Parallel Accounts in the Bible & the Quran

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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"'Read,' commanded the angel. "'I cannot read,' Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasallam protested.

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So the angel held Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasallam tightly by the shoulders, shook him, and taught him these words, "'Read in the name of your

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Lord, who created, created man from a clot. Read, and your

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Lord is the most generous, who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know.

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These were the first words of the Holy Quran.'" Tonight we're basically discussing two fields of study.

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And in the first session, we will look sort of at parallel accounts in the New Testament. And then in the second session, we're going to turn it around and we're going to look at parallel accounts in the

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Quran. So what we're going to do, as well as after the 25 -minute introduction of both speakers, we're going to have a five -minute break, just so we can get everything set up and so we can get you a bit of rest.

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You can also have something to eat, then we'll come back and we'll go further. But let me just say for both speakers tonight,

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I'm very well familiar and sort of, I got to know both Dr. White and Yusuf Ismail exactly through Dr.

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White coming to South Africa. So I'll be honest with you if I say that I know both of them very well, in the sense that we've always had the opportunity to work together with everything that we've organized in South Africa.

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And you know, Yusuf is actually a wonderful guy and I really appreciate that he's always willing to participate in debates and these events.

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And then also Dr. White, I think tonight you are quite privileged because it is 150th debate tonight, which is just absolutely incredible.

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So what we will do is just tonight, as far as the structure of the debate, we will actually allow every single speaker to have an introduction, sort of 25 minutes, and then we'll have sort of a 10 minute rebut, and then obviously after that we're going to have sort of a five minute closing in the first session with Yusuf going first,

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Dr. White having a closing statement in the second. We're going to repeat that format sort of in the second session, but what we're going to do in the second session is we're going to have a 15 minute sort of, just before the rebuttals, sort of what we're going to have crossfire questions, like similar to one they had last night.

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And then what we're going to do is we're going to allow them to actually ask each other questions. Now I know you're very hearty and you would love to ask questions and so forth, but what we're going to do is due to the time delay tonight and due to the fact that we unfortunately are already behind schedule, is we're going to reserve the question and answers to do these individuals themselves, so they can ask each other.

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If you are not happy with that, I would refer you to Facebook, you can change your name to not like, and then you can basically go say on Facebook you don't like it and it will say nobody likes it.

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But we're going to give the opportunity to them to basically ask each other questions rather. I just think it will be better if we utilize the time in that effect.

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But thanks for being here and thank you once more for allowing us to have this venue.

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Thanks for Adila. She organized everything and I just wanted to say thanks for that as well, because people don't realize how much work goes into this behind the scenes.

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And I really just wanted to say thanks to Adila as well and I know Yusuf will tell her that I really am appreciative of everything that she's done.

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So with that in mind, let us welcome Yusuf Ismail first and let me just say before Yusuf comes up,

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Yusuf is, and the reason I'm speaking is also to sort the sound out, but Yusuf is an attorney and he's actively involved in sort of the studies of world religions, but specifically the dialogue between Christianity and Islam.

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And that is just exceptional to have him here tonight and to have him speak to us directly.

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And I'm going to give it over to Yusuf. Before I start, I also want to take an opportunity to thank

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Dr. James White, Rudolf, IPCI staff as well, Mohammed Khan, Khaled Iqbal, all of you for attending here.

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I know it's a weekday and that becomes somewhat problematic, but we hope to have a fruitful discussion.

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We hope to learn and share with each other. Alhamdulillah wa salatu wa salam ala

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Rasulullah wa ala Ali wa sahbihi ajma 'in. Amma ba'd. A 'uzubillahi minashaytanir rajim. Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim.

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Rabbish rahli sodri wa yasir li amri wahdul uqdatan min lisani yafkaw qawli. Sadaqallah.

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Sadaqallahul Azeem. What I recited may sound like foreign or strange to you, but I don't have the time to give the translation.

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What I actually recited was a prayer given by the Prophet Moses when he asked God to give him strength to address

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Fir 'aun, to remove the impediments from him. At his particular time, impediments were speech.

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He was a stutterer, a man with uncircumcised lips. And I recited the same prayer, and in doing so,

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I greet all of you with the universal greetings of peace. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.

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May the peace, blessings, and mercy of God be upon all of you. I want to congratulate

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Dr. White for his 150th debate. This will be the fourth debate. I'm having with him, and probably the eighth debate if you separate them together.

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I do believe we've broken a record there. I want to start off with a discussion straight into the subject, parallel accounts in the

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New Testament, or in the Bible in general. Now what are we looking at here? As a starting point, we're going to focus on the

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New Testament. And effectively, we're going to look at the four Gospels as have been presented to us and as contained,

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in the opening covers of the New Testament. But even prior and before going into that, we need to establish certain rules here.

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The first point is that the language that Jesus spoke was Aramaic. So, English, or I beg your pardon,

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Greek, was something which was effectively foreign to him. He never spoke Greek. He never communicated in Greek, and Greek would be something which would be effectively strange.

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The language he spoke was Aramaic. That was the original language. Do we have any manuscripts written by Jesus in Aramaic?

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The answer is quite clearly, no. What we've got is Greek. So even if the manuscripts can be traced back to the original, what you've effectively got is, at best, a guess, secondary source material.

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Secondly, there arose a tradition, a century after the alleged crucifixion of Christ, that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in fact, wrote the

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Gospels. This was in accordance with what some of the early church fathers believed.

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However, the problem is that the Gospels themselves are always written in the third person.

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They're never written in the first person. Let me give you an example. If you open Matthew 9, verse 9, you'd read an expression, and as Jesus was walking by the way, he,

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Jesus, saw a tax collector called Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom, and he, Jesus, came up unto

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Matthew and said unto him, Follow me. And he, Jesus, arose and followed him, Matthew. Now clearly one can see this is not

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God speaking, this is not Jesus speaking, and this is also not Matthew speaking. Because if Matthew were just right, he would have effectively written, and as Jesus was walking by the way, seeing me, sitting at the receipt of custom, he came up unto me, and he told me to follow him, and I arose and followed him.

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Can you see? This is in the third person, and it's clearly not someone that Matthew's writing, and something that is not written by Jesus, and something that clearly is written by an external biographer, writing about the life of Jesus.

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One can go further, even though we're not focusing on the Gospel of John, but if you look at John's Gospel, particularly the last passages of John's Gospel, John chapter 20 verse 24, it states the following in relation to John, This is the disciple which testifies of these things, and we know that his testimony is true.

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We. Who is we? And there are many things which Jesus did, which if they should be written, every one,

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I suppose, that even the entire world could not contain what was written. Now, check the pronouns.

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Who is we? Who is his? Who is I? Is that John that's basically writing? So an external observation, even if you're not a scholar, you can basically discern that it seems to be an external biographical account, a narration and a narrative about the life of Jesus, as opposed to something which was in fact written by Jesus.

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Coming back to what I've got, what we can see and what many scholars point out, the general scholarly consensus amongst biblical scholars today is that the

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New Testament, particularly the four Gospels, are biographical accounts written as apologetic motifs about the life of Jesus, as opposed to documents written by the respective disciples.

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Look at the dates. According to most critics, they would date Matthew to about 100, John to about 110, that's radical criticism,

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Luke the year 75, and Mark, which some would say is the earliest, dating to about probably 60 to 65 of the

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Common Era. Now, the problem is that most of the authors, accordingly, as some would argue, were presumably dead at the time of compilation.

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So this begs the question, who wrote these particular writings? The other problem is that these dates are only in theory, because the closest manuscripts that you have date to probably the first century, the second century, the

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Chester Beatty papyri, and so on, and if you analyze them, they are the size of, for example, a credit card.

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The complete unseals date to the 4th, 5th, and 6th century. We're not going to focus on that tonight.

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Now we're going to come to an issue called the synoptic problem. And I want to raise the aspect, what is the synoptic problem?

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Robert H. Stein, who is a biblical scholar, in his book, The Synoptic Problem, in his reduction, at a glance, effectively, when you look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you find certain similarities and certain differences.

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You find, for example, similarities in terms of stories contained in Matthew, you can find them in Mark, you can find them in Luke.

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Nobody disagrees. Most scholars solve this particular problem by arguing that Mark was the first gospel written, and was used as a source for Matthew and Luke.

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Because if you do, not a conventional reading, but a reading whereby you read one passage contained in Matthew, and then a similar passage contained in Mark, and then a similar passage contained in Luke, you'll find striking similarities between the three.

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And then, of course, you'd find striking differences. And then they would argue that Mark is a source of Matthew and Luke, and those sources that are not contained, those stories in Matthew and Luke which are not contained in Mark, scholars hypothecate that there may be an external source called

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Q, the Q source, quela, symbol for sources. And this leads us to something which is called the

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Four Source Hypothesis. Now, here's Daniel Wallace. He's accused me of misquoting him in last year's debate, but I wonder if he's going to say

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I'm misquoting him here. He says, It is popular today among laymen to think in terms of independence, meaning that the gospels were written independently.

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That's what many people believe. And to suggest either that the writers simply recorded what happened, and therefore agree, or that they were guided by the

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Holy Spirit. You see, if all of you here were inspired to write about something, the tonight's event, all of you would write about something similar, but you would not have identical words in use.

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Am I correct? Does that make sense? Right. Now, he will say that if you look at the gospels, it's not that simple.

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They don't seem to be independent. And he said, This explanation falls short on several fronts.

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This approach is historically naive for the following reasons. And he quotes, Firstly, it cannot explain the differences amongst the writers, unless it is assumed that verbal differences indicate different events.

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In that case, one would have to say that Jesus was tempted by the devil twice, because it's narrated in different gospels.

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That the Lord's Supper was offered twice. Peter denied the Lord six to nine times. In fact, one might have to say that Christ was raised from the dead more than once, if this were pressed.

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Can you see? So the approach is also naive regarding the role of the spirit in inspiring the authors of the gospel.

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And here's the difference. You see, for a Muslim, we believe in verbal revelation. The angel

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Gabriel says, Iqra! Read! And the prophet is made to recite. But Christianity doesn't believe in verbal revelation.

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They don't believe in a dictation. They believe that men were moved by the Holy Spirit. But then each and every single person who is writing would have his own style, his own nuance, own idiosyncrasies, and so on and so forth.

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But, if identical verbiage is attributed to the spirit, that is inspiration, to what should verbal dissonance be attributed?

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What do we do when we have differences on the same incident in the gospels about the same event? Now, since John's gospel is unique, for example, certain sayings only are limited to John, does this imply that he was not inspired by the spirit in the writing of the gospel?

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Can you see the implications? So, in sum, it is totally impossible to maintain total independence amongst the gospel writers, and you can see that there are particular problems that arise from there.

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Now, here's the issue. This is a relationship, as scholars point out, and this is a scholarly consensus.

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James may have a different view between what we have. We have Mark, Matthew, and Luke. According to rule of thumb, 76 % of what is contained is

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Mark, and Mark occurs in either Matthew and Luke, meaning Matthew and Luke draw from this particular source.

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And then you find writings unique to Matthew, writings unique to Luke, there's a double tradition between Luke and Matthew, and then, of course,

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Mark and Luke, and Matthew and Luke, Mark, have certain verses which are basically unique to them.

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So, from this, scholars argue that Mark seems to be the source, the starting point to Matthew and Luke, and that Mark and priority, which dictates that Mark was written first, and Matthew and Luke flowed from that, basically led to the development of the gospels as we see today.

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And so when one compares the synoptic parallels, you find some startling results. But effectively, what these double parallels reveal is two things.

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One, Mark did not follow the principle of exclusivity, for it includes quite a bit of material which is found in only one other gospel.

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You find examples of parallels between Mark and Luke, like the healing of the demoniac, the widow's mite.

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What's the implications of this? And then you've got parallels between Mark and only

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Matthew. Again, what is the implications of that? What's the implications between stories contained in only two gospels and not in the other gospel?

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Here's two individuals. This is F .F. Bruce and this is Richard Barkham. Bruce is late.

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And they wrote a particular book, and they did an analysis of the gospels. And when they compared the gospels in the fashion of Mark first,

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Matthew second, and Luke third, they pointed out that the stories of Jesus were changed to reflect the higher view of Jesus.

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For example, they would look at one gospel and they would cross -reference it to another gospel detailing the same episode.

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Meaning, you have a story about Jesus and Mark, you have the same story about Jesus and Matthew, you have the same story about Jesus and Luke.

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But when they analyzed it in this way, they found striking differences and similarities. So comparing

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Mark to Matthew, they discovered that there was an increase in the status of Jesus, and in fact, the

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Christology as contained in the particular gospels. For example, on the occasion when

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Jesus was transfigured, in the gospel of Mark, Peter calls him Rabbi, Mark 9 .5.

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But in Matthew 17 .4, same story, same incident, Peter calls him

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Lord. So Matthew changes the wording to reflect the higher Christology of Christ. Can you see?

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What about this? When Jesus directs his disciples to wait and watch for his imminent return, in Mark, he says he is the master of the house.

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But in Matthew, he calls himself your Lord. So can you see? Matthew made Jesus describe himself as Lord, there is an improvement from Matthew to Mark.

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If you look at the Greek, the word is Hokirios Tes Oikias in Mark, in Matthew it's Hokirios Haimon.

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Can you see? The Greek. But there is an improvement from Mark to Matthew. So did Matthew and Mark really use the same words?

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And did they really communicate the same concept? And if both were inspired by the Holy Spirit, then which account is accurate?

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What about this? At a place called Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked Peter whom he thought he was.

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In Mark, he calls himself, Peter says you are the Messiah, Mark 8 .27. But in Matthew, same story, same question, and same issue, you are the

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Messiah, the son of the living God. Can you see what's happening? Can anyone see?

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There is clearly an editorial improvement. What about this? When Jesus' mother and siblings came to look for him in Mark, he says whoever does the will of God is my mother and brother and sister.

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But in Matthew, same story, same incident, whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother, mother and sister.

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So can you see what Matthew has done? Matthew has basically personalized the relationship between God and Jesus by making

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God described as a father, which is not contained in Mark. Matthew made people pray to Jesus.

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While Jesus was asleep in the boat, a storm rocked the boat. Now, in Mark's gospel, the disciples awoke

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Jesus with a rebuke. And what did they say? They said, teacher, don't you care that we are drowning? Are you not afraid that we are going to die?

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But in Matthew 14 .32, they say, Lord, save us, we are perishing. Can you see?

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Same story, same incident, same people, but there's an editorial improvement.

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This can only be viewed as an editorial improvement. There is a change in the story. So what's the implications of this?

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And in all honesty, I hope Dr. White is not disappointed. He's always disappointed in the rebuttal session with all the debate opponents.

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I hope he's not disappointed. This is an honest question that I'm basically asking. In Mark 12 .29,

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the first of all commandments is the Shema. Here in Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. But in Matthew, same episode, you shall love the

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Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul. Which was quoted by James yesterday. Strangely enough, he never quoted the first commandment.

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If you look at the debate that we had yesterday in some context. In Mark 10 .18,

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someone came to Jesus and said, good master, what good thing should I do to enter eternal life? So Jesus responds by saying, why do you call me good?

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No one is good but God alone. But in Matthew, same story, same incident, same person, same question.

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He says, why do you ask about what is good? There is only one who is good.

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So Jesus does not rebuke the attribution of goodness to himself. Are you guys following this?

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Can you see what's going on here? I'm not making this up. I'm not inventing things. This is clearly what appears to be an editorial improvement in the narrative.

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Now, comparing Mark to Matthew, we can see how Matthew reworked the tradition to bring out later

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Christian material. And you find that the difference is further pronounced. If you go from Mark, the first gospel, to John, the last gospel.

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For example, in John, Jesus says, I and the Father are one. I am the way, the truth, and the life.

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No one cometh unto the Father but by me. I am the light of this world. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was

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God, and the Word was God. Can you see? All those passages, if Jesus really said that. Why is it not contained in Mark, the first gospel,

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Matthew, or Luke? But it's only contained solely in John. So what you can see is that when you look at the gospels in this fashion,

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Mark first, Matthew or Luke, then Matthew, and then John last. You can clearly see that there is an evolution in the

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Christology of Christ, in terms of how he is in fact represented. And that accounts for why you find that there may be what sometimes appears to be contradictory narratives.

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Here's a moral conundrum, which I just want to throw in. When Jesus faced death on the cross, did he face it, because this is the implication, did he face it with a human belief that he would be raised on the third day, depending on which gospel you look at, or did he face it with the infallible knowledge that he would be so raised?

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You see, if he is God, then if he believed with human faith in God's ability to raise him, then he's not

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God. But if he faced death with the infallible divine knowledge, that he would in fact be resurrected, then what's a great sacrifice?

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What risk is he taking on his side? But again, these implications are based on the gospels that you read, and you find different perspectives.

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Now here's a problem. Look at the genealogies of Christ, between Matthew and Luke. This is a genealogy according to Matthew.

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From David, right up until Jesus, you've got 41, you've got 15 to 41 names.

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And then you've got Luke's genealogy, from David, right up until Jesus.

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They've inserted Mary here, but there's no Mary, it's Joseph in the gospel of Luke. And you find that the names from David to Jesus, and the names from David to Jesus, are not the same.

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So how do you account for this contradiction in the genealogy? Why would God Almighty dictate the genealogy of his son, in inverted commas, leave himself out, and the genealogies are so grossly contradictory?

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The other difficulty we've got is this, is that if you look at Matthew's gospel, which is the genealogy that's contained there, in Matthew chapter 1, verse 1, we are told quite explicitly, that the generations from Abraham to David are 14, the generations from David to the

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Babylonian captivity are 14, and from the Babylonian captivity to Jesus, there are 14 generations, meaning 14, 14, 14.

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Yet you find that in the generation from the Babylonian captivity to Jesus, there are only 13 generations.

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How do you explain that? What's the implications behind that? Can you see? What about Matthew 27, verse 51?

