Ali Ataie – Is the Bible corrupted
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AI: Transcript ©
Starting with,
the preservation of the New Testament. Like, the
Bible is corrupt.
Yeah. It sounds to me that's not an
argument you would necessarily like to go with.
Please tell us why. Yeah. Wait. But
okay. I'm just wondering how it this kind
of subject became so controversial that people got
very upset about. Yeah. Well, Muslims think the
Bible is corrupted. Right? Understood. Right. Right? That
that's the common thing. The Bible has been
corrupted,
and the Quran came to, like,
like is and that's one of the things
about the Quran. It's the it's it'll never
be corrupted. Yeah. Right? So talk to us
a little bit about I think Sim is
asking, though, why would they have a problem
with that and cause,
you know, they have it. Oh, so so
let's have him explain. Let's have him let's
have him break it down. So so the
proposition that the Bible is corrupted is is
viewed by many Muslims as almost a,
almost like a creedal statement.
And it's because of, you know, the their
sort of background as far as,
the type of rhetoric or the type of
Dawa, the type of apologetics that they've heard
and
and they've experienced,
in their respective countries,
that this is a major point,
of Dawa is that,
the the New Testament is not authentic.
It's been corrupted,
and certainly Muslim apologists
like Zakir Naik and Ahmed Diddat and
and others. I mean, this is one of
their main points.
It's interesting because Muslims,
Muslim apologists oftentimes
will use,
the arguments of very, very secular historians
to drive that point home. For example, to
quote,
a Bart Ehrman or James Dunn or Elaine
Pagel, John Dominic Crossan, even atheists like Richard
Carrier and say, see, these are secular historians,
and they're all saying but at the same
time, those secular historians, I mean, what would
they say about the Quran? This is a
point I made last night. I mean, I've
heard Muslims use Julius Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis Mhmm.
To disprove
that Moses wrote the Pentateuch
and say, see, this is a, you know,
this is Well,
what
Well, what does Wellhausen say about the Quran's
origins?
You really don't wanna know. Mhmm. Well, you
can imagine. So we need to have an
answer for that.
So unless you have an answer for that
part of it, we shouldn't be using these
secular historians. That's a great point, man. Yeah.
So so it's a very uneven method. Another
example I give, like like, modern Muslim reform,
like Sayyid Khotob in his,
Chafsir,
Quran.
He,
so he's talking about the Ayatul Salaba 4
157,
the only verse in the Quran that refers
to the crucifixion or alleged crucifixion of Isa
alaihis salam. And he says there that we
can't trust the gospel of John's account and
he calls it kabir. It's disgusting and it's
too late and, you know, it's you know,
who wrote this? And
and then he says and then he uses
the gospel of Barnabas,
to drive his point home that Judas Iscariot,
right, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, he was
the one who was crucified.
Well, you know, if if the gospel of
John is late
and the gospel of Barnabas is I mean,
gospel of Barnabas is written in the 16th
century. It's written in Italian. It has anachronisms.
It has doctrinal
errors from our perspective. It calls the prophet
Mohammed, peace be upon him, Al Amsir.
I mean, it's it's a total disaster.
Right?
So oftentimes, Muslim apologist, don't really,
they don't see the other side of the
argument. They're not being even in the way
they apply their methodology.
Kind of cherry picking their way Exactly. To
Yeah. Winning the debate. So Yeah. We've been
taking unauthentic pieces and trying to
use that to prove your point. Yeah. So
And Christians refer to this thing as they
call it solid bar hermeneutics, like you just
pick and choose, like, whatever agrees with the
Quran I'm gonna pick and choose that and
say this is the part of the original
issue. But it a lot of Muslims don't
know and this is this is why the
controversy happened last night. Night. A lot of
Muslims don't know that there are opinions of
scholars,
where
the text is actually affirmed as being authentic.
This is the opinion of, for example, an
Egyptian scholar, Ibn Umar al Bikha'i,
who actually wrote a an Arabic gospel harmony,
an an Arabic diatesseron. In other words, he
took the 4 gospels, and he put them
into a single narrative.
