Transcription
In this video, I want to, uh, compare and contrast the Quran with the Bible, particularly the New Testament, and ask some basic questions. Do we have the original Quran? Do we have the original New Testament? And how were they viewed? Was the Quran viewed as the words of God himself? Was the New Testament regarded as scripture? Was it regarded as revelation and inspired by God?
Now, these questions matter because historically, the answers are quite shocking, actually. And particularly if you're a Christian, you may not be aware of some facts that are well known to scholars of the Bible. I want to begin by sharing some words from a very, uh, wonderful scholar who's sadly no longer with us, Dr. Shabir Akdar, who was an academic at Oxford University. He was a Muslim, and he wrote this, uh, amazing book, which I really recommend, "The Quran and the Secular Mind: A Philosophy of Islam." It's one of my favorite books, and he says, on page 123, some very interesting things, uh, about the Quran and the Bible.
And then I want to go to another, uh, Christian, uh, scholar from Oxford University, a professor there, and what he says about his own scriptures, uh, reporting on mainstream, well-understood, well-agreed-upon scholarship. And then we'll go to what the BBC, at a fascinating, uh, short video, said, uh, several years ago about the Birmingham Quran. Just how early is it? Just how reliable is it? Was it, in fact, written by, uh, someone who knew the Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace? And you may be shocked to hear, uh, what they have concluded at the University of Birmingham about this incredible Quran they have in their custody.
Anyway, back to Shabir Akdar, and he says the following fascinating words. So he's up three paragraphs in his book. He says the following: "Unlike the scriptures of other extant historical religions, the Quran is contemporaneous with the faith it established. The Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, for instance, came to acquire belatedly the status of scripture within their communities. Groups of churchmen, in the case of the Greek New Testament. New Testament is written in Greek, not the language of Jesus, of course, which was Aramaic, but in the language of the Greco-Roman Empire. Groups of churchmen canonized a set of writings well over three centuries after the events those books and letters allegedly record, 300 years."
So, the 27 books of the New Testament. What's the earliest? What is the earliest list of the 27 books that we have today in history? What's the earliest time that anyone ever said, "Aha, there are 27 books, the same list we have today"? Actually, it was in the fourth century. If you Google a guy called Bishop Athanasius, uh, he was a bishop in Alexandria in Egypt, very senior, outspoken bishop, uh, of the church. And in 367 AD, he wrote, um, a letter to his congregations detailing exactly the same canon of scripture that we have today. Starting with the Gospel of Matthew, all the way through the Gospels, Paul's letters, James, John, you name it, all the way to the Book of Revelation. It's identical to our list. But he was the first man in history, the first man to actually have the same list. Before that, there was disagreement about which books go in and which books go out of the New Testament. There wasn't a consensus. And even after his time, there still wasn't consensus for a couple more centuries. So, in fact, Shabir Akda's claim is actually historically, uh, accurate. It was well over three centuries after the alleged events they narrate in the first century were these writings canonized as a set of scripture. That's the first remarkable point that many people don't know.
And then he says, "The result is often seen, even by Jews and Christians, as a poorly edited anthology of religious literature." I'm not sure I agree with him there. I'm not, I don't know many Jews or Christians who would see it that way, but that's his view. Then he says, "The Quran's status is different. It is self-described as revelation constantly." By the way, if you look through the Quran, it talks about itself as a revelation from God to mankind. It's very aware of its status, of what it is, as God's speech. God is speaking through the Quran. And Shabir says, "And it single-handedly created the community that treated it authoritatively, not the converse." This is very interesting. It is self-described as revelation, and it single-handedly created the community, the Muslim community, that treated it authoritatively, rather than the converse.
