Amazing Bible Facts

Bismillah Alhamdulillah Salaam Alaikum peace be unto you. Thank you again for tuning in to another episode of the deen show. All thanks and praises to the Creator of the heavens and earth, who's given us this ability, this platform to be with you today to talk about many of the truths

of Islam. Now, one crucial thing that's very important is that we know that God Almighty throughout time,

he is a loving and merciful God, adjust God, and He has manifested is by throughout time sending through his messengers, what he wants from us, how he wants us to live,

and the many rewards in the lights that are waiting for those who strive their utmost to be upright and honest, and live a godly life, not according to your whims and desires, but life according to how the Creator of the heavens and earth wants you to live. Now, we as Muslims, we believe in the Torah which was given to Moses peace be upon him. In its original, we believe, in the NGO, some translated as the gospel gospels which was given to Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. And what was given of the Scripture to Abraham was given to taolu, David, peace be upon them all. And what was given what we have is a living miracle today intact, the verbatim Word of God the end, which has

been memorized by millions, and we did a show on this, giving you the overwhelming amount of evidence to show you and to prove to you that the Quran is indeed the verbatim Word of God. But today, we want to talk about the Bible. We want to talk about this book,

to examine it to see is this indeed the word of the Creator of the heavens and earth? What is it? So to help cover this very important topic? Is our good friend and brother who's been with us before he has a special section at the deen show calm Dr. Gerald Dirks. He is a doctor in clinical psychology. Amongst that he has graduated with honors from the prestigious Harvard University with a master's in divinity finished seminary school, and the list goes on. We're going to bring him out to help us tackle this topic. On a closer look into the Bible, we'll be right back.

His Messenger

Jesus was his messenger.

No, I did that. Maybe it's maybe it's just a break the ice. Peace be unto you, and peace to you, brother. Thank you very much for being with us here on the D show. Now. Tell us briefly, quickly. Many people already know who you are. But there's some people that have just tuned in for the first time. And they want to know who is this person? And how is he qualified to talk about the Bible? Well, as you mentioned, in your introduction, I received a master of divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School. I was an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church and converted to Islam in 1993. Okay, now break this down for us. What is the Methodist Church? Well, the United Methodist

Church is one of the Protestant denominations in Christianity is that the largest denomination? Now at one time it was back in the 60s, it was the largest Protestant denomination in America now it's probably Second. Second. What's the first Southern Baptist Southern Baptist Baptist and then now then Methodists will come after that problem. You were filling the congregation the pope is I mean, you weren't there. You were preaching and teaching the Bible. Yes. So you were would they say or a Bible? Would they say a bible thumper? No, I was never a Bible thump. What does that mean when you say the word? Well, that's sort of a colloquialism. For someone who is constantly preaching from the

Bible, and constantly filling his sermons with biblical verses. So they can see your story here your story on how you accepted Islam. But today, we were intrigued, we want to know, because as I when I introduced the show, we talked about these scriptures that were given revelations to the messengers and intact originals. We believe that these were from the crater, but the Bible, how do we approach it? What is the Bible that we have today? Is this the Word of God? Well, I think there's a prayer question we have to ask brother Tell me and that is which Bible? Which Bible which

By and when I say that I'm not saying King James Version versus New Revised Standard Version, that's simply different translations now, and the New Revised Standard Version, they go back to earlier Greek manuscripts then the King James Version, so you get a more authentic translation, but basically, it's different translations. But the reality is that Christianity has never agreed on what constitutes the Bible. So if we look, there's two main parts of the Bible, the Old Testament, the New Testament. If we look at the Old Testament, the Protestant Bible has 39 books, and the Old Testament. Now to that the Roman Catholics add several books, those being,

amongst others, first and second Maccabees.

