Who Wrote The Gospels

			Bismillah Alhamdulillah Salam aleikum, which means peace be on T Welcome to another episode of the
deen show. We're here in Medina, out of all places, the beloved home of the Prophet Muhammad peace
be upon him. And we have a special guest. We're going to be talking about the compilation of the
Bible, we're going to be talking about who the authors were and some of these other things, I'm sure
you're eager to know. And we have our special guest, former Christian minister, preacher, shake use
of esters, you don't want to miss this episode of the deen show sit tight, we'll be right back.
		

			Messenger.
		

			We want to ask you a few questions about the compilation of the Bible. Now many people assume that
Jesus wrote for his
		

			companions wrote Matthew, Mark, Luke, and john, let's start with these four Gospels. Can you tell us
who's responsible for writing these four gospels? Yes. First of all, the books that we know today as
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and john, in their original company, ation, they weren't, they didn't carry
these names, they had code names on them. They were given these names later, as a mark of
distinction, to give sort of a personal touch to the each of the books, Matthew, they said was most
likely someone who was perhaps a Jew, a tax collector, for the Romans or whatever. So they've
labeled him as Matthias or Matthew, they bring it as Matthew when it comes to English. And Luke,
		

			they said was possibly a doctor or something like this called him, Lucas, we call him in English
loop. Mark, this is based on one on a much older gospel, which is called Q, it still maintains the
original Codex it had of Q. And then the last one is the johanne. gospel. And none of these were
from the same time period. If you look to the johanne gospel, you're talking about something that
came much later, and had a totally different flavor to it, if you will, so much so that it is not
considered as a part of the first three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, these are considered to be the
Synoptic Gospels, because they follow this Synopsis The same way was in the johannine. gospel
		

			doesn't, as far as any authenticity of where they came from, they like to go back and see how much
they can draw from the commonality of the first three, based on what was called Q. But in reality,
none of them were really written by the names of the people that use Matthew was not a companion of
the Prophet, Jesus, or Luke, or any of these. Well, okay, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are made up names.
Yeah, there's the possibility that john is real because of the reference within the text itself. But
when we start talking about the names that are on there, that this is just some way for them to keep
up with it to denote that we're talking about this particular book or that book. You might also
		

			consider the rest of the New Testament when you talk about the Corinthian letters, the Romans,
Hebrews, and so on, because what's happening here, these letters were
		

			written to particular churches and bishops, and then send to them or maintain their, for instance,
First Corinthians in Second Corinthians means the first letter came. That's the first so called but
then the second letter comes, that's the second
		

			book. And these are going to be instructions that are written to them by someone who will really
know who wrote it. We don't know who wrote the letter to him to start with to tell him the story.
But if you're living in that time at that place, in that church, church, and you go there, this is
the book they refer to then the whole Bible, not in those days, they would have him perhaps if
they'd been Jewish, they would have but for the converts, they would just have this letter, or the
second letter. And then later these were compiled together, but much later, is as a matter of fact,
the Bible as we know it. Today, the Catholic Bible is coming from the Council of Nicea, which was in
		

			325 ad or the Christian era, as we say, and at that time, there were more than 200 books. And there
was quite a discrepancy over that and it was decided at the Council is that they would accept only
these 73 books and they were 73 at that time, then later that charge took out the last book which
called the book of revelations, then this
		

			was put back in at another council meeting taken back out in another council meeting over the
centuries.
		

			Now, as far as the Bible, it's known to the Protestant Christians today, perhaps some of them know
this, that or even from the layman that this Bible is really a diminished version of the Catholic
Bible, and Catholic Bible having a total of 73, as we mentioned, but this one is only 7066 books in
66 books. So what happened the other seven books, well, part of those books were put into other
chapters, some things were taken out, there were some things added that had never been in the Bible
before. Now, one of the things for instance, in this example, there are three separate letters,
attributed someone named john, not john, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and john, but some other john. And
		

			that's john one, john two, john three. In john one, there is a verse in chapter five, verse seven.
And it says in here that there are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Son, and the
Spirit, and these three are one, this is an interpolation, which was added, only. Within the last
hour, we might say, six or 700 years. It was based on the verse that comes after it. And so they
inserted an extra verse in there and tried to make it appear as though that was a part of the Bible
and wasn't the birth verse, the target form actually says there are three that bear witness in
heaven, okay. And the Father, the blood in the spirit, there's no word son here, it's father, blood
		

			and spirit. And these three agree.
		

