November 29, 2005

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning, a bit of a nippy morning here in Phoenix.
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It's nice finally that the cool weather has arrived. It arrived a couple of days ago, the last two mornings.
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It's actually dipped down into the very upper 30s, which for us is about as cold as it gets.
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I don't think it has frozen here. I don't think it's gotten below 32, about six years now.
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So that's, yeah, we've not had a hard freeze in a long, long time. And we used to, it used to be a little more common.
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But as the city has grown and grown and grown and grown, you put all that concrete and asphalt and rock lawns out and that's global warming, global warming.
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Yes, well, it is. There is global warming. That's not no one's question. There's global warming.
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The problem was there was global cooling that got us to the point where now we're having global warming.
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So it's called a cycle. Yeah, but it's our fault. Well, you know,
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Christians do, you know that. Well, yeah, that's what's what was that magazine recently that I was just looking at this.
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Yeah, Mother Jones magazine, December issues, all about how conservative Christians are behind all the evils of the world.
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So that's great. I mean, I was just scanning over some of the stuff here, by the way. Open phones, 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.
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I was just reading some of the World Magazine blog titles here, which
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I do. I try to do on a regular basis. David Limbaugh writes about the
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University of Wisconsin -Eau Claire banning resident assistants from leading Bible studies in their own dorm rooms.
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And then we have we have this real brilliant issue here.
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Brunswick Main Town Council debate ensued over the content of a poem to be placed on a memorial to the town's firefighters.
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Members of the local firefighters union selected a poem written in 1959 by a Kansas fireman entitled A Fireman's Prayer to appear on the monument.
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Some council members feared that because the poem mentions God, it would violate the separation of church and state.
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Others were afraid that a line in which the firefighter asked God to protect his wife and children could be perceived as a sexist comment, implying that only men can be firefighters.
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Thankfully, the council finally voted to allow the poem to remain unaltered on the memorial. There's there's what you get when you have secularism, pure, unadulterated secularism.
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We can't talk about God. We have to deny our own history. I tell you, it's anyway.
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I this past week was finally contacted by one of the
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Muslim apologists whose debate to Sam Shamoon, I reviewed this particular individual.
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I played, as I recall, two clips. But by name, I, in the process of reviewing the
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Shabbir Ali debate, reviewed comments from various other individuals who have had debates with Sam Shamoon on Pal Talk.
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And I think the major comment I made was that particular recording was just maddening to listen to all the
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Pal Talk chitter chatter and all the problems and the technical problems and the really bad nature of the recording and all the rest of that stuff.
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But anyway, I finally heard from one of these individuals. I had mentioned that his followers had been emailing me and saying
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I was afraid of this man and all the rest of this stuff. And so I had played some clips and documented some errors.
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And so I finally heard this week an email basically saying, so are you inviting me on your program? And I said, well, we have open phones.
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It's a toll free number, 877 -753 -3341. You're welcome to call in and take issue with anything that I said or defend your position.
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And we've been doing this for 20 some odd years now. We have a long track record of the fact that we honor the truth on this program.
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And, you know, as long as a person doesn't become abusive, use foul language or the like, then we could have a conversation.
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And so you're inviting me on your program. It's almost like so you want me to be your guest. No, I'm not doing that.
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But if you want to call in, the number is 877 -753 -3341. So I would invite that gentleman or his representatives or whoever, if he wishes to participate in the program today as I offered, then in the sense of calling in as a regular caller today, the phone number is open to him or to others.
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If you would like to call in, that is fine and dandy. We're here for another 54 minutes or approximately there.
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Actually, talking -wise, only about 52 more minutes. 58 .10,
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I believe, is when I start hearing that Steve Camp music in the background. But, yes, it may be more than happy to discuss some of the things that were said.
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And, of course, just to provide a little bit of the background, I took the time to go back through and resurrect the clips, listen to the debate again, put some other clips together.
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And as I recall, the first thing that I had mentioned in regards to this particular individual's presentation,
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Nadir Ahmed is the name that is on the file anyways. And it was this particular clip that I played that I discussed the issue of the alleged corruption in the
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New Testament and the issue of equivocation, using the term corruption to mean multiple things.
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You can say a text is corrupt in the sense that you can no longer determine its original meanings, that it's no longer a viable text to represent the original intents and words of the author.
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Or you can use the term corruption, and it is used in a technical sense in textual criticism, of any textual variation.
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And, obviously, those are two different things. It is a far cry to go from there is textual variation in manuscripts.
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There is handwritten manuscripts, and hence there is textual variation. You always have textual variation in handwritten manuscripts.
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Obviously, there are clearly variations in the early editions of the Quran. You would not have had to have the traditional understanding of the
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Uthmanian revision and the burning of Qurans within just a matter of decades after the death of Muhammad if there were not those types of corruptions that took place.
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And so, any ancient text, and the term ancient there might be a little bit overblown, any text that was written prior to the invention of the printing press is going to have that kind of variation, handwritten variation, in it, and that is called textual corruption.