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In Matthew 27, verse 51, we have what we would call a zombie apocalypse. Michael O 'Connor, who is an associate of Debated, he's rejected this version as metaphorical.

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But when Jesus died, the question is, did an earthquake open the graves of the many people who walked around Jerusalem and were seen by many?

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Did that really happen? And if that in fact happened, why is it that this incident is only reported in Matthew and none of the other four gospels narrate this?

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Is this an important question to basically ask? What about the resurrection narratives, the parallels and the differences?

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What were the last words of Jesus? Again, this depends on which gospel you read. Who buried

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Jesus? Matthew says it was Joseph of Arimathea, but according to the Acts of the Apostles, it were

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Jews, the rulers, and all strangers to Jesus. How many women came to the tomb on Easter morning?

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Was it one, as is told in John? Was it two in Matthew, three in Mark, or more in Luke?

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This again depends on which gospel you read. Who did the women see at the tomb? Was it one person, one angel, in Matthew and Mark, or two persons and two angels, as in Luke and John?

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Was the tomb already open when they got there? Matthew says no, but the other three gospels say yes.

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Can you see the implications? Did the women tell the disciples? Mark says, trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb.

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They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid. Matthew and Luke make clear that they did so immediately.

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So which account is right? Because if you've got the Holy Spirit inspiring these writers, why is it that they've got different accounts?

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In Mark's account, the women are instructed to tell disciples to go to Galilee, but they don't tell anyone. In Matthew, the disciples are told to go to Galilee to meet

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Jesus, and they immediately go there. And in Luke, the disciples are not told to go to Galilee.

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They are told that Jesus had foretold His resurrection whilst He was in Jerusalem. And Jesus appears on the road to Emmaus.

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Now, if Matthew is right that the disciples immediately go to Galilee and see Jesus ascend from there, then how can

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Luke's gospel be right that the disciples stay in Jerusalem the whole time, see Jesus ascend from there, and stay on until the day of Pentecost?

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Which gospel is right? This, again, the narrative depends on which gospel account you're reading. What did

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Jesus tell the high priest when questioned at His trial? Again, it depends on which gospel you're reading. Why does

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Matthew quote the wrong prophet when he speaks about Judas betraying Jesus for 30 pieces of silver? He quotes the prophet

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Jeremiah. The problem is that the prophecy is contained in the book of Zechariah, chapter 11, verse 3.

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Can you see? This is a problem. Mark and Luke and Matthew state that Jesus rode an animal when

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He entered Jerusalem. But in Matthew, the entry into Jerusalem is said to fulfill a prophecy.

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In accordance with Zechariah, chapter 9, verse 9, Your King is coming, sitting on a donkey and a colt.

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Now, here's a problem. Matthew literally describes Jesus as sitting on a donkey and a colt.

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Now, scholars would tell us that in Zechariah, chapter 9, verse 9, we have something called synonymous parallelism.

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This basically means that two lines say the same thing. But Matthew doesn't understand that.

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So Matthew has literalized the poem and rendered two beasts when in fact there were only one. Which means if you read

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Matthew's account, it would mean that Jesus was sitting on a donkey and in fact a colt. Now, every commentator will tell you what

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Matthew has done with Zechariah, but few will attempt to tell you why he has in fact done it. And this is why.

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Could Jesus have been doing that, like a rodeo? The answer is clearly no. So why does Matthew do that?

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Folks at Qumran, who are the collectors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, they point out that they in fact believed in at least two messiahs.

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One was a priestly messiah and a royal messiah. So could Matthew have been answering those who expected dual messianism by using

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Zechariah, chapter 9? Can you see the implications of what we find here? When was the curtain of the temple ripped?

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After Jesus died? Or was it whilst Jesus was still alive? Again, there are implications from this.

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In what you're going to hear and what we're going to discuss, if you want to criticize any religious book, if you're a

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Christian and you want to criticize the Quran and use radical forms of critique, then I can argue that the

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Bible will collapse by the very same standard. Always be honest in your assessment.

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I can state for categorical sureness that I've been honest and I've at least tried to be as sympathetic to the sources that I have.

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I've tried to stick to the best that scholarship offers because in these two books that I have here, one is an introduction to the

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New Testament by Raymond Brown, a noted Christian scholar, Roman Catholic. He's a believer.

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I don't know if James views him as a believer. And here's another book, the New Testament, a historical and theological introduction by Donald Hagner, and they would point out the same thing that I've presented here.

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Now, if that is the case, why is this so absent from lay Christians in different parts of the world?

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Why is it that people are not told about this? Why is it that many Christians do not know that the ascension of Jesus, Mark 16 9 -20 and Luke 24 51, is thrown out as a fabrication in the four gospels.

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The ascension of Jesus is not there. James and I agree about this, and he knows this. But in the vernacular and every

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Bible translation read by many people in different parts of the world, the ascension is still contained there.

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Why is this information not being put forth for people to basically view? So, coming back to my issue and the discussion tonight,

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I would argue, don't just talk about even scales. Don't just simply talk about evil scales, but practically demonstrate it.

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You see, in the discussion we're going to have tonight, he's going to talk about parallel stories and accounts in the

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Quran, and probably from Jewish folklore and fable, but if one could look at just an ordinary account.

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Christmas. Why do we celebrate Christmas? We all celebrate Christmas, Christians, but James, Rudolph and myself agree that this is a pagan festival.

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So, if you want to critique the Quran and use forms of radical critique against the Quran, then the

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Bible could collapse by the same standard. I want to thank you for this. I appreciate you all attending, and I hope we can continue with this fruitful discussion, and I hope

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I've made my points clear and articulated it to the team. Thank you very much. Thanks.

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We're just quickly going to connect Dr. White, and then Dr. White can have his 25 minutes. All right.

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Well, it is indeed an honor to be with you this evening. Thank you very much for being here. I'm not sure how many of you were here last evening, but it's good to have you here this evening, and I hope that you find this evening's discussion to be very helpful.

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My entire goal this evening is truly one of understanding.

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Very rarely do our two communities have a lot of understanding of what the other side believes when it comes to the matter of the nature of our scriptures, and I'm afraid there's so much misunderstanding that when we do talk, there is a great gap between us, and I want to try to bridge that this evening by looking at this issue of right now, parallel accounts, specifically the synoptic gospels in the

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Bible, and then looking at the fact, which is not really discussed a lot amongst many

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Muslims, of the parallel accounts that occur in the Quran as well, and my fundamental desire is to once again call for the use of even scales.

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We need to use the same standards in the defense of our texts that we use in the criticizing of someone else's, and I really do believe that if we look carefully at each other's texts, we'll discover that if we believe that God has spoken, that the use of the same standards will provide a lot of light as to what we can and cannot argue in regards to someone else's text of scripture.

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So we know that the Bible and the Quran both present us with differing views of inspiration.

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That's going to come out a lot tonight. We both describe our books as inspired by God, as God's very words, but what we mean by that is very, very different, and unfortunately, what some of the people, only some, not all, that Yusuf has quoted means by the

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Bible as the word of God is going to be different than what I believe about that. I am not a postmodernist.

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I do not accept much of modernism's rejection of the supernatural.

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I believe that a book can be inspired by God. I'm not ashamed to say that in the face of modern scholarship, and so we're going to discover, however, that what you and I believe about inspiration and what that means, and especially how that comes to exist in written form in the ancient world, some very significant differences.

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We do not believe, for example, that men are delivered some kind of an external thing that they just simply repeat, sort of like a person, well, hearing from an angel, to where Muhammad has no role whatsoever in the creation of the

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Quran other than being the conduit through which it comes. The biblical view of inspiration is very different than that, and it's much more complicated than that.

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It's described by Peter as men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit, and see, we don't have just one person involved in the production of the

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Bible. We have 40 authors over 1 ,500 years in multiple languages.

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I mean, the miracle, really, you talk about the miracle of the Quran, but from our perspective, the miracle of the

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Bible is that you have these threads of truth that are woven through a tapestry that took 40 different people and 1 ,500 years to produce.

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That's a major, major difference, and so keep that in mind as we discuss these particular issues.

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So let's take a look at some of the parallels, and let me talk a little bit about how it is that we understand, specifically, the synoptic

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Gospels. What does synoptic mean? Well, synoptic means to look at in the same way, and so the synoptic

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Gospels are Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John is not considered one of the synoptic Gospels because it doesn't follow the same pattern or the same outline, though he does at times narrate the same events that you have in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

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Now, the early Christians referred to the Gospel, singular, as the entire message of Jesus, but it was always contained in the

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Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. There aren't any other Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There aren't any other Gospels that go back to the 1st century.

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None of the Gnostic Gospels are actually representative of anyone that lived in the 1st century in Palestine or anything like that.

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And so you have these four Gospels that give us the life of Jesus, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke are obviously related to one another.

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Now, how are they related? Well, we've had all sorts of discussion of that already, but let me try to just point out,

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I've already mentioned that men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, but as we look at Matthew, Mark, and Luke, each author is drawing from an overarching

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Gospel tradition. You need to remember that the living apostles, the eyewitnesses of the events of Jesus' life, didn't just disappear when

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Jesus died. Oh yes, there was persecution, but there were many thousands of people who had heard

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Jesus' teachings and things like this, and so those eyewitnesses continued to exist within the

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Church. And so there was a living tradition. It was passed down orally for a period of time, and that would have been supplemented by those living individuals who had heard

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Jesus speaking and teaching. And so in those first few years, we can find elements of this in the

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Gospel traditions and in Paul and other places. We can find out what those early Christians were believing.

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And by the way, we had a very good debate with Shabir Ali at the

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University of Pretoria on this subject a couple of years ago. So I would invite you to take the time to watch that on YouTube and listen to that discussion of what those earliest

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Christians believed. But there was an overarching Gospel tradition. Now, many scholars today somewhat minimize that, and they want to promote the idea of literary dependence.

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And I don't have any problem if especially Luke had written sources, because he says he used written sources.

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He says he examined things, he gathered documents together, he did research, and some people say, well, that proves that can't be the

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Word of God. That, again, is one of the differences between us. We don't believe that that precludes something from being the

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Word of God. And in point of fact, that just simply increases its historical accuracy and in no way precludes it from coming from God.

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But I wouldn't have any problem if there was a relationship. I do have one problem, however, and that is if you come up with a theory, if you say

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Mark was first and Matthew and Luke had Mark and then they had the Q source, all the rest of that stuff, very common, but it raises more questions than it answers.

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And what it requires us to do is to become mind readers. Well, hmm, I wonder what

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Matthew was thinking when he changes this, or I wonder why Luke didn't like this, or something like that.

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And all of a sudden, we are left trying to read minds rather than interpret texts.

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And so I think it ends up raising far more questions than it actually answers. It's much more clarifying to recognize that each one of them is drawing from the same oral tradition, and each one of them has his own audience in mind.

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So we know that Matthew is writing for the Jews, and so he picks his material based upon writing for the

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Jewish people, and he wants to communicate to the Jewish people. But Mark is not trying to communicate to Jewish people specifically.

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He's probably trying to communicate much more to a Roman audience, as is Luke. But Luke, for example, has a much deeper interest in the women in the life of Jesus, in the ministry that they had, and things like that.

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And so there's all sorts of places where he gives insights into what Mary was thinking, or what other of the women were involved in the ministry of Jesus.

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And so the point is we have three different authors, and they are writing different books for different audiences at different times.

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There is no evidence whatsoever that any of them are writing post -AD 70.

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It's all theory. People want to try to push the dates back as far as they can, but that introduces all sorts of questions as to why they would say things that after the destruction of Jerusalem would require them to phrase things differently.

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So there is, for example, no way that anyone can prove that the Synoptic Gospels were not written prior to AD 70, prior to the destruction of Jerusalem.

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But whenever they were written, they're not dated. There isn't a stamp on them someplace. We don't need to have any of those kinds of things.

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No one thought that that was relevant. But the point is that each one had his own audience, and he also had to choose how long a book he was going to write.

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Ever thought about that? I mean, we do this all the time. Let's say some of you decide to write up a

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Facebook article tonight about the debate that you attended this evening. And let's say two of you decide to do that.

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And tomorrow, one of you has off, and one of you has to get up very early in the morning to go to work.

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But you both want to put your Facebook articles up tonight. One of you is probably going to write a pretty brief, quick review.

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The other one might have time to write a very full review. Does that mean you went to two different debates?

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No, it means you're in different contexts. You have a different context of how much time you have.

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Well, obviously, Mark, for example, wants to write a much shorter book than Matthew did.

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And so if you're under a stricture as to how many words you can say or how long you want your book to be, that's going to determine how much information you include, things like that.

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So we have to keep in mind each author has a level of specificity that determines the level of detail that he will provide.

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And very often we're told, well, there's contradiction. It's not contradiction. It's simply the fact that some authors want to provide more detail than other authors at a particular point in time.

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The gospel accounts are not intended to be modern MP3 recordings or court transcripts.

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Very often accusations are made that, well, you know, there's a difference between how Matthew says this and Mark says this.

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Well, of course there is. Matthew and Mark, if they are rendering from Aramaic into Greek, are going to do so in different ways.

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And they can do so perfectly accurately. They may be drawing from different elements of the oral tradition. All these things are perfectly explainable.

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And nobody would accuse us of contradiction or lying if we wrote up reports of this debate and they weren't in the exact same words.

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That's not a matter of that. That's just simply applying a standard that no one in the ancient world would have been able to even begin to understand.

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Well, you said he said this, and you said, does it mean the same thing? Yeah, but you used different words. Well, that's wrong.

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That's a modern, Western, I have an MP3 recorder type standard that never existed in history.

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And as we will see, it's not even used within the Koran as well, which is very important to point out.

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We should not only expect differences between the gospels, we should be thankful for them, for very often they provide a richer insight.

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I've been teaching through the Synoptic Gospels for nearly a decade now in my church. I know we're slow, but I travel a lot too.

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We're just about done. We're just about there. But very often the differences between the gospels are not contradictions.

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They are further information that provide so much more depth to an understanding of what's actually going on in the life and ministry of Jesus.

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So let's look at an example of this. The raising of Jairus' daughter is recorded for us in Matthew and Mark.

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And it's fascinating to note that Matthew, in narrating this event, uses 139 words over eight verses, but Mark uses 379 words over 22 verses.

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It's interesting that when Matthew and Mark both narrate the same event, Matthew is almost always shorter than Mark is.

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Mark gives much more detail and much more information than Matthew does. But Matthew, of course, has to do that because he includes a tremendous amount of teaching that Mark never intended to include in his gospel.

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So each of the writers has to choose, how in -depth am I going to be? Matthew's version is 37 % the length of Mark's.

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Mark's version is 2 .7 times longer than Matthew's. Now, let me just show you how that works out in the story.

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In Matthew 9, while he was saying these things to them, a synagogue official came and bowed down before him and said,

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My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her and she will live. Now compare this with Mark.

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One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, notice he provides the name, came up and on seeing him, fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, so you have the bowing down, but there's even further description of it, saying,

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My little daughter is at the point of death. Please come and lay your hands on her so that she will get well and live.

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Now notice something else. There is a fundamental difference between these two statements, and people have argued that this is a contradiction, because notice,

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My daughter has just died, versus My little daughter is at the point of death.

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Now if you just looked at that, you would say, See, there's a contradiction here. Now, of course, if you believe in literary dependence, then why in the world would

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Matthew want to contradict Mark, which has already been widely distributed in the

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Christian congregation? That's never made any sense to me as to why he would contradict these things. Was he trying to replace

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Mark? No one can prove anything like that. So why would there be this difference?

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Well, again, it's because of what Matthew is doing. Matthew is telescoping.

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Remember the old telescopes? I'm not sure if you had them when you were a kid, but mine were always really cheap and they weren't very good, but if you've ever seen the old movies of people at sea, they would have these telescopes and you could pull it out so you could see farther away, and then you could push it back together.

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It would go in and out, and it was just a mechanism that would allow you to see great distances.

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Well, when we talk about telescoping, sometimes if I describe, let's keep using this example, if I describe the debate this evening on my way home, maybe call my family because they're nine hours behind me, so it's daytime there.

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I'm paying a certain amount of money per minute on my cell phone, and so I'm going to telescope events.

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I'm going to put them together into a briefer version rather than giving the whole detail of, well, you know, we drove down to Durban and we had this conversation in the car, and then we parked over here, and I was worried it was going to rain, so I brought a raincoat.

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I'm not going to go into all that kind of detail with my family. I'm going to give them the highlights. I'm going to telescope it.

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Well, that's what Matthew's doing, and the reason for the difference here is found in this next slide.

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Mark gives us a detail that Matthew completely removes. He does not say anything about it.

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He does not include it. Maybe he didn't even know about it. We have no way of knowing, but notice what

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Mark tells us. While he was still speaking, this is after Jesus had healed, on the way to raise

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Jairus's daughter, a woman with an issue of blood touches his cloak. She's healed. While he was still speaking, they came from the house, the synagogue official, saying,

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Your daughter has died. Why trouble the teacher anymore? But Jesus, overhearing what was being spoken, said the synagogue official,

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Do not be afraid any longer. Only believe. Matthew does not include this information. So what he has done is he has made it so that when

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Jesus arrives at the house, when the disciples come to the house, everybody knows that the little girl has already died.

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That information comes while Jesus is on the way to the house, as Mark tells us, but Matthew doesn't include this in this middle material.

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Remember, it's 2 .7 times longer, I believe, is the number. And so he's giving us more information.

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Now it's just not fair to any historical source when you give more information to say,

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Oh, you shouldn't do that. That's a contradiction. It's very, very easy to make arguments of contradiction when what you're actually looking at is just simply being given more information, and it flushes the whole situation out.

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And that's what's going on here in the raising of Jairus' daughter. So we recognize

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Mark can have his intentions in having the fuller account. Matthew can have his intention in summarizing the account and therefore putting things together.