Now, Christians will often say, "Well, hang on, the New Testament also says that it is revelation from God, doesn't it?" And the favorite verse they quote is in the New Testament, in a letter, uh, allegedly written by Paul. And I say allegedly because many scholars think it's a forgery, but we won't go there. Uh, it's called the Second Letter of Peter, to, uh, sorry, Second Letter of Peter, the third chapter, verse, well, 14 onwards. I'll read the context of the verse. The verse is number 16, but I'll back up a bit and go back to 14 because it really matters the context of this statement that's made. "All scripture is inspired by God." It says, but what is this scripture? It says, is inspired. That's the question. And Christians always, uh, leave out the context. They don't look at the verses before, the verses after. And so it gives, I would think, I would argue, a misleading understanding of what Paul is actually saying in his letter.
So, from verse 14 onwards, he says the following. I'm reading from the NRSV, which is this, the gold standard translation, uh, in academia. Paul writes, "But as for you, now, Paul is writing to Timothy." So, Paul is writing, say, probably in the 60s AD. This matters, by the way. He's writing in the 60s. No, no one disagrees that Paul was around in the 60s. Whether he may not have written this letter, it's probably a later forgery, but let's assume it's authentic. So, he is writing to Timothy, who's a younger, uh, younger disciple, a younger companion, [snorts] follower of Paul. So, this is what Paul says to Timothy: "But as for you, Timothy, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you have learned it, and how from childhood, this is Timothy's childhood, you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you, uh, for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." So, Paul is referring to the scriptures that Paul, that Timothy knew as a baby. Now, this is way before the New Testament was written. Any, nothing in the New Testament was written at the beginning of the first century. No one thinks that. And then the next verse, "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, correction, and training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work." "All scripture is inspired by God," says Paul. What scriptures are we talking about? Well, we know we're talking about the sacred writings. They're obviously the Jewish Bible that is able to instruct you for salvation. Now, when Paul was writing, the Gospels hadn't been written. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are dated much later. So, Mark is dated in the 70s. Uh, Matthew and Luke are usually dated in the 80s or 90s, even, and John towards the very end of the first century, or possibly even later. No one thinks that, uh, the Gospels are written, uh, by the time Paul was around. So, when Paul says, "All scripture is inspired by God," he cannot be referring to texts or Gospels that had not been written. He didn't know about them. He'd never heard of them. No, neither had anyone else heard of them. And of course, Paul's letters themselves, some of them hadn't been written either, let alone the other letters. So, I, I, I would say, and this is actually common sense when you read it in context, that when Paul writes in verse 16, "All scripture is inspired by God," he must be referring to what Jews had as scripture, which is the Jewish Bible, mainly, preeminently the Torah, the Pentateuch, within it is the books of Moses, the first five books of Moses. It must be referring to that. It can't be referring to the New Testament.
So, when Christians say, "Aha, um, the Bible does claim to be inspired by God." If you read this passage, and this is their favorite verse, 2 Timothy 3:16, when you read that verse in context, it's not referring to the whole Bible because the whole Bible hadn't been written then. It's impossible for it to be referring to the New Testament. It must be referring to what Christians call the Old Testament.
So, um, in fact, I'll just share some other words before we go back to Shabir Akdar from this marvelous book. This is "A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths," written by John Barton. Now, John Barton, who I've had the privilege of interviewing on Blogging Theology, um, is a professor of the Bible at Oxford University, no less, and he's a clergyman. So, he's a Church of England, uh, priest. So, he's a believing Christian, and he's an expert on the Bible. And this book, this book in particular, is hugely, uh, esteemed and critically praised for its incredible knowledge and erudition. It's very lucid, very readable. And if you want a good education about the history of the Bible, its texts, its canonization, and so on, this is one of the best books on the market. I do recommend it.
So, what does this expert say [snorts] about the New Testament? And I think this is really important. This comes as a shock, uh, will come as a shock to Christians. I would say 99% of people are going to have no idea about this. See what you think about what he says. Just think about it and see if it makes sense. So, um, in chapter 10, excuse me, page 239, Professor John, the Reverend Professor John Barton writes the following: "The New Testament did not begin life as a collection of sacred writings at all, but as occasional literature, highly important, but not sacrosanct. Each of Paul's letters is addressed to a specific situation in one of the local churches. And though he no doubt intended his letters to be kept and reread, they were not holy in the way that the Hebrew scriptures unequivocally were. The Gospels, treated so solemnly in later Christian life and lit and liturgy, are the distillation of traditions about Jesus and as such were also naturally highly regarded and copied for subsequent generations. But they were not seen by the first Christians as verbally exact. There was no tradition, as there [clears throat] was in Judaism, of precise copying of the text, with the consequence that New Testament manuscripts vary greatly and none is authoritative."