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And, in fact, even after the invention of the printing press, you had all sorts of types of textual corruption even then.
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One of the more humorous things is to document the various errors of printing. Remember how printing used to be done, typesetting each individual letter and block and so on and so forth.
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Somewhat humorous to document the various corruptions that took place in the printing of the
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King James Version of the Bible in the early years. And we even have it today.
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People can be zipping along on the computer, typing away, and you can still skip lines. You can inadvertently...
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Have you ever been in a program, I do this in Channel all the time, where I'm going along too fast and I hit a key combination that brings up a really neat thing in the program, but I have no idea how
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I got there. And it's like, oh, that's cool. There's all sorts of times I wish I could use that, but I have no idea how to get back to it because I don't know what
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I did. It's the wrong key combination. Or you can just accidentally hit Control -V and insert something.
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And if you aren't watching, you didn't even know you inserted it. And you look up the screen, you don't know what happened. And if you're not being careful, you can end up sending it off that way.
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That happens to all of us. Textual variation takes place because human beings are imperfect human beings.
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So you have that type of a situation. So it is a very poor form of argumentation to equivocate on the use of the term corruption.
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And where you could catch me with all the things
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I've said, all the things I've recorded, all the debates I've done over the years. It would be very easy for you to find on one end my saying, the
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Bible is the word of God inspired and inerrant, and on another place find me talking about a textual variant of the
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New Testament. And if you just simply don't respect truth or you're confused or just ignorant of what you're talking about, you can try to make those two statements contradictory.
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They are not contradictory. But you can make them contradictory by equivocating on the terminology.
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And so as I recall, the initial section of this debate that I played was the one
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I'm going to play right now, if we can have the volume ready, where this discussion of corruption comes up.
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Let me start off by saying that corruption comes in two forms. The first form is by corrupting the actual text itself.
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For example, we have two books, book A and book B. Book A is the literal word of God.
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And let's say that in book A it says that Jack went up the hill.
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And book B is actually a copy of book A. So what I write down in book B, I write
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Jack went down the hill. So what I have done is that I have corrupted the word. Instead of up,
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I wrote down. Another way you can corrupt the text is by corrupting it by your interpretation.
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Going back to the same example, in book A, if it says Jack went up the hill, but my interpretation of that is
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Jack went to a higher understanding of truth. That's what the verse means. So then what
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I write down inside book B is my corrupt interpretation, which is
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Jack went to a higher understanding of truth. I don't write that Jack went up the hill, which is what book
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A states. And then book A disappears and all we are left with is book B. So these are the two ways of how the
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Bible or how any scripture can get corrupted. It can get corrupted by interpretation as well as corrupting the very word itself.
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Well, and I took issue with that. That's an exceptionally simplistic and somewhat confusing presentation.
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If you write your interpretation as if it is the actual text, that is gross corruption.
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That's not even transcriptional corruption. That's not transmissional corruption. That's complete rewriting.
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That's editing or redacting. And that's a completely different issue than if you change a word from up to down.
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There's no discussion here about the primary, the vast majority of textual variation in ancient manuscripts was actually due to scribal error.
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That is, instead of up, using a variant spelling of the word or a word that would be similar, upward, or something like that, something that can be explained by homo italius on similar endings or by other scribal sight errors, or then later if manuscripts are being produced in a scriptorium where it is being read and then copied down by multiple people, errors of hearing as well.
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You have errors due to familiarity with parallel passages. There's all sorts of things that goes way, way, way beyond the rather simplistic and somewhat confusing presentation that was made there.
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And that's what I played. And I said, these aren't the only two forms. And, in fact, these aren't really directly connected to one another.
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One's editing and redacting. And there's no discussion here of purposeful editing or redacting or purposeful changes over against the scribal errors and different kinds of scribal errors and so on and so forth.
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And so that's what I addressed. And then, as I recall later on, I pointed out that when
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Sam Shamoon could not get his microphone working, he had to restart Pile Talk and start it all over again and blah, blah, blah, blah.
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And in the process, there was this discussion in regards to, well, here.
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This is what took place when Sam Shamoon was attempting to get his
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Pile Talk thing working. And I took a real exception to this because I found it to be rather childish. I'm sorry.
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I got the mic. What I was saying is that I'm sorry. I won't accept that. And I warned him, please make sure your microphone is working.
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So we're not going to do it that way. He cannot get his microphone done. He's not going to run away.
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We're going to continue with this debate. So I want to make sure that's very clear. You can type and somebody can read after.
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That is the way we will do it. That's not fair. And I said, you know, that's just simply absurd.
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You know, someone can't get their material working, their computer working. You schedule for another time.
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You don't have someone sit there and try to debate typing while you get to speak. I mean, that was silly. That was pretty much the entirety of it.
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And so as I was listening again, I ran across, and I may have.
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Now, let me think about it. I may have played this one as well as an example of just completely missing the boat.