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No one in the ancient world would have considered either one of them to be lying, deceiving, or doing anything of the like.

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And only if you have a very low view of Scripture to where it is just simply a matter of it being a photocopier and there can be no human activity involved in the giving of that Scripture can you have any problem with what takes place in the synoptic

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Gospels. Here's another example, the sons of Zebedee. In Matthew 20, it says,

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Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to Jesus with her sons, bowing down and making a request of him.

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And he said to her, What do you wish? She said to him, Command that in your kingdom these two sons of mine may sit on your right and one on your left.

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But notice how Mark has it. James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, came up to Jesus saying, Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.

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And he said to them, What do you want me to do for you? They said to him, Grant that we may sit, one on your right hand and one on your left, in your glory.

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So very often, Mormon missionaries will do this all the time. People like that will say,

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Well, see, this is a contradiction because either it was their mother or it was them, it can't be both.

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But the reality is we recognize that when someone represents someone else they are held accountable as if they were those people.

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And so we're simply being given more information. And it's interesting that it's

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Matthew that gives us the more information here rather than Mark. Now, I don't know if there was a relationship there that gives him that information or maybe he's just simply drawing from a different part of the oral tradition that contained that information.

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But the point is the mother is representing the sons and they make a request of Jesus.

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And so, again, if you're going to say, Well, that's a contradiction. No, it's not a contradiction. It is, in fact, simply more information than you would be given.

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And if you say, Well, I just won't accept that, then what you're saying is, I will not accept having more than one gospel unless they're just simply photocopies of one another.

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What good would that be? Why in the world would you have four gospels if they're nothing more than photocopies of one another?

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That doesn't make any sense. There wouldn't be any reason for that, especially if you hold to the literary dependence viewpoint.

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It would not make any sense to have those gospels in that way. The fig tree.

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This is an issue that a lot of my Muslim friends have. They don't understand this story. Notice that Mark, again, gives the longest version of the fig tree.

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I'll just go with Matthew because my time's going by. Now, in the morning when he was returning to the city, he became hungry.

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Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, he came to it and found nothing on it except leaves only, and said to it,

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No longer shall there ever be any fruit from you. And at once the fig tree withered. Now, compare that with Mark where he includes the idea right here.

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If perhaps he would find anything on it. And when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves for it was not the season for figs.

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Now, I'm not going to get into the misunderstanding that unfortunately many people have that disproves that Jesus was ignorant because he didn't know when figs were supposed to be growing.

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If you read both of these in their context, this is when Jesus is going into the temple, this is when the cleansing of the temple is, everything has to do with the fact that the people of Israel look like they have fruit because they have the leaves, they have all the outward trappings, but they don't.

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It's a parable about the people of Israel. That's easy. The point is that, again, Matthew has telescoped, and notice he says,

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And at once the tree withered. But when you read Mark, it was the next morning that they discover that fact.

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Now, again, if we didn't have both of the accounts, we'd only have a part of the information.

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But when we allow both accounts to speak, we can see how these things are to be harmonized to one another.

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Here's a good example. This is not a synoptic parallel specific, but it deals with the synoptics themselves.

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When did Jesus die? Well, John talks about it being the preparation day, which is

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Friday, and it was about the sixth hour, but Mark says it was the third hour when they crucified him.

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Now, John isn't actually saying the crucifixion took place the sixth hour, but there's about a six hour difference when you actually look at the materials between John and Mark.

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Why would that be? Is that a contradiction? No. There were many different time systems in the ancient world, and especially with John being written at a later period in time, most people certainly believe, probably after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, if he's writing from Ephesus, then he's going to use the

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Roman time system. He's not going to use the time system that was being used by the Jews in Palestine at that time.

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And the Romans begin their day six hours different than the Jews did, which did it from sunrise to sunset, whereas the

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Romans had the concept of midnight, which we have in our time today. So again, simply allowing the context and the background and not insisting upon simplistic photocopy -like similarity is what is important here.

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Now, in just two minutes, what can we learn? Well, we need to have equal scales. We must apply the same standards to other scriptures that we apply to our own.

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We must understand similarities as well as differences in our concepts of inspiration. The idea of God breathing out his word, using men, and yet being so provident and so sovereign over his creation, that even though Paul speaks from his heart and John speaks from his heart, that what is produced is exactly what

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God intends it to be, that's what we mean by Theanostos. That's not what Wahi means. That's not the idea of sending down the

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Quran on Laylat al -Qadr to Jabril, and then Jabril gives it in portions to Muhammad. They're very different understandings of Revelation.

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Very, very different understandings of Revelation, and that's going to come up a lot this evening, and I hope we can discuss it.

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What does believing Christian scholarship mean when we speak of such terms as inspiration and inerrancy?

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I believe in inerrancy. I am not afraid to affirm that fact tonight, but one must understand what that means.

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It is not a simplistic thing. What is the difference between plenary verbal inspiration and the dictation theory?

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That's the difference between us. We don't believe that the word was dictated to people, so they just sort of become an automatic writer, and they're just writing things down.

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But we believe that God determines the exact form of what he's going to give and exactly what the result is going to be as well.

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And how does all this impact our overall view of interpretation of our text? For the

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Christian, backgrounds, language, the experience of the author, the identity of the audience, all are vitally important and a part of regular believing exegesis.

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But for the Muslim, is what Muhammad understood relevant to the exegesis of the

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Quran? If you believe that the Quran has eternally existed on a heavenly tablet, then no, but that's one of the things we're going to need to discover this evening, is exactly where Yusuf is in regards to his understanding of those things, and hopefully with that, we will be able to have an excellent discussion this evening.

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Thank you for your attention. Dr. White is responding in due time, and then after that, we're going to have five minutes each, closing statements, and then what we're going to have is the second session that we will start, which will focus on parallel accounts in the

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Quran. So, Yusuf, five minutes for you. Oh, ten minutes, sorry, first. In the name of God, most gracious, most merciful.

54:32

Thank you, James, for that discussion that we had. Now, I want to bring something to your attention.

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Those of you who were at the debate last night, if someone, if you had two people, as you gave the example on Facebook, and two people wrote an account of what happened, and one were to say that the debate ended at eight o 'clock, and another said that the debate ended at half past ten, who would be correct?

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The one at half past ten. But now, two hundred years later, you have two reports of an account.

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The debate finishes at half past eight, and another report says that the debate finishes at half past ten.

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Who is correct? And then you have a thousand years later, you read the same report, someone says the debate finished at half past eight, and another says the debate finished at half past ten, who is correct?

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And the problem is compounded when both writers who say that they recorded the incident, both claim that they were inspired by God.

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So who is now correct? Are you going to blame God for that particular mistake that you have?

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Can you see the problem we have here? And I'm trying to be honest with this, is that, as I intimated earlier, the synoptic problem is an important one.

55:48

If Matthew, for example, altered a story that he found in Mark, we can assume that his changes that he made were influenced by particular theological motifs that he wanted to convey to his particular community.

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Now, I showed you those accounts, you know, all these accounts, comparing

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Mark to Matthew, we can see how Matthew reworked the tradition. Now, I would like Dr. White to deal with that, because clearly an honest observer will see that seems to be an editorial improvement.

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I mean, I gave you how many references? How many references? In the case of Jesus, the disciples probably drowning, and in one instance

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Matthew says, and he changes it to a perishing. Look at the example that James gave about Jairus' daughter.

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And here's a problem, he says it's not a problem, that Matthew, Mark has, there are key differences, but Matthew, in a way, telescopes those key differences, but here's a problem.

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Jesus, in Mark's gospel, we are told, basically is called to cure the daughter on the basis that she's close to death.

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And in Matthew's gospel, same instance, same story, Jairus' daughter is dead.

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Now, James says that's not a key difference, but the point is that the difference may seem insignificant, but in actual fact it is major.

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It's a question of a difference, it's a matter of life and death. Was Jairus' daughter dead, or was

57:27

Jairus' daughter not dead? If you are at the point of death, then you are clearly not dead.

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If you are dead, then you are not at the point of death. Now Mark says that the daughter was at the point of death, meaning in the process of probably going to die.

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Matthew says that Jairus' daughter did die, there's clearly a difference. But if you look at the theory that I proposed earlier on, that in fact,

57:50

Mark is the earlier gospel, and Matthew is the later gospel, and both Mark and Matthew were writing to different communities, then one can clearly quite clearly see that Matthew wanted to indicate to his readers that Jesus in fact raised

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Jairus' daughter from the dead. Can you see? He brought the daughter, she was dead, and now he brought her back to life.

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But in Mark, that is not conveyed, because she's at the point of death, and if someone is at the point of death and you manage to resuscitate them, it's not the same as resurrecting someone who had already died.

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Can you see the implications behind this? So now the problem becomes far more compounded when you ascribe divine inspiration to it.

58:32

You see, I can understand and I agree that people can have different choice of words in communicating a particular thing.

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If all of you have to write about this incident, this debate tonight, you'd all write with your own style, your own grammar, idiosyncrasies, nuances, and so on and so forth.

58:48

But if you find factual differences between the two, then whose version is right? If somebody writes that James White never turned up to the debate, and someone else writes that Yusuf Ismail never turned up to the debate, then who is actually right?

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Well, those who are eyewitnesses can clearly see, but a hundred years from now, who's going to determine whether James White or Yusuf Ismail turned up at the debate?

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Can you see the problem? And a thousand years from now, if the writers of this debate were claimed to have been inspired by God, then can you see the implication?

59:19

If both are not correct, then do you attribute error to God? Because even though there's a human element in your concept of inspiration, the problem is that at the end of the day,

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God is held accountable. So now we have to put God in the box. Like for example, if I could just borrow my mic, this is not the synoptic, this is the gospel of John.

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John chapter 18 verse 9, that the same which me fulfilled, that he spoke of them which thou gavest me,

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I have lost none. But in John chapter 17 verse 12, whilst

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I was with them in the world, I kept them in my name, those that thou gavest me, I have kept, and none of them is lost, except the son of perdition,

01:00:03

Judas Iscariot, that the scripture might be fulfilled. Can you see? What's the difference? What is the difference between one and none?

01:00:11

100 % difference. So what was it? Was it one or was it none? How many disciples did

01:00:17

Jesus in fact lose? Can you see the implication? Now if the writers are said to be inspired by the

01:00:22

Holy Ghost, and even though you admit that your concept of inspiration is different from the

01:00:27

Islamic concept of inspiration, still, the point is that there would be factual similarities. The facts, the description would be factually the same.

01:00:36

But when you have differences, what's the implication? Their implications, the genealogy for example, the genealogies are grossly contradictory.

01:00:44

Both are attributed to Joseph. The story in the resurrection narratives, who did the woman see at the tomb?

01:00:52

You have to reconcile them all together to get what we would call a gospel of harmony, if you want to have and believe in your version.

01:00:59

But clearly, these were written with some degree of independence, but they were interdependent at the same time.

01:01:06

In Mark's account, the woman I instructed to tell the disciples to go to Galilee, but they don't tell anyone. Matthew, disciples are told to go to meet

01:01:14

Jesus, and they immediately go there. In Luke, the disciples are told not to go to Galilee. Now all these writers were writing under inspiration from God.

01:01:21

Which account is right? You see, it's not a choice of words here. It's not basically text complementing each other, or putting them together to complement each other.

01:01:30

We have clearly what can be seen as a contradiction. There clearly, what does Jesus tell the high priest when questioned at his trial?

01:01:37

Why does Matthew quote the wrong prophet? Judas betrays Jesus for 30 persons of silver, referring to the prophecy in Jeremiah, but you actually find the prophecy in Zechariah.

01:01:46

Now, this is clearly an error on the part of Matthew, or the author of Matthew. J .B. Phillips, he wrote a book called

01:01:53

The Gospel According to the Gospel Translated in Modern English. He said, and this is generally accepted, the general scholarly consensus will tell you the same thing.

01:02:01

Early tradition ascribed this gospel to the Apostle Matthew, but scholars nowadays almost all reject this view.

01:02:09

The author, whom we can still conveniently call Matthew, has plainly drawn from Mark's gospel and of course, the mysterious

01:02:18

Queller. So the point is that in the final analysis, and I know time is again limited, it's not just a question of writers complementing each other and one needs to look at it contextually, there are clearly marked differences between these particular writings.

01:02:37

Difference between one and none. That's clearly a marked difference. The difference between Jairus' daughter being at the point of death, as narrated in Mark, and Jairus' daughter already being dead in Matthew.

01:02:49

Now, if we were to look that Matthew had a motif, if we were to look at the idea that Matthew in fact had a motif, and his motif is that he would change to tell us something about his own theology or his own interests.

01:03:02

So if one were to convey Jesus with certain supernatural powers, one would obviously write the narratives about Jesus in that particular fashion and in that specific style.

01:03:12

And I think it's important when we look at this in its entirety that we need to deal with these particular issues.

01:03:19

You know, one can go on, one can go on with numerous accounts, there are numerous and this has been discussed by scholars throughout.

01:03:26

This is not a question of just simply picking and choosing and trying to find fault with scripture. No. I've tried my best to be respectful to scripture and try to accept, and I think

01:03:35

James agrees with me, that his concept of inspiration is different from the Quranic concept of revelation. He believes that there's a human element, right?

01:03:43

But, if these people were moved by the Holy Spirit, then surely, and he subscribes to the principle of inerrancy, meaning, without error.

01:03:52

Now, how can you subscribe to the principle of inerrancy when you find clear -cut error in the existing scriptures that we can basically see?

01:04:03

Can you see the difficulty? And when you particularly find an evolution in the way Jesus is presented, bearing in mind that the

01:04:10

Gospels were written not as biographies but as apologetic motifs to prove certain particular theological points.

01:04:18

I've got two seconds left. So I think these are important issues and I hope in the rebuttal

01:04:24

James deals and addresses with this logically and to the point and focus on the core and fundamental issues that we have because they are inherently disturbing.

01:04:35

Thank you. Thank you

01:04:45

Yusuf. And now Dr. White with his ten minutes. Now, before you forget what was just said to you, which unfortunately happens to a lot of us very quickly,

01:04:54

I want to point out that Yusuf completely misunderstood my central example that I gave this evening and that was about Jairus' daughter.

01:05:04

If you just heard he said, well, look, and this illustrates perfectly the danger of taking the perspective that Yusuf is taking and it's going to really become,

01:05:15

I think, an issue in the next section because basically what he said is, which account is right? They all have to have, they all have to go by the modern standard and they have the same words and so on and so forth.

01:05:26

We're going to discover that's not going to work for the Quran, but here's the issue. He said, see,

01:05:33

Mark doesn't have what Matthew has. Matthew has

01:05:38

Jesus raising a girl who has already died, but Mark, she's at the point of death.

01:05:44

No, it's not. The whole point is that the information that the girl had died came to Jesus and her father as they were coming to the house.

01:05:55

I gave you the section where Mark gave that information right after the healing of the woman with the issue of blood.

01:06:02

The point was that when they get to the house in both Matthew and Mark, they know they're coming to a place where a death has already taken place.

01:06:10

See what happened there is ignoring what Mark actually says. Now we start going,

01:06:16

I wonder why Matthew did this. Matthew's trying to make Jesus look bigger and that is also in 2006

01:06:24

I debated Shabir Ali at Biola University and I had caught Shabir in a simple error based upon the fact that Shabir did not read

01:06:32

Greek at that time. In all of his lectures he had talked about, he talks about this alleged growth between Mark and then

01:06:40

Matthew and Luke and so on and so forth. It's a very unfair and I believe grossly biased position to take because it doesn't then give counterexamples and there are numerous counterexamples to be cited but the specific story that was cited again by Yusuf, though we have corrected this,

01:06:59

I don't know how many times now, was Mark 13 .35 and Matthew 24 .42. For years

01:07:04

Shabir had said, well here's this evolution because in Mark you have the master of the house and in Matthew it becomes the

01:07:14

Lord and see there's this evolution. And I looked him up and they both use kurios. They both use the same term.

01:07:21

And so there is no evolution and the screen that Yusuf showed clearly comes from Shabir Ali where he tries to explain this but the fact of the matter is one adds one word description and that's it.

01:07:37

There is no evolution, there is no evidence of change. We need to stop citing that one.

01:07:42

We've refuted it many many times now. We need to stop going there. I think it's very very important that we do that.

01:07:51

How many women were at the tomb? Now I actually wrote this down Yusuf.

01:07:57

I said Yusuf owes Bart Ehrman some royalties. Because if you're familiar with who

01:08:03

Bart Ehrman is, Bart Ehrman is the most prolific English speaking critic of the

01:08:10

New Testament. He's an apostate, he's a former Christian. And you've got some of his books.

01:08:15

There's a book sitting right there. And I've debated Bart Ehrman and what you heard about, well how many women were at the tomb?

01:08:24

Well it depends on which manuscripts you read. Depends on which book you read. Depends on which count you read. How many this, how many that.

01:08:29

This is his standard approach that he uses in all of his classes, all of his teaching, all of his debates over and over and over again.

01:08:38

And what I want you to hear nail this down right now because there's a second part to this discussion this evening.

01:08:45

What's being said was there must be exactness in recording of details or we are going to make the accusation of error and contradiction.

01:08:56

So there can't be any difference. So if one gives more information, we were just told well which one's right?

01:09:04

And the problem is in dealing with any accounts written by any individuals, including the accounts in the

01:09:13

Quran, we are going to see that is an absolutely insustainable argument.

01:09:20

And therefore, if we have equal scales, then I'm going to suggest to you that the standard that has been utilized this evening so far in Yusuf's criticism of the

01:09:32

Synoptic Gospels will require a rejection of belief in the inspiration of the

01:09:37

Quran itself. Now you're not going to do that, so you've got a choice. You've either got to rethink the criticism or you've got to abandon the

01:09:49

Quran. And I don't think most of you are going to be willing to do that. So let's keep that in mind.