Then he continues, "There is clear evidence for the first few generations, the Gospels did not operate as sacred scripture. They did not operate as sacred scripture, but was seen as collections of material about Jesus which could be drawn on in retelling his story." Just as Matthew retold Mark with additions and omissions, because the scholar, the standard view now is that Matthew copied Mark, changed him, embellished him, corrected him because he disagreed with Mark on important matters to do with the Jewish law, for example, and other matters. So clearly, Matthew didn't regard Mark as scripture, otherwise why would he change him? He wouldn't want to do that, would he? Obviously, just as Matthew would, uh, retold Mark with additions and omissions. So an early Christian preacher could, in some measure, extemporize from the Gospel he or she knew best, or perhaps already from a mental harmony of more than one Gospel. So, this, the point here is, there's clear evidence that for the first few generations, the Gospels did not operate as scripture. They were not quoted as scripture.
Now, he goes on to explain in a lot more detail how this is the case. He looks at the works of Justin Martyr, for example, in the second century, and he looks at the early fathers in the second century, and when they quoted the words of Jesus, they were not quoting them as part of a canon of scripture, but the words themselves were authoritative, like the red-letter Bibles we have today. In some editions, it's like, ah, the words in red, they're inspired, they're from God, they're from the prophet Jesus, but the other words around it, the narrative and so on, are not inspired by God, because that's just Luke saying things, or Matthew. That's not canon, that's not scripture. That's how many of the early fathers seemed to have used what we call the New Testament, not that it existed in our form completely at that point either. So, it's a fascinating story.
So, when our Muslim writer, Dr. Shabir Akdar, says, um, that the Quran's status is different. It is self-described as revelation. This is true because it literally is that. I mean, virtually every, every chapter of every surah of the Quran has statements to that effect. But you don't find that in the New Testament, uh, for reasons I've explained.
Anyway, uh, Shabir Akdar continues, "No discipline among the sciences of the Quran corresponds to the critical historical concerns of critical biblical scholarship. A field covering textual criticism, as well as form, source, redaction, literary, and historical criticism." These are all sort of specialist branches of the study of the Bible in, in academia. I'm not going to go into them now, but they're all very, very interesting. Particularly, in my view, redaction criticism. How, how later Gospel writers change the words of Jesus in clearly identifiable ways to raise his status from prophet to son of man to a divine or semi-divine being. You can actually see the mutations, a bit like a Darwinian, to use a metaphor, Darwinian evolution. You can see how, uh, the ontology of Jesus changes, really, from the purely human figure to someone who is in some sense divine, uh, as the Gospel writers exalt him more and more, till we get to John's Gospel, where he is divine in some sense. I say, in some sense, because that caveat really makes the difference, because lots of people in the ancient world were called divine, both in Judaism and in the Greco-Roman world. For example, Philo of Alexandria, the very eminent biblical scholar, Jewish biblical scholar, commentator, uh, Hellenized Jew based in Alexandria. Philo, P H I L O. He wrote lots of commentaries on the Bible in Greek, of course, because he was a Hellenized Jew. Um, and he actually refers to Moses as, uh, theos, [snorts] theos, God. God. Now, he doesn't mean that Moses is, is Yahweh. He doesn't mean what we mean by God as the creator, eternal, uh, being who created the universe. He doesn't mean that. It's just an, like an honorific. Um, it's, it's the way they use language at that time. Now, it's unacceptable, of course, for us as Muslims, or even Christians, to use such language. But nevertheless, my point is that to call someone divine in the ancient world doesn't necessarily mean they are God with a big G, in the sense they are Yahweh. It doesn't necessarily mean that at all. And that's where the different worldview, the different religious, [clears throat] universe that the ancient people inhabited, if we're not aware of that, we're going to make some mis-, we're going to misinterpret what they're saying sometimes. So, even when a Christian might say Jesus is divine or God, he may not quite mean what we think he means. He may not, he may make a distinction still between Jesus and the Father, who is Yahweh, the God of Israel, the creator of the universe. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," it says in Genesis 1:1. It may not mean that they think Jesus is that person, that being, but he has a kind of subordinate divine status. Now, this is all getting way off the subject, um, but it's these kind of issues, these historical issues that we must be aware of if we're to interpret the New Testament correctly. So, does Paul call Jesus God, for example? Well, no. Not in the sense that we mean God, but he does still call him a divine being in some sense. And you've got to understand the Greco-Roman world, I think, to appreciate what's really going on, rather than just reading Paul through our own 21st-century theological lenses. It's easy to misunderstand Paul. That's why historical criticism, as it's called, is so important when it comes to the New Testament.
