, “and others”.
4, “Renewed skepticism”, represented by the views of Cook and Calder.
“The Ashgate Research Companion to Islamic Law”, p. 30.
So, as you can see, there are diverse views and schools of thought on the ahadith. Your simplistic and obviously poorly researched claim that the “majority” of western scholars reject the ahadith only reflects your own ignorance and stupidity. Real scholars recognize the complexity of the debate.
Furthermore, on the issue of fabrications of ahadith, Dr. Jonathan Brown has observed:
“The most recent Western scholarship on Hadiths has shown that such wide-scale forgery was highly improbable. Textual analysis and archaeological evidence can take us back reliably to within a century of the Prophet’s death, and as far back as that horizon the Sunni science of Hadith transmission and law seems to have been an honest if hotly contested undertaking” (“Misquoting Muhammad”, p. 177).
So Lassie, you have been exposed once again as a lying, duplicitous little missionary mutt. Christian taqiyya is alive and well, just like it was in the days of the false apostle Paul! LOL!!!
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You are so contradictory. Earlier, these scholars you now refer to were just ‘pseudo scholars’ and you made the ridiculous generalisation that “western scholars believe in the Hadith’. I simply proved you wrong by highlighting that the scholar you cited was a minority position (which it is) and that Muslims only cite him because his conclusions come close to Islamic theological thought.
taqiyya exposed (or maybe your typical argent ad stupidity)
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Fido barked:
“Hold your horses little britches.
Motzki has been criticized for circularity in his approach. He first presumes that the hadith are authentic, then sets about filling in the gaps. I actually have some sympathy for his method, but at the end of the day, the most significant problem doesn’t go away.
he has scant early manuscripts by which to check his theories. Because of the hard science of archeology (and Motzki’s method cannot in any way be considered to be hard science), we know that the city of Petra played a huge role in early Islam. Yet, all the Muslim sources are silent on this fact.
This speaks to the likelihood of significant redaction centuries after the events. Motzki rejects wholesale the possibility of major redaction, yet the archeological evidence swats those presumptions aside.
That aside, mini-man, there are many more scholars who hold opposing opinions to Motzki, so I wouldn’t be so quick to become a fanboi..”
LOL!!! Fido and Lassie make almost similar assumptions, without providing any evidence to back them up! Should I be surprised?
See my response to your rabid buddy Lassie. The western views on the Ahadith are quite varied, and nothing like you two idiots make it out to be. Maybe I should start calling you Harry and Lloyd, you know “Dumb and Dumber”? 😉
“We know that the city of Petra played a huge role in early Islam”? LOL!!! See, now it is clearly that you two boneheads simply copy what you read on the Internet, desperately seeking to confirm your biases against Islam. Care to present any scholarly evidence that “we know that the city of Petra played a huge role in early Islam”? I think I have an idea of where you got this idea, but I will wait to see what evidence you present. I’m looking forward to it. Get going, Fido! Go fetch!
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I challenge D to produce one paper criticizing Motzki for being methodologically circular.
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I have a feeling he won’t be able to. He will bark a little and then run away with his tail between his legs.
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kmak
I challenge you to produce a comprehensive list of the manuscripts that served as the source materials for the hadith of bukhari. You have practically none – don’t get mad at me. Without a manuscript trail any assertion of authenticity of any hadith is self-referencing.
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Poor D. Can’t go a day without making a fool of himself.
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LOL, see? Fido won’t answer any challenge except by making an utterly idiotic counterchallenge!
He will just bark for a little while and then run off after enduring enough humiliation.
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Fail
Challenge applies to you too hairy munchkin. Produce the full manuscript sources for bukhari.
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Lol Fido, still not answering Kmak’s challenge? Bark all you want, you rabid mutt. Your humiliation is unavoidable.
As I showed above in my refutation of your laughable posts, many western scholars accept the general reliability of the ahadith. Your silly “challenge” for manuscripts only shows how stupid you are. Of course, there aren’t any manuscripts, but scholars can still reconstruct the ahadith back to early Islamic history.
What I find particularly laughable is how you harp about manuscripts, but don’t seem to realize the irony, given that you are a Christian whose Bible lacks any manuscripts from early Christian history! Silly boy, when will you take yout head out of your rear-end?