01:09:55

We were just told that Matthew quoted the wrong prophet. There are a couple places in the

01:10:01

New Testament where people who are ignorant of how the Jews cited Scripture because remember something folks, there were no chapter divisions, there were no verse divisions in anybody's scriptures for a great deal of time.

01:10:14

And in fact, in the Bible you did not have the modern chapter and verse divisions until 1551.

01:10:21

So for the majority of the experience of the existence of the Christian scriptures, you did not, you couldn't cite

01:10:28

John 3 .16. There was no John 3 .16. So citation of text, especially when you have a scroll, how do you cite a scroll?

01:10:39

Well, the only way to cite a scroll would be by the first book in the scroll if you have other books that are in that scroll.

01:10:47

And so it became common for the Jews to cite their books by the major prophet that was the first prophet in the scroll that you would be looking, you've got these different scrolls, you need to be able to find it that way, you didn't have a book, you couldn't turn the pages.

01:11:01

It's interesting that even scribes down through history introduced textual variants in the

01:11:07

New Testament because they were ignorant of these things. And so in Mark chapter 1, for example, there is a conflated citation of Isaiah and one of the minor prophets.

01:11:18

It's cited properly as Isaiah, the major prophet, but some scribe later on goes, oh, but there's somebody else.

01:11:24

So he changed it to prophets. Now we know he did that if we only had one manuscript. We wouldn't know he did that, but we have many manuscripts, and so we can detect these things.

01:11:32

That's exactly what Yusuf is doing right now. He made a mistake. No, he didn't. He's just doing it the way Jews did, and you just don't know how the

01:11:38

Jews did it. And so that's exactly what's going on here. You need to understand the backgrounds, understand what was going on in those situations.

01:11:48

We were told that the genealogies of Jesus are grossly contradictory. If you will take the time to look at in -depth scholarly commentaries on the subject of the relationship, or just look at a scholarly commentary on Luke, compare it with a scholarly commentary on Matthew, a believing one.

01:12:10

I mean, I wouldn't say to you, why don't you read unbelieving commentaries on the Quran once in a while? Well, then

01:12:16

I would suggest to you, why don't you look at what believing commentators say about the Bible? And I think you would discover that brilliant intellects have done tremendous work on this and have pointed out, for example, that obviously

01:12:29

Matthew is not intending to give us any kind of exhaustive genealogy of Jesus.

01:12:35

He's making an argument to a Jewish audience, which is why he divides the genealogy up into sevens.

01:12:44

It's specifically meant to make a point and an argument, and nobody, nobody in the day of Matthew reading that would have gone, it's grossly contradictory.

01:12:54

They would have gone, oh, he's presenting something to us in such a way that he's saying, see, here's the fulfillment, here's the numbers of generations, and so the next time there's to be the great person, great fulfillment comes in Jesus, okay,

01:13:09

I get the argument. Whether you'd accept it or not is another issue, but don't accuse Matthew of not knowing what in the world he's talking about.

01:13:17

I mean, Matthew knows what he's handling. Matthew knows what he's doing. There is a point that goes far beyond.

01:13:24

And it's the same thing with Matthew 27, 51 and a zombie apocalypse, really.

01:13:30

Read Matthew 27, 51. There was a resurrection of some who had died.

01:13:36

It was not a general resurrection. Obviously, for people in Jerusalem to know who they were, they would have had to have just recently died.

01:13:42

There was a demonstration of God's power. The idea that these were zombies running around through Jerusalem or something like that is to completely, but the argument was, well, why didn't the other

01:13:53

Gospels say it? And again, the assumption is they all have to be identical. If they're identical, why do we need four of them?

01:14:00

What is the basis for this assertion? They must be identical to one another. What's the basis?

01:14:06

I have not heard a basis other than, well, I just won't accept it if it's not that way. What is the basis of saying that we cannot, that God has not given us a great thing in giving us different perspectives with messages for differing peoples, for Gentiles and Jews and so on and so forth in the

01:14:24

Gospel narratives? We haven't been given that explanation yet. And I would be, I'm looking forward very much to hearing what that explanation might be.

01:14:33

Thank you very much for your attention. Okay, no worries.

01:14:43

25 minutes, Dr. White, for the second part on the Quran. I'll set my time as well.

01:14:48

There you go. All right, thank you very much. Now, here's where the rubber meets the road.

01:14:56

Here's where there's never been a dialogue like this before, to my knowledge. You ever heard of anybody talking about this?

01:15:02

No. And here's where I think the value of it will come from if we will allow it to speak to us, if we will allow our hearts and minds to open to think about these things.

01:15:16

Because my big concern, and anybody who has listened to my debates that I've been doing now since 2006, starting with Shabir Ali, knows that my concern all along has been consistency.

01:15:31

And I try to be consistent in my application of standards, in my dialogues with Muslims. We have fundamental disagreements.

01:15:39

Tomorrow night I'm debating the old subject is Jesus God. OK? Big disagreement.

01:15:46

But we can't keep debating the same thing over and over again. We have to get to more fundamental, foundational issues if we're going to ever increase in our understanding of each other and get any farther down the road.

01:15:58

And so I want to thank Yusuf for being willing to do these things. He's doing

01:16:05

Star Trek. He's going into unknown countries and so on and so forth here. And I appreciate that.

01:16:10

But here's the issue. We need I try my best to only use arguments in my defense of the

01:16:21

Christian faith or even my criticism of Islam that would be consistent with how I defend my own faith.

01:16:30

And I think that is something that's absolutely necessary for all of us. And so let's see if I'm consistent with what

01:16:38

I just said about my text and how a Muslim will understand the differences that exist between parallel accounts.

01:16:46

Now, were you aware of the fact there are parallel accounts in the Quran? Of course. Tafsir literature has dealt with this for a long, long time.

01:16:54

But I've talked to more than one Muslim, and when I've asked them about these things, it's like, well,

01:17:00

I had never thought about that before. For example, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is told four different times in the

01:17:10

Quran. In Surah 7, Surah 26, Surah 27, and Surah 29. And when we look at them, there's a lot of similarity here.

01:17:21

But there's also differences. Will you commit foulness such as no creature ever did before you?

01:17:27

Surah 7. What, of all creatures, do you come unto the males and leave the wives your

01:17:34

Lord created for you? Will you commit abomination knowingly? You commit obscenity such as no creature did before you.

01:17:42

Now, the translation I'm using is the Turkish translation was done by an entire group of scholars.

01:17:48

And sometimes, sometimes, some of the differences are just translational differences that do not have underlying

01:17:55

Arabic differences. But many times, there are specific Arabic differences between the two.

01:18:02

Do you come unto men and rob on the highway? Um, where is that in Surah 7?

01:18:09

Uh, where is that in Surah 26? Um, where is that in Surah 27?

01:18:15

Where in Surah 27? No, you are but a people who are ignorant. Well, where is that in Surah 29?

01:18:21

You will see differences between these narrations of the same event.

01:18:29

Now, I am not arguing for a second that they're not narrating the same event.

01:18:35

I am not, for a second, trying to argue that they're contradictory to one another because I recognize the necessary standard that we must apply to any ancient work, especially when those ancient works are narrating the same events.

01:18:51

The authors have the right to express those things in different ways. But here is where the difference comes in.

01:18:59

You and I don't believe the same thing about inspiration and especially the issue of the

01:19:06

Quran being one author, no human intermediation.

01:19:13

This was written, at least according to Sunni orthodoxy, and I'm going to need to find out from Yusuf what his understanding of this is, and I wish

01:19:22

I knew so I could incorporate here, but we'll find out here, and this is where I'll find out. But for many

01:19:28

Muslims with whom I have spoken, let me put it that way, I'm not going to hold him accountable for that because we haven't had a discussion of this, but for many

01:19:35

Muslims with whom I have spoken, the Quran existed in eternity past, uncreated upon that heavenly tablet, and it has been sent down on Laylat al -Qadr to Jibril, here to the earth, parceled out to Muhammad over time between 610 and 632.

01:19:53

All right, then why are there differences? You see, the differences between Matthew and Mark is because Matthew has a certain length of a gospel in mind,

01:20:05

Mark has a certain length of a gospel in mind, Matthew has a certain audience, Mark has a different audience,

01:20:11

Mark has a different vocabulary than Matthew has, that's why there are differences, and that's how God chose to give us

01:20:17

His word. He's big enough to, He made us, He's big enough to use us, with the results still being exactly what

01:20:23

He wanted us to have. He's big enough to do that. But how does the

01:20:29

Muslim understanding of the transmission of the Quran and its uncreated nature, at least in Sunni orthodoxy, my understanding is the

01:20:41

Shiites have a different view on this, I'm not an expert on Shiite theology, I'm not an expert on anybody's theology for that matter, other than my own, but at least amongst

01:20:48

Sunnis, how does the idea that these were written on a heavenly tablet, which one's perfect?

01:20:57

Which one's perfect? Well they all are you say, but wait a minute, we were just told that if my gospels say anything differently, you've got to have just one way of saying it, or it's wrong.

01:21:09

Well then which one's right? Which account is right? That's the question. Now these are just simply different ways of saying the same thing, but they contain information that the other ones don't.

01:21:21

If this is a perfect thing that has that information, is this an imperfect one that doesn't? When the surah was first given, before let's say this one came before this one,

01:21:30

I'm just guessing at that, for a period of time was there ignorance amongst people because they didn't have the added information?

01:21:37

I mean these are questions that come up in light of whatever theory of inspiration we're going to be dealing with.

01:21:43

Let's look at another one to illustrate it. Oh it helped, you know what? It does not.

01:21:53

I want to blame my technology, but it was user, error exists between user and keyboard, and that would be me.

01:22:00

What was said to lot in this situation? In surah 7, drive them out of your city.

01:22:07

They are people who keep themselves pure. Surah 26, if you cease not a lot, you will soon be of the outcasts.

01:22:14

Surah 27, expel the household of lot from your city for they are people who purify themselves. And surah 29, bring

01:22:21

Allah's torment upon us if you are truthful. Well, was it all of it together?

01:22:29

What about when there's differences? Who keep themselves pure, who purify themselves? Pretty much the same thing.

01:22:37

But there's nothing about purity here in surah 26. And here's Allah's torment, which isn't found any place else.

01:22:44

So which one is the perfect accounting? Now, that's not the standard that I would apply here.

01:22:52

But again, in light of the standard that's already been applied to my text, equal scales means only one of these can be correct.

01:23:00

I don't think that's the way forward. That's why I think the arguments that are commonly used against the reliability of the

01:23:07

New Testament by Muslims need to be rethought critically in light of a meaningful defense of your own text.

01:23:16

I think that's vitally important. That's what I'm calling for this evening. That's what I'm calling for this evening.

01:23:22

We need to move the ball down the field. We need to advance. And just because there were popular ways of doing things in the past does not mean we keep doing it that way.

01:23:34

There are bad arguments against Islam. I try not to repeat them. Do I get resistance from my own people about that?

01:23:42

Yep, sometimes I do. Might you get resistance if you say, you know what? That argument's not really a good argument.

01:23:48

We need to abandon it. Well, you might. But for a Christian, truth is the ultimate issue.

01:23:56

Truth is the ultimate issue. And I would say that you'd probably say that for yourself as well, right? So that's where we need to go. So what was said?

01:24:03

Good question. How Thank you.

01:24:09

How did the law punish the evildoers? Well, Surah 7, and we rained a rain upon them.

01:24:15

See how it was the end of the criminals. Surah 26, we rained on them a rain. And dreadful is the rain of those who have been warned.

01:24:22

Surah 27, we rained upon them a rain upon them. Dreadful is the rain of those who have been warned.

01:24:27

And Surah 29, we are about to bring down upon the people of this city punishment from the sky because of their corruption.

01:24:34

And we have left a clear sign for people to understand. Two points. If these two are right, stop that.

01:24:41

If these two are right, this one's wrong. Because this is past, this is we're about to.

01:24:48

Isn't that exactly what we have between Matthew and Mark? We were just told they're contradictory.

01:24:54

Do you have a contradiction in the Quran? I don't think so, but that's because I recognize the need to use proper standards.

01:25:01

But there's something else I want you to see. These two, even though there's a slight difference in English rendering, in the

01:25:07

Arabic, are identical. Now, why did I put that up there? Because it points out that if the author of the

01:25:14

Quran wanted to say it in the exact same way, he could. He did right there.

01:25:20

In two of the accounts, it's identical. And the other two, it's different. Why? Now, you see,

01:25:29

I think most Western Muslim scholars outside of Egypt or Saudi Arabia or some places like that would like to look at this and say, this is simply the author's way of expressing the same truths in different words.

01:25:50

But the problem is, that then introduces the issue of the author into the selection of the words themselves.

01:25:59

And if you have the theory that this has been inscribed in Arabic in an uncreated fashion for all of eternity, and is simply transcribed through the process of being given the

01:26:11

Jibreel, then given the Muhammad, and it's written down, and that's it, there's no room for making choices about words.

01:26:19

For Christians, we believe that Paul made choices about words, and John made choices about words, and Matthew made choices about words.

01:26:25

But remember what 2 Timothy 3 .16 says. It says, all scripture is theanoustas, not every scripture writer.

01:26:34

It's the result that is exactly what God wanted us to have. And that requires us to believe that God knows each and every one of us, including each and every scripture writer, with such intimacy that he could use them in their life situation to give us exactly what he wanted us to have as his word.

01:26:54

Now maybe you haven't been explained that as a Muslim, as to our understanding of inspiration, and believe me, there's a bunch of people who call themselves

01:27:00

Christians who either have never thought about this, or have a very low view of scripture, and I'm sorry about that.

01:27:06

I don't hold you accountable for the nominal Muslims who are Muslims in name only, they don't pray, they don't care about the

01:27:12

Quran, they don't want to apply the principles of life to themselves, I'm not trying to hold you accountable to them either.

01:27:19

Okay? But I hope you're hearing what we understand about inspiration, because it raises all sorts of questions, when you apply the standard that's been applied to my text, which one of these is right?

01:27:33

It can be said identically, but it isn't always said identically, which is where the issue comes up.

01:27:41

And I would especially like to know, here it's past tense, we are about to. We are about to.

01:27:47

Is there something in the context that changes that? Again, if these are all

01:27:53

Allah speaking, then which one is what he actually said? Now, here is a special example.

01:28:05

This is in regards to the angels, at the creation. In Surah 7,

01:28:11

Allah says, prostrate yourselves before Adam. But in Surah 38, it says,

01:28:18

I am creating a human being from clay, so when I have fashioned him and breathed into him of my spirit, then fall down before him prostrate.

01:28:26

Now, here is a bit of a problem. And I'll be interested in the understanding. These are not words describing what

01:28:35

Allah did. These are the very words of Allah. This is Allah speaking. Prostrate yourselves before Adam.

01:28:43

I am creating a human. So which one is the right one? This looks to me like a summary statement, a telescoping of what you have here.

01:28:57

So does the author of the Quran have the right in one surah to tell the story in a fuller sense and in another surah to tell it in a shorter sense?

01:29:13

I say he does, but I'm not sure how that fits into your theology. And that's why

01:29:18

I'm here to find out from Yusuf how he understands that. But something tells me, and I think

01:29:25

Yusuf will probably confirm this, that there might be some differences of opinion amongst the Muslims here this evening as to how that works.

01:29:31

Maybe even might disagree with Yusuf's explanation. I don't know. We'll find out. We'll find out.

01:29:38

And as long as we have mutual respect for one another, at the very least, unlike most people who spent this evening battering their

01:29:47

IQ by watching television, you will have spent this evening learning something more about someone else and maybe increasing in your own faith.

01:29:56

That might be a good thing. Might be a very good thing. But here, the important thing is these are the very words of Allah.

01:30:04

It's in the exact same context of the creation. So which one's right?

01:30:11

It would be pretty easy for someone to say, well, this was extra stuff that just wasn't said here, but the problem is this and this are the same thing.

01:30:23

Not identical, but it's the same command. So you have to come up with the idea that, well, yeah,

01:30:28

Allah said this, and then he said that afterwards, or something. But the reality is you have to use the exact same methodology of harmonization.

01:30:42

You have to ask for the exact same freedom to allow these texts to speak within their context that was denied to the synoptic gospels in the first half of this debate.

01:30:55

That's why I call for even scales. Same arguments for both.

01:31:02

How about Adam's fall? Adam's fall. There are three main accounts of Adam's fall in the

01:31:07

Quran. 2 .30 -38, 7 .11 -27, and 20 .115 -124. It's a vitally important theological issue bearing on history, law, theology, and salvation.

01:31:19

I've said many, many times one of the fundamental differences between us goes back to the issue of man and his sin and what man's relationship as a sinner to God can be.

01:31:33

The holiness of God, salvation, it all goes back to Adam. Are we fallen in him?

01:31:38

You all don't believe in original sin. We do. That has a huge impact on understanding

01:31:44

God having to be the one to take the initiative in salvation, the ability of mankind to fulfill commandments whether they're dead in sin or not dead in sin.

01:31:52

This is all important stuff. We would think the Quran would be mubinun, clear on this issue.

01:32:00

And yet, the three accounts of Adam's fall differ greatly from one another. In Surah 2,

01:32:06

Satan causes Adam to slip therefrom which is not exactly a decisively clear description.

01:32:14

To slip therefrom. To slip from something. Evidently he's right standing with God. Satan is the one who causes

01:32:22

Adam to slip. That's all it says. You go to Surah 7, Adam says that he and Eve have wronged ourselves.

01:32:32

Well, see, I automatically put those two together. Satan's involved, but they accept their responsibility so they've wronged themselves.

01:32:42

Wronged ourselves. In Surah 20, it is said that Adam forgot and that no firm intention was found in him.

01:32:52

Well, which one is the right one? It's easy for me and I think it's necessary for all of us to say, well, we need to harmonize them.

01:33:04

We need to put them together. But that door was already closed in the first half of the debate.