Anyway, back to Shabir. He says, "No discipline among the sciences of the Quran corresponds to the historical critical approach of the, uh, Bible." How so? How can this be so? Shabir, Shabir says, "The Muslim reluctance to develop the discipline of critical Quranic scholarship is mistakenly thought to be connected to religious obscurantism." In other words, "Oh, we just don't want to face up to the truths about our scriptures. We just want to be hold on to our fundamentalism or whatever, however you want to put it." Sometimes that is assumed. But in fact, he says, there are no materials and no need for such a discipline. The Quran, unlike the Bible, is not the heterogeneous work of many hands. In other words, it's not written by lots and lots of different people, like the, the Bible. 27 books in the New Testament, but there are many, many more authors and writers, many of whom we don't know who they are, who are involved in producing what we call the Bible. The Quran is not like that. It's not the heterogeneous work of many hands in several genres, in a trio of languages. The Bible, of course, is in Greek, Aramaic, uh, and Hebrew, mainly Hebrew in the Old Testament, mainly Greek in the New Testament, in varied geographical locales stretching over millennia, surviving only in uncertain and fragmentary forms. The Quran isn't like that. The oldest, and this is another shock for people who don't know, what is the, and I often ask Christians this question, it's not meant to be, it's not a trick question, it's a question of facts. What is our oldest New Testament manuscript? Often Christians say, "Oh, the first century. We've got first-century manuscripts." And I say, "Where is this manuscript? Tell me. I'd like to know." And they can't name it. They can't say, "Oh, well, it's this manuscript in this university, and it's been classified, and we know what it is." No, no. In fact, the earliest New Testament manuscript we have, the complete New Testament manuscript, not fragments, bits and pieces, is from the fourth century. The fourth century. Remember, Jesus lived in the first century. And, uh, this, of course, is the famous Codex Sinaiticus, because it was found in, uh, a monastery in Mount Sinai, Sinaiticus, in, uh, in Egypt, in the 19th century, and it's dated to about 350 AD, ish, and it's in the British Library in London, and I've seen it lots and lots of times. It's in Greek, really difficult to read because it's all in block capital letters, Greek letters, and there are no gaps between words and sentences, just a stream of words. And goodness knows why they did it at that time, but so it's not easy to read. But anyway, nevertheless, that is the oldest, um, authenticated, certain New Testament manuscript, and it's hundreds and hundreds of years after Jesus's time.