			It doesn't say that one is said they agree. And so that gives you an example of one of the things
that Now, if you look to the gospel of Mark, the gospel of Mark, and the very last chapter was
chapter 16. You'll notice that and if you have a Revised Standard Version, or some of there'll be
some footnotes in there, the oldest manuscripts only go up to verse nine, they stop, verses 910 11.
These are added by someone and they don't know who added these verses, and another version has
verses roll up to where the 22 who added those verses, they don't know. So you get an extra 13
verses or an extra three verses, or just let it stop where it originally did, and you've got choices
		

			to make.
		

			The best authorities on the Bible in the ancient manuscripts have all concluded unanimously, there's
no difference of opinion that they don't really know exactly what any of the books were in their
original form, but they can get pretty close. And they can understand that there were teachings that
were pretty similar.
		

			So we covered how many books total in the New Testament? Well, it depends on if you have the power
to somebody. And in the Protestant Bible, we have today 2727, four of which are the Synoptic
Gospels? No, three synopses. And what's john? JOHN, is that just called the john john. Okay, so we
cleared this up that those names are conveniently given to those books, we don't know who the
authors are, is that true? Well, I didn't say conveniently given But no, we don't know who the
authors are, these were given to give a personal flavor for the reading. Because if you just said
this is Q and this is z, and this is y, or this is alpha, and this is beta. It didn't have the ring
		

			that they were looking for, to keep the the priests
		

			focus on what So bottom line these weren't any of the companions of Jesus peace be upon him writing
these books, we just want to make this fact clear. Is this true or not? That's well established.
Okay. by by by who? So the audience knows that we're not coming from a bias. What sources can they
go to to verify this? Well, of course, you can go to any of the scholars who worked on them
archaeological finds the Bible those who work with the manuscripts for centuries. Well, today there
would be barked on I would say that he would be one of the top experts. And certainly he's very
critical on the text. I would recommend his books. He's written the loss scriptures, misquoting
		

			Jesus, and lost Christianity's his three books are very famous right now and they're in crime, you
can get them at local bookstores. Another one that you might be interested in the one who is not
		

			attacking or being extra critical, but still he is a good scholar, and this is FF Bruce. And
although a very confirmed Christian here admits as well, that the English translations have many,
many changes. He says in his books, that the first re translation translation of the famous
		

			book we refer to as King James Version. He said it was, as you probably know, in 1611. At the first
read, translation had to be the very next year because it had some very serious mistakes. Now, one
of which was a reference to a good lady as a prostitute, that was a mistake. And they had to fix
that. That was in 1611, to 1612, the first year 1613, another translation, etc, etc, he gives a list
of the many different read translations they did in the first second centuries, and his book, A
History of the translations of the
		

			Bible to the English language. I think that's the full title of it. And then if you want to go to
some of the Old Testament scholars and see what they've said, as well, you can look for
		

			Dr. Richard Elliot Friedman, in his book, who wrote the Bible, you can also look to
		

			a number of others, I would refer also,
		

			that's fine. We want to move on from here, we have recovered the four they can go and look at these
resources you mentioned. Now, that brings us down to 23. Who wrote the rest? If you can name a few
of the books that come after this? And who are the suppose that authors of these books? Well, what
were some of the references, I should also mention, there's a website called Bible islam.com, which
is a reference site where you can go and get a lot of information work for Bart Ehrman, or any of
these people, are you making some proceeds?
		

