Chapter 2: The Bible -
INTRODUCTION
Muslims and Christians differ very much in their
understanding of the Bible.
1. What is the Bible?
According to GotQuestions.org
the word “Bible” comes from the Latin and Greek words meaning “book” , a
fitting name, since the Bible is the book for all people, for all time. It’s a
book like no other, in a class by itself.
Sixty-six different books comprise the Bible. They include books of law, such
as Leviticus and Deuteronomy; historical books, such as Ezra and Acts; books of
poetry, such as Psalms and Ecclesiastes; books of prophecy, such as Isaiah and
Revelation; biographies, such as Matthew and John; and epistles (formal
letters) such as Titus and Hebrews.
The Authors of the Bible
About forty different human authors contributed to the Bible, which was written over a period of about 1500 years. The authors were kings, fishermen, priests, government officials, farmers, shepherds, and doctors. From all this diversity comes an incredible unity, with common themes woven throughout.
The Bible’s unity is since it has one Author—God Himself.
The Bible is “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16). The human authors wrote exactly what God
wanted them to write, and the result was the perfect and holy Word of God (Psalm 12:6; 2 Peter 1:21).
The Divisions of the Bible
The Bible is divided into two main parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. In short, the Old Testament is the story of a nation, and the New Testament is the story of a Man. The nation was God’s way of bringing the Man—Jesus Christ—into the world.The Old Testament
describes the founding and preservation of the nation of Israel. God promised
to use Israel to bless the whole world (Genesis 12:2-3). Once Israel was established as a nation,
God raised up a family within that nation through whom the blessing would come:
the family of David (Psalm 89:3-4). Then, from the family of David was
promised one Man who would bring the promised blessing (Isaiah 11:1-10).
The New Testament
details the coming of that promised Man. His name was Jesus, and He fulfilled
the prophecies of the Old Testament as He lived a perfect life, died to become
the Saviour, and rose from the dead.
The Central Character of the Bible
Jesus is the central character in the Bible—the whole book is about Him. The
Old Testament predicts His coming and sets the stage for His entrance into the
world. The New Testament describes His coming and His work to bring salvation
to our sinful world.
Jesus is more than a
historical figure; in fact, He is more than a man. He is God in the flesh, and
His coming was the most important event in the history of the world. God
Himself became a man to give us a clear, understandable picture of who He is.
What is God like? He is like Jesus; Jesus is God in human form (John 1:14, 14:9).
A Brief Summary of the Bible
God created man and placed him in a perfect environment; however, man rebelled against God and fell from what God intended him to be. God placed the world under a curse because of sin but immediately set in motion a plan to restore humanity and all creation to its original glory.As part of His plan
of redemption, God called Abraham out of Babylonia into Canaan (about 2000
B.C.). God promised Abraham, his son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob (also called
Israel) that He would bless the world through a descendant of theirs. Israel’s
family emigrated from Canaan to Egypt, where they grew to be a nation.
About 1400 B.C., God
led Israel’s descendants out of Egypt under the direction of Moses and gave
them the Promised Land, Canaan, as their own. Through Moses, God gave the people
of Israel the Law and made a covenant (testament) with them. If they would
remain faithful to God and not follow the idolatry of the surrounding nations,
then they would prosper. If they forsook God and followed idols, then God would
destroy their nation.
About 400 years
later, during the reigns of David and his son Solomon, Israel was solidified
into a great and powerful kingdom. God promised David and Solomon that a
descendant of theirs would rule as an everlasting king.
After Solomon’s
reign, the nation of Israel was divided. The ten tribes to the north were
called “Israel,” and they lasted about 200 years before God judged them for
their idolatry. Assyria took Israel captive about 721 B.C. The two tribes in
the south were called “Judah,” and they lasted a little longer, but eventually
they, too, turned from God. Babylon took them captive about 600 B.C.
About 70 years
later, God graciously brought a remnant of the captives back into their own
land. Jerusalem, the capital, was rebuilt about 444 B.C., and Israel once again
established a national identity. Thus, the Old Testament closes.