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Now, we go to volume, excuse me, we go to Abu Dawud, volume 9, book 92, number 460.
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Narrated Abu Huraira, by Abu Huraira. The people of the book used to read the Torah in Hebrew.
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And they explained it in Arabic to the Muslims. Allah's Apostle said to the Muslims, Do not believe in the people of the book nor disbelieve in them, but say we believe in Allah and whatever is revealed to us and whatever is revealed to you.
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So we are supposed to say we believe in what was revealed to you. But don't confirm or deny what they're saying from their
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New Testament. And I'm asking why. Is the New Testament 100 % pure word of God?
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Why did the Rasulullah give us this strong warning? But here we see another clear proof that the
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Bible, which is in the hands of the Christians, this book is corrupt. Now, I may have played that one.
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I'm not recalling right now. As an example, the
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New Testament wasn't written in Hebrew. And it wouldn't be narrated by Jews in Arabic. And yet he says, so if the
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New Testament is pure, then why would this warning exist? Well, maybe that was just an error of thought or speech or something.
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I don't know. But the fact of the matter is you have a confusion here between the statement, this particular
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Hadith statement in regards to Jews reading the Torah, the
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Old Testament in Hebrew, and then explaining it in Arabic. And what is said there, and there's disagreements, and you can listen to the debate for yourself if you want to hear the disagreement over actually what it means.
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Sam Shimon pointed out that they were explaining it in Arabic and that it was not an issue of, well, the
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Hebrew is wrong. Because another Hadith points out that at one point Muhammad placed the
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Torah on a pillow and said, I believe that this is the word of God. I believe it was revealed from God, and so on and so forth. And a lot of this particular debate that took place was over what the
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Quran's view of the Christian scriptures is and things like that. But I simply point out this is simply not something that is relevant to the
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New Testament at all because the New Testament wasn't written in Hebrew. So maybe I played that. I'd have to go back and double -check that.
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So as I was listening to the debate once again, there were a number of other things that came up that I thought, well, if Mr.
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Ahmed wishes to call in, we can listen to these and we can discuss the specific claims that were made.
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For example, another example of this equivocation on the term corruption took place a little bit later in the debate.
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Let's listen to that. Now, Sam Shimon, of course, on the
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Internet and talking with his Christian friends has been promoting the view that Let me stop this for a minute. This is the part
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I was looking for. I remember now, I was looking for this in the entire waveform. It was like 144 minutes that time or something longer than that.
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I was looking for this, and I couldn't find it. So I just had to sort of narrate what happened. And here
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I have the actual thing that I've been looking for and couldn't find before. The Bible is the uncorrupt word of God, the pure word of God.
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In fact, on July 1st, here on Calcog, in front of an audience of Orthodox Christians and Jews, he was seeking some help on Jeremiah 8 .8.
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This is what Sam said. I don't believe that anyone can corrupt the Bible. He said it was a pure word of God.
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Now, let's stop right there and let's apply what we said before. Let's not equivocate on the meaning of the term corruption.
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What would a Christian like Sam Shimon mean by what he just said? Would he be talking about textual variation?
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Would he be talking about the textual variation of 1 John 3? No, he's not talking about that.
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He's talking about the word of God as the word of God, destroying the word of God so that the word of God is lost.
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You can no longer know what the word of God was, changing it so that there's confusion, so on and so forth.
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So let's see if that equivocation takes place. And he agreed with the Orthodox Jews in their belief that the
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Old Testament was 100 % pure word of God, which is pretty much what most evangelical
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Christians believe, and he's just basically reassuring them of their faith. But now, ladies and gentlemen, prepare for the shock.
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I said, prepare for the shock. Because when Sam Shimon is confronted with Biblical scholars or qualified critics of the
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Bible, this is what Sam Shimon has to say about the uncorrupt, pure word of God.
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Okay, now, so we've got the setup here, and what we're about to hear is a portion from the
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Shabir Ali debate. And we had heard this, we had actually commented on it.
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Since it's secondhand, it may be a little bit difficult to understand. But here
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Sam is going to talk about guess what? Yep, you're right, about textual variation.
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So we see here, he says, no manuscript has come down very and free. And in the
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Bible, we can find the corruption in there. We know where it is. And then he goes, oh, but by the way, your
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Koran is the same way. Which, by the way, that's going to lead to the next debate, in which, inshallah,
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I will debate him on the authenticity of the Koran, and I will prove that the Koran is 100 % authentic, inshallah.
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So Sam Shimon has to come clean tonight. He has to tell us what does he believe about the Bible. Do you believe it's corrupt or uncorrupt?
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And then we can go from there. So here you have, I think, one of the most clear examples of equivocation.
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Here's the argumentation. Sam is talking about textual variance. He's pointing out the fact that any ancient text that is passed on to us through manuscript form is going to have textual variations.
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And that is then being allegedly contrasted with and made to allegedly contradict what is stated earlier in a completely different context in Paul's talk about the corruption of the
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Word of God as the Word of God. That kind of equivocation is very, very common.