He also used
the Torah
as a primary source of exegesis for his
own tafsir. And, of course, this
this was the cause of,
you know, a lot of pushback from the
other ulama of his day because of the
standard sort of interpretation. I wanna jump in
real quick and just clarify for the audience
because some people, they assume the Bible they'd
like, I think this you came across last
night. They don't understand what the actual Bible's
composed of. Right? Yeah. So you've got the
old testament
Yeah. Of which the first five books are
the Torah. Correct? Right. And then the new
testament,
there's 27 books, but 4 of those the
gospels are 4 books of the 27. Yeah.
And there's a bunch of letters and other
things in there. Right? Right. So just like,
so you're talking about the gospels
in the in jail, not necessarily the entire
New Testament within jail. Right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
It seems like it seems like Imam al
Ghazali I mean, he wrote this. And some
say it's pseudonymous.
That Khazali didn't write it. It certainly sounds
like Khazali. We'll just say that he wrote
it. It's called the Radu Jamil. So the
beautiful refutation of the of the,
of the divinity of Jesus from the gospel.
So here's Ghazali. He's quoting Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John. He doesn't quote, you know, first
Corinthians. He's not quoting the book the
epistle of James. So it seems like he's
affirming that the 4 gospels in the New
Testament is sort of a fourfold gospel,
or is a sort of
an accurate representation
of the actual teachings of Jesus. Now Ghazali
just might be sort of entertaining the text,
to make an argument against the Christians. That's
that seems to be what he's doing in
the Tehafot al Falasifa where he sort of
entertains
Aristotelian,
you know,
deductive arguments to drive a point home that
that the universe can't be pre eternal in
the past. So he doesn't really believe in
in actual cause and effect. He he he
apparently is an occasionalist, but over there, he
seems to be entertaining that argument in order
to refute it. That could be what he's
doing at Reh Tujimil.
But it doesn't seem like it because in
other in other,
in other works, he he freely quotes from
the
the New Testament gospels. Kitabul Elim, the first
book of the Ihia, he will quote he
says on on the witness of Jesus,
whoever
whoever gains knowledge,
and teaches others so shall be called great
in the kingdom of heaven. Something like that,
he says. Well, he's not quoting a hadith.
That's not Quran. That's the gospel of Matthew.
He's paraphrasing Matthew's gospel.
So his opinion so Al Bikari's opinion is
that what the Christians are calling the injil
is the injil.
That seems to be Ghazali's opinion. This seems
to be Fakhruddin al Razi's opinion because they're
of the opinion that
no one can change the the words of
God.
And then in the Quran,
while while
So Allah says, let the people of the
gospel judge
by what God has revealed therein. So it
appears from this ayah
that the what the Christians have as far
as the gospel goes
is,
a an accurate authentic source of legal and
moral teaching.
Why would Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala so here's
the argument. Why would Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
refer to the Christians ahlul Injeel if they
don't have the Injeel? Yeah.
And then another piece of, evidences
in Bukhary,
we're told that
Yeah. So
he became he was converted to Christianity,
and he used to read the gospel. It
it says in Bukhari, the gospel
in Arabic. So the question is, you know,
what is Waraka actually
reading? You know, because Bukhari calls it the
gospel. So is he reading some
now lost
archetype
of the injil that, it was written in
Syriac and
it was written by, you know, Jesus, peace
be upon him, himself? No. He's obviously reading
that he's obviously reading the new testament.
Now I think the reason why
the,
the Quran uses a singular
gospel and not gospels
is because Warakah most likely has a copy
of the Diatessaron,
which is Tayshian. So there's a second century
Christian
scholar who's a student of Justin Martyr. His
name was Tayshien, who did a gospel harmony.
I mean, would do one later, right, from
a Muslim perspective.
But,
Tatian's,
according
to Sydney Griffith, the gospel in Arabic or
the Bible in Arabic
was the most popular form of the New
Testament,
in in the Arabic speaking world in the
Quran's milieu. So it seems like Waraka has
the
in front of him and he's reading and
and translating it into Arabic.
And there are some intertextual correspondences between the
Deoteseran
of Taishan and what's in the Quran. For
example, in the Deoteseran,
you have the first five verses of the
prologue of John's gospel,
and then you have the statement that John
the Baptist witnesses
the word of God,
and then you have the birth of John
the Baptist. Well, in the Quran, you have
the birth of John the Baptist and then
you have the statement,
that he he witnesses concerning a word of
God. So it seems to be a mirroring
of what's happening in the Deoteseran.