The New Testament
opens about 400 years later with the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem. Jesus
was the descendant promised to Abraham and David, the One to fulfil God’s plan
to redeem mankind and restore creation. Jesus faithfully completed His work—He
died for sin and rose from the dead. The death of Christ is the basis for a new
covenant (testament) with the world. All who have faith in Jesus will be saved
from sin and live eternally.
After His
resurrection, Jesus sent His disciples to spread the news everywhere of His
life and His power to save. Jesus’ disciples went in every direction spreading
the good news of Jesus and salvation. They travelled through Asia Minor, Greece,
and all the Roman Empire. The New Testament closes with a prediction of Jesus’
return to judge the unbelieving world and free creation from the curse.
Summarised Conclusion from the Bible: Isaiah 45:21b-24a
There
is no God apart from me, a righteous God and a savior. There is none but
me!
Turn
to me and be saved all you ends of the earth; for I am God and there is no
other.
By myself I have sworn, My mouth has uttered in all
integrity a word that will not be revoked.
Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear.
They will say of me, 'In the LORD are righteousness and strength.'
2.Origin of the Bible (with a comparison of the Quran)
The Following is a shortened version of a book that is strongly recommended for everybody to read (even worth to study in detail); (Reference links provided)
The Qur'an and the Bible in the light of history and science by Dr. William Campbell
Only a selection of Chapters is given underneath; please visit the whole book from the Contexts above.
SECTION THREE: The Bible and the Qur'an:
Effects of Criticism and Similarities in Their Development
CHAPTER III: Historical Development of the Qur'an and the Gospel Compared.
A. The Beginning Development of the Qur'an and the GospelB. The Final Collection of the Qur'an and the GospelC. Variant Readings in the Qur'an and the BibleD. Struggle and Conflict in Early Christianity Compared with Struggle and Conflict in Early IslamE. The Second Hundred Years of the GospelF. Summing up of the Development of the Qur'an and the Gospel
SUMMARIZED CONCLUSION (Read the whole Chapter from the above link)
The question previously asked: HOW DO YOU KNOW that the Qur'an which you have with you is the same as that given by Muhammad?
If, despite this "manhandling" and suppression of evidence by Othman, Muslims BELIEVE that there has been no change of any importance in the essential doctrines of the Qur'an, on what basis shall anyone say that the Gospel does not contain the essential doctrines of Jesus?
If the Qur'an which came six hundred years later does not agree with the Gospel-New Testament, Muslims will have to find some other explanation than "Tahrif". To charge lightly and easily that "the Christians changed the Gospel" is a basic assumption for which no proof has been provided.
Christians agree wholeheartedly with the idea expressed in the late Meccan Sura of Jonah (Yunus) 10:64 when it declares, "There is no change in the Words of God".
C. VARIANT READINGS IN THE QUR'AN AND THE BIBLE
VARIANTS IN THE QUR'AN - SUMMARIZED CONCLUSION:
Now that we have gone over this material, it is time to again ask our questions.
- How do you know that there have been no changes in the Qur'an in the 163 years between the giving of the first verse of the Qur'an and the oldest known copy?
- What about these variants?
- How do you know that it is just the way it came from Muhammad?
- That these variants are just minor changes.
- You are going to tell me that the members of Zaid Ibn Thabit's committee were serious men, and they never would have made any changes on purpose.
- And you will tell me that even if the Qur'an was first written without the vowels and without the dots to distinguish the letters, this was controlled by the custom of memorizing the whole Qur'an.
- And finally, you might point out that in 150 A.H. there were men still alive who had heard about Muhammad's life and teachings and learned the Qur'an directly from their fathers and from other men who had known Muhammad or some of the companions personally.
- Therefore, it is not possible that there could be important errors which would change the doctrines of the Qur'an.
And this is exactly the conclusion made by Hamidullah when he writes:
"Furthermore, in gathering all the variations and studying them carefully, we are sure that not one of them changes the sense of the common text so carefully codified and so carefully transmitted."