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And as you're talking with Muslims who have heard this kind of material, then you need to be prepared to address these issues.
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And who else do we have to address these issues with? We have to address these issues with Mormons who believe that the
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Bible has been corrupted in a very similar fashion. Very same skills, same study that would prepare you for dealing with the 8th
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Article of Faith of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City should likewise help you to be prepared to deal with this kind of presentation as well.
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And so that to me was very interesting. Now, there were about three different things that were presented by Mr.
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Ahmed in his presentation. One of the primary ones he focused upon, there were two.
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There was Surah 4, 1 -7, and there was what he called the acid test of the
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Qur 'an that the Bible allegedly fails. The acid test of the
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Qur 'an. The acid test of the Qur 'an is found in Surah 48, Ayah 29, if you have a
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Qur 'an and you want to follow along. And in the
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Yusuf Ali translation, we read the following.
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Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah, and those who are with him are strong against unbelievers, but compassionate amongst each other.
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Thou wilt see them bow and prostrate themselves in prayer, seeking grace from Allah and His good pleasure.
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On their faces are their marks, being the traces of their prostration.
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This is their similitude in the Torah. And their similitude in the
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Gospel is, like a seed which sends forth its blade, then makes it strong, it then becomes thick and it stands on its own stem, filling the sowers with wonder and delight.
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As a result, it fills the unbelievers with rage at him. Allah has promised those among them who believe and do righteous deeds, forgiveness and a great reward.
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This is Surah 48, Ayah 29. And you will notice two references there, one to the
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Torah and one to the Gospel. Now, the commentary provided by Yusuf Ali in regards to the similitude of the
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Torah is as follows. In the Book of Moses, which is now found in a corrupt form in the Pentateuch, the posture of humility in prayer is indicated by prostration.
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For example, Moses and Aaron fell upon their faces, Numbers 16 .22.
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And then in regards to the similitude in the Gospel, the commentary is, the similitude in the
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Gospel is about how the good seed is sown and grows gradually even beyond the expectations of the sower.
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The seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how, for the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself, first the blade, then the ear, after the full corn the ear,
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Mark 4 .27 -28. Thus, Islam was preached by the Holy Prophet. The seed seemed to humanize, lost in the ground, but it put forth its shoot and grew and became strong until it was able to stand on its own legs and its worst enemies recognized its existence and its right to live.
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Note how much more complete the parable is in the Quran. The mentality of the sowers of the seed is expressed in beautiful terms.
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Its growth and strength fill them with wonder and delight. Now, let's keep track of what we're thinking about here.
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We're thinking about a man who is writing, who is illiterate.
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He does not have the Gospel text in front of him. He is seemingly going upon what he has heard people saying at points in the past.
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So, you have a man who may have heard the parable of the soils found in Mark 4 and in others of the
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Gospels. The parable of the soils preached at some point. Probably never heard it from the original languages.
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Probably heard it only paraphrased or in some form of Arabic. And this, he is going by memory on what he heard in the past without reference to the original documents.
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And so, he remembers something about a seed growing and sprouting and here's how it appears in the
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Quran. And this would be more than 600 years removed from the actual teaching of the parable, the recording of the parable by the
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Synoptic Gospels in the Scriptures themselves. Okay? So, that's what you have in Surah 48,
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Ayah 29. This then becomes what's called the acid test in this debate.
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And let's listen to what the acid test is supposedly all about. Now, Sam Shimon, of course, on the internet and talking with his
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Christian friend has been promoting the... Let's get to the right one here.
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There you go. It needs to be double -clicked. Try it one more time. Now, moving on, it's like chapter 48, verse 29.
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The Quran presents an acid test. This is a test to show if the
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Bible has been corrupted or not. It says over there, inside chapter 48, verse 29, that their description in the
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Injil and the Gospel is like a sown seed which sends forth its shoots, then makes it strong, then it becomes thick, and it stands straight on its stem, delighting the sower that he may enrage the disbelievers in.
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So, what the Quran here is saying is that this verse is supposed to be in the Injil. So, an uncorrupted
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Bible is supposed to have this verse. So, I would like Sam Shimon to come up and show me where this verse is in the
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Bible. Because the Quran says this is supposed to be in the Injil, which is, of course, the revelation given to Jesus.
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And I don't think he will be able to find it. The closest you're going to find, I think, is Mark 27.
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I'm sorry, chapter 4, verse 27. And that is... but yet, it's not the same. And when Sam Shimon will read the verse, you'll see.
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This is not the same. Therefore, we see that the Bible fails this acid test of the
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Quran, leaving the reader with no other conclusion other than that the Bible has been corrupted.
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So, there you have the assertion. You have a source written in a different language, geographically removed, temporarily removed by over half a millennium, written by a man without access to the original languages, writing in a different language, based upon what he's heard of the presentation of something that seems to be like it's represented in Mark chapter 4, verse 27.