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Poor Fail
Many western scholars think the hadith are man-made fairy tales, cobbled together after the events they are supposed to recount in order to bolster political or religious sensibilities of the day. I agree with them.
As for my counter challenge, the burden is on you to prove that the hadith are authentic – you are making these outlandish claims. The only way to do that would be to produce the full complement of manuscript sources for them.
We both know that these manuscripts don’t exist.
Sorry little britches, your faith is based on man-made precepts.
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The Quran says that Jesus confirmed the Torah before him.
The Quran itself also confirms the Torah and I’m pretty sure the Torah that the Quran confirms is the same Torah that Jesus confirmed. But the Torah that Jesus confirmed was in existence before his time and we have manuscripts which date back to that especially thanks to the Dead Sea scrolls.
So I’m a bit confused here, shouldn’t Muslims be proud and happy that Biblical manuscripts even exist rather than fighting Christians (and Jews) over the texts in their scriptures?
From what I’ve seen, the Quran confirms and retells so many biblical stories in mostly abbreviated forms but still keeping the essence, whereas you can read the Bible to get a better historical understanding of the summarised stories that the Quran talks about. For instance in chapter 7 verse 160 it talks about God dividing Moses community into 12 tribes of nations, this is a direct reference to the 12 tribes of Israel who were the sons of Jacob. In that same chapter, verse 157 talks about how Muhammad is mentioned in the Torah and Gospel of the current Jews and Christians in his day. Manuscript evidence shows that we still use the same Bibles that were distributed to that Judeo-Christian community (since we already have complete Old and New Testament Bibles by the 3rd and 4th centuries).
I’m a little lost here, all this talk about corrupt bibles will only make people question God/Allah’s integrity. Why would He not preserve His own texts and then let human beings go through millennia of pain and confusion over these texts? Yes there are variations in biblical manuscripts but why not be happy with the fact that the essence of the text remains intact (as Mike Licona and other Christians have done)? Whether you read the Old or New Testament, God is still One, Jesus is still the messiah and he will still return to defeat the anti-Christ. I’m pretty sure every Muslim here agrees with that, therefore you can see that the essence of the Bible has remained intact despite variations. On top of that, the Quran retells the Biblical stories with only slight differences in certain cases, and the differences mostly come from the Jewish Talmud or Christian apocryphal texts which are still part of the tradition either way. I don’t think that some of you guys realise that if the Bible falls (especially in matters that are important to Islam), the Quran falls with it.
I’m ashamed, we still see our faiths as separate entities rather than acknowledge that we are children of Abraham and share in the same covenant that God made with him and his children (that’s all of them, including Ishmael, Isaac and his other sons and daughters – see Genesis 17 and other chapters). Considering the number of adherents to Christianity and Islam in the world, there will not be a mass conversion of people from one faith to the other so that means we need to respect our differences and focus on the similarities where we are united. I think each scripture already provides a framework to do that, just a shame that many still use them in the wrong way.
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Damn I was just about to make some insults to the Muslims here after reading some stuff that pissed me off but this made me think twice. Penetrated right through my conscience… Sorry Jesus 😦
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I haven’t been on here for such a long time but I’m glad to see new open and like-minded people like Tribulation, Jason and others on here. Even Oops has some interesting views, nice.
Eric is still here as well providing the usual interesting insight into the Bible and Quran.
Paulus and Ken Temple still fighting and staying strong as well.
Paul Williams still making controversial posts that has everyone at each other’s throats and then throwing a few odd but funny posts in between just to lighten the mood haha.
Sam Shamoun still using funny aliases to disguise himself but always getting found out (I can’t keep up with which he is now lol, still appreciate answering Islam for teaching me a lot though regardless of what the Muslims may say).
Burhan still making subtle (or sometimes obvious) remarks against the Christians.
And Intellect still sticking his nose into every conversation and frustrating the Christians he speaks to (myself included), but deep down I can see he’s a decent guy who means well and is still learning all the time.
Tribulation you said some deep stuff and I know how you feel, I used to get frustrated on here about similar things a while ago as what you said is similar to the questions I used to have, but just stay on the path you’re on. If you’re sincere God will guide you to where you need to be.