Anyway, the Quran is different because we have manuscripts now, increasingly so, going back to the time of the Prophet himself, actual manuscripts. And shortly, I'm going to invite you to look at a brief video produced by the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation, uh, a couple of years ago about the remarkable discovery of the Quran in the University of Birmingham here in England. They, they actually had this manuscript for years. They didn't know how old it was. And then some enterprising researcher thought, "Hmm, we've got to carbon-date this. This looks early. How early is it?" And they did not, in their wildest dreams, they say this is their world, we do not think in our wildest dreams would this manuscript be so early, because it goes back to the time of the Prophet himself. And there's a professor there, you, you're here at the university, who I've actually interviewed, who's actually a Christian, and he says some fascinating things about who the likely author of this particular manuscript is. It's been carbon-dated to the time of the Prophet and the companions of the Prophet, peace be upon him. So, look, we're going to watch that video shortly. Um, but just coming back, just to finish off what Shabir says. So, the Quran, unlike the Bible, is not the heterogeneous work of many hands in several genres, in a trio of languages, in varied geographical locales, stretching over millennia, surviving only in uncertain and fragmentary forms. It is a unified canon, canonized, revealed in just over two decades, addressed to a man fully known to his contemporaries and to subsequent history. A man living in only two geographical locations in the same country. It was written in one language, the language of the recipient and of [clears throat] the first audience. Think of today, how many of us can read Aramaic? I can't. How many of us can read Greek? I can read Koine Greek, but I can't speak it. How many of us can read biblical Hebrew? Very few people can. And yet, the language of the Quran is the language of literally hundreds of millions of Arabs today. What is an Arab? It actually means someone whose native language is Arabic. So, the language of the Quran is still living, uh, and is, and so the Quran is still understood. Unlike the Bible, I've never come across anyone. I know of people, like two scholars I know of, that's it. One of whom is no longer with us, um, uh, who read, who can read Aramaic, because parts of Daniel, for example, the Book of Daniel are in Aramaic, and a few other places as well. So, no one can actually understand the book in its language apart from a handful of people out of how many Christians? Three billion Christians. It's, it's remarkable. Contrast that with the Quran. It was written in one language, the Quran, the language of the recipient and of the first audience, a living language that is still widely spoken. The period of its oral revelation and final authoritative compilation is only about two decades. Remember what I said about the Codex Sinaiticus and the biblical manuscripts? The earliest complete copy we have, it's in the 4th century, 400 years after the birth of Jesus. The Quran goes back to within a couple of decades, uh, of of its initial revelation. The, the physical Quran we have, or could be even earlier. Apart from some variant readings, he says, of the Quran that do not materially affect the sense, the text is invariant, defined, and fixed. Textual emendation, editing the text to remove alleged corruptions or errors in copying, was never permitted. The text has retained perfect purity. A unique version has enjoyed universal currency during the entire history of Islam. I cannot see, says Dr. Shabir Akdar, barring motives of malice and envy that should have no place in scholarship, any grounds for developing a critical textual scholarship of the Quran.
So, that's just two paragraphs actually from page 123 of this marvelous book, "The Quran and the Secular Mind." Uh, I certainly do recommend it. And, and these contrasts between, you know, the earliness of the Quran and the much later manuscript evidence from the New Testament are not really accepted and known by Christians. When often I bring this up, they resist what, what I've just said. And I'm thinking, on what grounds do you resist what I've just said? Is it on factual grounds? Fine. Please, let's talk about facts. Isn't it historical grounds? Fine. Let's talk about history. When I say that the earliest list of the 27 books of the New Testament we have comes from the 4th century, from Bishop, uh, Athanasius, from Alexandria in 367 AD. They didn't, they don't know that. And even then, and some scholars make this mistake, they think, "Oh, well, that was it. It was settled then in 367." At that point, the church agreed, surely, on what the canon is, the list of books. But that's not true either. Still in the East, in places like Syria and elsewhere, books like the, uh, the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, Second Peter, were very much disputed and doubted because if you look at the Book of Revelation, it's pretty weird. I mean, it looks like the guy is on something. I mean, it's, it's really, it's apocalyptic in a very strange kind of weird way, if you look at it. If you read the book, you'll know what I mean. And to Peter, no one ever heard of the Second Letter of Peter until a couple of centuries after Peter died. And today, it's seen to Peter, almost universally, as a forgery, as a fake. And this matters because it states in it that it is