And sometimes people get the wrong idea and
say, what are you saying? The prophet said,
he copied the Dei Tesseran and you're just
playing into the hands of the Christian. No.
I'm not saying that.
It doesn't necessarily follow that. I don't think
it has anything to do with sorry to
cut you off. It has nothing to do
with Muhammad.
Right? Yeah. Exactly. That's what
Allah is saying. Right? Exactly. But, yeah, from
a Christian perspective, they'll say, well, you know,
the the Quran is just sort of these
different disparate,
Christian traditions are sewn together.
And so the fact that that the Quran
is mirroring
or engaging with another text does not negate
that it's a divine revelation. That's a nonsecretary
argument. I mean, the bi the New Testament
does that all the time. It quotes in
the Old Testament and then it sort of
revises or
or or interprets things through a more crystal
logical lens.
So that's that appears to be happening in
the Quran.
So there's a valid opinion that the tariff
is not of
the Nas. I mean, that's the dominant opinion
that the text has actually changed.
Right? I mean, this opinion of Ibn Taymiyyah
in the majority
of Ulema. But there is an opinion, it's
a minority opinion that Muslims are not aware
of that the text of the New Testament
gospels is sound according to the Quran, based
on the Quran. Yeah. You know? And there's
other evidences as well. I think what throws
people off is when you say is sound.
Uh-huh.
They think
that it's on the same level of the
Quran Yeah. As far as application. Is that
what the dilemma is?
You know I mean, they say, hey. You're
saying that it's equal to the Quran.
Maybe they take maybe they're making that assumption.
I because why else would someone have a
problem with it? And I'll tell you and
tell me if I'm thinking of this properly.
When I was growing up and generally what
I tell people is, the idea and the
argument for Muslims that
the Quran is,
copy is copy and pasting from the Bible
Mhmm. Is a non issue because everything is
from Allah. They're all
the
right? Yeah. They're all the books revealed from
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
and
that's why I like what Ahmadinejad used to
say to refer to the Quran as a
final testament. Yeah. Right? That's right. It's because
it's all from Allah
anyway. It has nothing to do with copy
and pasting.
It has to do very simply
that when a book when Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala chose a new messenger
and a book was not properly
being implemented. It's 2 parts. Right? It's about
prophethood and it's about books. Right? Allah
sends a prophet and it's the final
testament. It's the final Yeah. Speech of Allah.
But people
like just thinking for those people,
I think it's very
if they're not,
paying attention properly Yeah. They're gonna start thinking
that you're saying, hey. The Bible is legit
just as the Quran is legit. Yeah. So
Christians making that That's definitely not what I'm
saying. No. No. I know. They're making that
equation in their mind because they're probably just
listening to certain things. As soon as they
hear something that they've never
before Yeah. They're that that question mark goes
on like, oh my god. What's that? And
it's it's kinda turbulent for them. Right? And
also, like, they'll say, wait a minute. Wait
a minute. The New Testament has contradictions.
You know, Jesus is called the son of
God in the New Testament several times, and
clearly that's, you know, that's negated,
repudiated
many, many times. And how do you how
can you possibly reconcile? And of course, there's
sophisticated answers for these things. Yeah.
But but that's that's the main issue.
And and, so
so to clarify the point is that definitely
there's nusk, right? Now the verse in the
Quran What, Sorry, what do you mean by
nusk? Because it's like abrogation. Abrogation, yeah. So
in Al Baqarah 106, I mean, the dominant
opinion
is that there's not only
intra religious abrogation but inter religious abrogation. So
there's ayat in the Quran,
that cancel other ayat in the Quran, the
akham aspect.
And so puts this at, you know, 19
or 21 verses in the. I mean, just
a few verses.
So, you know, sometimes people, they they they
they sort of take this idea of nusk,
and they have this really reductionist idea of
whatever is later automatically
abrogates what is before.
And this is just so much more
involved than that.
But but certainly there's nusk of previous dispensations.
So, you know, I got this question one
time. Are you saying that, you know, the
new Testament and Torah, they're they're valid and
they're valid in their text? Possibly the Quran.