Tobit, Judith ecclesiasticus, the wisdom of Solomon and Baruch. And over and above those books that they add to the Old Testament, they add additions to the book of Daniel, they add additions to the book of Esther, as the Roman Catholic Bible, Roman Catholic. Yeah, so it has a total how many books in where you'd have to add them up? To 77? No, no, not in the Old Testament, okay. And the Greek Orthodox, they add even more than the Roman Catholic due to the Old Testament. So for example, they add a 100 and 51st, Psalm, Protestant Roman Catholic Bibles in with 150 songs that they add 100 and 51st. First Psalm, they add material to the book of Jeremiah, that doesn't exist in either the

Protestant or the Roman Catholic Bible. Now we're talking about that's the Old Testament. We're still sticking with the Old Testament. Okay, gotcha. They also add third and fourth Maccabees, that's not found in the Roman Catholic Bible. And they add first as dress and the perm anassa, neither of which is found in the Roman Catholic Bible. So these are books that are in one Bible, they're not in the other. That's right. Okay. And then when we go to something like the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, we discover a radically different Old Testament. Now, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church had a cannon of about 46 books, I think it was, whereas the Protestants have 39 in their Old

Testament. And they included things such as jubilees, Ethiopian, Enoch, pseudo jiofi, Josephus, the Ezra Apocalypse, and these aren't found in any of the other Bibles that we've been talking about. So in terms of the Old Testament, Christianity has never agreed as to what constitutes the Old Testament. The Christianity has also never agreed as to what constitutes the New Testament. Now and the Protestant Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Bibles. They all agree and say there are 27 books to the New Testament. However, the Coptic Orthodox Church adds first and second, Clement, to the New Testament, giving a 29 book cannon to the New Testament. The Syrian or nestorian church omits five

books that are found in the Protestant Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Bible, they they do not recognize, second, Peter, second, and third, john, Jude and Revelation, you won't find that those books in their New Testament.

And the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, again, a fairly radically different New Testament, they say there's 35 books, and they're New Testament. And they include things like first, second, third and fourth sentidos, the first and second book of the covenant

complementos Mentos, the shepherd of hermas, etc, books that are not found in any other churches Bible. So Christianity has never agreed as to what constitutes the Bible. And as to why that's the case, we can talk about that if you want, or we can go on with whatever other questions you have. Tell us now it's presumed that Moses, he was the author of the first five books, Is this true? The first five books of the Old test Old Testament? Yeah, the first book of Jesus called Genesis by Christianity. Well, you know, we know he didn't write all of it, because it says at one point, and Moses died, so we know Moses didn't write that. You know, that's been sort of the traditional,

legendary origin of these five books that the this was the Torah that God gave to Moses peace be upon him. So this is not the Torah. But no, this is not the original Torah that was given to Moses. Now the first five books of the Bible, the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus,

Because Numbers and Deuteronomy, let's call the Torah today by Jews and Christians is actually a cut and paste compilation from earlier source material. Those sources usually identified as being JED and p. j was written around the year 950 BCE, II 750, BC II, D and the 600 BC, P and the four hundreds and 500 BC, and they were finally put together sometime around the year 400.

These four sources in a cut and paste fashion. Now Moses peace be upon him live depending upon how you figure your chronology from the biblical dates, somewhere from around 1600 BCE, at the earliest to around maybe 1200 BCE at the latest 1600 20 to 12 to 1200, somewhere in that range when Moses and these are coming about the oldest part j is from 950 BCE. So this would be home at least 250 years after most after the at least. Okay, minimum. So it's safe to say now, and when did you start to learn this information? Was this while you were up on the pulpit preaching and teaching? Or was this come later in seminary, I was in seminary, this was in seminary, you know, there's a very

interesting verse in the Old Testament that says that Ezra came from the Babylonian captivity back to Palestine, around the year 397 398 BCE, and he brought with him the law or the Torah, because it had been totally lost and forgotten, in Palestine amongst the Jews that remained there. Most modern biblical scholars say that the Torah as we know it today, not the original Torah given to Moses. But the Torah, as we have it today, in those first five books of the Old Testament, was a cut and paste compilation from earlier source material that was put together in Babylon during the Babylonian captivity, and reached its final form around the year 400 BCE. And that this is what Ezra brought

back with him to Palestine. So those are the five books, what are the books that come after these five? Well, in the traditional Jewish way of addressing it, there are three parts to the Old Testament, okay? There's the Torah, which we've already talked about, then there's the nether eeehm are the prophets. And the Jews didn't agree until what constituted the prophets, and probably the second century BCE. And then there's the kids theme or the writings. This would be things like Psalms, Proverbs, Chronicles, Song of Solomon, etc. and the Jews didn't really used to be thought that they finalize the canon of what went into the kitchen theme at the Council of Gemini around the