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But because it's in the Quran, that means the Bible is corrupted. We have manuscripts of these
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Gospels that predate Islam by tremendous numbers of centuries here, hundreds of years, and they don't have any problem with the parable of the soils.
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There is no evidence to back up this assertion that this variant reading, even if it's meant to be a direct quotation, which would be highly unusual, rather than just simply a similitude, an example, we have no evidence of this reading ever having existed.
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So, you have a single man who would go into fits and receive revelations from God, allegedly, without knowledge of the original, and on the basis of that, 600 years removed, the
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New Testament is corrupt. You may recall back in 1999, when
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I debated Hamza Abdel Malik on the issue of the deity of Christ in the New Testament, that in my opening statement,
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I specifically said that the only way that you can deny the deity of Christ, the text of the
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New Testament, is to handle the text of the New Testament as if it is to be corrected by an external authority, specifically the
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Quran. You have to allow a later source, a far removed source, the
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Quran, to overrule the New Testament. Here we have this, and as you examine the apologetic approach of Islam to the
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New Testament, that will be the consistent activity of the Islamic apologist is to make the
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Quran the final authority, and anything in the New Testament that therefore contradicts the Quran is either misinterpreted or, more likely, it is simply, completely corrupt textually, even if they cannot offer a single bit of evidence.
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Remember, I kept asking Mr. Malik during the course of the cross -examination. Alright, so you're saying
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John chapter 1, you're saying Romans 9, 5, you're saying this passage, these were all later interpolations, these were all put into the text later, right?
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Right. Can you show us a single manuscript? Well, they're there. Well, can you show us one? Well, scholars say, can you name a scholar?
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Well, no, not right now. Could not even begin to substantiate the allegation, but that is what was taking place, and that is the argument that is being made.
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And so we will look a little bit more at this acid test and some other things. There's also something about Jeremiah 8 .8,
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and once again, phone lines are open, 877 -753 -3341. If Mr.
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Ahmed would like to comment on these things, he's more than welcome to do so on the program today, 877 -753 -3341.
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We'll be right back. The Trinity is a basic teaching of the
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More than any time in the past, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals are working together. They are standing shoulder to shoulder against social evils.
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We are listening to various clips from the debate between Nadir Ahmed and Sam Shamoun.
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And we had just listened to the acid test. There was a second acid test clip here
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I had. Here it is. And it's about 46 seconds long. Let's take a listen to it.
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Let's see what else did he say here. Chapter 48, verse 29. He said, yep, it is there. Read chapter 4, verse 27 of Mark.
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It is different. It is not the same. It talks about, in fact, I have the... Where is the verse?
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It says, For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself, the blade and the ear. The blade and the ear is the only thing which mat, and then full corn of ear.
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But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he put it in the sickle. The Quran says nothing of this.
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We see here that the Bible fails the Quran's acid test.
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We do not find this verse in the Bible, in the Bible at all, which proves beyond a reasonable shadow of doubt that the
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Bible has been corrupted because a pure and authentic Bible will have this verse which the Quran said, an
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Indian jeal, the description of such and such. So it's corrupted because there's a paraphrase of a portion of a verse in the
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Quran in a different language 600 years removed, not because we can actually go to the manuscripts and prove it, not because we can actually go to the manuscript tradition and the
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New Testament presenting one of the most testified to and documented manuscript traditions in all of ancient history, not because we can go to that and prove it.
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It's because one man in trances and visions 600 years later in a different language who is illiterate simply paraphrased this and therefore it should have been written like this in the first place.
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That's the level of argumentation that is put forward in this particular context.
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Let's go back to the other argument that was presented because this one is rather interesting because Surah 4, 1 -7, we've talked about it a number of times in the program recently, but this time it's being used as evidence of the textual corruption of the
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New Testament. Listen to this type of argument. Let's go on and take a look at another verse which talks about the corruption of the
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Christian scriptures. It says in Chapter 4, verse 157, And because of their saying,
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We killed Messiah Esau, son of Mary, the messenger of Allah, but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but the resemblance of Jesus was put over another man.
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Now, let me ask a question. What book is it which teaches the
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Christians that Jesus is crucified? Any third grader can answer that. It is the
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Bible. That is what the Christians use to justify their beliefs on crucifixion. Now let me continue with a verse.
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And those who differ therein are full of doubt. They have no certain knowledge.
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They follow nothing but conjecture. Again, I ask the question.
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What is it that the Christians follow which teaches them that Jesus was crucified? I think there can be no doubt about it that the
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Christians follow the Bible. That's what teaches them. But look what the Quran says. They follow nothing but conjecture.
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And conjecture is a form of corruption. Even Sam Shimon will agree upon that. But can we also read this verse as saying they follow nothing but corruption?
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Of course. And look what the verse says above. And those who differ therein are full of doubt.
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They have no certain knowledge. People who believe in crucifixion have no certain knowledge.
