Abdullah of the UK on Textual Claims, Part 1

Responding to Abdullah on Textual Corruption and Manuscript Variants

Greetings. This is a continued response to Abdullah from the United Kingdom. He has posted a series of replies to my replies to him, and so back and forth we go. And I was watching the videos and taking notes, and I was actually looking for a reference that was made in Abdullah's videos where he spoke of John Chrysostom's interpretation of Paul.

And as I was looking through the videos to find the original citation that he had used, I encountered this video, again going after Jay Smith, who I do know, by the way, Abdullah. I know Jay. I spent some time with him last January, in fact.

And when I get back to the UK, which I'm certainly desirous of doing so, I was last there in May of 2007. I think that was when I tried to get down to Speaker's Corner, but the trains were out at the one connection we needed to make, and we were not able, and we tried, we just couldn't get there.

And certainly I will be there. I want to get to Speaker's Corner, and I would like to meet you, and that would be quite interesting. But I do know Jay, and I ran across this video. And this is my area.

The King James Only Controversy and Textual Criticism

You're talking about things like textual corruption, and you're talking about the Textus Receptus, and you're talking about the King James. And I don't know if you've seen it, Abdullah, but I wrote a book back in 1994 called The King James Only Controversy.

And it is a rather full work discussing the movement, primarily in the United States, but there are people in Britain. In fact, one of the reasons there are certain churches in the UK that wouldn't even have me speak was because I have written on this subject, and have responded to the claims of those who would say the King James is the only translation.

And this book has been used in colleges and even seminaries as an introduction, sort of a pastoral introduction to the subject of textual criticism. And so you're talking about the things that I've been working on for many, many years.

And you're simply in error about some of the things you're saying. At least you know what the Kamiohanium is. The vast majority of your co-religionists do not. Then again, the vast majority of my co-religionists don't know what the Kamiohanium is either.

But it's very clear to me that you have either ignored those who write in this area, who are consistent in being supernaturalists, or you are purposefully ignoring their material. You know it's there, but you're not going to deal with it.

And you're drawing from those who are the most inconsistent with Islam. And that's what I find very strange, but also find it very regular in Islamic apologists. And I believe it is because of the nature of the apologetic context between Christians and Muslims.

And I would trace it back to one simple fact. It is my assertion that Muhammad did not know the contents of the Bible. He knew orally stories about the Bible, but he did not know what the Bible itself actually stated.

Therefore, he made mistakes. That demonstrates he was not a prophet of God. If by that you define his knowledge of divine texts to be mediated to him supernaturally, as most Muslims do. And when you seek to defend him, you then have to attack the text that was written in the Bible.

But in so doing, you have to use a double standard. You have to use a standard you cannot use for the Quran. You have to use a standard in a realm of scholarship that you simply cannot use in regards to your own faith.

And this, I believe, is very much part of the nature of the apologetic encounter. So I wanted to, I just had to respond to what you have in this video and provide some corrections. Because I'm sure that it's a part, as I continue listening to your responses, I'm sure it's a part of what we're going to have to deal with.

It is fundamental to the Christian-Islamic debate to deal with these various issues. And so let's take a look at, right from the start, your assertions, and I believe confusion, regarding the use of the term corruption, as it has to do with the scholarly study of manuscripts of the Bible, or of the Quran, or any other ancient work.

What Textual Corruption Means in Scholarship

As for your denial, and continued denial, of the Bible being corrupted, you admit that there was errors, additions, corruptions. But then you try to say, no, no, I'm not talking about the Bible now. No, no, I meant the original manuscripts.

You never actually said that in your first video. You just said that Muslims claim that there were additions and changes, and that it's not true. Whereas now you're saying, no, no, no, I meant just the original manuscripts.

Now, once again, we have to be very careful about making accusations of dishonesty, as you seem to be making against Jay Smith, based upon the fact that, if someone walked up to me and said, do you believe the Bible's corrupted?

I would say, well, of course not. But if someone walked up to me and said, do you believe the manuscripts of the Bible contain textual variants? I would say, well, of course they do. In a technical use of the term corrupted, if there is any textual variation whatsoever in a manuscript tradition, then that is called a textual corruption.

And so if you want to use the term corrupted in a very narrow, specific, scholarly sense, then every ancient work and most modern works are corrupted, because they contain textual variants. Well, any handwritten document, if it is passed on even one generation, will have to be called corrupted.

So all ancient documents, including the Koran, is corrupted. And if that's the standard you're using, there's merely the presence of textual variation between manuscripts. And we'll look at this a little bit more later on.

But there are palimpsest manuscripts of the Koran that demonstrate that Ibn Masud readings continued on in the tradition of the Koran for quite some time. And so if that's the definition you're using, then you're going to have to be consistent and look in that camera and say to your audience, the Koran is corrupted.

But you wouldn't want to say that, because from your perspective, well, Allah has preserved the Koran. Well, I believe that God has preserved the New Testament, too. The issue is the mechanism by which this takes place.

But the fact is, all ancient works that are passed on through handwriting are corrupted in that technical sense. You see, that's not how the vast majority of modern people use the term corrupted. They use that term to refer to such a disruption of the transmission of a text that the ability to determine what the original message or intent of a work has been lost.

We don't know what the original authors are trying to communicate. And I don't believe that there is any serious scholar, even someone as far to my left as Bart Ehrman, who would make the assertion that we don't know what the original authors of the Bible intended.

From his perspective, all we're doing is tweaking right now as far as the text of the New Testament is concerned, that the vast majority of textual variants have nothing to do with the meaning whatsoever.

And the same thing is true of the Koran, at least back to the point of the original editing of the Koran. And that's another issue we'll have to get into, because you try to make the accusation of the Galatian decree having something to do with the text of the New Testament, yet that's half a millennium later, not at the very collation of the documents and then the destruction of variant readings.

Your attempt to make a parallel there fails from a scholarly perspective, as I will demonstrate as time allows. And so we have to be careful, and I'm afraid that many of your fellow Islamic apologists very much play upon using the term corruption in two different ways.

They'll quote the scholarly sources that use it in a scholarly sense, which would necessarily have to mean the Koran is corrupted, but they won't go there. Instead, they'll play on that very narrow sense and try to turn it into the very broad sense of, well, we can't trust the Bible whatsoever.

And you close your video by saying, hey, the New Testament, the Bible's corrupted. What do you mean by that? Does it contain textual variants? Yes, it does. Does the Koran contain textual variants? Yes, it does.

There's no question about that. No one will seriously deny that. And so does that mean it's corrupted? Well, that's a question that you have to answer. But from my perspective, it's very important to make sure that people understand that you cannot simply make the connection between those two words.

And then especially to accuse Jay Smith, who in one video may be talking of the one kind of corruption and another video talking about the narrow form of corruption, textual corruption. To accuse someone of dishonesty at that point, I just don't think is wise at all.