year 90. But more modern biblical scholarship is now saying, that probably went on for a while after the Council of Gemini, maybe for a century or two. Well, the Roman Catholic Church when it constructed its Old Testament, you know, there weren't very many people around who read Hebrew at that point. Yeah. And so what they did, they went to something called the Septuagint. Now, the Septuagint was a Greek translation of Hebrew Scripture and writing that were that was done by Jews in Alexandria, Egypt, around the year 300 BCE. So this was well before the Jews had finalized deciding what was and wasn't in their canon of Scripture. And so these Jews, as they were

translating, they used a number of books that didn't make it into the final Jewish set of Scripture. Well, when the Roman Catholic Church went to construct its Old Testament, and they use the Greek Septuagint, they automatically accepted everything that was in it, which included these books like first and second Maccabees, Judith and tau. But that's not in the Jewish

body of Scripture, as we have it today.

When the Protestant Reformation took over 1400s 1500s the Protestants basically said we don't why are we fooling around with this? Greek Septuagint? You know, let's go to the the Hebrew text. And as a result of doing that, they ended up with an old testament that was shorter than that, that the Roman Catholic said.

So tell us now for the layman. I mean, we want to know, just like in a court of law, you want to bring forth the witnesses, you want to examine their truthfulness. You want to see their biography who these people are, can we trust them? So we can submit to whatever God Almighty is telling us to submit to? We don't, as you said, What's allegedly called the Torah. Okay, these

books now, from what we're understanding was not written and could not have been written by Moses. Now, the rest of the book Now there may be bits and pieces, devices, etc, that are part of that original Torah that someone had memorized. That's possible. How about the books that follow? Do we know who these authors are? In many cases we don't, we don't. In many cases we so we can't bring them forward to cross examine them to know their life to know history. Now we can't we can't.

You know, books such as First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings, Deuteronomy. We know these books were written or authored by Israelites that were part of what we call today, the Deuter anomic. School, but who they were specifically, we don't know their names. We don't know this is affect anyone who wants to take the time to research. This stuff is known. It's out there. Yeah. Now the Jewish Talmud or oral tradition that later got codified, and written down, gives legendary authors to most of these books. But again, modern biblical scholarship doesn't accept it. And legendary, you learn most of this in almost all of it in seminary. Okay, now, tell us to go a little

bit further.

Tell us, if somebody wants to look now towards the New Testament, do we have the same thing that's happening here with the authors because many people will say, okay, Matthew, the Gospel according to Matthew, the Gospel according to Mark the gospel according to etc, etc. These were the actual disciples, and this is probably the majority of Christian, they will say that this, these are the disciples of Jesus who are writing these books. Is this true? Yeah, this is what most Christians really okay. But unfortunately, it's not true. It's not true, not true at all.

State the first book of the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew wasn't written, as far as we know, by Matthew who was a disciple of Jesus, we really don't know who wrote it. It was written around the year say 8085, ce II. And it in turn is a compilation of earlier sources, to proto mark, and M.

The first mention that we have anywhere that Matthew wrote a gospel comes from around the year 120. When one of the early bishops said, Matthew, the disciple of Jesus, peace be upon him, wrote the sayings of Jesus in Hebrew.

And then later tradition associated that statement with the first gospel in the New Testament, and Matthews name got a fix to it, though, the Matthew we have is not in Hebrew, who was in Greek, and it's far more than simply sayings of Jesus. So there really is no

logical or evidence evidence to link Matthews name with the Gospel of Matthew. The same thing is true of the other gospels, john, apparently written by someone named john. But whether that was john, the disciple of Jesus, is very questionable. The books that we do have some known authorship for the letters of Paul, though, he's often credited with writing more of those letters than he actually did. So even those books by Paul Adam, like Hebrews, Hebrews was not written by Paul, the legend associates Hebrew with Paul. But Paul did write Romans he did write First and Second Corinthians he did write Galatians. Now by scholarship at the highest levels, is this something

which you saying that this is agreed upon? Or is there now differences of opinion opinions? Oh, you know, you may find a few

extremes, extreme members of the Christian, right, who will dispute this, but most all biblical scholars of mainline Christianity, acknowledge this. Now, going back quickly to the Old Testament, so we don't have anything original.

of a document.