I mean, the the the Torah was brought
it's a hadith in Abu Dawood. The the
Torah was brought to the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam and he placed it on a pillow
and then he said,
I believe in you and the one who
sent you. And now it seems like he's
affirming,
the Torah.
So then the question is, okay. Well,
why don't you follow all 600 and 13
of the mitzvot of the commandments in the
Torah? You have to become a practicing Jew.
No. This is where nusk comes into play.
This is abrogation.
So nusk only refers or only applies to
the aham.
Yeah. Right? Not to the theological ayat, not
to the
the the stories necessarily,
because those things are,
they're they're they're teaching transcendental lessons.
So somebody would say, wait wait a minute.
The story of Joseph in Genesis and the
story of Joseph in the Quran, those are
clearly different.
The Quran is correcting that story and, yeah,
I can I can see that point and
I'm not negating it?
Right? That that the Quran is a corrective
and I think many times it is correcting
certain things,
with respect to Christian theology,
and and Jewish attitudes towards,
certain things.
But, I don't necessarily see
or necessitate this idea that the Quran is
correcting or,
biblical traditions, but could be sort of just
expounding them,
explaining them in new light. For example,
the story of Yusuf alaihi salaam in Genesis
is very tribal. It's focused on on
fraternal type things. Yeah.
It's basically,
trying to instill within the Israelites this sense
of pride in in in in themselves.
Whereas the Quran is broader. It's more ecumenical.
That's why the story in, of of Yusuf
in prison in in in Genesis,
when those 2 men, the cellmates have their
dreams,
Yusuf alaihi salam immediately interprets their dreams just
right off straight away.
In in the Quran,
he tells them about Tawhid.
Allahu Akbar. So he so the Quran is
not necessarily negating
pharaoh, you know, in in the bible,
you have Israelites against the Egyptians and let
my people go. In the Quran,
Allah tells Musa Alaihi Salam speak to him
a kind word or a gentle word perhaps
he'll fear Allah.
So,
I mean, it's conceivable that many the people
that made exodus out of Egypt, many of
them were Egyptian converts
to
whatever the religion was. I mean, it certainly
wasn't Judaism, but the the term Judaism is
much later term,
to the religion of Moses at that time.
Many of them must have been Egyptians, and
that's why we have this tradition of Asiya,
the wife of pharaoh, who believed in Musa,
Alayhisam, missing from the from the, Jewish tradition.
So the Quran is not necessarily
negating those stories or even correcting them, but,
expounding them in a new way for a
different type of emphasis. Yeah. And don't don't
we believe as as as as Muslims that
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
in the Quran is addressing a people what
was relevant for their time to let them
know what happened in the past and what's
gonna be for their time as our as
the Arabs in Arabia and for the future.
Right? And I'm glad you're about to point
out. I've actually never heard anybody talk about
this. But,
what's so some of the people in in
the chat are saying, like, so are you
saying that the Bible is not corrupt? But
from what I am, I'm understanding, you can't
say either or.
You you can't you can't use that as
a as a basis of an argument.
Is that what you're saying? I'm saying it's
it's a possibility that this is what the
Koran is saying, so we have to not
take it off the table. And, again, the
gospels themselves, not The gospels. Not the other
twenty
4, 23 books of the New Testament. Yeah.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It seems like
the Quran is
affirming that what the Christians have
is
the gospel,
or else why would Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
order the Christians to take rulings by the
gospel if it's a corrupted text? Okay. So
I wanna I want you to clarify a
couple of things. Yeah. There's some questions in
the group about, like Mhmm. So when we
think of I think when Muslims think about
the injil, they think about a revelation to
understand that Islam spoke Aramaic.
Yeah. And the original gospels first of all,
the Christians don't even say that Islam wrote
it. It's like they were written by most,
like, most critical scholars will say the even
John didn't write John. It's Yeah. We don't
know who wrote John. It's attributed to John
Right. Vice versa. Right?
So how does that fit the definition
of
the injil as a revelation to if
you're saying that these
are the gospels when the Christians themselves say,
we may not even know who wrote them,
but these are accounts from the life of
Jesus. Yeah. So,
it's it's certainly conceivable that the injeel was
revealed in Greek, first of all. Aramaic is
is a dead language. A few thousand people
spoke it.