01:33:12

Unless we want to open it up and say, okay, maybe our arguments against the synoptics are we've been relying too much upon people that don't share our belief in supernatural revelation.

01:33:24

Maybe that'd be a good direction to go here. The only way to deal with such divergent text is to seek to harmonize them by allowing for authorial intent and literary freedom of expression.

01:33:38

But how does this fit with the view of the Qur 'an as having nothing of men in it and the idea that is reflective of an eternal tablet?

01:33:46

That's what we're going to have to discuss because I don't know how

01:33:52

Yusuf is going, what Yusuf's position on this is so I'm not criticizing it because I don't know what it is yet. But I want to make sure we actually address the important question which gives light to our interaction with one another this evening.

01:34:07

Here's another question. What did Allah say to Satan? Now once again, we're talking here about the very words of Allah.

01:34:16

What did Allah say to Satan in Surah 7? Then go down from it, that is the garden.

01:34:22

It is not for you to show arrogance here, so leave, you are of the degraded. In Surah 38, go out from here, you are accursed, and my curse is on you till the day of judgment.

01:34:37

Well, again, these are the very words of Allah. Did he say both of them?

01:34:43

Did he say get out, go down? Did he mention the garden, not mention the garden?

01:34:50

Did he mention the curse? Did he say something about arrogance? There's nothing about arrogance here.

01:34:57

So is one adding information? Is it wrong to add information? When I just pointed out that my

01:35:04

Gospels add information, that was called a contradiction and error. So do we do the same thing here?

01:35:11

No. I'm saying no we don't. That's not appropriate.

01:35:17

But again, the question then becomes, let's say from the position of Sunni orthodoxy that these are the very words of God and they are delivered by Jibreel, then the question that has to be asked is, why does

01:35:30

Allah report his own words in different words?

01:35:37

Because when Yusuf got up in his rebuttal, what did he do? He talked about what time we got out last night, remember?

01:35:44

And he kept saying, if it's 100 years now, 200 years now, it still is contradictory, no matter what.

01:35:51

That was his point. Well, if you use that standard, which one is the right one? I think what this reveals is that we can't use those standards because they do not reflect the reality of our text, but my real question then becomes if you believe what you believe about inspiration, because you see, if Surah 7 was written by one person and Surah 38 written by another person,

01:36:15

I wouldn't have any problem with this. Even if they're written by the same person at different times in their life, even if these were from two different sermons, they're not contradictory.

01:36:25

But given your perspective, how do you understand it? I'm actually looking forward to finding out how that works and how you understand that.

01:36:34

Finally, what did Satan threaten in Surah 7? Now because you have sent me astray,

01:36:40

I shall lurk and ambush for them on your straight path, then I shall come upon them from before them and from behind them and from their right and from their left and you shall not find most of them thankful for your mercies.

01:36:52

And in Surah 38, it's just then by your might I shall beguile them all, save your sincere servants among them.

01:37:00

I don't know about you, but that is clearly a summary statement and compilation of what's here.

01:37:08

Right? So this can't be an error to summarize something, just like it wasn't an error for Matthew to summarize what happened with Jairus' daughter.

01:37:20

Right? Even scales. Consistency. Gotta have it.

01:37:26

It's a good thing. Now, when Muslims engaging in Dawah raise issues regarding the

01:37:32

Synoptic Gospels, do they do so using a double standard? Do they apply the same standards they apply to the

01:37:39

New Testament, to the Quran? If not, they are not arguing in accordance with the Quranic imperative and your

01:37:45

Arabic is much better than mine, but the standard translation is argue with them in beautiful ways.

01:37:53

Hassan, is it beautiful ways or sometimes they translate as accurate ways or things like that. The point is that Surah 16, verse 125 says to use arguments that are beautiful and my world view, and I think your world view would agree with this, that something that is untruthful is not beautiful.

01:38:13

One of the 99 names is Al -Haqq, is it not? The truth? And so, double standards cannot be something that either

01:38:23

I, I cannot use them because I follow him who is the way, the truth, and life. As a

01:38:30

Muslim, you can't either if one of the 99 names is Al -Haqq. Right? But in particular, how does the orthodox

01:38:40

Sunni idea of the uncreated Quran, and I hope you know in your history, that developed over time. That was a development over time.

01:38:46

There was controversy over that. The uncreated heavenly tablet, square with the variations in narration, details, language, and content in the parallel accounts found in the

01:38:58

Quran. Especially when Allah is quoting Allah. How do you deal with that in light of your position?

01:39:07

And, if one adopts more modern views of the Quran, how does this impact the entirety of Tafsir today?

01:39:14

If we can begin to ask questions about the motivation of the author, alterations of the text, so as to communicate in nuanced meaning, etc.

01:39:20

Does this not introduce an entire universe of unanswered questions regarding Quranic teaching and Quranic meaning?

01:39:26

And so, in conclusion, the Bible and the Quran both contain parallel accounts, though not in exactly the same form. The multiplicity of authors, as well as the longer period of time over which it was written, changes the dynamic of the

01:39:37

Bible's parallel passages. The questions that must be asked of the Quran's focus upon its compilation,

01:39:42

Canada in particular, upon the theory of inspiration. These are the things we need to discuss this evening.

01:39:48

Thank you very, very much for your attention. Applause In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful All praise is due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon the

01:40:03

Messenger of Allah, and upon his family and companions all. After this, I seek refuge with Allah from the accursed

01:40:08

Satan. My Lord, open my chest, and ease my affair, and remove the tightness of my tongue, so that what

01:40:14

I say may be understood. God is truthful, God is great. Now, I want to thank

01:40:19

James for that impassioned presentation that he did on the particular Quran. What he presented is something that I discussed with some students that came from the

01:40:30

Al -Ahsa Center close to a year ago, and it's contained in his book What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran.

01:40:36

There's an entire chapter which basically is focused on this particular issue, and so nothing that he presented tonight is anything new, or anything that has any particular impact in terms of what was discussed previously in the early presentation.

01:40:51

Now, here's a problem, before I go into the main presentation. You see, James presented us passages of the

01:40:58

Quran, which purportedly appear to say the same thing, but in different perspectives.

01:41:04

For example, what did Lot say to the people of Sodom? Surah 7, verse 80.

01:41:10

Will you commit foulness such as no creature ever did before you? Surah 26 verse 165. What of all creatures do you come unto males?

01:41:18

Surah 27, verse 54. Will you commit abomination knowingly? Surah 29, verse 28.

01:41:24

You commit obscenity such as no creature did before you. Now, the question is, what's the difference there?

01:41:32

What is the difference? There's a difference in terms of the choice of words. The difference in the expression, that is basically presented in a different context, but it basically says the same thing.

01:41:44

So, if I were to say, James White, get out and go to Arizona, and Rudolph reports the next day that Yusuf said that James White needs to leave and go back to Arizona, would he be saying what

01:41:56

I basically conveyed? Yes! But the point is, that the choice of words is different.

01:42:03

Now, in my critique on the New Testament, I wasn't looking at the choice of words.

01:42:09

I was looking at factual differences. You see, one or none. How many disciples did

01:42:14

Jesus lose? You see, James has still not dealt with that particular issue. He attempted to deal with the issue of the genealogies, but how does he deal with the fact in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 1, which speaks about the three different time periods and 14 generations right through, but when you look at the time from the

01:42:31

Babylonian captivity, right up until Jesus, you have 13 generations. Can you see? There's a problem.

01:42:38

Factual differences basically mean someone says X, and another person says

01:42:43

Y. But if two people say X, but the way they say X would be different, it doesn't mean that they're contradictory.

01:42:51

If I were to tell you to get out of the auditorium, and if someone were to tell you to leave the auditorium, it's the same thing, but the pronouncing is different.

01:43:01

So, for example, if it said here, will you commit foulness as no creature has done before you? What of all creatures do you come unto males?

01:43:09

Will you commit abomination knowingly? You commit obscenity such as no creature did before you. What is a contradiction?

01:43:16

There's no contradiction there, but it's a choice of words. Now, bearing in mind that the Quran uses certain parables and stories, particularly as vehicles to convey certain theological and moral truths.

01:43:29

What you're doing is raising technical concerns and attempting to say, well look, how can you now criticize the

01:43:37

New Testament whereas you have something similar like that in the Quran? No, James, it's not the same.

01:43:43

One and none is not the same. There's a 100 % difference between one and none. Can you see?

01:43:51

There's a significant difference between what we have in the New Testament and what we have in the Quranic text.

01:43:57

Now, I want to move on to the particular discussion. The Quran quite clearly states, and I think from this perspective,

01:44:04

I'm going to expand my issue on some of the aspects that James has raised, and add additional material.

01:44:10

And they say, tales of the ancients which he has caused to be written. Now, although James never focused on this particular issue, but this is a charge of the

01:44:19

Quran having borrowed ancient materials and composing it as the Quran is contrary to the particular view of Christians.

01:44:26

What is the excuse? You see, the main particular problem, which

01:44:33

I want James to state and convey to us, is that he disagrees with the

01:44:39

Quran. He disputes that the Quran is a divine word of God. Why not come open?

01:44:46

Why not be open about it? You see, traditionally, missionaries, when referring to the

01:44:53

Prophet Muhammad, they had certain charges that they laid against him. If you look at someone like, for example,

01:45:01

Bob Moray, James is nowhere clear to him, they would make the allegation that he's mad, they would say he's possessed by Satan, or they would say that he's lying.

01:45:11

Now the problem is that in missionary tautology, which is what James represents, they have to have all three at the same time.

01:45:21

But the argument is that you cannot have your cake and eat it at the same time. Because if someone is mad, then he cannot be a liar, because he's insane.

01:45:30

Am I correct? If someone is lying, then he cannot be possessed by Satan. Am I correct?

01:45:35

But now in missionary tautology, the allegation and the charge against the Prophet Muhammad is all three.

01:45:41

So now I want to ask James to ask in his rebuttal, does he believe that the Prophet Muhammad was mad?

01:45:47

Does he believe that he was possessed? Yesterday I showed it couldn't be the case, because the Quran has many verses which says that when you read the

01:45:54

Quran, you are to say فَاسْتَعِذْ بِاللَّهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ When you read my book, I seek protection in Allah from Satan the accursed one.

01:46:02

And clearly if Satan wrote the book, he wouldn't tell you to ask God to seek protection from him. It doesn't make sense.

01:46:08

So from that particular aspect, the argument simply falls down. Is he lying? Is he lying?

01:46:15

Lying would mean that he's an imposter, he's a deceiver. Now there are many examples in the life of the

01:46:21

Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, whereby certain issues raised which basically raise certain aspects.

01:46:28

For example, in Bukhari there's an incident where there was an eclipse of the sun. We had an eclipse a couple of days ago.

01:46:34

And in that particular narrative, if the

01:46:39

Prophet was crazy or mad, he would have claimed and said yeah, my and his child had passed away,

01:46:47

Ibrahim. He would have said, yes, my child has died and there's an eclipse. Yeah, it's a miracle. If he was crazy, if he was lying, he would have said, yeah, you go and tell the people, this proves that I am a prophet.

01:47:01

What did the Prophet, peace be upon him, say? He said that the signs of God and the sun does not basically change or eclipse for the death of any person or the birth of the son of Muhammad.

01:47:15

But when you see it, you invoke God and seek his pleasure and worship him. Doesn't sound crazy, doesn't sound somewhat mad.

01:47:22

So the question I need to ask James, that if he has these theories which he's presenting to us, does he believe that the

01:47:28

Prophet was mad? Does he believe that he was possessed by Satan? Does he believe that he's lying?

01:47:33

In missionary tautology, you have to have all three. Because all missionaries in their writings will throughout their works tell you somehow or the other that he's mad in certain instances, he's possessed or he's lying.

01:47:46

My point is that you cannot have your cake and eat it at the same time. It can be one or the other, but it cannot be all two or three at the same time.

01:47:54

Now, here goes a problem. And we look at the issue of borrowing. The main theme of the theory of borrowing is as follows.

01:48:02

If a later text shows similarities to an older text or tradition or similar to what is known or thought before, then the later text has borrowed, plagiarized, copied, utilized or previously known.

01:48:14

Now here's a problem. Within missionary circles in the past, close to 180 years ago, there were themes that there were certain stories in the

01:48:25

Quran that were borrowed from Jewish folklore and fable to show parallels from pre -Quranic sources, thus demonstrating that the

01:48:33

Prophet Muhammad borrowed from the spiritual debt to the Judeo -Christian heritage. But the problem with this, let's assume that Prophet Noah was given certain examples, then the

01:48:43

Prophet Moses was given certain examples after certain commandments. Now, if we want to see that the followers of the

01:48:50

Prophet Noah accusing the followers of the Prophet Moses, how do we accept the followers of the Prophet Moses to respond?

01:48:56

Because the law has come from the same source, we could find similar teachings. So the problem is, let's stop engaging in duplicitous double standards.

01:49:08

In all the passages that James, and I'm disappointed I must say, you know, he says, he's always disappointed by me.

01:49:14

Three debates, you know, my teachers were disappointed, but in every single debate he's been disappointed, particularly when the thing gets too tough in the context of the debate.

01:49:22

I hope he's not disappointed tonight. But the problem is, I am disappointed that he never chose to even focus on any of these particular issues.

01:49:29

He focused on issues which were a total irrelevance, in my opinion. I gave you an example, and I'll look at some of the other passages and examples that he focused on here.

01:49:40

For example, what did the people of Sodom say to Lot? Or what did

01:49:46

Lot say to the people of Sodom? Or how did Allah punish the city of Sodom? Let's look at this example.

01:49:53

In Surah 7, verse 84, it says, And we rained a rain upon them, see how was the end of the criminals.

01:49:58

Surah 26, verse 173. We rained a rain on them, and dreadful is the rain of those who have been worn.

01:50:04

27, verse 28. We rained a rain upon them, dreadful is the rain of those who have been worn. Similar to Surah 26,

01:50:10

Surah 29. We are about to drown upon the people of the city. Punishment from the sky, meaning we will rain a rain upon them, because of their corruption.

01:50:19

And we have left a clear sign for people to understand. Now the question I need to ask is, in all these four accounts, what is the contradiction?

01:50:27

James will agree, there is no contradiction here, but there is a difference in the form and the pronouncement and the choice of words, and one being in the past tense, and one being in the present tense, and one being in the future tense.

01:50:41

But does that detract from the message? Does that in fact come close to the examples that I presented in the

01:50:49

New Testament, where you find clear distinctions. Did the women, were the instructions given to go to Galilee, or did they not go to Galilee?

01:50:57

There's a difference. But here it's the same thing, but in a different choice of words. When you look at the concept of revelation, wahi,

01:51:05

Arabic, English, every language of the world is human. The Quran says,

01:51:11

There never was a people without a warner having lived amongst them.

01:51:18

And to every nation have we sent a guide. And what the Islamic belief is, that Allah, through His infinite mercy and wisdom, inspires men through direct wahi, revelation, and uses language, and employs parables and stories as a means of communicating a particular message.

01:51:37

Now what James had to say, he should have shown us a verse in the Quran which says, and we rained a rain upon them.

01:51:44

And then surah 26, Allah says, and we did not rain a rain upon them. We did not punish them.

01:51:49

Can you see, that's a contradiction. Because in the one verse it will say, Allah punished them. And in the next verse,

01:51:54

Allah will be saying, no we did not punish them. That's a contradiction. And that's what I was showing in the context of the

01:52:01

New Testament. You see, the specific examples I could show could be numerous. I could show several similar passages in the

01:52:09

Matthew, in Mark, in Luke, the story of the Syrophoenician woman, where you've got similar stories, where the writers use a different choice of words.

01:52:21

But, I illustrated points where there were factual scenarios given, and there were different facts mentioned on the same incident.

01:52:30

Now, here we do not have a different fact. If James could have shown that one particular surah,

01:52:36

Allah gave a punishment, and in another surah there was no punishment, then that would be a problem.

01:52:42

But here, his issue is, that because there's a choice of words, and that one particular surah is basically mentioned in the past tense, and another is in the present tense.

01:52:52

Now, does that mean that there's no divine inspiration? Does that mean there's no divine revelation? If we accept the principle of Quranic revelation, that the

01:53:01

Quran uses Arabic, and uses a human language as a means to convey certain theological and moral truths, it will employ the human language in different contexts, in different styles, and in different forms.

01:53:17

But, we'll do so from the perspective that God Himself is revealing and dictating the particular words.

01:53:24

So, for example, and we rain down a rain upon them. It is as if God Himself is speaking. Can you see?

01:53:32

This is part of the tidings of things unseen, which we reveal unto thee, O Apostle, through inspiration.

01:53:40

Now, coming back to the idea, suppose the Quran was totally devoid of similarities, would you then accept the

01:53:49

Quran, James? And the answer again is unlikely. You would probably argue for the theory of innovation.

01:53:55

Because it is not to be found in an earlier revelation. Now, the point is that you're damned either way.

01:54:01

This deals with the issue of missionary tautology, implication, and the idea of parallel sources, which

01:54:06

James hasn't dealt with. But I want to basically point out this particular fact. The methodology is not used not to prove why they don't believe in the

01:54:15

Quran, rather to deceive uninformed Muslims to have doubts about the Quran and to make them accept the

01:54:21

Bible, as well as to prevent others from considering Islam. Yesterday I stated quite categorically and I said again that James has an agenda.

01:54:29

And in the rebuttal he says, he has no agenda. How can I dare accuse him of having an agenda? And then in my rebuttal session

01:54:36

I pointed out that of course he has historical bias because he'd like to see everybody accept Christ. And if he wanted to be more fanatical about it, he would like all of you to accept the

01:54:44

Calvinistic interpretation of Christianity. Can you see? That is your agenda and that is a historical bias.

01:54:51

Why not come open and say openly and boldly, either the prophet is mad, either he is a liar or either he's possessed.