Pride leads to disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. Proverbs 11:2
God bless!
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Salam Marvin, Glad to hear you from again. God Bless!
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Seems like you have some history here Marvin but thanks for the advice, and that is one of my favourite proverbs lol
God bless you too
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With the Name of Allah the Gracious the Merciful
Hi Tribulation, I thank you for your comment.
I agree that we as community of faith, the children of patriarch Abraham must work together than fight each other and set a good example for other fellow humans.
In the Qur’an it is said that we humans are khalifa, or caliph of God in the world Q 2:30 خليفةُ اللهِ علَى أرضِهِ. The root of the word is the Arabic verb “khalafa,” which means ”came after or succeeded”. So it is God’s intention, or mandate, to make humans His successors or representatives, on Earth. It is a great honor to us, but it comes with a big responsibility. We have to make the earth a heavenly place to live, a God obedience society. Not the place which full corruption and bloodsheds.
I share your sentiment that Muslims should somehow value that Biblical manuscripts. You are probably aware that muslims do not subscribe to wholesale rejection of the Bible we have now. We still hold to the belief that the Bible does contain true teaching from God. The difference perhaps that we use the Qur’an (which we have full confidence on its preservation as God Himself promises it in the Qur’an) as the “criterion” to differentiate truthfulness and falsity.
Trust me not all muslims have negative attitude towards christian (or jewish) brethrens, if we do it only apples to Islamophobes and missionary types of christians and jews who deliberately demonise Islam. early muslim scholars such as Ibn Kathir have in depth knowledge in the Bible, I personally have many muslim friends who study new testament and hebrew Bible and I even read the TaNakH and rabbinic literature in original hebrew with other fellow muslims to seek the common ground and understand the context of some Islamic teachings.
Peace (=salam)
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Thanks for the interesting info Eric, I know that not all Muslims totally reject the Bible but I know many who will never touch a Bible because they have the same superstitions about the Bible that some Christians have about the Quran (that it’s evil for example), but I know not all are like that.
It’s a problem on both sides really, we should be more open to reading and understanding the different scriptures as you and your friends do.
Shalom
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Thanks Eric, I won’t be here long because of my schedule but good to hear from you as well.
Peace
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Oooh, Lassie is ticked off!
It’s ok, Lassie. I understand that you’re angry since you can never actually provide evidence for any of your rants. It’s hard for someone with a dog brain to process scholarly information. There, there.
I have shown that even reputed western scholars accept the general reliability of the ahadith. I also showed, contrary to your still unproven assertion, that there are varied views among western scholars as a whole. If anything, the summary given by Herbert Berg shows that most scholers have abandoned the “early skepticism” of Goldziher and Schacht, and have adopted the middle ground. Hence, most western scholars do not reject the ahadith. That is your own pathetic pipe dream and reflects your poor research on the subject. Now go back to barking just like your idol Paul, the false apostle and founder of Christian taqiyya. 😉
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Someone doth protest too much. Has it got something to do with wiping your backside with stones? We essentially agree now, since it only took a few posts to get you to contradict your own earlier taqiyya based generalisation. You make it so easy!
And what’s all this talk about Paul. Do I need to educate you on your own faith again? Because our good mate, Ibn Ishaq surely disagrees with your slandering of Paul. And
his biography was written well before the Hadith fabrications even began! Go figure!!
so how about you take your hatred out on your fellow Muslim scholar, Ibn Ishaq, cause he has sure made you look dumb today. It’s amazing how often you contradict your own Islamic sources haha
Now, go ahead and have the last word. We all know you can’t help yourself…
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Tribulation,
Thank you for your post. While I don’t agree with everything you said, I do agree with you that we should be respectful of each other. Unfortunately, most of the Christians on this blog never show respect to Islam or Muslims. Instead, they demonize everything that has to do with Islam. As a result, I don’t hold back against such people and have no problem when others also put them in their place. It’s impossible to have a reasonable and friendly conversation with such people.
But I don’t think I would have any problems with someone like you. Even though I don’t agree with your religious views, there is nothing in your demeanor that would cause me to mock you like I mock some of the other Christians on this blog. So, have faith in humanity. The bigots cannot cause us to be completely divided. 🙂
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I’ve always learnt that “a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Proverbs 15:1, but I understand that it’s not easy to do so when people are insulting and rude, even I need to work on it.