It it's not a very precise language.
It's I mean, it's related to Arabic, but
it's really, really different than Arabic. I mean,
Hebrew is Close-up. Is is is is actually
very remedial compared I mean, you can if
you if you learn 600 words in Hebrew,
you can read you can basically start reading
the Hebrew Bible. I mean, the dictionary is
about an eighth of that of Arabic,
but Greek is
an
extremely vast
precise language. I mean, there's 16 verb conjugations
in Greek
And the word injil
that the Quran uses is actually a Greek
word. I mean, the Semitic word for gospel
in Hebrew is
or in Arabic, but the Quran says
So it's not conceivable that, it's not inconceivable
that the that the that the was revealed
in Greek to Isa alaihis salam, and that
was the lingua franca of the Mediterranean during
his time. That was the, in other words,
that was the language
Roman empire in the ancient in the in
in in the Mediterranean at that time,
in the ancient near east.
Now,
the Quran says
that
I read and this is the only time
in the Quran, by the way, where Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala says
in the first person common singular.
It's usually or
or so and I certainly gave,
you know, because the verb
and this is a point that some of
the the make in in the books of
Ulumur Quran
is that even though the we're gonna use
the the verb
if it's talking about a prophet, then that's
a type of wahi, and wahi is only
for profits.
But the same verb can be used for
nonprofits, but we don't call it wahi. We
call it iha. So it seems like the
disciples are receiving a type of ilham, a
type of inspirated
in inspiration,
not necessarily a a word for word,
you know, what's called
a verba, word for word dictate from God.
Yeah. So so what's what's happening here is
that the the the disciples are receiving.
So in my in my opinion, I don't
think anything I don't think, the the Injil
was written down in in the life of
Esai alaihi salam. I think the Injil is
his message.
His message is the Injil. And then the
disciples at some point or disciples of disciples,
they wrote down what they remembered
from the message of Jesus,
and that was given to them as a
type of
non non prophetic revelation. Yeah. And that's Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John. Now you say what
secular scholars, you know, they say that these
books are written later. That trend is actually
changing,
and this is something that Raymond Brown makes
a point of. The trend now is to
actually date the gospels earlier amongst secular historian.
I'm talking about I'm not talking about confessional
Christian scholars.
And and one of the reasons why is
they've discovered that secular historians traditionally make a
lot of assumptions
when they're dating these books like Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John. So one of
the one of the critical assumptions that they
make is they say, well, the gospel of
John must be very, very late
because it doesn't even mention the destruction of
the temple of Solomon. The the destruction of
second temple by the Romans general Titus. It
doesn't even mention that. So that event must
have just blown over by the time
John wrote his gospel.
But you can make another assumption from that,
and that is that it it was written
before the destruction of the temple. In fact,
the author of the gospel of John, and
it is anonymous,
but towards the end of the gospel, I
think chapter 21 in its epilogue,
the the somebody called the beloved disciple takes
takes,
a credit for writing the gospel. But anyway,
the author in the gospel of John describes
the temple
precincts
and he uses a present active verb. He
says, there are this and there is that.
He's not saying there was, so it seems
like the temple was still standing when John
was being written.
Another critical assumption they make is like the
gospel of John. They'll say, well, the gospel
of John's Christology is so high, you know,
you know, in the beginning was the word,
the word was with God,
the word was God. I mean, that's a
Christian translation of of the first verse of
the prologue. There's different ways of translating that,
and, you know, and, I mean, we'll get
into some
some other
comparative literature things with Philo of Alexander. He
uses the same type of language referring to
Moses. But anyway,
they'll say, well, it's Christology is so high.
It's so sky scraping. It must have been
a later development.
Well, Paul's Christology is also very high. If
you read, for example, Philippians, which was Can
you define Christology for the lay listeners? Christology
is basically,
what you believe about Christ. Okay. So high
Christology would be like deification. Would you say
that? That's a type of high Christology. Okay.
Yeah.
Or this idea that,
Jesus is,
the word through which all of creation
was made, and that's that's stated in,
in in John's prologue
that through it, all things were made.
It seems like and there's different ways of
reading that. Certainly, there were Arians who were
Unitarian Christians in the 4th century
who simply said, well, Jesus is the is
the initial created light
and that
through,
through the light of the Messiah,
subsequent creation was was was created.