The modern Christian translator, D. Masson, comes to the same conclusion. In the introduction to her French translation of the Qur'an she says,
"Finally, in spite of these points of debate, we can say that the text presently in our possession contains the criteria of a substantial fidelity."
VARIANT READINGS IN THE GOSPEL - THE NEW TESTAMENT -
SUMMARIZED CONCLUSION:
Abundant evidence from the Hadith and from Muslim commentaries prove that there were variant readings in the copies of the Qur'an made by the companions of the prophet. This contradicts the frequent Muslim claim that the present text is a "photographic copy" of the original. Nevertheless, these variant readings are not important enough to undermine Muslim confidence that they have the essential message of the Qur'an as Muhammad proclaimed it.
Likewise for the Gospel-New Testament. It is impossible to support a "Christian" contention that the present text of the Gospel-New Testament is a perfect reproduction of the original autographs. Nevertheless, the variant readings are not important enough to alter Christian confidence that we have the essential message of the Gospel as Jesus proclaimed it.
D. STRUGGLE AND CONFLICT IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY COMPARED WITH STRUGGLE AND CONFLICT IN EARLY ISLAM
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION CONCERNING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE QUR'AN (Read the whole Chapter from the above link)
We have now made a complete study of the historical development of the Qur'an. We started with the first preaching of Muhammad l3 years before the Hejira and followed through to one of the oldest copies of the Qur'an from about 150 AH. To see this progression in the development of the Qur'an easily, it is summarized in Diagram 3.
Diagram 3 --- THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE QURAN
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Having considered all this information, it seems correct to summarize Muslim beliefs about the collection and transmission of the Qur'an in the following statements.
- Even though you do not have the original copy of the Qur'an in your hands, you BELIEVE that Zaid and Omar gathered the Qur'an as it was given.
- You BELIEVE that if something was missed when Othman burned the original copies, or even if Omar and `Ubai were right about the verse of stoning and the two extra Suras, it doesn't make a difference to any basic Islamic doctrine.
- You BELIEVE that those who copied the Qur'an did it carefully; and that when errors were made because the scribes were human, they could be controlled by comparison with other copies.
- You BELIEVE that the Hadith gathered by Muslim and Bukhari describing the life of Muhammad and the collection of the Qur'an are essentially true and to be relied upon.
- You BELIEVE that those original Muslims would not have given of their money and their time and even been ready to die for something that they knew to be a lie.
- In summary, YOU BELIEVE that the evidence in favor of the reliable transmission of the Qur'an is so great you ARE SURE that you can use it with complete confidence.
E. THE SECOND HUNDRED YEARS OF THE GOSPEL
SUMMARIZED CONCLUSION (Read the whole Chapter from the above link)
- As you BELIEVE that Zaid and Othman gathered the Qur'an carefully, we BELIEVE that Luke and John preserved the Gospel carefully.
- As you BELIEVE that those who copied the Qur'an did it carefully, we BELIEVE that the scribes who copied the Gospel-New Testament did it carefully.
- As you BELIEVE that those leading Muslims of the first century of the Hejira would not spend their money and their lives for something that they knew to be a lie, we also BELIEVE that Jesus' disciples---the Apostles---would not die, as Peter and Paul did, for something that they knew was a lie.
- As you BELIEVE that the evidence is so great in favor of the reliable transmission of the Qur'an that you ARE SURE that you can use it with complete confidence, we BELIEVE that the above evidence is so great in favor of the reliable transmission of the Gospel that we ARE SURE that we can use it with complete confidence.
FINAL CONCLUSION: NEITHER THE PRESENT QUR'AN, NOR THE PRESENT GOSPEL ACCOUNTS HAVE SUFFERED ANY IMPORTANT CHANGE. THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY AS THEY WERE WRITTEN.