			No, no, I have emailed him back and forth and tried to encourage him to visit with us and talk with
us, but he wasn't really interested in it. However, the website, Bible Islam, you can find a lot of
reference material there and do some study on your own. As far as some of the other books after the
first gospels, the very first thing comes is called the
		

			Acts of the Apostles. That's the name of the book x Book of Acts or acts of the apostles. This is
also attributed to the same author of the book of Luke, they say whoever wrote Luke was probably the
one who also wrote the Acts of the Apostles, because whoever it was, he had a lot of access and
knowledge about the person named Paul or Saul, and his kings on his, whatever he did, his history
and so on is accounted for here. And in chapters,
		

			chapters seven or nine and 24, and 26. There, there's an account here, if you will, I don't have it
in front of my mind right now. But the accounts of how Paul originally got his revelation, when he
was on his road to Damascus, and when he was carrying the papers, to Damascus to be able to legally
persecute anybody who had left their form of Judaism, to this new thing called Christianity. And in
fact, it wasn't even called Christianity yet. He says, and another book, they wrote a says that they
were never called Christians until they went to Antioch. But he called some people in the way so
people in the way he was on his way to, to serve papers to the government, to show that they had
		

			permission to grab these people, put them in chains, drag them back, torture them, punish them kill
him, he said that himself in the text.
		

			So no, Paul didn't know Jesus peace be upon him. He didn't know any first hand account. He knew
secondhand accounts from people who had known Jesus. But originally, as I said, he was killing those
people. He wasn't listening to them for guidance he was making fun of them or, you know, destroying
them. As far as the Acts of the Apostles go, it is really disputable about who actually wrote it.
But it may be that the same author is the one who wrote Luke. Now, there's another book called
Hebrews. And Hebrews it appears whoever wrote this was writing to the Hebrews in particular, are the
children of Israel, to try to justify what's going on and make it
		

			compatible to what their teachings are, too. We're almost running out of time. We want to just
continue on we covered five so far, you have after john, you have Luke no acts of the apostle
Hebrews For the rest of the 22 or 21. Who wrote these are these all the rest from Paul are anonymous
authors. Well, there's the book of Romans For instance, in enrollments, this is supposedly written
to the, the, what we would call mushrikeen or the pagans, who are not from the Jewish background and
so it is trying now to present things in a way that they would understand it according to their you
know, ideologies and so on. Then you have the first and second Corinthian ladders. These are a good
		

			example of
		

			letters that are written to churches, a bishop might write a letter to a church and send it out, it
would be rather large. And this is why they're called books today and has chapters in it. And then
after a period of time, they would write another one to them. And this would be the second one. And
that's why they would say, first Corinthians, Second Corinthians, and then here, there would be a
lot of inspirational things that they would tell them to think about this, consider that are some of
the, mostly from Saul, you find a cancellation of the basic Torah, the Torah itself, meaning the old
testament to us.
		

			He is saying that these laws, the men, and there are more than 200 commandments, direct
commandments, not just 10. And he's saying that because of these laws, that he's a sinner, and for
one for these laws, he wouldn't be a sinner. He says, Therefore, I'm dead to the law, the law is
dead. To me. This is direct contradiction, by the way to whoever wrote the book of Matthew, because
in chapter 517, they're saying that they have a quote from Jesus Himself, saying that I came not to
destroy the law.
		

			Not to destroy the law, nor the teachings of the prophets, he said, whether I came to fulfill. And
he goes on to say that if anybody even though he says that not even the least Dr. tiller, the
smallest letter from alphabet of the law will be in any wise lesson. But if anybody breaks any of
these commandments, and teaches this, that it's okay, that he's going to be the least in the kingdom
in the next life. But whoever keeps these commandments, and teaches that he'll be the highest in the
kingdom, then it goes on whoever was had our thing in for the Sanhedrin. Because he goes right
straight to the Pharisees, and he says it right here it says, and unless your righteousness exceeds
		

			that of these Pharisees, you will in no wise enter the kingdom. So we see a direct. But as we will
discover, as we discover more and more about the history of the person, so called Saul or Paul, he
did have a vendetta against the Pharisees, because they had turned him down, kicked him out,
basically, his papers to go to Damascus tours last chance. And they said, When you're done, you're
finished. Because the leader, the chief of the Sanhedrin, the high priest, had a beautiful daughter
named Paul Paya, Paul is are solved in his engaged to her, but because of his ways, his manners and
his appearances, it was said that he was rather ugly, had a hunched back or crouched stance, and
		

			that she not only did she run away from my father, she ran away from the synagogue and the religion
itself and was known to be a wife, or at least a concubine of the Caesar at that time, and it was
said that she was in plays on stage and things like this totally against all the things the
teachings of the Hebrew Scripture. So the father of her is not impressed with Paul anymore at all,
or Saul, and is basically told him no, you're not going to ever have a chance to be on our
Sanhedrin, our board of directors, if you will, and you're never going to have a chance to go
anywhere with Judaism, you're finished, you're out. I think that's the way they tell the stories.
		