But thanks for your comment 🙂
God bless
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Tribulation
Thanks for your peaceful words. May God guide us all to the right path. The path of those He has blessed and not the path of those who invent lies in scriptures and do not obey Him(God) and earned His anger.
I will start by correcting you in some instances.
– The Quran accepts all prophets and all scriptures that came from the God of Abraham before it.
– In our prophets time, he did not see the complete Bible as we have it today
-They were so many stories(gospels) about Jesus circulating at that time, including the gospel of Thomas, the infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, The Gospel of Mary and many more that did not find their ways in the Bible.
-The Bible we have today did not have the Epistle of Banabas, The Sherphered Hemas etc.
– The Roman Catholic have more books than the Protestants and the Eastern Ethiopian has different books in their Bibles.
The Coptic Christians have theology which other Christians will not accept and many more.
So, my dear friend this is just the surface and there is more study and more facts to prove that there was no correct single Bible at the time of prophet Mohammed except different stories and or books about Jews and Christian religions.
There were Jews who read in their scriptures that a prophet will come aroung the Arabian Peninsula and they congregated there waiting for the prophet. When they realized he was not a Jew, so rejected him and so accepted him(Mohammed).
Since then, till today the Jews who did not accept Prophet Mohammed highly respect him and his message and they will clearly say it is the same with theirs except some minor differences.
THE REASON WHY THE OLD SCRIPTURES WAS NOT PRESERVED BY GOD.
Jesus clearly said he came for the Jews and refused the help a woman because she was not a Jew and so his scripture needs to be replaced by God for all mankind that is why the final book of God came for all mankind and preserved in memory and written till the day of judgement.
Most Christian clergy, pastors, bishops etc. cannot recite their Lords prayers in Greek the original language of the NT and so it was not preserved and under gone so many changes.
Most Muslims have memorised the Quran including English, Spanish, Arabs, Africans, 5 year olds, 10 year old 40,50,70 etc. from the time of our prophet till today and it is the miracle to preserve the Quran tha last message of God to all mankind.
The Quran did some miracle Christians and Jews do not seem to understand. Because it is the final message of God, it has to correct the earlier message that was distorted.
1. To Jews Jesus is a prophet and messiah from God and they did not kill him because the messiah cannot be killed. The Jews accept the messiah cannot be killed and anyone who was killed is not the messiah. So Jesus was not killed according to the Quran and Jesus is the messiah. The Christians agrees with the Quran that Jesus is the messiah and prophet of God. Both Jews and Christians agree with the Quran on Jesus and conflict with each other i.e. Jews and Christians and the Quran has the truth on both sides and they will not accept.
2. To Christians the God of Abraham is Only One and He is Alone and none else which is in the Bible and Jesus and his mother are the creations of that one God and they are not God themselves.
Don’t you see the Quran is the last message of God? to all mankind? and corrected the same religion of God
preached by all prophets?
Yes, the Quran confirms the earlier scriptures and prophets of God but corrects the scriptures because in their traditions they have varying scriptures and some that were not canonized by the Church Father. Who gave the Church Father the right and authority to reject other scriptures that did not find their way into the current Bible? i.e. Gospel of Thomas, Epistle of Banabas etc.
Thanks.
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Mr. Henry
Long time no hear my friend. I miss you. Please do not get frustrated, and comment for God sake. We are all learning and brainstorming in between or breaks, leisure etc.
It is serious because we are dealing with our salvation here, instead of browsing facebook, whatsup etc. with less important topics.
-Thanks for your complements. I managed to let madmanna to say “If God is one and has all his attributes, then no person can have all His(God ) attributes. So God the Father has his all attributes including generating/creating the Son and sending the Son which the Son does not have. So the Son does not have all the Father(God) attributes and so Jesus is not God.
– I managed to force Ken Temple to accept Jesus Christ(Son) do not have or possess all the attributes of the Father because Jesus cannot generate the Son which the Father does and Jesus cannot send the Son which the Father does. Remember the Bible said God is One. God has all His attributes i.e. sending the Son to mankind or generating the Son from eternity.