3.History of Bible Translation
The following is a
brief treatment of biblical translation
as according to Brittanica.com
The Jewish
Bible, the Old Testament, was originally written entirely in Hebrew, with a few short elements in Aramaic.
When the Persian
empire controlled the eastern Mediterranean basin, Aramaic became
the lingua franca of the area, and for liturgical reasons it became
necessary for the Jewish communities of the region to have
the Torah, or Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), translated
into the common language from traditional Hebrew. The resulting Targums (from
Aramaic meturgeman, “translator”) survived after original
Hebrew scrolls had been lost.
By the mid-3rd
century BCE Greek was the dominant lingua franca, and Jewish scholars
began the task of translating the Hebrew canon into that language, an
undertaking that was not completed for more than a century. Because tradition
held that each of the 12 tribes of Israel contributed six scholars to
the project, the Greek version of the Jewish Bible came to be known later (in
Latin) as the Septuagint (Septuagint: “70”).
The Hebrew
Scriptures were the only Bible the early Christian church knew,
and as the young religion spread out through the Greek-speaking
world, Christians adopted the Septuagint. In the meantime, many of
the books of the Christian Bible, the New Testament, were first written or
recorded in Greek, and others in Aramaic.
The spread of Christianity necessitated
further translations of both the Old and New Testaments into Coptic, Ethiopian,
Gothic, and, most important, Latin. In 405 St. Jerome finished
translating a Latin version that was based in part on the Septuagint, and this
version, the Vulgate, despite errors introduced by copyists, became the
standard of Western Christianity for a thousand years or more.
Hebrew scholars at Talmudic schools in
Palestine and Babylonia about the 6th century CE began trying to
retrieve and codify the Hebrew scriptures, restoring them authoritatively and
in the Hebrew language. Over centuries they laboured to complete the traditional,
or Masoretic, text, which since its completion in the 10th century has
come to be universally accepted. The Masoretic version was transmitted by
scribes with amazing fidelity down to the time of movable type in the
15th century.
Jerome’s Latin Vulgate served as the basis
for translations of both the Old and New Testament into Syriac, Arabic,
Spanish, and many other languages, including English. The Vulgate provided the
basis for the Douai-Reims Bible (New Testament, 1582; Old Testament,
1609–10), which remained the only authorized Bible in English for Roman
Catholics until the 20th century.
The new learning in the 15th and 16th
centuries revived the study of ancient Greek and led to new translations, among
them an important one by the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus, who in
1516 published an edition of the New Testament containing the Greek text and
his own translation into Latin. Meanwhile, in Germany, Martin
Luther produced the first complete translation from the original Greek and
Hebrew into a modern European language. His German-language translation of the
New Testament was published in 1522 and that of the complete Bible in 1534;
this remained the official Bible for German Protestants and was the
basis for Danish, Swedish, and other translations.
The first complete English-language version
of the Bible dates from 1382 and was credited to John Wycliffe and
his followers. But it was the work of the scholar William Tyndale, who
from 1525 to 1535 translated the New Testament and part of the Old Testament,
that became the model for a series of subsequent English translations.
All previous English translations culminated
in the King James Version (1611; known in England as the Authorized
Version), which was prepared by 54 scholars appointed by King James I. Avoiding
strict literalism in favour of an extensive use of synonym, it was a
masterpiece of Jacobean English and the principal Bible used by
English-speaking Protestants for 270 years.
About the time of the invention of printing
in 1450, there were only 33 different translations of the Bible. By about 1800
the number had risen to 71. By the late 20th century, the entire Bible had been
translated into more than 250 languages, and portions of the Bible had been
published in more than 1,300 of the world’s languages.
Look here for a video about the History of Bible Translation
4.How many different
languages has the Bible been translated into?
According to Ethnologic, there are currently 7,106 living languages in the world.
As of 2020 the full
Bible has been translated into 704 languages.
The New Testament has been translated
into 1,551 languages and parts of the Bible have been translated
into 1,160 additional languages.