01:54:58

Make that claim. I dare you. I dare James to make that claim tonight. He will not make that claim.

01:55:05

Here's the issue. This is the important question to ask. Some people who claim that the prophet used, and no one will chop off his head tonight.

01:55:15

There's no ISIS individuals here. Some people who make the claim that the prophet was using and borrowing stories from different communities and putting them together, they fail to deal with particular key issues, which was raised by Dr.

01:55:31

Jamal Badawi some years ago. One, who is the mysterious teacher through whom Muhammad might have learned all of this?

01:55:38

Why is it not possible for them to reveal and name the person whom they allege to be the human source or sources of his teachings?

01:55:44

How could they believe in his truthfulness if they had any doubt, meaning his contemporaries? What kind of teacher might have taught the prophet a coherent and complete religion that changed the face of history?

01:55:55

You see, because if one were to look at James' theory, he's presenting this to say, look, there may be a human development.

01:56:03

There may be, some radical critics would say, there may be an evolution in the Quranic development in the sense that it could have been sourced by different writers.

01:56:12

So answer these questions. How could many Jews and Christians amongst his contemporaries become

01:56:17

Muslims and believe in his truthfulness if they believed he was copying? How could he have hidden himself for so long?

01:56:23

Now, are these fair questions? And James, are you willing to answer these questions?

01:56:29

And do you have any answers to these questions? Now, we know you don't have any answers to these questions because modern conventional scholarship of the

01:56:37

Quran cannot provide any answers. Even people like John Wandsborough and his student John Burton and people like Patricia Crone and Michael Cook they will hypothecate, but they cannot pin down.

01:56:48

So in the absence of pinning down an answer to this, how can you make allegations? So, rather, basically his position is what you do not know, you do not have to show.

01:57:00

Just say it and it becomes so. And that's a problem that we have. Now anyone familiar with the history of the

01:57:05

Quran will know that the Quran is a collection of inspired messages. And we believe that it's a product of the

01:57:11

Prophet over a particular period of 23 years. Now here's the issue. Recently a number of studies of the Quran have been done, incidentally by scholars, counting its words, letters, verses and chapters.

01:57:25

And a number of instances of surprising coincidences have basically been found. And this is not mentioned in the

01:57:30

Quran itself, but people in looking at the Quran have found numerical similarities in the expression and utilization of certain words.

01:57:41

Now bearing in mind, this is not like Michael Drosnin's Bible Code, where after certain events happen, he tries to find prophecies in the

01:57:47

Bible itself. There's something else entirely. But again, what are the implications of this? What are the explains incidents of correspondence in the

01:57:56

Quran? Is it by human design or by divine design? For example, there's a statement in the

01:58:03

Quran of the seven heavens. It's repeated seven times. The creation of the heavens, is also repeated seven times.

01:58:12

The number of repetitions of words, for example, plant and tree, is used 26 times.

01:58:18

The word shaitan, satan, is used in the Quran 88 times. The word angel, malaika, used the same number of times, 88.

01:58:25

The word faith, iman, without the genitive form, is repeated 25 times throughout the Quran.

01:58:30

And the word infidelity, kufr, repeated 25 times. The word paradise and hell, in its primary form, are repeated 77 times each.

01:58:40

The number of times the word man and woman are repeated in the Quran is 23. 23, check it up.

01:58:47

The total number of human chromosomes is 46, 23 each from the mother and the father. The word salawat appear 5 times in the

01:58:55

Quran. And Allah has commanded man to perform salah 5 times a day. The word wine, khamar, and intoxication, sakara, are repeated in the

01:59:03

Quran the same number of times, 6. The word tongue and sermon are both repeated 25 times.

01:59:09

The word sun, shams, and light, nur, both appear 33 times. The number of appearance of right guidance, al -huda, and mercy, ar -rahma, is the same, 79 times.

01:59:19

David and Solomon appear the same number of times. Son and father, 16 times. The word land appears 13 times in the

01:59:27

Quran, and the word sea appears 32 times. Check it up. Giving a total of 45 references. If we divide that number by that number of references, that's the percentage you get.

01:59:36

And if you look at the total references to land and sea, 45, divided by the number of references to the sea in the

01:59:41

Quran, you find the figure 32. That's approximately 71 point so many percent.

01:59:47

Extraordinarily, those figures represent exactly the proportions of land and sea on earth today.

01:59:53

Now what's the implications? What's the implications from this? Wait. What is the implications?

02:00:00

Look at the word human being. Insan, 65 times. And if you look at the composition of human beings, soil, turab, 17, drop of sperm, nutfa, 12, alaka, the embryo, 6, a half -formed lump of flesh, mudgha, 3, bone, id 'ham, 15, and flesh, lahm, 12, and you add the two, you get a total figure of 65.

02:00:23

Now, think about this. Someone is living in a desert, and according to the theory, he's writing this book, and he's borrowing stories, and he's adding human elements inside it.

02:00:33

What are the chances and what are the probabilities, think aloud, of words and expressions and phrases used in the

02:00:40

Quran that appear identically the same time in different instances and in different contexts?

02:00:46

And it's no good sitting back and saying this is a coincidence, and I'm not making this up, and I never came up with this, and I never invented this, because this has been discussed, and there have been studies conducted by this, and this is not the kind of Rashad Khalifa, number 19, spurious theory, where he tried to find words and said certain verses of the

02:01:07

Quran are fabricated. This is clearly an observational view of certain passages and words in the

02:01:13

Quran as they appear in different words. I'm asking you, James, in all humility, account for that.

02:01:21

You have to account for that, because you need to be bold enough and say that either the

02:01:26

Prophet is mad, either he was lying, or either he was inspired by Satan. You have to say that he has to be one of the three, but then if he's one of the three, he cannot be all three.

02:01:36

But according to missionary tautology, he's in fact all three, and that is a ludicrous position that we have to say.

02:01:42

Let's look at the birth of Christ. You see, in the Quran, the enunciation is mentioned about the birth of Christ.

02:01:48

He will speak to the people, and Mariam asks, how shall I have a son when no man has touched me?

02:01:55

And the Quran is made to say, وَإِذَا قُدَ أَمْرٌ فَإِنَّمَا يَقُولُ لَهُ كُنْ فَيَكُونَ

02:02:01

And when He has decreed a plan, He, Allah, merely says to it, Be, and it is.

02:02:09

For Allah to create millions of Jesuses, or millions of human beings, He would simply say,

02:02:14

Be, and it is. But now, if the Quran is a forgery, it has to be a forgery according to the ideas presented by James.

02:02:24

Then let's contrast this with the original. The original says, How shall I have a son when no man has touched me?

02:02:31

The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee, shall be called son of God.

02:02:40

And more explicitly, before she came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Now what are you saying?

02:02:47

We know that we are both saying the same thing. But when you compare the two, the differences are remarkable.

02:02:53

So when in Genesis it says, And the Lord visited Sarah as He had promised. And the

02:02:58

Lord did unto Sarah as He had conceived, as He had said. And Sarah conceived, what did the

02:03:04

Lord do to Sarah? We know it doesn't mean that. We know it's an it was a conception at a later time.

02:03:10

Here, immaculate conception. But what's the implications of the language that is being used? And if the

02:03:15

Quran is a forgery, as it is alleged, then why is it that the forgery comes out far more purer in the choice of words than the actual original?

02:03:27

How did the Holy Ghost come upon Mary? How did the Almighty overshadow her? Can you see the implication?

02:03:33

That gives the atheists, you're giving the atheists and agnostic a stick to beat you with. So how can a forgery be better than the original?

02:03:41

I don't think there's anything significant at all in the 25 minutes that James says that even comes close to laying a challenge to the integrity or the superiority of the

02:03:56

Quran. So coming back to this, and I want to basically leave us with this particular issue.

02:04:05

Let us not maintain a duplicitous double standards. Again, let us maintain even scales, your words.

02:04:12

Let us look at the Quran and the Bible with ever fresh opening eyes. The Christian critique against the

02:04:17

Quran simply does not stand, and does not hold any respect within academic circles, and is only popular amongst polemicists and missionaries.

02:04:27

Why is it that not a single, very few Quranic scholars of note, if you look at the

02:04:32

Cambridge Companion to the Quran, by the book, the arguments presented by James would not even hold water, or even be considered in academic circles.

02:04:42

The question is why? Look at the works of Angelica Neuwirth. Even look at the historical revisionists who are analyzing the

02:04:48

Quran. Why is it that this kind of work and this kind of argument is only familiar in missionary and common in missionary circles?

02:04:56

And so, I need to question you again. What is your agenda? If your agenda is to convert Muslims to Christianity, or your form of Christianity, why don't you be open and tell them that?

02:05:06

Why do it through a means in terms of which you are basically going behind the scene? Thank you very much.

02:05:12

God bless you. Thank you.

02:05:21

Thank you Yusuf. Now for Dr. White. Well, I tried. I tried to initiate a discussion where we sought to understand each other better.

02:05:33

Where we could grow in our understanding of one another's views to move the ball forward.

02:05:40

That attempt was just repudiated in fullness by probably the most glaring example of smoke and mirrors that I've had in 150 debates.

02:05:53

I was just criticized for not changing the topic of the debate. He was disappointed that I did not deal with issues other than that of what we're supposed to be discussing.

02:06:06

I honestly, in 150 debates, have never heard anything like what I just listened to. What I asked and the issues

02:06:13

I raised were completely, totally ignored. All sorts of other issues were addressed that I didn't even raise.

02:06:23

We were talking about oh, well it's better in the Quran to say that Jesus was just created rather than the Holy Spirit overshadowed.

02:06:29

Totally ignoring the Shekinah glory and the Greek and the things that Yusuf doesn't know anything about. But somehow that's on the screen.

02:06:37

When I was trying to point out, you know, we all have issues to be thinking about here. Why is it that when the

02:06:42

Quran quotes Allah's words it quotes it in different ways? And all we get is, well, it says the same, means the same thing.

02:06:50

And yet we heard the exact opposite standard being applied when

02:06:56

Mark says something or Matthew says something. So evidently, since no answer was given, the debate's over.

02:07:01

And it's been conceded by Yusuf that he needs to go debate something else and turn me into a missionary and try to get your emotions going and get a few talk beers going.

02:07:12

Let's stop the thinking. Let's get the emotions going. And that's the exact thing I've been saying. We need to stop.

02:07:19

And here we are doing it again. What were you clapping at? You're clapping at stuff that had nothing to do with the debate this evening.

02:07:31

How are we ever going to get past throwing rocks at each other if we don't try to understand?

02:07:41

I don't understand it. How are we going to do it? I raised important issues.

02:07:48

I stuck to the topic of the debate. I used the exact same standard that I used in defense of the

02:07:54

New Testament, not to try to bring an agenda. And by the way, I told you what my agenda was last night.

02:08:01

I was open about it. Anybody was here. The recordings are there. We can listen to them. Instead, what

02:08:08

Yusuf wants me to do is to say, you're a missionary.

02:08:14

Well, aren't you? Isn't anybody engaged in dawah a missionary? Is that somehow a bad thing?

02:08:20

I was open with you last night. I care about you. I want you to know the truth.

02:08:26

I've taken the time to understand, to try to be able to communicate with you, and I want us to deal with these issues in a position of mutual respect and not compromise.

02:08:39

Do I want you to know Jesus Christ? You better believe it. I'm always open about that. I'm always open about that.

02:08:45

No one's tried to deceive you. I cannot believe. He's carrying a book around where I've talked about these things, and somehow

02:08:52

I'm being duplicitous and not being open about what I believe. I've done dozens of debates on these issues, and I'm somehow being duplicitous and not open about what

02:09:04

I believe? I don't know where what just came from, but I'm in shock.

02:09:11

And I hope you are, too. I imagine a bunch of you sitting there going, I want to know, what does

02:09:18

Yusuf believe about the recording of the Quran and the heavenly tablet, and why would there be differences of language, and why would

02:09:26

Allah say it one way one time and another way another time, and why is there added information, and how is that not relevant to what he said about the

02:09:34

New Testament? We didn't get any of that. Instead, we got stuff about, you need to say this, that, or the other thing about Muhammad.

02:09:42

By the way, I remember Ahmed Didat criticizing

02:09:48

Christians for using the Lord liar or lunatic thing, and now we've got the

02:09:54

IPCI using it in reverse? Really? Seriously?

02:10:00

I'm amazed. I'm in shock. As a Christian, I believe what my

02:10:08

Bible says. In Hebrews chapter 1, it says, in these last times, God spoke by His Son.

02:10:14

He spoke by prophets and apostles in olden days, but He's spoken now by His Son.

02:10:22

And so anybody who comes along and says that's wrong, you have to ask the question, is this a person you're going to follow or not?

02:10:32

There have been people who've come along who've claimed to be prophets in the line of Muhammad. You reject them.

02:10:38

Are you a hater for that? Are you a hater for that? No. So why try to turn me into one?

02:10:47

I do not believe that the author of the Quran understood the New Testament. There's no evidence in the

02:10:52

Quran that he did. None. That's the reality. And when

02:10:58

I try to come and I try to find out, well, where is the evidence? What I get is stuff like what we just saw that does not deal with the issue this evening.

02:11:11

Yusuf, you may be disappointed in me, but I am not disappointed that I did not change the topic of the subject of the debate this evening.

02:11:21

Why not be open about my rejection of the Quran is what you asked. Is there anybody here that was confused about it?

02:11:30

You're carrying a book called What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Quran. Is someone confused?

02:11:37

That I accept it as revelation? I can't. So does that mean we just have to stop talking?

02:11:45

Evidently, given the attitude that was just expressed, yes, we need to stop talking. Let's just go back to throwing the firebombs at each other.

02:11:53

Let's just go back to the same old, same old, and repeat it over and over again and yell, and all will be good.

02:12:03

Is that what we want? Is that what's going to get us somewhere? I know amongst the

02:12:09

Christians here, I see laughter amongst the young men. I'm not laughing because I care about you.

02:12:17

And I am concerned that when our communities when our communities only argue with one another by repeating the same things over and over again and we never increase in our understanding, the result is the violence that we talked about last night.

02:12:36

This is important. I don't have anything else to rebut because I wasn't given a response to my questions.

02:12:44

So I'll ask them again. We saw the parallels.

02:12:50

I didn't raise the issue of the Quran's use of outside sources. If you want me to do a debate on that,

02:12:55

I'll be happy to do a debate on that. But don't criticize me for not violating the rules of the debate.

02:13:04

I wanted there to be a clear parallel so that we could see whether Yusuf and I use the same arguments.

02:13:12

And man have we seen the result. Only one side can use even scales.

02:13:18

That presentation was the greatest example of dishonest scales ever seen. A double standard.

02:13:25

So here we go again. How do we answer the question in light of what we believe about the authorship of our sources?

02:13:34

I've explained to you why there are differences amongst the synoptic gospels. But we weren't explained why there are differences.

02:13:40

Well, it was just dismissed. Well, it doesn't really matter. There was one thing

02:13:48

I wanted to mention. I apologize. I need to get to it. He said, I showed factual things. Jesus said he'd lose none, but he lost one, so it's 100 % difference.

02:13:59

It's a theological issue, my friends. Judas was clearly identified as the son of perdition. It was prophesied that he would do what he did.

02:14:07

The ones he would never lose are his sheep. Judas was never one of his sheep. It's a theological thing that Yusuf doesn't understand.

02:14:13

Just as he didn't understand and he did not admit the error he made in regard to how Jews cite scriptures. If we will not start talking to one another, we will never advance in our understanding of each other.

02:14:30

I've come all the way around the world, and I wanted to know. I wanted to know. I wanted an in -depth discussion.

02:14:37

Why are there differences in light of what we believe about inspiration? And man, that's just not happening in our world today.

02:14:46

I wanted it to happen tonight. And I hope that amongst both

02:14:54

Muslims and Christians here, you want the same thing. Maybe we can still make it happen during the discussion.

02:15:02

I hope so. Let's see if we can. Thanks. I just want to ask from the floor, don't scream at the guys while they're speaking because it's pretty distracting.

02:15:18

And also, respect the speakers. Don't scream at each other over the aisles while they're speaking because it distracts them.

02:15:26

It's been orderly yesterday night and tonight so far. We're getting a bit of gesturing and speaking. It really distracts both of them.

02:15:32

So please, just keep it in order and quiet. Yusuf, yourself, I will show you the time.

02:15:38

Thank you for that, James. And I must say, he claims that he has absolutely nothing to rebut.

02:15:47

Is it possible that he cannot rebut anything? I'm quite surprised that James makes a claim that I've conceded the debate.

02:15:55

He did the same thing with Shabbir Ali in Pretoria in 2013. And Shabbir retorted,

02:16:01

I'm not going to say the same, that he hasn't seen a man losing a debate so badly and still claiming victory.

02:16:06

The points that I raised were quite clear and categorical. At no stage did

02:16:12

I accuse James of changing the debate. What I pointed out was that the issues he was effectively raising was so minute as to be totally insignificant when you're looking at it from the

02:16:23

Qur 'anic perspective. For example, what is the nature of revelation? Now the Qur 'an states categorically in no uncertain terms in surah 2 for example, verse 23 وَإِن كُنْتُمْ فِي رَوَيْبٍ مِّمَّا نَزَّلْنَا عَلَىٰ عَبْدِنَا فَأَتُوبِى صُرَةٍ مِّمِّثْلِ

02:16:37

And if you are in doubt as to what we have revealed unto thee from time to time to our servant, then produce a chapter like thereunto and call your witness or helpers if there are any besides Allah.

02:16:48

And if your doubts are true but if you cannot, and of a surety you cannot, then prepare yourself for the fire whose fuel are men's stones.

02:16:57

Now I get the sense that either one, the information particularly on the numerical patterns that are found in the

02:17:06

Qur 'an was so overwhelming for James that he couldn't respond to them and had to engage in a tirade about how in more than 150 debates that blew him away.