Yeah, I give her the bits and pieces, bits and pieces. Yeah. Okay. So the trick is knowing which bit and which piece, okay, so it's confusion here. Now, we go back to the to the New Testament, and we do and like I always try to stress into shows. I mean, do we believe that there is some of the Word of God in the Bible? Sure, of course we do. But again, the trick is determining which is which, you know, many of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the gospels of the New Testament. Probably many of them actually were said by Jesus. Yeah, but again, which were which weren't, which were added later, which reflects the teachings of the early Pauline church, and not the actual teachings of Jesus.

These are the sorts of questions that biblical scholars wrestle with. What about the red letter edition? Is this now accurately what Jesus said the red letter Bible? Well, it's what is attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. But whether Jesus actually said all of those things or not, we, we really don't know. Have you heard of this Jesus seminar? Sure. What did this, this is about biblical scholars and interested lay people who get together and vote on which statements attributed to Jesus, they think he actually said, and what did they did they come up with a percentage number they have, yes. What was the percentage that they Well, you know, give this a subject to, to argument and

dispute among biblical scholars. But suffice it to say that we don't have absolute proof on any of these things, what we have, or secondhand third hand fourth hand information, and we don't have the chain of transmission. Yeah, for this information. You know, we don't have anything that says, I received it from so and so who received it from so and so who received it from so and so that Jesus said this, so that we have this provenance that we can go check. Yeah, kind of like what we have a stringent, meticulous chain of narrations in Islam, where you have the person's biography. Yes. If he had a bad memory, you throw this person's Huddy for saying out? I mean, you know, everything if

this person prayed five times everything about this person, you're talking about the sayings of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him? And yes, that's called a deep. And there's two parts to every Hadith. Yeah, there's the mattone, or the narrative, you know, the Messenger of God, peace be upon him said, and then the rest of it. But before that comes what's called the isnaad, or the chain. And this is the chain of transmission of the provenance of this say, you know, Abdullah, mon, received it from so and so who received it from so and so who received it from so and so who heard it directly from the processor contain a link? Yeah. And you can go check. Who know all these person?

Yes, not only who they are. But can we ever put them at the same place at the same time? If we can't do that, then we're not going to do okay. Yeah, this wasn't done here with the No, we don't we don't have any chain of transmission. So what what we have in the gospels is basically Hadeeth. But without the provenance. Now, if we take this again, and we use rationale, and we do what we do now as a civilized society, and we bring it to a court of law, and we want to cross examined two witnesses, can we do it? Well, it's, we don't have like a third fourth hand information. Okay. So now a person says, you know, what, you got to have faith, brother? Yes. What do you say?

I mean,

faith is a wonderful thing. Yeah. But reason, and rationality are also wonderful things. Yeah. And the two really should go hand in hand. So you want to before you have faith in something you want to have evidence to back to his knowledge based faith. Is that correct? Well, certainly the Quran always tells us, you know, reason, reason about this reason about this, use your observations, etc. So yes, I mean, one would prefer that reason and faith coexist and point to the same together. Now, do we have which we actually do? It's interesting, because you see this confusion here. And like I said, We are not trying to step on anybody's toes, but this information is out there. And it should

be known. Now what we have in the verbatim Word of God, the Quran, which is kept intact, since it was revealed, memorized by millions all over the world. You have a verse in there, that God Almighty Allah is saying that woe to those that write the book with their hands, yes, and gain a measly price vote to them for what their hands do, right? And will to them for what they profit from. But we see this going on? Yeah, we certainly do. And we can see this, specifically in terms of some places in the Bible, where we know when something was added, we know why it was added. We even know where it was added. Give us some examples. Now, if I can reach over here to King James Version of the Bible,

yes. And I'm using this one because King James version is from a late Greek source manuscript.

Not an early one. And this is what you'll find in the King James Version. For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one

And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit and the water in the blood. And these three agree in one. Now that's what you find. And that's what this is that this is, first john chapter five, verses seven and eight. Yeah. And that certainly sounds like the Trinity, doesn't it? Yes. Okay. But this is a late Greek manuscript that they're translating from. Now, if we go to the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which goes back to much earlier, manuscripts,

and we look at the same exact

verse, we find this, there are three that testify, the spirit and the water in the blood, and these three agree. And that's it.