If someone cannot send the Son to all mankind or generate/create the Son, then that person(Jesus) is not God because he does not possess all the attributes of that one God.
-Finally, my friend Mr. Henry came out publicly and reject Trinitarian Christian. He said he was not a Trinitarian and I do not know whether he followed my wisdom and intellect to reject Trinity or he did it out of his knowledge. The reason why I said so, I used to debate him against Trinitarian concept.
Thanks.
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Thanks for the input Intellect, there are still a lot of things I need to learn about the scriptures so I like having a rounded view of things. I think the shepherd of hermas and epistle of barnabas were removed from the canon because they were of later date and authorship than the current 27 NT books. Hermas and Barnabas were 2nd generation church fathers, whereas Jesus’ disciples and Paul were first generation. However, unlike the pseudo-gospels such as the gospel of Peter and infancy gospel of Thomas, Hermas and Barnabas’ work was not considered apocryphal or heretical, they’re in the field of respected Christian writings. Also every denomination of Christianity has the 27 NT books, the differences come from the OT. One of the main reasons that the Jewish OT has less book numbers than the Christian ones is because the Christian ones used divisions for the Prophets and Writing sections in order to make it easier to read. For example, the Jewish bible has the book of chronicles as one huge text whereas the Christian one splits it into 1 and 2 chronicles, same with the book of Samuel too. It’s all still the same thing just broken into sections. The biggest division is the minor prophets. In the Jewish OT, the minor prophets is all put into one big text, but the Christian OT splits the section according to the introduction of each minor prophet. So rather than reading one whole thing it is split into sections for each prophet, 12 I believe, instead of one. This would make it seem as though Christians simply added to the Bible when they didn’t, in fact Jews typically use the Christian format to make it easier to break down the sections as well.
However there is slight variation as you mentioned and that’s because the Catholic Church and Ethiopian church include Biblical apocrypha into their Bibles also, all from the OT (as mentioned the NT is fixed at 27). For example they include the Maccabees and more wisdom texts, reasons I don’t completely know why but I believe they serve a historical purpose as it has allowed historians to understand what was happening around Judea at the time. I believe Martin Luther said they aren’t to be considered scripture but still serve an educational purpose suitable for reading.
I believe that when Jesus rejected the gentile woman he was only testing her because he ended up fulfilling her request anyway. To be the messiah and to return a second time to defeat the anti-Christ, and for his message to be spread across the world for me means that it was supposed to be universal otherwise God would not allow it to grow as it has done.
I do agree that the Quran gives a balanced view especially for the Jews but there’s just certain parts in the Quran that I find doubtful to have occurred historically (such as Dhul Qarnyan or the sleepers in the cave, or Solomon having an army of birds and Jinns), and there’s other parts especially when it comes to the law or shariah that I find may have been useful during Muhammad’s time but aren’t compatible with changing times. The combination of these things and more make me doubtful that the Quran is the ultimate and only word of God, but I do still think that it’s useful and good for anyone to read. Because of some Christian propaganda in the past, I used to be worried that the Quran was satanic or demonic but I no longer see it like that. It has words and meanings that can resonate with any Jew or Christian. I also don’t care much about the violence in the text, not that people like Isis should get away with it, but because the Bible is similar so it would be hypocritical for Christians to say the Quran is the only violent scripture. It’s just about all of us being honest and open to each other’s scriptures, that will help us to work together more.
The Bible says love God and love your neighbour as yourself. The Quran says not to argue except in a way which is best and that we should say “we believe in what has been revealed to you and to us, and that your God and our God is one”. Like I mentioned above, each scripture has the framework already there for us, we just need to use it in the right way.
Anyway I was going to watch the 100m final but I need to sleep now.
God bless
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I’ve just finished watching the sprints but if it wasn’t too obvious for anyone I won’t spoil who won 😉
I told you Intellect sticks his nose in every conversation haha (just kidding Intellect, it’s all good :))
I’ve missed you too man, good to see you’re still active on here as usual.
And don’t worry those days of frustration are over but I won’t be here for long, like you said we’re all still learning and it would be nice to make some input sometimes but my schedule isn’t like before so I’ll be sitting back and letting the new generation have their go.