a letter by an eyewitness, by Peter himself. So, someone is faking testimony to the life of Jesus as an eyewitness. "We have seen him on Mount, the Mount," uh, I think it's the Mount of Transfiguration, I should say, in 2 Peter chapter 2. But in fact, this is not by an eyewitness. It's a fake. And there are lots of very strong historical and literary reasons why scholars have concluded this. They don't want to conclude. These scholars are usually Christians in this field, but they have. And as the, uh, world, world-famous, uh, Dictionary of the Christian Church, published by Oxford University Press, has has stated, and you can read it for yourself, "It's virtually impossible," quote, "for 2 Peter to be by the Apostle Peter," for the reasons they outline in the article, which I won't go into now. So, which means that we have faked testimony about the life of Jesus in the New Testament, which is acknowledged by the highest authorities in the church itself. This is unknown to 99% of Christians, but it is known to scholars. And this disconnect between scholars, Christian scholars in universities like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, whatever, and the so-called, you know, the lay people, patronizing term, couldn't be greater. There's simply no, uh, knowledge from one to the other. People don't know what their own scholars have been saying for hundreds of years. But many Muslims, interestingly, do know what's been going on and, uh, have shared the, the findings of Christian scholarship with a wider audience. So, that's the reality. The early, the letters of Paul and the Gospels were not seen as scripture by the first Christians. And we can know that if you look at the early Christians, where they, they cite passages from the books that did become holy scripture, they don't refer to them as scripture. They don't refer to them as revelation. Very interesting. And if you want to read the stories of the full details of this, look in this book, "A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faith" by John Barton. Uh, Bart Ehrman himself, in a book called "Lost Christianities," um, has discussed this in great detail. Um, this is a, a subject for another session, perhaps, but another podcast, another YouTube video.
So, I hope you found that interesting. I'm now going to leave you with the BBC. Um, here we go. BBC News, "Oldest Quran Found in Birmingham." Uh, this came out nine years ago. It's had 1.7 million views, this video, which is unusual for, um, uh, something like this. Uh, it's the world's oldest fragment of the Quran found by the University of Birmingham on their, in their library. They didn't even realize they had this really early text. It's radiocarbon dated to around the time of the Prophet himself. Um, absolutely remarkable. And it's the same Quran that we have today. That's the, that's the point. It's the same Quran. I, I've been there. I've seen it. I've been with Muslims who've read it. Yep. They actually recognize all the ayah. Yep. That's, that's what we know. That's our Quran. And it comes from the time of the Prophet himself and the time of the companions. So, that's it. Game over. We, we could all go home and stop arguing about it. We have to, though, keep on asserting this truth because some people don't want to hear it. Um, because the Quran has been preserved in its purity, intact, for all these 1400 years. Alhamdulillah. Anyway, enjoy the video. Until next time.
You're looking at one of the oldest fragments of the Quran ever discovered. It's written on parchment, most likely made from sheep or goat skin, and it's been dated by experts as being more than 1300 years old. And that makes it among the earliest known fragments of the Quran anywhere in the world. And it's here in the University of Birmingham. This remarkable document had been resting on the shelves of the university library for decades without anybody realizing just how old it was until a researcher decided to take a closer look. The pages were radiocarbon dated to no later than the year 645, which means the university has found one of the very earliest known examples. Finding out that we had one of the oldest fragments of the Quran in the, in the whole world was fantastically exciting individually and for the university as well. I mean, we were expecting it to be early, but we, we did not, I think, in our wildest dreams, expect that it would roughly correlate to the lifespan of the Prophet Muhammad, which makes it, uh, an incredibly early Quranic fragment. The manuscript had been stored here in a collection of Middle Eastern documents brought to Birmingham in the 1920s. Academics here say that this discovery goes back to the earliest years of Islam. The person who actually wrote it may well have known the Prophet Muhammad. He would have seen him, probably. He would maybe have heard him preach. Um, he may have known him personally, and that really is quite a thought to conjure with. Birmingham has one of the country's biggest Muslim communities, and they have welcomed having such a treasure in their city. When I saw these pages, I was very much moved, and there were tears of joy and emotions in my eyes, and I am quite sure that even the people from all over the UK would come here to Birmingham to just have a glimpse of these pages. People would love this. This is an exceptionally rare and valuable discovery, and the university says it will be put on public display. It has no intention of letting these pages from world history leave Birmingham. Sean Cochland, BBC News.