Everything about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and being in heaven, and these three are one, that's a later addition, that does not exist in the oldest manuscripts. And in this particular case, we know when this was added, and was added around the year 380. It was added in Spain and a manuscript in Spain. And from there went into the Latin vulgate, Jerome's translation of the Bible into Latin, and then subsequently was picked up from Latin sources, and some late Greek manuscripts, which is how it got into the King James Version. But the original, there's absolutely no mention of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. What's the one from I believe it's march towards the end

where you have bits, whole chunks that are not the last part of Mark, the last chapter of Mark most of the early manuscripts in with verse eight, this is chapter 16, verse eight, that's where it ends. But in later manuscripts, it goes on from chapter from verse nine to verse 20, talking about the resurrection of Jesus, and this is a big later addition

to the these are no facts, how about the story of the adultery and adulterous? Oh, and john? Yeah, doesn't exist in the earliest manuscript one where Jesus says, How does it go? He said, those those without sin cast the first though, yeah, wonderful story, beautiful story. The entire chapter is a later edition doesn't exist. And the earliest manuscripts that we have, I mean, this is something profound. I mean, it's amazing. Any sincere person, what should he do? Now? What does he do? He's confused, you've confused some people, some people knew it from from the get go. I mean, where do we go from here now? Well, a person needs to study. And this is what I would advise any Christian to

do. study your Bible, and study a good translation of the Bible. And the one I would recommend is the New Revised Standard Version, because it does go back to some of the earliest manuscripts that we have.

And then get a good Bible Commentary, one that's done by scholars, such as the interpreters one volume commentary on the Bible, published around 1974, I think it was our 1971. study these, there's no substitute for study, become familiar with your own scripture. And as many converts to Islam have discovered, by studying the Bible, this was actually one of the things that led them to Islam. This is amazing. How could someone go further into

looking into this topic that we had just discussed in one of your books? Do you go more in depth into this? into the issue of the Bible? Yeah. And the cross in the crescent chapter that talks about comparing the Quran with the Torah, and with the the Gospels, and most of those things you mentioned, amongst more things, they're in here. Many things are in there. Okay, any closing comments and suggestions

that you can give?

Well, I would say read carefully study the Bible carefully. And don't go on automatic pilot when you read. So for example, the famous

lineage of Jesus that's given in the first chapter of Matthew, and he says so and so we get so and so we get so and so we get so and so. And then he gets towards the end of that.

And he says,

some very significant words, he says, so all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations and from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, 14 generations. Count them.

There's not 14 in each set. There's 14 only in two of the sets. There's 13, and one of the sets, so read critically do

Not simply read on automatic pilot. And don't just take everything what you think about you think about it. And this is something that you after going through, you know, Harvard Divinity going through seminary that you were exposed to this, but now someone doesn't have to go through all that. I mean, luckily, they got to tune in and begin to hear it here. So thank you for being with us. My pleasure, brother. Thank you. Hello, hi to God Almighty reward you in abundance and like to thank you for coming to the deen show. To learn more about Islam and Muslims and to learn about some of these truths. One main thing that you can do to make it simple is to humble yourself and ask the one

who is all knowing who knows what's deep in your heart, as the one who created you alone, to guide you to make things clear, and it only be fair, that he'd got you. If you humble yourself and you ask, and then do like our guest said, study, put some time aside from the material world and the rat race that's out there. You're going to die one day,

you should be prepared for what's coming next. God Almighty, as we said earlier, he sent messengers, and the last and final messenger to mankind is the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, not as a son of God, not as the right hand man of God. But as a teacher, just like Jesus was Moses was Abraham was they were all teachers, teaching us how to get close to God. You're going to have to talk

to yourself, and really ask yourself, what's my purpose in life? Why am I here? and start to ask these more serious questions and want to get to know what the truth really is not just sliding in and going with the flow. So these are things that you're going to have to want to do on your own, and we hope that we can be of assistance. So come and visit us here every week on the deen show. Until next time, peace be unto you. No speech is better than to do that we call people to Allah and to do the work, no speeches better. No, nothing is better than that. Is it true that if one person on the Lord giving you the ability to guide someone and the last permission, the creator's

permission that is better than everything in this world, but in the whole world and everything that's in it in another generation is better than the best of wealth, but if we really felt that he would not be get out getting down, and this is something that we encourage all the MSA all the Dow organizations, the mushes to get this we want to create more we give these to the non listeners for free for free for free Warner Brothers.

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