And I remember that trinity thing. It was when Paul posted that link to the book about 100 Unitarian arguments from scripture or something like that. Then there was also verse 27 and 28 of 1 Corinthians 15 that made me realise Jesus was below God. The authority that Jesus has was given to him by God, Jesus himself says that in every gospel “God gave me authority in heaven and on earth”. But like I’ve said before, I have no problems with Trinitarians, they still believe in one God no matter how complex that is. My main point was always the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and that seems to be way for many Unitarians I’ve seen on here. I guess it’s just to show the Trinitarians that you can still be a Christian without believing in the trinity, and it doesn’t make you a jehovah witness either (not that there’s anything inherently wrong with them). Jesus’ disciples were Unitarians who believed in 2 powers in heaven, i.e God with Jesus at his right hand but like Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:28, when everything has been made subject to Jesus, Jesus himself will bring it to God and be subject to Him too. In the same chapter Paul says the foundation of the faith is the resurrection of Jesus whom God raised up (not himself), he doesn’t say anything about the trinity being the foundation of the faith. Sadly many Christians have made the trinity the foundation of their faith today, probably because they want to distinguish Christianity from Islam so they pound that view more than others. There’s nothing to be afraid of though, Jesus quoted the Shema.
Anyway God bless all!
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Usain ligthning came back past Jutin was specatular. He is named “bolt” for a reason.
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Lol very true Eric!
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Tribulation
Thanks. You are so polite that makes me shy to engage with you. But I will correct you with regards to Solomon. The Quran said God gave Prophet Solomon power over other creatures and the Bible said he has magical powers. Powers from God and Magical powers which is the best?
The Sharia can be interpreted to fit any situation including modern times. Example Muslim women can wear their traditional native dress with scarf. It does not have to be Middle Eastern or Arab. It has to be a little loose so as not to show the tantalizing part of the woman.
I think it is civilized than watching the German volleyball team dressed naked like the Amazon jungle primitive indigenous people against the Egyptian volleyball team who nicely covered their body well which Jesus and his mother will appreciate. There is a thread on this blog for that.
Dhul Qarnyan or the sleepers in the cave or Solomon’s power are miracles and the power of God for those present to see but not historians because they could not see it.
Have you forgotten the ghosts bursting from their graves when Jesus was killed and they went to the city and people saw them? Did that happened in history? Do you doubt that one too?
I have read your explanation with regards to the divisions of your scriptures. The problem is that it is not as simple as you explained it because some factions of Christianity will not accept other scriptures of Christianity and those books I mentioned did not find its way in the Bible.
Who gave the Church Fathers the right and authority to reject the word of God? They are late? Some later documents can be truthful. Why use some of the late documents and later reject it? Did the Holy Spirit not help? The Quran will not go into all these problems of the Old scriptures except to correct them and move on, it has other important things for mankind to discuss.
Thanks.
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I’m sorry, and my views my be considered heretical by all, but I just refuse to believe that the light of God doesn’t shine on my Muslim/Jewish/Christian brothers cause of doctrinal differences. I’m sure some may give me some flack over my belief, but I can’t help but find beauty in all three faiths,3 yet 1 (doesn’t that sound familiar..lol) I find so much beauty in Islam/Judaism and agree with some aspects of Sharia Law.
I wish America would ban pornography (I know the ill effects of watching such dark shit and how it took hold of me at one time) alcohol can go as well, as I have also suffered and caused much pain to myself and my family due to my days as a drunkard. The rampant drug use in the states is insane,many members of my family have been destroyed by meth and heroin (my Father and Aunt are prime examples)
Actually, I find the West rather disgusting and disturbing! The way we encourage our women to dress as well as the many vices that we extol! The stupid television shows, our narcissistism and self interest seem to trump all. Free speech, man forget free speech, I just don’t believe humans should have the right to utter every absurd idea and vain belief just for the sake of free speech! Don’t get me started on the Gay agenda.
Muslim/Jew/Christian we all worship the One God of Abraham! Where are the God’s of the Hindus or the Buddhist(and yes some Budhhist worship dieties) or any other faiths? Our ancestors God is the most dominant God EVER! Hmmm I wonder why. We are all Monotheist/Unitarian.