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But we all know that they had the Bible in their hand. But this is not only talking about the Bible. But this is talking about all the
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Christians that believe in the Bible as well as the very Bible authors themselves. Therefore, not only do we find a clear charge of Bible corruption in this verse but we also find a sweeping indictment of all the
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Bible authors and all the people who follow them. The verse is clearly speaking of Bible corruption and that conclusion is inescapable from this verse.
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There is no way that the Bible can escape this indictment. And if I am wrong,
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I tell Sam Shimon to come to me and say, no, no, no, no, no, no. The Bible is actually exempt from this verse. I would like to see that.
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Therefore, what we see here is that the Quran is clearly accusing the New Testament of corruption.
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And it does it in its own little sweet way. There is more than one way to skin a cat and that is the lesson we learn from it.
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There is more than one way to convey the message that your book is wrong.
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So, once again, there is absolutely no question about the fact that Surah 4, verses 1 to 7, certainly one of the most important ayahs in the
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Quran, is central for the Christian to understand. That is why we have attempted to discuss it in its context in the past and we will do so more so in the future.
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But what is being said here, again, involves equivocation.
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That is, corruption would require us to believe what?
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In this context, it would have to require us to believe not that there was textual change, but that the original authors themselves were corrupt.
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That there was, in fact, no recording of the actual message of Jesus because who in the
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New Testament does not have this concept of the crucifixion of Christ? It is clearly a part of all the
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Gospels. It is the foundation of the entirety in the New Testament. So, if you are going to take that perspective, then you are going to have to have an understanding that, in essence, the entirety of the
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New Testament text has been corrupted in its writing, not in its transmission over time.
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That would be the difference at that particular point. And, again, that is not really corruption as much as it is just false religious writings to begin with.
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There is an equivocation between, well, it was written down originally properly and now it has been changed over time.
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Those are not the same things. That needs to be kept in mind. Secondly, what
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I wanted to ask, if Mr. Ahmed was going to call today, as I have gotten the feeling he would, maybe it will be
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Thursday, who knows, at least if we have done this program he can listen to this and maybe we can interact based upon what we have said here.
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But I would like to know, where do Arabic lexical sources tell us that the term conjecture equals corruption?
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That is said over and over again. Well, conjecture would mean corruption. Conjecture would mean corruption.
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I don't see that. I would like to find out where the
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Arabic word that is used in Surah 4, verse 7, where that means corruption.
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Because it seems to me it was that they are full of doubts and no certain knowledge but only conjecture. Conjecture is about this idea of the crucifixion of Christ.
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And what you have really got going on here, again, is the very same attitude the Jews had. The Messiah could not be crucified.
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Crucifixion was a horrible way of death. And so what did Paul say the cross was to Jews?
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It is a stumbling block. It is a scandal. Well, it is to Muslims too. Exact same attitude. And so you take that attitude and you put that attitude in the mind of an illiterate man who does not have access to the
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New Testament, who has only minimal contact with sound Christian teachers or preachers, and hence has a very, very minimal amount of knowledge upon which to be working in the first place.
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So you put that attitude in that mind and Jesus could not have been crucified. Jesus was a good man. Jesus was taken the very next ayah in Surah 4.
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158 says, No, nay, Allah raised him up unto himself, and Allah is exalted in power and wise.
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So he exalted Jesus. He raised him up to himself because Jesus was a good person. That is what happens to good people.
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They get raised up. He could not have been crucified, etc., etc., etc. So again, 600 years removed.
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Same attitude the Jews had. And because of that, we have to believe the entirety of the
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New Testament is false. All that stating is, Islam is not
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Christianity. Islam contradicts Christianity. There can be nothing from this that can be logically derived to have any meaning in regards to the transmission of the text of the
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Bible at all. This is just simply, okay, one man, 600 years after Christ, didn't like the idea of crucifixion.
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That's all that means. That's it. Now you elevate his opinions to the position of the word of God, and now you get to choose between the multiple eyewitnesses and testimonies of the eyewitnesses of the event, and all those people who were willing to die in the name of that crucified
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Savior, half a millennium before Muhammad, you get to choose between them and the guy down on the
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Arabian Peninsula. 600 years later. Who doesn't even have access to New Testament documents?
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There is your choice. I've made my choice, and I would like to invite others to make their own as well.
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So there is the presentation that is made. Now it got a little hot. Let me just play for you a short segment here.
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When Mr. Ahmed came back in response to Mr. Shamoon's comments, we have this type of language being used.
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It's going to be very easy to respond to many of your rantings and ravings. It will be very easy to respond to many of your rantings and ravings.
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I was hoping that we could avoid that in our own discussion. But then there was, and this was very important, there was a frequent discussion, a repeated discussion of Jeremiah 8 .8.
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You'll notice it's on the blog. You've got Jeremiah 8 .8 on the blog. And I put two of those sections together.
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You'll hear about two seconds of silence, about a minute in here. Listen to what is said about Jeremiah 8 .8,
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especially if you have already. Okay, go ahead and let's do that first, and then
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I'll play this section on Jeremiah 8 .8. Hey, Sam, how are you doing? Hey, my dear brother, Dr.