And the Arians used to call Christ,
which literally means the best of creation. That
was sort of their belief about Christ, and
they were defeated at the Council of Nicaea.
But if you look at Philippians,
Paul has a very high Christology.
Right? And Paul is writing in the fifties.
That's very early.
And
and,
traditionally, the gospel of John was dated by
secular historians
in the nineties or 90
5. So it it wouldn't be out of
the question to place the gospel of John
in the forties or fifties.
So, you know, scholars are starting to are
starting to rethink these dates. And Raymond Brown
says maybe John,
the son of Zebedee, did have something to
do with the composition of the gospel of
John.
And you say, well, these are these are
sort of anonymous. I mean, the Christians, the
early church fathers, they have,
chains of transmission. They have
is not,
for these 4 books. I mean, these 4
books were chosen because,
for various reasons, but they they claim to
have, know, chain of transmission that goes back
to a disciple. So these books are just
just not, you know, chosen haphazardly.
I mean, there's some like 30 gospels and
and and various
dozens of epistles, and most of them are
forgeries.
So why these 4 books? Because these 4
books were authenticated
by early Christians as being,
as being,
authentically written by disciples or students of disciples.
So John is a disciple of Jesus,
the gospel of Luke. Luke was a traveling,
companion of Paul.
So he's like a tabby,
and then Mark is a student of Peter
at tabby.
And then,
Matthew is is a disciple. I see. So
is that a valid argument where people generally
say that, you know, Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John never met Jesus and never saw him.
They came many years after him. So their
words can't be validated at all because who
which one was it, Paul that was supposed
to be a slayer of Christians or something
like that. Is that actually true and accurate?
They said that he actually used to be
a bounty hunter.
Oh, that's true about Paul, and he admits
that in his in his letters.
And he had a vision and then for
after that he Yeah. So is that actually
is that accurate and why people accurate? What
I mean to say is accurate to use
that as an evidence for the lack of,
for for the,
reason of taking authenticity away from the gospels.
Well, Paul didn't write a gospel. So Yeah.
Paul on Paul's own testimony and his conversion
is told a few times in the New
Testament. Luke,
retells it in the book of Acts that
Paul was a persecutor of Christians.
He would arrest them and bring them to
Jerusalem to stand trial for blasphemy and whatnot.
And then he on his, he claims that
he had a,
apocalypsis or a revel a revelation where the
resurrected Christ appeared to him and commissioned him
to be an apostle to the Gentiles.
Now,
so that's Paul.
Now what's interesting is oftentimes Muslims will vilify
Paul and say, Paul, you know, he's the
one that, you know, who'd corrupted Christianity. Yeah.
And and certainly,
there's some
there's some evidence for that. I mean, there
were early groups of Christians called the Ebionites
or the Ebionim
and these were, you know, Jewish Christians. So
these were Christians who believed in Jesus, but
they still can continue to to,
to follow the
the cash route, like the kosher laws. They
they they were practicing Jews. They worshiped in
the synagogues. The only difference was they believe
Jesus was the Messiah.
And some of their writings,
it seems, have been preserved and and clearly
Paul is the enemy. They believe that Paul
is an apostate, that he, you know, he's
the one that,
introduced Hellenistic elements
into the early Christian movement, and they don't
like Paul at all.
And,
Muslims sort of gravitate towards that opinion with
Paul. Interestingly, Paul never in any letter, you
know, there's 7 genuine Pauline letters
and 14 of the books of the New
Testament could have been written by Paul, but
7 are agreed upon by all secular historians.
Mhmm. Never does Paul call Jesus
God one time, God with a capital g.
There's there's no explicit verse in any book
in the New Testament,
that teaches Trinity. I mean, the the ingredients,
if you will, of the Trinity are there.
I mean, it says father, it says son
somewhere, it says holy spirit somewhere, but you'll
also find these three terms in the old
testament. Yeah. So these are Hebraisms that are
Christianized later,
and redefined as,
the 3 persons of a trinity that share
an essence.
I mean, there was a verse in the
first epistle of John,
and this was a book that's written much,
much later probably.
I mean, according to secular historians, 110, 115,
something like that. First John 57.