Maybe I’m just weird, but I’m a Christian who prays on an Islamic prayer rug. I love Rabbi Tovia Singer and prefer Rumi over John Calvin. And my favorite blog is this one (go figure).
Excuse my honest ranting. Time to get to bed. God bless all of you guys on this blog and every man, women and child on planet earth. Peace
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Jason I agree that God shines His light on all, not just one over the other because of their doctrinal beliefs. Peter said it best in Acts 10:34-35, “Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.” Sounds so similar to Surah 2:62 and 5:69 which says anyone who believes in God and the last day and does good shall have their reward with God, there is nothing for them to fear.
And the Quran also says this: To each of you We prescribed a law and a method. Had Allah willed, He would have made you one nation [united in religion], but [He intended] to test you in what He has given you; so race to [all that is] good. To Allah is your return all together, and He will [then] inform you concerning that over which you used to differ. (Surah 5:48)
So if God wanted to He could have made the whole world united in religion but it seems He wanted to give different people in different times their own way of life and to live according to those laws. The differences in religions are both a test and a blessing for us. But humans left to their own devices will make evil out of it and kill and fight each other over it.
There’s a guy called Ken Biegeleisen who wrote a book back in the 90s about the major world religions working together, he has a site called ark-of-salvation which contains a huge amount from his book so worth checking out.
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Hello Intellect
I don’t recall the Bible saying Solomon had magical powers but I do know it says he fell into idolatry and sinned because of his many wives. Regardless his wisdom came from God.
And I know sharia can be changed for different times but I was talking specifically about the Quranic laws which cannot be changed. Also indigenous people who are naked can’t quite help it if they’re born into such an environment. We don’t need to sexualise everything we see. Despite living mostly naked, many indigenous people around the world are actually very sophisticated and well mannered, they don’t just run around having sex or getting excited from seeing naked bodies. It’s our society that makes a big deal out of matters that shouldn’t even matter. If a woman chooses to cover herself religiously or play with less clothing I don’t see why we need to make a big deal out of it, it’s sport and both men and women can dress in different ways depending on the sport. I don’t see why it’s always such a big issue for the woman when people barely say anything about how the man dresses. I definitely don’t agree with any Western person saying that there is a culture clash however, that’s such as ridiculous statement but it really all comes down to the perspective of the individual and their mind.
I don’t believe every single Biblical word is entirely accurate or historical either, that’s why I like to emphasise in finding a balance and respect for all the scriptures. The way I see it, every piece of writing on this earth was made by human hands and human thoughts, though some were inspired by God. This means there is bound to be flaws and imperfections in any piece of writing, I don’t believe that one is superior over the other. The things that God really needed us to see and understand are present in the scriptures, the rest is human interpretation. Like Marvin said, it’s both a test and a blessing. If we’re fighting over it that’s our own responsibility since we have free will. This is just my opinion anyway, you don’t have to believe or agree with it.
And also Marvin, I have a friend who owns Dr Biegeliesen’s book. It’s called “whoever you thought you were… You’re a Jew”. Sounds funny but it’s deeper than what most people would think. I skimmed over it a year or 2 ago and it helped bring me to a more open minded view of religions, particularly the Abrahamic ones. I will ask him for it again so I can read over properly.
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Tribulation, that’s the book. No wonder we have similar views 😉
Anyway I’m off now, don’t know when I’ll be back but keep the faith in humanity and stay strong and humble.
Peace
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Thanks Marvin, you too
Shalom
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LOL Lassie, so you agree with me that most western scholars reject the skepticism of Goldziher and other Orientalists and generally accept the historical reliability of the ahadith? Great!
Oh but, you had to go and ruin your momentary flirtation with reason by making another asinine comment. The Sirat by Ibn Ishaq was criticized by Islamic scholars even when it was written. Try to do some actual research instead of just regurgitating what you read on the Internet!
The irony of course is that you don’t realize that your appeal to Ibn Ishaq actually backfires since he utilized the same oral tradition, albeit with many weak ahadith, that you are claiming is historically unreliable! LOL! When will you wake up, silly puppy?
And by the way, you need to be thankful for Islam pulling your ancestors out of the dirt hole they lived in. 😉
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