			And these are stories that we can't confirm a lot about, we can what we can from though, is to
prepare herself, that is well known that she was Jewish, and that she had left their religion and
left her father who was the high priest, and that she had gone over to the Caesar. That's historical
fact. We want to know, the audience wants to know, a sincere person who really wants to examine the
evidence from these 27 books. Is there anybody that we can bring forward and examine their
testimony? Are they receiving these revelations from God? Are they getting inspired by God?
		

			Because the majority of people, as I'm understanding it,
		

			these books are anonymous.
		

			Is there any one of them that we can bring forward and examine
		

			witnesses, like you would in a court of law and understand what you're saying that this isn't done,
even the intent of what people are saying? The scars of the Bible are not trying to say that they've
got an author for any particular one. What they're saying is that they know that the fact that they
have enough different versions that there must have been an original, that's what they conclude. So
they're just trying to determine what must have been the original and why changes were made and who
made them and that is what is called the, the
		

			the criticism that they have or the way that that they apologetics a deal with it. What are we
		

			doing your best you know this, this seems very much in line with what Islam teaches and you do have
that in the New Testament. On the other hand, if you have a person who never really met
		

			Jesus, and he never really had a proper attitude from the beginning, his attitude is one of
destroying Christianity, or people of the way, and his idea of even persecuting them to death, which
he claims he did, then all of a sudden having a blinding light revelation, and just that alone is
enough for him to convert to this new thing that he's come up with. And he's all of a sudden in
charge of it. Well, that's pretty good concern. He just lost his job, you know? So is that a motive?
Well, I would say that it would be a pretty strong one, that in the fact that he's no longer having
his fiance for pay, and she's gone out of the picture. His intended father in law, who is the, the
		

			high priest is basically saying you're out we don't need you. That would be a motivator.
		

			The idea that he has these mystic things from the beginning, he is actually a product of Tarsus,
animistic religion, they had them. So this may be some of the his motivators that in liking,
enjoying being in charge, given the orders, and so on. And all of this could be and then it could be
that all of its bogus, it could be that these are things made up by other people. Because when you
don't know who the author is, you don't you can't point to somebody and say, he wrote it, okay,
let's ask him why he did it, then you don't really know. Now we don't want the people to lose hope.
Because there is a man that is claiming he's receiving revelation from God. He's a man that you can
		

			bring an examine his whole life. Can we talk about this man and the message that has come for the
whole of mankind? Well, you're talking about Mohammed Salah let peace be upon him. And certainly we
will be happy to talk about him. Number one, Muhammad peace be upon him is a cousin
		

			to Jesus piece of couponing their cousins by way of Abraham. Abraham has the two sons Ishmael and
Isaac, from Isaac comes the long line of the children of Israel, and from Israel is coming the what
they call the religion, which originally was no different than the religion yz very became corrupted
over the centuries by the Arabs themselves and paganism crept in and began to take over. A lot of
the rituals that had originally been ascribed to Abraham became corrupted. So when Mohammed was
born, he was different from the rest of the people. One of the things that's very impressive about
it is that he never lied, so much so that they gave him the title of the truthful person, they call
		

			him a subject. Another thing was, if he was given any trust, he never broke the trust. And he
promises he gave, he fulfilled his promises. So he was highly respected, highly regarded. And he was
someone that also joined the ties of kinship amongst the people to help them fix their differences
amongst families, amongst tribes, and so on to end wars and brutal and bitter feuds that they had
going on. So he was highly respected, and he was the son of one of their tribal members who were
successors. And when the grandfather would die, to take over all of Mecca and all the religious
		

			paraphernalia, etc. It goes along with that for all of Arabia, his grandfather was the chief, the
main one. So he had a very high position, but he didn't regard that as, as something to make him
better than anybody else. In fact, he was very, very humble. And he liked to worship away from these
people in their false worship, he would just go off in a cave, fasting and pray and not have any
beads with him not have any statues with him not have any pictures or images or anything, detested
all that, which is very similar. If you go back and look at the mecca bins of the Old Testament,
you'll find they were the same way, this is exactly how they were. And if somebody wants to really
		