There are 3 that bear record in heaven,
the father, the word, and the holy ghost,
and these 3 are 1.
Well, that verse
is nowhere to be found in the most
ancient Greek manuscripts.
So So that that's an important point because
somebody was asking Yeah. Regarding that verse and
also the verse of the adulterer.
Yeah. They don't like, by throwing the stone
and then Yeah. The end of Mark.
So you were you were mentioning to me,
like, we were yesterday, we were when we
were, driving about
how people are still like, okay. So we
have to equate we're look. We have a
translation of the bible, the King James or
NIV or whatever. Right? Yeah. Of the gospels.
Even that's not you're not saying that's the.
What you're saying is there's something called the
critical Greek edition. Yeah. Okay. That's what so
that has all those mistakes and, like,
forgeries
removed. Yeah. That's what we're talking about. Yeah.
So there were attempts to change.
So ultimately, God protects his revelations.
And
here, I didn't say Al Quran.
And another ayah,
So in the Quran, the Sahaba are told,
if you don't know something, ask the people
of dhikr, of ad dhikr. And almost all
of the classical exegetes say here that is
alkitab.
So if why would you ask Jews and
Christians about something if their books are corrupted?
And then here, indeed, we have preserved adhikr,
the totality of revelation.
So I think there have been attempts,
to corrupt the gospel,
but over time, these have been discovered. To
corrupt
the Quran. There was this Egyptian scientist
named Khalifa
who who,
came up with this sort of mathematical code
of the number 19. Yes. Yes. There are
some there are some winners. Yeah. Russian Russian
Khalifa. Rashad Khalifa. So what he did was
he removed the last two verses of of
Surah
Tawba.
So he took out those verses. He said,
oh, these these verses are talking about shirk,
and we need to remove them. And so
he started printing Arabic Qurans without those 2
verses. So what did he do? Did he
corrupt the Quran?
No. Because
because this was discovered, this was known, that
this is what he had
done. So, I mean, it's not an official
Quran. It's not recognized by by the ulama,
by the,
the ijma. So it was an attempt to
corrupt
the speech of God.
So there have been attempts like that in
the injil as well. But when we talk
about injil, we are talking about the Greek
critical edition. We're not talking about English translations.
So the layperson, when they go to the
bookstore, they go to I don't if there's
any Barnes and Noble's anymore, but I don't
know. Bookstores even exist. Amazon. They go to
Amazon, and they order the the New King
James version. Right? Right? And they pick it
up and they read it and they look,
oh, 1st John 5:7, there are 3 that
are record in heaven, the father, the word,
and the holy ghost. And these 3 are
1. So, yeah, there's a trinity.
Injil, that verse is nowhere to be found.
Right? So there's this disconnect between Christian laity
and their olema.
And and what what about the Aramaic one
version? Isn't there There's no evidence of an
Aramaic New Testament.
Or or is there a Latin one?
The Latin is translated from the Greek. Okay.
The original books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John are in Greek. They're not in Aramaic.
Mhmm. And this is the point I was
making earlier. It seems like the Quran is
affirming
that the gospel was is was was revealed
in Greek. Everyone's everyone would have understood that.
And Greek would have also been the language
that Jews in diaspora
in the Mediterranean would have understood even more
so than Aramaic.
So it makes more sense to reveal it
in Greek rather than Aramaic.
And, you know, the the milieu of Isa
alaihis salam was very, very diverse. I mean,
he probably,
definitely, he knew Aramaic. That was the language
of the common people.
He knew Hebrew. That was the language of
the synagogue liturgy, and he was a rabbi.
He knew Greek that was the language of
the Roman Empire who was occupying that part
of the Mediterranean.
He probably knew some Latin because that was
the official language of the Roman Empire Mhmm.
Outside of the Mediterranean
and probably knew several dialects of of these
languages,
as as well.
So
so like I said, the Greek language is
such a precise language. It just makes sense.
I mean, if you look at I mean,
Greek, I think, is the most inflected of
the languages. So, like, in Arabic, you know,
there's, like, 8 or 9 Ismael Ishara. Right?
There's, you know, demonstrative pronouns hada, hadi, he,
vadikatilka.
In in Greek there's like 48 of them.
Is it? Because they're all they're all inflected,
you know.