02:17:17

I'm not so sure what blew him away. Was that that basically blew him away? I pointed out earlier on that when looking at these different Qur 'anic references,

02:17:25

Allah uses human language. And he conveys certain spiritual truths with a choice of words using different languages.

02:17:33

Using the same language but using a different choice of words. So for example, again I need to ask you the question

02:17:39

James. In surah 7 verse 84 when Allah says, And we rained upon them a rain, see how was the end of the criminals.

02:17:47

Surah 26 verse 173 And we rained on them a rain, and dreadful is the rain of those who have been warned.

02:17:53

Surah 27 verse 28, And we rained a rain upon them, dreadful is the rain of those who have been warned.

02:17:59

Surah 29 verse 31, We are about to bring down upon the people of the city punishment from the sky because of their corruption.

02:18:07

What is the message that a reader of these particular passages needs to take away from?

02:18:14

Is it to now take away the fact, Oh well look now, why is it that Allah uses words in different ways?

02:18:22

Is there an agenda here? Is there a primary source? Is there a primary author? No. The Quranic concept of revelation is quite clear.

02:18:29

We believe in a verbal revelation, no doubt. But Allah employs human words as a means to convey his particular theological message.

02:18:38

Now what's the problem with that? We as Muslims do not believe that the loham mahfuz, many scholars, that this is literally a heavenly tablet.

02:18:48

But all that is within the realms of divine knowledge from the metaphorical perspective because the

02:18:53

Quran mentions quite clearly in surah 3 verse 7, the fundamental rule in revelation.

02:19:00

And if you were to read surah 3 verse 7, you'd quite clearly see what it says. It says here, It is he who has sent down to thee the book, in it are verses which are clear, basic or fundamental.

02:19:19

They are the foundation of the book. But there are other passages in the

02:19:25

Quran which are effectively allegorical. But those in whose hearts is a perversity, follow the part thereof that is allegorical, seeking discord and searching for its hidden meanings.

02:19:36

Now the point is that if some Muslims may have interpreted the loham mahfuz as an eternal divine tablet of stone, whereby it is unchanged and it's stuck, then that may be a literalistic interpretation.

02:19:51

But the Quran challenges this by saying that there are passages in the Quran wherein the meanings are in fact allegorical.

02:19:57

You understand the usage of metaphor. So for example, the Quran would use metaphor. It would use allegory.

02:20:04

It would use human language in different forms because the primary message of the Quran is not to basically show, no, look, here's a story of Lot and it needs to be the same.

02:20:15

Here's another story and it needs to be the same exactly word for word. The difference with the New Testament is that you've got different books.

02:20:22

Different books saying different things. If the Quran, for example, says something in one account and there's more information in another account, it's within the same book.

02:20:36

It's the same book itself. So for example, there may be the prostration of Adam, not told in too much of detail in one particular surah, but in more detail in another surah, it's the same book.

02:20:48

And what prevents Allah from describing the same narrative and using the same narrative to convey certain different theological truths depending on the context and depending on the time.

02:21:01

But in the context of the New Testament, it's not the same book. Even though you have the

02:21:07

Holy Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they were not one book. At the time that they were written, those who were reading

02:21:14

Matthew never had access to Mark. Those who were reading Mark never had access to Luke. Those who were reading

02:21:19

Luke never had access to John. But in the time of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, when the Quran was revealed finally in its entirety after two and three years, we knew that the mashaf, or at least in the minds of men, the entire

02:21:32

Quran was there. So quite clearly, you could see one particular surah which narrates a particular incident, and then you can juxtapose with another particular surah which narrates the same incident with perhaps different details or more details, but not contradictory details.

02:21:49

Can you see that's a difference? You are dealing with different books. Although Christians have the same books in the same

02:21:56

Bible, historically speaking, those readers of Matthew never had access to Mark.

02:22:01

I challenge James to say that they did. Those readers of Luke never had access to John. Those readers of John never had access to Matthew.

02:22:10

They were different people, different times, different locales. So from that perspective, if they were inspired by the

02:22:16

Holy Spirit, then factually at least, even though they may have had different choice of words, which I will grant, factually they should be saying still the same thing, but they don't.

02:22:25

Now in the Quran, James takes issue with the fact that within one book you have a particular narrative and another surah, the same book, same narrative with more detail or with a different choice of words, but how does that detract?

02:22:41

How does it detract from the fundamental message? How does it detract from the principle that this is not divinely inspired?

02:22:48

Can one now argue that the Quran is not inspired on the basis that the creator uses it in different forms to convey different messages when in fact he is using the human language.

02:23:01

The very principle of Quranic revelation is in fact the reader is meant to get guidance.

02:23:09

And so when stories and parables are told, they are used as vehicles to convey guidance.

02:23:16

Now if James were to show us chapters and passages in the Quran to the examples that he had given, illustrating that they show us or illustrate different things, then that would be an issue which we would have to deal with.

02:23:29

But throughout the debate has he shown any of that? So how can he stand up and say that his mind is blown away?

02:23:35

How can he claim that? I find it inherently disturbing that James says that in his 150 debates, he's never been as blown away as he was blown away tonight.

02:23:46

Maybe the numerical miracles blew his mind away, I don't know. But the point is that I try to be as honest as possible.

02:23:53

I'm not dismissing the critique in its entirety. I understand where he's coming from. I'm not denying the critique, but what

02:24:01

I'm saying is that your criticism is not of sound basis. If you are saying that there are different passages in the

02:24:08

Quran, what prevents a Muslim from allowing that revelation and wahi can be revealed in a particular fashion?

02:24:18

Whereby the same incident is narrated with an emphasis put on certain aspects or certain elements which may or may not be contained in the same surah.

02:24:28

And a Muslim can easily complement the surah. So for example, if you find a situation whereby one story has a particular account and another story has a more detailed account still, those accounts can be juxtaposed together because it's in the same book.

02:24:44

But of the Christian, unfortunately it's not the same because you've got different books. Don't see the

02:24:49

New Testament as a whole book. See Matthew as a separate book. Mark as a separate book. Luke as a separate book.

02:24:56

And John as separate books. Written for different peoples. And all of them had written tracks to convey certain theological motifs.

02:25:04

So, if you were to compare the two, it's a question of chalk and cheese. I would like to James, to honestly address the issue of accounting.

02:25:14

And I know I threw that in as a primer to basically create the idea.

02:25:20

I would be interested in knowing what is his understanding. Because if on the one hand, he uses these particular verses of the

02:25:26

Qur 'an to deny the fact that this is revealed by Allah through the conventional

02:25:32

Muslim understanding of revelation, then how does he respond to the ideas that verses, phrases and words are used in different contexts with certain numerical patterns and that these numerical patterns occur at particular times similar and identically the same.

02:25:50

How does he account for that? Is that a fair question I need to ask? How does he account for the fact that the stories of the annunciation are so much more pronounced and much more explicit in the

02:26:01

New Testament as opposed to the Qur 'an? These are the issues. I believe I have dealt with the issues entirely. I don't think James needs to be blown away unless of course the facts that were presented tonight in fact blew him away.

02:26:10

Thank you. We're going to allow 15 minutes each now.

02:26:23

Yusuf will ask Dr. White questions for 15 minutes and then we're going to turn it around and then we're going to have the closing remarks.

02:26:30

Alright Yusuf, we got into the topic of the debate there in your rebuttal and I'm very appreciative of that.

02:26:38

You said that some passages in the Qur 'an are metaphorical.

02:26:46

What did you mean by that and is that a way of saying that Allah chose to allow the author to choose what words were used or how does that change?

02:27:02

Well it's quite clear James. If you look at surah 3 verse 7 it lays down to us a fundamental principle of revelation that there are clearly verses in the

02:27:10

Qur 'an which are clear, fundamental. They do not need any particular interpretation. In other words as certain priests would tell you that if the plain reading of scripture makes sense, seek no other sense.

02:27:22

We do not need your interpretation or my interpretation. What in fact does the Qur 'an say when it says herein is a book and it is guidance.

02:27:30

And then the other passages of the Qur 'an which is metaphorical. So for example, when the

02:27:36

Qur 'an speaks about heaven, hell, the hereafter, akhira, the usage of the term fire.

02:27:46

What many Qur 'anic commentators and scholars in particular, one notable one which I have in front of me,

02:27:51

Muhammad Asad, would point out that the usage of certain descriptions in detailing the hereafter, in detailing jannah, in detailing jahannam, is for example metaphorical, symbolic of the afterlife because the afterlife, the hereafter, heaven, hell, what is beyond the naturalistic realm of this world, cannot be basically conveyed in plain human language.

02:28:21

So the Qur 'an uses symbolic language to convey that particular message. But having said that,

02:28:27

I would argue in light of the passages that you had basically presented to us, none of the passages that you presented this evening in any way without a shadow of a doubt, in fact cast any sort of questionable integrity on the

02:28:47

Prophet Muhammad to give the indication that these may not have been revealed from God. So for example, in the passages you illustrated, you need to show us that some passages are inherently contradictory, where passages just simply differ on the choice of words, we need to accept and understand that the

02:29:05

Qur 'an sometimes narrates passages with different emphases on different choices of words, but at the end of the day, the fundamental point is to convey certain theological points for guidance to humanity in order that they can learn certain moral lessons and teachings.

02:29:21

I don't understand how the fact that there are metaphorical ayat is relevant to what you just said in regards to our subject.

02:29:31

Maybe you could apply it to the text. I was referring to the last analysis made by you on the screen.

02:29:39

That was not the metaphor. I referred to the fact that in the Qur 'an there are allegorical passages.

02:29:45

For example, the law mahfuz. That's something which is allegorical. There is no literal divine tablet which now is literally cast in stone.

02:29:54

But as many scholars would tell you, that would constitute the divine knowledge of the Almighty and the divine knowledge of the

02:30:00

Almighty is manifested in revelation throughout history. So when the Qur 'an says وَإِمِّنُ أُمَّتَنِ إِلَّا خَلَافِيَا نَذِيرٌ

02:30:07

There never was a people without a warner having lived amongst them. And to every nation did we send a guide with wahi, with revelation.

02:30:14

That law mahfuz, that knowledge that is part and parcel of the divine domain, not literally written down and cast in stone, but part and parcel of the divine knowledge, finds itself manifest in revelation given and vouchsafed to prophets over a particular period of time with a fundamental message of guiding humanity.

02:30:33

Okay, could we make application to one of the texts that I gave where a law is quoted in different ways, specifically.

02:30:42

Give me an example. The comparison of Surah 7, 13 and 38, 77.

02:30:48

And specifically the comparison of the phrase, then go down from it, the garden.

02:30:54

It is not for you to show arrogance here, so leave. You are of the degraded. Versus, go out from here, you are accursed, and my curse is on you till the day of judgment.

02:31:05

Now, in one, you have arrogance. You do not have that in the other.

02:31:11

You have the discussion of degradation. I'm trying to understand, and still hoping that we can get to this, in light of the standards that you have used in the

02:31:24

New Testament, how is it that something about clear verses and metaphorical verses is relevant to answering the question of why the same words would be narrated differently by a law when these are a law's own words.

02:31:40

But James, you are not listening to what I said. And I don't think you need to listen carefully. I said that the usage of metaphor and allegory in the

02:31:48

Quran deals with the afterlife. For example, paradise, hell, descriptions of punishment, descriptions of reward in the hereafter.

02:31:56

The Quran employs allegory. Here we don't have allegory used. We have a narrative which effectively has two different versions, but they communicate the essential same thing.

02:32:08

Now, for example, in Surah 7, verse 13, quotation you've given, then go down from it the garden.

02:32:14

It is not for you to show arrogance here, so leave. You are of the degraded. Go out from here, you are cursed, and my curse is on you till the day of judgment.

02:32:24

That literal interpretation that you want to superimpose on the Quran only makes sense if we believe that Allah literally spoke a language in the limited sense that we understand today.

02:32:37

So in other words, if you want to believe that God spoke Hebrew to Adam, or he spoke Arabic to Adam, or he spoke

02:32:43

English to Adam, or he spoke Zulu to Adam, if you have that narrow -minded, limited perspective that God basically would limit himself to communicating a particular aspect in a specific language, as I mentioned in an important point that you failed to deal with in my presentation, that language is human, and language is effectively an artificial construct which

02:33:04

God has somehow bestowed upon us, whereby we develop the language based upon our development in history and nuances and context.

02:33:12

For Allah to convey a certain theological truth, or a principle, or a particular aspect in human history, or even outside human history, he would use the human language in order to convey certain particular truths.

02:33:29

So for a human being, this is a means and a manner that we would understand what happened in a metaphorical sense from time immemorial, in the sense when

02:33:41

Adam was literally removed from the garden. But from that perspective I need to argue this particular point, it doesn't mean that Allah now spoke

02:33:50

Arabic, Allah spoke English, and that this was exactly the words that he conveyed, but the import of what is conveyed here, if I were to tell you for example, that James get out and go back to Arizona, and it's reported that I told you to leave and go to Arizona, the import is that I'm telling you to leave the country, but it doesn't mean it doesn't mean,

02:34:12

I'm saying, why are you superimposing human language on God, and dictating and believing that God at some time outside history, or even within the capacity of history, has to have used human language.

02:34:26

The human language is conveyed and contained in the Quran for us to understand a particular aspect, in terms of how

02:34:34

Allah dealt with humanity, and in terms of how he dealt with his servants in history. You just said, well, a couple moments ago now, you just said if you insist on enforcing this narrow literalistic interpretation on the

02:34:51

Quran, and how we're just talking about human language here, and this is not what Allah's not limited to human language, wasn't the entirety of your numerical argument based upon the use of human language?

02:35:03

Absolutely, absolutely, and in fact, I might add again, that the Quran makes no reference to that, but you see the point

02:35:09

James, which again, you're failing So why isn't that narrow -minded? The point is, to show a divine pattern that may have existed.

02:35:19

This is the point, this is the point which I tried to illustrate. If you look at the passages and the utilization of certain words and expressions, nowhere in the

02:35:27

Quran does Allah say, you read my book, and now, this proves that I am now the author of this book, because this word appears so many times, that word appears so many times, that word appears so many times, that word appears so many times.

02:35:40

What I presented to you in my entire presentation, which I don't think has been refuted, and cannot be refuted, was an incidental examination and an observation of the

02:35:51

Quran which goes on to debunk the probability that a man living in the desert, 1400 years ago, would somehow construct a book, and words would appear so many times, in certain capacities with equal import in different contexts.

02:36:07

For those numerical numbers to appear, it would require that Allah be in absolute control of exactly what words are used in the recording of the

02:36:18

Quran. In principle, in theory, yes. In theory, one could argue In theory or principle, you have to say yes or no question.

02:36:25

In principle, yes. Allah, let's put it this way, there would be a divine authority guiding the

02:36:30

Prophet Muhammad through his transits and the pronouncements that he made over a period of 23 years.

02:36:37

Yes, but here's the difference. The difference between Wahi and the difference between inspiration is that you believe that men were inspired or tickled by the

02:36:45

Holy Spirit, right? We believe in a direct revelation whereby the

02:36:50

Archangel Gabriel made an indelible impression on the mind of the Prophet. So for example in the first revelation, when the command given to him is

02:36:58

Iqra, he states, ma ana bi qariya, I cannot read, and that passage in that aspect, in his response, does not find its way in the

02:37:05

Quranic text. Were the words that were given to Muhammad exactly what is found in these two texts?

02:37:13

The Muslim Orthodox position is that that is in fact the case. Okay, so we were brought back once again to ask the question, what specifically did

02:37:26

Allah say to Iblis? And you keep saying it's in the same book, it's in the same book, but these two surahs were given at different times.

02:37:38

So in the intermediate time between their giving, wouldn't there have been deception or lack of clarity on something?

02:37:46

If something is added at a later point in time, or even let's say that the reference to arrogance here is in the first surah given, but then it's not in the latter, now something's missing.

02:38:01

So just because you have a theological concept that this is one book made up of 114 surahs, doesn't answer the question as to why there's a difference here.

02:38:15

But James, I mean, let's be real now, let's get serious. You have to juxtapose surah 7 verse 13 with surah 38 verse 77.

02:38:23

Now, in your particular book, you consider the same point, that you've got two different choice of words used in these particular surahs, and both of them communicate the same basic idea using different terms.

02:38:37

Now I pointed out again, that some action had happened, which is what?

02:38:43

The dismissal of Adam from the Garden of Eden, according to the limited understanding.

02:38:50

But that is conveyed in a very humanly terms, and in human language.

02:38:56

So in order for a human being and mankind to grasp what basically transpired, he reads what is contained in the

02:39:03

Quran in the language most suitable and applicable to him. This does not mean in any way that Allah somehow or the other literally spoke

02:39:13

Arabic to Adam, or he literally spoke Hebrew to Adam, and literally told them in the

02:39:19

Hebrew tongue or in the Arabic tongue what is contained here. But these... Are there Muslims who disagree with you on that?

02:39:24

There might be. There might be literalists, and there might be literalist Christians who would disagree with you on that particular point as well.

02:39:30

Maybe some writers of Tafsir too? Probably so. There might be. I don't deny that. But the point

02:39:35

I'm trying to emphasize James, which you need to understand, maintain an interpretive relationship with the text of the

02:39:41

Quran. What you find here is an idea that has been conveyed. And an idea has been conveyed in the human language.

02:39:49

But this does not mean that literally God basically spoke the language.

02:39:54

Language is not for God to speak. He doesn't speak language. He creates language for us as human beings to communicate.

02:40:01

And so he uses that language, which is limited, and which is finite, and language by its definition has limitations to convey certain truths.

02:40:10

And he does this by these different variances that you see in these particular passages, which contain the same idea.