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White. How are you doing, sir? Hey, I've been sitting here. I don't know. How much of the program have you gotten to hear?
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I've been listening from the beginning. Okay. All right. Well, nothing's happened, and I didn't get any type of confirmation.
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I think I mentioned to you in an email, I said, look, if you want to call in like anybody else could call in, it's a toll -free number.
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Feel free to do so. I had all these clips lined up. So I'm sort of like, okay, I'll tell you what. I'll play them.
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I'll explain my position. I haven't been mean or nasty or irrational or anything else.
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I've been a nice person here, and I'm laying all this stuff out, and we will put the archive up very, very quickly, and I'll just mail that to him and say, hey, look,
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I commented upon these things. I've now commented much more fully upon your encounter with Sam Shamoon.
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So if you want to discuss it, we're on again on Thursday night.
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I'll have the same clips ready to go, and we can discuss them there. I don't know. But you had some major difficulties at the beginning of that.
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You were at somebody else's home. I got that feeling. Exactly. Computer crashed twice on me, by the way.
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And you were having trouble communicating with the folks who were supposed to be posting stuff for you. Yeah. You had about every type of distraction that could possibly be thrown at you in that particular situation.
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And when you first came on, all you would hear is sort of like that.
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And so you had to reset, do all the rest of this stuff. That didn't really help things out a whole lot.
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But you finally got it all going, and the result was what?
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It was two hours, wasn't it? Yep, yep. Because what I did is
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I went through and I cut out all that stuff. What's going on here? Who's got red dotted?
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And, you know, all the rest of this stuff, because, I mean, you know. And cut it down a little bit from there.
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But the same issues keep coming up over and over again, the validity of the scriptures, the word of God, this anachronistic taking of the authority of the
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Koran, 600 years removed from the time of the Bible and enforcing it upon the text of scripture. You just have to keep going over the same stuff over and over again, don't you?
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Exactly. I mean, if you write a paper just demonstrating the veracity of New Testament documents, you basically have covered most of the arguments that all
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Muslim apologists will bring up against you in a debate. And yet they bring them up in somewhat different forms.
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I've got to admit, listening to the Sabeel fellow and Osama and this fellow, at least you can try to give
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Shabir Ali some credit that he tries to utilize a little more in the presentation.
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It's the same material. I mean, I was just about to play a section on Jeremiah 8 .8 and Shabir Ali brought up Jeremiah 8 .8
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to you as well. Exactly. So they're both using the same thing. But you can present an argument in a way that would be a little bit more understandable to the
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Western mind and Shabir Ali does that over against others that just sort of throw it out there like, well, here it is, it's clear, it's plain, blah, blah, blah.
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That seems to be about the only difference that I can see. But you've got to get frustrated once in a while.
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I'm really frustrated. So that's why I'm praying that the Lord would give me the grace and the humbleness to be like you in dealing with those who just mock and blaspheme the
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Lord and the Scriptures. Well, it's awful. It can't be easy, especially in some of those contexts where you start hearing this type of, and it is blasphemy against your faith.
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And you're probably also seeing stuff going on in the Pal Talk channel part that I can't even begin to imagine what that's all about.
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Like you said, friends don't let friends use Pal Talk. I have a lot of enemies.
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They let me use it all the time. That's right. I'm going to tell you something. I have learned a lot listening to that, and I think
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I mentioned to you in an email the response that you gave. I think it was to Sabeel on John 5.
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It was just absolutely masterful. It was just tremendous. So I've learned a lot from that, but at the same time the frustration with the
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Pal Talk stuff has almost made me crash a few times. So if I do go off the bike sometime, we'll blame it on Pal Talk.
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I won't blame it on you. But I tell you, stick on the line there just a second.
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I'm going to put you on hold a second so you can hear this a little bit more clearly. Sam, let's play this section on Jeremiah 8 .8
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real quick. In Jeremiah 8 .8, it says, How can you say that we are wise, for we have the law of the
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Lord, when actually the lying pen of the scribes have handled it falsely? But now, of course,
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Sam Shimon has his own personal interpretation of this verse. His interpretation is the exact opposite of what it says.
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This is an explicit verse which says that you have handled the Bible, which talks about the corruption of the
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Bible, but his interpretation is that, no, no, no, you see, it's not the corruption of the Bible. Can you let me know every 30 seconds how much minute
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I have left? I want to finish this point. That's the kind of stuff I want to cut out. Why did he say that? He said, because you see, other people talk good about the
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Bible. He said, because people said that, in fact, even in Jeremiah, he said, follow the
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Torah. Daniel said, follow the Torah. Therefore, my interpretation of Jeremiah 8 .8
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is the exact opposite of it. Where it clearly says that your Bible has been corrupted, even though the interpretation is the exact opposite, it really means that the
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Bible has not been corrupted. So he spawned an interpretation which contradicts the verse. And then a little bit later, later in the debate.