			study the life of Muhammad slaves, they will find that he is truly an amazing man. But he was a man
he wasn't like a god, a demagogue, a son of a god or anything else. But he did do some amazing
things in a very short period of time to reorganize some very disorganized tribes, to bring together
harmony and a peace between tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, and unite them in such a way that the
people had to respect this new way of life this way called the dino Islam. And it's amazing because
so many people would be affected by watching the positiveness and seeing the results of believing in
one God and obeying Him and following Muhammad. He to the extent that it became
		

			spread all the way out into Spain to the far west, and all the way to China in the Far East. And
this is in itself a reason why we should explore
		

			Learn more Who is this man Mohammed, and that we have a website, Muhammad A to Z. This is give you a
good chance to learn more about what other people said about him. What non Muslim said what his
enemies said what his friends said his companions, his wives. What did they say? And especially what
did the law say about him in the Quran? I think that this would be probably a topic for an entire
program or series maybe I want you to tell me what a ruler at that time. So let's miraculous. Yeah,
his name was miraculous. And Heraclitus was the Roman leader at that time. And he was
		

			this is some here's a case where his own enemies, relatives, tribal relatives, were doing business
in this city, and miraculous knew that there was the letter coming to him in the Arabic language. He
didn't read Arabic. So he said, Bring me these merchants over here that are from that area. They
said, Do you know this man? Well, they were relatives. In fact, they were pagan worshippers, and
they didn't like worshiping one God. So they were against Mormon. And he said, directly said to him,
I want you guys to do a translation of this. But first, I'm gonna ask you some questions. Okay, tell
me about this man, Mohammed. And he listened to the answers. He said, Did this man want to be a
		

			king? Or was anybody a king and his family and noise? Not like that? Or did this man ever want to
have some kind of glory? Did he claim some kind of thing and a pass and you read the whole story? At
the end of it? He concluded this man is.
		

			Sounds very good. It sounds like a upright man. Now read me the letter as owner who he is before I
read it. Well, it's too bad. We don't do that today. Because if you said, Well, I don't need to know
who the author is, before I read, then you would find a lot of people understanding religion a whole
lot better. But in any case, they said, well, it's a letter to Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim, In the
Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. And this is Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah
writing to you, to call you to the worship of the one true God, and, and serving Him. And if you do
that, then all your people will follow you how the reward of this. But if you refuse, then you'll
		

			have that to deal with on the Day of Judgment, but he's calling him to worship one God, and join us
in this beautiful way of life. as Muslims, this is what he's calling the miraculous, the leader of
the Romans. And Heraclitus tested his people by saying, what do you think five? So he first he had
him go lock all the doors. And he said, What do you guys think if I accept this, and we become
Muslims, and then they went mad, they started going crazy. And they said, No, we worship you.
		

			They worship him. And he said, Okay, okay, let it go at that. That's what we'll go with. I'm giving
you a brief translation of what it was. But to let you know that
		

			that Heraclitus himself was very impressed with what Mohammed and many other people have been
impressed. And we can do another whole show on this, I'd like you to give some closing comments and
suggestions for the sincere truth seeker who's been enlightened by this talk that we've just had?
Well, first of all, I don't want anybody to just take my word for anything we spend our lives
studying and reading and like, I know you have to
		

			what we encourage people to do is to seek information that's from reliable sources. That's number
one. Trust the the author based on his credibility, not just because you like him, or you'd like to
style or something like that, or wait comes his hair, but rather, what is his sources, how reliable
is he? And then read slowly and with an open heart open mind and understand where people are coming
from with what they're writing. And it could be very good as it happened to me, I used to course, as
a
		

			music minister and preacher and Christianity I was very sold on what I had until I began to really
explore the sources and came to the conclusion that Islam is something even better for me. Well, I
thank you for being with us today. My God Almighty Allah, the creator, the Amazon reward you just
look ahead, and we'll see you next time. Thank you very much.
		

			That was this week's episode of the deen show. Thank you for tuning in tune in every week where I
bring you a new episode. You can visit us at the deen show calm you can book use of SS at Islam
events.com and until next time, we'll see you a salaam aleikum which peace be unto you.