The 12 Verse Challenge movement is dedicated to eradicating Bible poverty by the year 2033. For more information about the 12 Verse Challenge visit https://12vc.illuminations.bible/.
5. Inspiration of the
Bible.
Christianity’s Definition of Revelation
The Christian understanding
of Revelation is much more personal and relational than what Islam understand,
and includes:
-
General Revelation: God’s
beauty, power and intricate wisdom is displayed in the sophistication of the
universe all around us, so that everyone can know Him
-
Special Revelation: But God
also chose to reveal Himself more specifically by means of prophets, sent with
a specific word, in a specific time, a specific place, and to a specific people
-
Personal Revelation: 2,000
years ago, God Himself came to earth to reveal Himself personally (Hebrew
1:1-2)
-
Ongoing Revelation: Even today
God continues to reveal Himself to Mankind through the work of the Holy Spirit
Comparing Definitions of Revelation between Islam and Christianity...
[Note: For an
explanation of Islam’s viewpoint on Revelation, see Chapter 4:6]
Islam’s primary
revelation = the Qur’an, while Christianity’s = Jesus
-
Instead of comparing the Bible
with the Qur’an
-
Compare Jesus with the Qur’an
-
Both are our primary forms of
revelation
-
Both are claimed to be ’The
Word of God’
- The Bible (i.e., the New Testament), therefore, is more like the ‘Hadith’, ‘Sira’, ‘ Tafsir’, and ‘Tarikh’ of Jesus’ life and sayings
-
Jesus, as our primary
revelation is indeed superior to the Qur’an in every way!
6. Textual Criticism of
the Bible
What is textual criticism?
- It does not mean that we are criticizing the text of Scripture; textual criticism of the Bible has nothing inherently to do with critiquing the Bible.
- Instead, textual criticism means thinking critically about manuscripts and variations in the biblical texts found in those manuscripts, to identify the original reading of the Bible.
- For example, what do we do when we find differences in 1 Corinthians 13:3 in ancient manuscripts? Some Greek manuscripts read “if I give up my body to be burned” (see ESV; KJV), whereas others read “if I give up my body that I might boast” (see CSB; NIV). The English translations differ because they are translating different Greek words: some manuscripts have a word for boast and others include some form of burn. The terms look similar in Greek; they both make sense in context. But which word did Paul use?
Read more here... What is textual criticism? How do you do it?
This is the task of textual criticism, which uses tightly honed methods to test variant (or divergent) readings that are encountered in manuscripts. The goal is to find the most ancient—and most accurate—reading.
How is this done? There’s not just one way, and there is some lively debate about the best way to proceed. But the most prominent method used by New Testament scholars today is a multifaceted, eclectic process.
-
First, the manuscripts
themselves are considered—this is called external evidence. In the example of 1 Corinthians 13, most manuscripts include some
form of burn. You might think that
finding what most manuscripts contain would solve the matter, but it’s not so
simple. Not all manuscripts are equally important; sometimes more is
not always better. Quality of manuscripts
matters more than quantity. In this case, the earliest manuscript evidence
supports boast, along with several
important manuscripts that have consistently proven to be reliable in other
ways.
-
Second, this eclectic method
also looks at internal evidence. This
includes a biblical author’s normal style and the sorts of mistakes that later
copyists commonly made when they copied texts. In the case of 1 Corinthians
13:3, Paul never mentions burning anywhere else, but
he often speaks of boasting. When it comes to
copyist tendencies, we might ask if the two words in question look like each
other (they do), and if they could easily be mistaken by someone copying
manuscripts (they could).
-
Textual critics thus arrive at
conclusions by asking a range of questions to determine which option is more
likely in each scenario. Sometimes there is no easy answer, and sometimes this
is apparent in differences between translations. But the good news is textual
critics like to show their work in critical editions of the New Testament,
giving the reader as much information as possible, so that interested readers
can draw their own conclusions.
FOR FURTHER STUDY:
- What is the Bible 👉YouTube video
- Answers for in-depth questions about the Bible FAQ page
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