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Therefore, what we see here is that the Koran is clearly accusing the New Testament of corruption.
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And it does it in its own little sweet way. There's more than one way to skin a cat, and that's the lesson we learn from it.
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We already heard that one. Now, Sam, you have an article on answeringislam .org,
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specifically on Jeremiah 8 .8. Is that correct? Exactly. I'll link you on that. And so I'll have to try to throw that link up.
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The site search engine seems to work pretty well, right? Yeah. You just do Jeremiah 8 .8. It will come up. And just talking about a distortion of my position, what
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I was trying to demonstrate, as you did masterly in your exegesis of the text, Jeremiah presupposes an existence of the
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Torah because he calls the people to obedience to it. But even more importantly, you find in Jeremiah 36 where Jeremiah's scroll is torn to pieces by the king.
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Right. And God has Jeremiah restore it, word for word, what was in the previous scroll.
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Now, my argument is this. Presupposing that the text of the Torah was corrupted, which that's not the reading of the text.
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Let's presuppose that. The same God who is revealing that truth to Jeremiah, the same God who is able to restore
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Jeremiah's scroll, wouldn't be able to restore the pure Torah in its original form? Right. Well, you made that very clear.
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Your presentation had been very clear. And the problem is, and someone in channel said this, and I think there's some merit to it.
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They said, look, these folks are used to reading the Koran, and the Koran is not to be read contextually.
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It's next to impossible to read the Koran contextually. And making connections between even single verses is sometimes next to impossible to do.
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And so they treat the Bible in the exact same way. And so you can look at Jeremiah 8 .8, and what it says, how 8 .8
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functions in the temple sermon in chapter 7 going into 8, and all the rest of the stuff is completely lost on the vast majority of them.
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And so, I mean, when it even says, behold the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie, it has to exist for you to be able to demonstrate that it's a lie.
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If it's been corrupted to where that's all that people know anymore, there'd be no way to demonstrate that it was a lie.
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I mean, it's just, it's common sense stuff. And yet, I thought
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I had had the clip there at the end. At one point, he's even saying, this is just Sam Shamoon's personal interpretation, as if he somehow, that's not his personal interpretation that takes into consideration nothing in regards to the context at all.
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And believe me, brother, I'm one person that can tell you, I do know the frustration of sitting there while someone else completely misrepresents what you're saying, knowing that I'm going to have even less time to clear up the misrepresentation than they have to make the misrepresentation.
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And you can become exceptionally frustrated. Believe me, I've lost more hair. Well, have you seen me recently?
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We don't have anything left to lose there. But anyway, no, I very much appreciate the effort that was put out there.
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And you know, I can tell by the questioners that you definitely have
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Muslims listening. Of course, they don't tend to be the ones that seem to be the most open. But you just don't know what's hiding behind each one of those little nicks, or once you post something like that on a website and make it available.
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Though I would suggest, if I could make a suggestion here, what
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I would do in the future, or what I would even do now, is to take that, keep the unedited full, all the spaces, all the rest of that stuff, keep that available, but make another version that's actually listenable, in the sense that it's just the material.
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It's not all the PalTalk stuff's taken out, and say, look, if anyone wants to make an accusation, we somehow edited something, here's the original, but here's the one that doesn't have all the silences and the breaks and the discussions of red dotting and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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It would be a whole lot easier for people to listen to. I'll try to get, because he's the one who recorded it, and we linked to his website, so I'm going to have to try to get a copy.
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Oh, okay. We'll do that. Yeah, that would be, yeah, because there's a lot of good information there, and when
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I first tried to listen to it, my MP3 player would not go through all those periods of silence. It's like, oh, this file's corrupt,
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I'm going to go to the next thing. And so it was actually impossible to listen to. But, hey, Sam, I appreciate your listening, and hopefully some encouragement to you when you hear your points being reiterated in someone else's voice.
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I praise God for that. That's on to your audience as well. This is Criteria in Sura 15, verses 90 to 91.
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It actually says the Qur 'an has been corrupted. So using his hermeneutic, you have to now admit that his own
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Qur 'an says the Qur 'an has been corrupted. It's in Chapter 15, verses 90 to 91. I never did hear him dealing with almost any of the passages you brought up.
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That was one of the frustrations. I'll be listening, because I'm waiting for him to call in, because I'm anxious for him to call in.
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I'll be listening, behind the shadows. There's going to be one big shadow, right? That's right.
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So, Lord bless you. Keep up the great work, brother. All right. Thanks a lot. God bless, Sam. Bye -bye. And we will be back on Thursday evening at 4 o 'clock my time, 6 o 'clock
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Eastern Standard Time. And obviously, if this gentleman or any of his followers would like to comment on what was said, open phones, 877 -753 -3341.
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We'll talk about it, and we'll do so in the very same way we've done the program today, with a focus upon truth.
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We'll see you then. God bless. We've been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602, or write us at P .O.
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Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
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World Wide Web at AOMIN .org, that's A -O -M -I -N .org, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.