Adnan Rashid and the New Testament

I would like to respond to some of the claims made by Adnan Rashid in his debate with David Wood a few weeks ago in London, specifically on the subject of the Satanic Verses. Now I think the debate was a pretty clear debate myself, and I would invite anybody to watch it.

I think they would find it to be most useful, especially David's presentation on the historical sources that testify to the issue of the early nature of the story of the Satanic Verses. But I want specifically to respond to some of the things that Adnan said concerning the text of the New Testament.

They seemed a little bit out of place, but more importantly, they were just grossly inaccurate. The first statement Adnan makes demonstrates that he simply does not understand the literature that he's reading and the claims made, especially by Bart Ehrman, regarding the nature of the New Testament manuscripts.

Let's listen to what he says, and then correct his flawed understanding. Now let's consider Adnan's claims here. First of all, he seemingly thinks that Isnad chains are necessary for knowledge of authorship and everything else.

While if a culture existed where Isnad chains, the such-and-such person narrated such-and-such person who narrated such-and-such person, if that had been the culture of the time of Christ, then you might have a case for saying, why aren't they there?

That was not the culture of the time of Christ. Ironically, it wasn't even the culture of the time of Muhammad. This is a later standard that is built up and created so as to allow for the formulation of the Hadith collections, especially Bukhari and Muslim, which become the very foundation of the Islamic legal system.

But to read that standard backwards, as Adnan consistently does, is another example of historical anachronism. It is not rational, neither is it logical, to read later standards back into earlier works as if that's somehow relevant.

Evidently, he seems to feel that we need to have a social security number on each of the early gospel writers if somehow they are going to be trusted or trustworthy, which again was not at all the context of those early writings, which are considerably older than the writings of the Quran, of course.

And so then he launches off into what is quite simply, and Adnan's a nice guy, but what he says about the New Testament manuscripts is simply absurd on any kind of meaningful scholarly level. And Bart Ehrman would confirm this, okay?

Bart Ehrman would say, dude, you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? Because notice what Adnan said. He said that no two of the 5 ,700 plus manuscripts in the New Testament are similar to one another.

Now, what a difference a word makes, because Bruce Metzger never said anything like that. Bart Ehrman never said anything like that. What they would have said, and what I've said many times before, is no two New Testament manuscripts are identical to one another.

Then again, no two Quranic handwritten manuscripts are identical to one another either.

Why?

Because handwritten documents contain scribal errors. But identical and similar are not synonyms. What Adnan is trying to present here is this idea that, well, you pick up this manuscript over here and it's talking about Billy Bob, and you pick up this manuscript over here and it's talking about Tom, and this manuscript over here is talking about Caesar, and every manuscript in the New Testament is completely different, not even similar to other New Testament manuscripts, which of course is completely absurd.

No one who's ever done any textual criticism would ever even suggest such a thing, and yet Adnan just presented that as an argument in a public debate. Now, if I ever made a statement like that about the Quran, I would never hear the end.

Of it.

It would be used to refute everything I would ever say, no matter whether everything I said after that was true or not. That one thing, because it's so absurd, would end my debating career, and yet I really wonder if the Muslims even care that Adnan made such an amazing blunder at that point to misquote Metzger and Ehrman and say that no two New Testament manuscripts are even similar to one another.

Let me show you how far off Adnan is. I have taken my BibleWorks program, and there are some tremendously good Bible programs available to us today. I mean, we can do things today that only a generation ago no one could have even thought to be able to do with the computer technology that we have, and I have two tremendously good Bible programs.

I have BibleWorks, and I have the Libronics software from Logos, and I happen to use BibleWorks for this just because it was easier for me to do it. I have set up the program. You can compare different databases in the program, and so I have set up the program to where it is comparing basically the two ends of the spectrum in printed Greek texts, and so basically what it's doing is it's using as the base text the modern eclectic text based upon the Nessie Olin 27th United Bible Society's fourth edition text, which is heavily dependent upon an Alexandrian text, and then I'm comparing that with the Byzantine text to a platform on the other side, and so what you're getting is you're getting the two ends of the spectrum of the manuscript families.

Now, if what Adnan is saying is true, then when I bring up this graphic in a moment out of Hebrews chapter 2, there should be color everywhere because what it does is it colors words where you have a difference between these Greek texts, and since Adnan told us that no two New Testament manuscripts are even similar to one another, then the whole text should be colored, right?

I mean, everything should be different. No two words are going to be matching because they're not even similar to one another, but the actual word is identical to one another. Here, take a look at Hebrews chapter 2 verses 2 through 8 with all the textual variants marked in color between the two ends of the printed Greek text spectrum of manuscripts.

Here you see Hebrews chapter 2 verses 2 through 8, and as you can see, there's not much color.

Here.

In fact, there's exactly one major variant, the word gar meaning for, and obviously it does not impact the meaning whatsoever. You see, Adnan has misunderstood the difference between identical manuscripts and similar manuscripts, and as a result, has presented a complete falsehood in regards to the text of the New Testament.

The Gospel of Thomas and Gnostic Misuse

The Gospel of Thomas states James is the successor of Christ, not Peter, and the Gospel of Thomas says that Jesus said that if you want to, if you see a man who is born, if you want to see God, then go, go to someone.

Someone who's born of a woman cannot see Jesus as well.

He was born of a woman.

The Gospel of Thomas is telling you directly that Jesus is not God.

He's born of a woman.

Every time I hear Islamic apologists glomming on to the Gospel of Thomas and Gnosticism, I just simply shake my head. I really do. The vision of Muslims depending upon polytheists, and I know, I just know that the vast majority of these people have never read anything serious in Gnostic studies.

They may have worked through some books, tried to find some quotes someplace, but if they were to seriously read this stuff and compare it with a real good knowledge of the New Testament, they would, they'd be embarrassed to even utilize this kind of stuff.

I remember the first time that Shabir Ali, in our debate at Biola, threw out this idea that the Gospel of Thomas was earlier than Mark. He was quoting from Femme Perkins, from a liberal woman scholar from Boston College, and even she doesn't make that argument.

It's being misunderstood, these men are misunderstanding a really basic assertion. There are some, and I disagree with them, they're in a small minority, but there are some who would argue that some of the sources used in the Gospel of Thomas are as early as that of the Synoptics.

So in other words, one of the arguments is that there might be a saying or two in the Gospel of Thomas that goes back to the Q source, Quella, the source that allegedly Psalms Matthew and Luke used to provide their information that is not contained in Mark.

That's the argument, that there might be some sources that go back that far. They are not claiming in any way, shape, or form that the Gospel of Thomas itself is earlier than Mark. That's so painfully obviously false to anyone who has even the most basic knowledge of the field.

But evidence, as David Wood himself pointed out, that the Diatessaron is important in the production of the Gospel of Thomas, which clearly makes the Gospel of Thomas a mid -2nd century production at its absolute.

And so all they're arguing is there might be a saying here, there might be a saying here that we might be able to trace back to a source that we theorize might have been used by the Synoptics. But the Gospel of Thomas comes from a completely different worldview, a worldview that was not represented in Jerusalem in the 1st century.

And if these men would just fairly read this stuff, but they're so biased and so unfair in their criticism, they just grab anything and just throw it out there. And it's frustrating to debate folks like Adnan, because in our debate, thankfully he didn't throw this out or I would have blown a gasket, but in our debate, four times I had to correct Adnan.

Finally, after the fourth time, it was I think my closing statement at that point, I sort of gave up, but I had made the argument that there is no reason for the Quran to misunderstand the Trinity, because by the year 600 the Trinity was well known.

All the Trinitarian controversies were passed, the definitions were clear, there would be no excuse of saying, well, no one really knows what the Trinity is, and so no one could have defined it in 600.

No, it was well known by that time. No one, who's even semi-fair or honest or accurate in their reading, and who had read my book on the Trinity or anything like that, which Adnan had not, would take my words to mean that I was saying that no one knew what the Trinity was up until 600.

That's completely acontextual reading. And yet, three times, Adnan repeated, well, James has admitted that no one knew what the Trinity was until six centuries after Christ. So I corrected him. He got up and repeated it again.

I corrected him again. He repeated it again. I corrected him again. By the time he did it the third time, the audience themselves were beginning to groan, because they knew that I had never said that, but Adnan doesn't hear, and that is one of the biggest problems that I have with some of these Islamic debaters, is that they just don't listen to what we're saying, and so their response, their rebuttal, is to something that we have to struggle to even figure out what it is that they're responding to.

Now, obviously, I think that people can see that, and they can recognize that, and that says a lot about this conflict between these two major religions. On one side, we do everything we can to try to accurately represent the other.

We study, we try to learn, we are imperfect, and if we are corrected, we want to hear and understand. I have been listening over the past week to in-depth lectures, not only on Hadith sciences, and the difference between weak and strong narrations, and all the rest of that type of stuff, but another whole set of lectures on the classifications of shirk.

I try to understand, not perfect, but I can guarantee you, there has never been any incident, in any debate I've ever been in, and I think I'm right around 75 right now, getting close to 80, where someone has made a statement, and I have misrepresented their statement three times in the same context, even though they explained in plain English where I was wrong.

That just doesn't happen, and yet it happens in my encounters with Muslims. Why? What is keeping them from hearing and dealing with the issues in a fair way? That's a question I think we have to ask. So once again, I would encourage you to watch the debate between David Wood and Adnan Rashid.

I think, again, David did a tremendous job. And I think it's very useful in giving you an understanding. A lot of people have no idea what the satanic verses are about. And it will give you an insight into I think the very pliable methodology that Islamic, especially Hadith scholars, have used to create the various legal schools and the various means to deal with the data from early Islamic centuries.

I realize that a lot of that stuff for most Christians is just, you know, we might as well be speaking in Arabic. It just doesn't make much sense. But I think David did a great job in making it very understandable.

And so I would highly recommend that to you. But when you hear folks like Adnan Rashid throwing out this stuff or they're quoting Bart Ehrman, I get absolutely no sense whatsoever that they have done a millionth of the reading in Ehrman that I have.

Of course, they're never going to face him in debate as I will in just about a month from now. But that's not really the issue. The issue is why do we do what we do? Why do we spend the kind of time and effort that we do when we just don't seem to see our opponents spending that kind of time studying our faith to the level we study yours?

I think that says a lot. Thanks for watching.