02:40:17

Does the Quran command us and instruct us and even give us any illustrations of searching for numerical patterns, so as to believe that the

02:40:28

Quran is inspired? None at all, except one which was cited by Rashad Khalifa in 1976, where he said, عَلَيْهَا تِسْعَتْ عَشْرَةٌ عَلَيْهَا تِسْعَتْ عَشْرَةٌ

02:40:38

Now, I don't necessarily subscribe to the 19th theory, which Shabir Ali has recently introduced into his discourse.

02:40:44

But there is no indication whatsoever of any form of numerical patterns that may in fact exist.

02:40:51

But here's the problem, but here's the problem, James, for you to deal with. If you have a book, any book for that matter, which is written by any man, what are the probabilities over a particular period of 23 years or 25 years that certain words and certain phrases would appear in a numerical pattern, particularly if you hold the idea that it may have been borrowed from other stories, that there may have been a committee writing the

02:41:18

Quran, that it may have evolved over the 3 or 4 centuries? What's the probability of that? Are you familiar with the number of times people have demonstrated those kinds of numerical patterns can be identified in secular works?

02:41:31

Are those inspired as well? I've seen that, I've seen that. And I've seen Jay Smith raise the same issue with Shabir Ali about Stephen King, that you can find the same thing.

02:41:38

When you look at those particular books, nowhere do they come even close to the ideas that is presented in the

02:41:44

Quran. And this is a problem, James. If they do exist, and if these numerical patterns do exist, how can you account for the human inspiration of the

02:41:55

Prophet? I hope that answers the question. No. Now, James, we've got 15 minutes.

02:42:05

I just want to analyze one thing. And I don't know what your perspective is on this particular issue.

02:42:13

The vast majority of Biblical scholars, and I've got here two, Donald Hagner.

02:42:20

I don't know if you consider him a Biblical scholar. And I've got Raymond Brown. He was recommended to me by William Lane Craig some years ago as a scholar of note.

02:42:29

I don't know if you consider him a Biblical scholar. The vast majority of Biblical scholars, there seems to be some degree of consensus that when we compare the

02:42:39

Gospel accounts, there does seem to reflect a developed Christology in terms of how

02:42:46

Jesus is presented in later Gospels. Now, here's the issue. I gave certain examples in my slide presentation in terms of how people addressed

02:42:58

Jesus, in terms of how Jesus described himself, in terms of how there appears to be editorial improvements or changes in these particular

02:43:09

Gospels. My question to you is, why is it so difficult for you to see what is clearly an editorial improvement in terms of how the nature and personality of Christ is presented when

02:43:25

Biblical scholars, believing Biblical scholars, not atheists or naturalists, but scholars, even someone of Raymond Brown, when they've identified the fact that these improvements exist, why will you not boldly come forward and openly admit them?

02:43:42

Neither one, of course, believes in the doctrine of inerrancy, and hence, they would be like Muslims that believe that the

02:43:48

Koran is filled with errors. Those are the only scholars you can quote because they're the only people that are going to be able to be assisting you.

02:43:53

But they believe in the Bible. Well, do you believe in the Bible? Do you believe in the Koran if you believe it's filled with errors?

02:44:00

Most Muslims would say, no, you don't. There is a fundamental difference, and of course, the whole issue of the relationship of Matthew, Mark, and Luke especially is a theoretical one.

02:44:11

As N .T. Wright has said, we don't know what they were written. We don't know the order they were written. It's all theory.

02:44:16

It's all speculation. And I reject the conclusions they come to because of the fact that Dr.

02:44:22

Hagner teaches at Fuller. I have a master's degree from Fuller. I graduated with honors. Magna Cum Laude from Fuller Theological Seminary.

02:44:29

So, the reality is I fought that battle about 25 years ago or so.

02:44:36

And I am well aware of the fact that the historic believing perspective on the subject of the inspiration of Scripture isn't even allowed to be a part of what is presented in the classrooms.

02:44:52

You have to bring it up as a student. So, well, let me just finish my statement by pointing out that I believe that simply slavishly believing in Mark and Priority and interdependence literarily raises more questions than it actually answers.

02:45:10

If you don't accept Mark and Priority, then what's your theory? As I pointed out in my presentation, each of the disciples,

02:45:19

I'm sorry, each of the authors is drawing from the oral tradition of the church. Now, I said specifically that Luke uses written sources and therefore when he does so, if he used

02:45:29

Mark, if he used other things, I don't have any problem with that. Luke specifically makes that point. But the problem is that the primary source material for the

02:45:39

Gospel writers, given their separation from one another in time and space, is to be found in the tradition of the teaching of the

02:45:48

Gospels, not in a simple literary dependence, because once you have that, you end up raising far more questions than you actually answer.

02:45:56

I don't know why people can't see that, but that's the way it is. So on that basis then, would you then argue which most scholars would disagree with, that Matthew wrote

02:46:07

Matthew, Mark wrote Mark, Luke wrote Luke, and John wrote John? When you say most scholars, again, most naturalistic scholars, something like that.

02:46:15

I don't want to interrupt you, but who's a scholar that we should refer to? Because every time in a debate that certain scholars are put forth, they're not good enough for you.

02:46:24

Jimmy Dunn is not good enough for you. Donald Hagen is not good enough for you. Daniel Wallace, you will not agree with him.

02:46:30

No, wait a minute. Back up the truck. There are all sorts of scholars who clearly, I'm sorry, was there an

02:46:36

Allah Akbar there? Oh, okay. I'm not sure what that has to do with it. That's not intimidating.

02:46:42

It says before an answer is given you're rejoicing, which means you're not listening, and that disappoints me.

02:46:49

It doesn't intimidate me in any way, shape, or form. Don't do that, please. See, I'm aware of the fact that very few people sitting in this audience know the difference between a

02:47:02

Jimmy Dunn and his worldview and his perspectives and someone who would believe that Matthew wrote

02:47:09

Matthew like a Kistemacher or someone like that, because they've not read their commentaries. They're just going on bias.

02:47:16

I understand that exists on both sides, and it's a shame to see. And I want these debates to try to change that, but tonight has especially been very disappointing along those lines.

02:47:26

But the fact of the matter is, Yusuf, that I went to a seminary that was way to my left. And so I've walked through these issues many, many, many times.

02:47:36

And there is not a single, interestingly enough, not a single scholar, let's use Brown and Hagner right there in front of you, that would agree with your application of the standards to the

02:47:53

Koran in the way that you're making their application now to the standards of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

02:48:01

You are in the exact same camp of Shabir Ali. You will utilize them to attack the New Testament.

02:48:06

You will not utilize that material and apply it with consistency to the

02:48:12

Koran, and we have seen that in glowing colors this evening. If you expect me to say, well, yeah, but it says the same thing.

02:48:21

That that's a sufficient answer. But I think I explained myself particularly to you.

02:48:27

But just moving on, if we agree to the fact that these gospel writers were written by them, then

02:48:33

I just want to count for the... I'm sorry, I wandered off. I don't have...

02:48:40

No one has ever come up with a manuscript that proves that Mark was written by someone named

02:48:50

Nathaniel. Okay, so the question is why do

02:48:57

I believe that they were written in the first century? They were rooted in the first century. They have knowledge of the first century

02:49:03

Jerusalem that no one in even a hundred miles away from Jerusalem could have had.

02:49:08

So wherever they were written, the people who wrote those things had connections right there.

02:49:15

And the question comes up, do I have any solid reason to question the tradition of the church on this?

02:49:21

And I have none. What about the internal evidence? If you look at John's gospel, I want to bring to your attention this passage which

02:49:27

I pointed out in my discussion. John 20 verse 24. 21 verse 24, in reference to the disciple, the beloved disciple

02:49:36

John. This is the disciple which testifies of these things, and we know, we know that his testimony is true.

02:49:43

And there are many things which Jesus did which they were written. I suppose that the entire world itself could not contain the books that could be written.

02:49:50

Now, bearing in mind that this is a book purportedly written by the disciple

02:49:55

John, and you have a passage here which seems to indicate, based on the change in usage of pronouns, an external writer or a redactor or biographer.

02:50:05

There's not even a question about it. This is as silly as trying to say that because Moses, because it says to this day in Moses that Moses didn't write the books of Moses.

02:50:15

This is a very, very simplistic approach. I've translated all of John Yusuf, and in Greek, the persons of the verbs are very clear.

02:50:28

I couldn't miss it. The point is, John wrote John. Was there disciples of John who then brought his book to other people and included their testimony?

02:50:40

That doesn't change the fact that John wrote John. Any more than Jesus. When Jesus said, these are the words of Moses, and yet there are clearly places in Moses, in Moses' writing, that was written by someone who came after that.

02:50:53

Does that make Jesus alive? So would you accept then that the ending of John is an editorial edition? Ending of John?

02:50:58

Well, the ending of John. No, not an editorial. Again, if you had listened, and if we were doing this to increase understanding, you would understand what

02:51:09

I've said a number of times this evening, and that is, it's not the writers that are theanoustos.

02:51:15

It is the result of their writing that is theanoustos, and that means that John can write

02:51:21

John 1 through 20, and his disciples, those who cared for him, can put that testimony in, and it's still theanoustos because it's not the individual.

02:51:32

So you have the idea that it's prophets, and it's their personal attributes, and that's why they have to be holy, and they can't, and that's why you've got

02:51:40

Nathan coming to David, but David didn't do any of the sins that Nathan actually was supposed to call into repentance for.

02:51:47

That's the problem. But here's the problem. If that is indeed the case, which you've now admitted, then how can you still proclaim, without a shadow of a doubt, that it is 100 % inspired as being the word of God?

02:52:01

If now we can concede the point that within the gospel of John you've got passages which were written by other people, were those people also inspired by God?

02:52:09

I just stated, I'll try it again, it's the result that is theanoustos, it is the scripture that is theanoustos, not the individual.

02:52:20

And so if God wants to include the testimony of the Johannine community at the end of John's gospel, he can do that.

02:52:28

It's the result that's inspired, it's the result that he has preserved, it's the result that he then brings together into the new testimony.

02:52:36

Okay, so then how do you explain this? If you, for example, take this and again sticking again to these synoptic gospels, let's be specific.

02:52:45

Matthew's gospel is purportedly inspired by God, you believe that? Of course. Of course, right. Now, in Matthew chapter 1 verse 17, in detailing the genealogy of Christ, you say there are no contradictions.

02:52:56

Now, let's go to this. You want to dismiss this, but I think it's... No, I don't want to dismiss it. I just wish that you would read meaningful scholarly material.

02:53:04

These are meaningful scholarly materials. Have you read Daryl Bock? Have you read D .A. Carson? I've read some of the writings of Daryl Bock, but the point is...

02:53:10

Have you read what he wrote about the genealogies? James, it's not a question. It's not a question of basically putting one scholar up against another scholar.

02:53:18

Let's look at the facts. No, I'm not. Yeah, but let's look at the facts. You're raising Daryl Bock. I'm raising a passage in Scripture. The passage says, so other generations from Abraham to David are 14, from David until the carrying away of Babylon are 14, and from the carrying away unto

02:53:31

Babylon are 14 generations. That's what Matthew writes under inspiration from God.

02:53:37

Now, when you analyze and count physically the generations from the

02:53:43

Babylonian captivity... You just ignored Matthew. There are 13 generations. You just ignored Matthew.

02:53:48

No. I'm looking at Matthew. No, you're ignoring the content. You're ignoring the author. No, no. I'm looking at Matthew's gospel that he clearly states...

02:53:54

And ignoring his intention. I'm looking at the point that he clearly states that from the Babylonian captivity to Christ there are 14 generations, and when you see the generations, there are 13 generations.

02:54:05

How do you explain this contradiction if this is inspired by God? Okay. Here's why we're never going to get beyond this, because of the way you even...

02:54:14

No, this is an honest question. I mean, you're saying you cannot get away beyond this. I'm asking an honest question, which...

02:54:19

Can I answer it? Okay, sure. Can I answer it? Okay. Without interruption. I'd appreciate it.

02:54:24

Thank you. Here's why we're not going to get past this, because you asked the question, why is this a plain contradiction inspired by God?

02:54:32

And I was sitting here trying to tell you that Matthew has formed his genealogy as a specific argument in a way that his

02:54:42

Jewish audience would fully understand. They would never argue as you, because they would not think that what

02:54:48

Matthew was saying was there was a literal number 14 generations. He had just listed.

02:54:55

He had just laid it out so that they would see it. This was a common way of doing genealogy.

02:55:01

This was a common way of demonstrating royal authority in descent, and that's exactly what

02:55:07

Matthew's been doing, and so what you're doing is you're cutting and pasting, you're ignoring the context of the author, and you're ignoring how his original audience would have heard him saying, and this evening, while I have attempted in dealing with the

02:55:21

Koran to hear the Koran, how in the context of the original authors of the

02:55:26

Koran, author of the Koran, and audience of the Koran would have heard it, you refuse to do the same thing.

02:55:33

I think that's a dangerous simplification on your part. I think that's a gross simplification. The passage quite clearly says regardless of the context, that in one particular aspect, generationally, it speaks about clearly 14 generations from the

02:55:47

Babylonian captivity to Christ, and when you count the generations that exist, you find 13 generations, but seemingly, you'd not want to address that particular issue.

02:55:57

That's a dishonest thing to say. You disagree with my... But why do you insist upon saying

02:56:04

I don't want to deal with it when you simply disagree with it? But you haven't reconciled the clearly existing contradiction that exists there.

02:56:12

You haven't reconciled it. It's one thing speaking about the context in which Matthew wrote. One of us is trying to point people to the context of Matthew's form of argumentation and actually knows something about the background of it, and one of us doesn't, but is insisting on demanding out of your ignorance that I adopt your misunderstanding of the background.

02:56:38

I will not do that, and I am asking that everyone recognize that this is a really bad direction.

02:56:46

Okay, so I want to learn from you. Explain it to me. In 16 seconds. Okay, we can do this in 16 seconds.

02:56:51

I think we need to wrap it up this evening. Joseph, you've got five minutes for your closing statement. I want to thank all of you for attending this engaging session this evening.

02:57:03

I really do wish, I really do wish that James desists from saying that he's disappointed with me.

02:57:10

In every debate that I have, he always seems to be disappointed. It's one disappointment after another, and I need to beg the question that if I'm such a disappointment to him, why does he continue debating me all the time?

02:57:21

I think I've raised critical issues. I've tried to address some of the aspects that he says about the

02:57:26

Quran. I clearly do not partake or internalize a literalistic interpretation of the

02:57:33

Quran. The critique that he raises against the Quran, James, and I say this with sincerity, would only be problematic to a

02:57:43

Muslim if he maintains a literalistic interpretation of the Quranic text. And that is a problem.

02:57:50

We are called upon not to maintain a literalistic interpretation of the Quranic text in every single instance.

02:57:56

Because quite clearly, the Quran conveys the message of Allah in human language.

02:58:03

Human language is limited by nature. I do not believe for one that Allah somehow or the other spoke to Adam in the

02:58:12

Arabic language, or spoke to Adam in the English language, or spoke to Adam in the Hebrew language. If as a

02:58:17

Christian, you want to believe that God created the earth in six days, and that He has some apartment in heaven, and that He hangs on the stool with His feet dangling on the canopy, that's your limited anthropomorphic conception of God.

02:58:32

But do not superimpose an anthropomorphic literalistic reading of scripture on my particular book.

02:58:39

I will not allow for that. And so, when you find different passages, because that's all James focused on tonight, when you find different passages of the

02:58:48

Quran saying the same thing, conveying the same idea, that is Allah conveying to humans an idea using human language because of the limitation of human beings.

02:59:01

And so in different surahs, you might find that the same idea is conveyed using the same limited language, but in different contexts, and in different choice of words.

02:59:11

But that is not the same from the clear contradictions that we pointed out and saw in the

02:59:17

New Testament, which again, I believe I attempted to deal with respectfully.

02:59:23

If we look at the discussion tonight, and when you do a comparative analysis of the

02:59:30

New Testament, and you compare it to what is contained in the Quran, you find that there's a difference between the two, clearly.

02:59:39

There's a difference in terms of how we perceive revelation. There's a difference in terms of how

02:59:44

Christians perceive inspiration. Christians would allow for the idea that humans could basically use their own idiosyncrasies, their own nuances, their own manners of communication in terms of conveying a particular message, and thereby leading to the problems that we have today in the world, whereby you find

03:00:06

New Testament writers grossly contradictory to each other in different respects on particular factual issues.

03:00:13

We don't have that in the Quran. And I don't think that was presented by James in any capacity whatsoever in the

03:00:21

Quran, even though he gave us the examples in his presentation showing us the same idea but different ways and means in which

03:00:29

God conveys His message and His guidance in limited human language. Admitting that does not detract from the fact that the

03:00:39

Quran is indeed, for us as Muslims, the veritable word of God. We, as Muslims, jealously keep books aside.

03:00:47

We have, for example, the word of Allah, which we believe to be the Quran. We have the word of the

03:00:55

Prophet, which is found in the prophetic traditions, the Hadith. We have the word of the biographers, and the historians, which are found in secondary and third source material.

03:01:05

And we find other material, which no decent person would be able to read to his community. Now in the

03:01:11

Bible, as quite clearly can be seen, we can see what appears to be, at the very outset, the word of God.

03:01:18

We can see what probably appears to be the word of a prophet. We can see what appears to be the word of a historian.

03:01:23

And we can see other material, which becomes somewhat embarrassing, and somewhat problematic for the community to read.

03:01:32

And this is the difference between our particular faith. At the end of the day, we need to maintain an interpretative relationship with the text of the

03:01:39

Quran. The Quran itself identifies itself as revelation.

03:01:44

It says, this is a revelation, which will come from Allah. An external observer of the Quran, even though he rejects the

03:01:51

Quran, may seem to see that, look, it appears that God Himself is speaking. Now if it appears to be that God Himself is speaking, doesn't it behove upon oneself to at least be curious enough to know what is contained in that particular

03:02:05

Quran? And that's my message I leave with you this evening. Open your minds. Don't be stuck to stereotypes.

03:02:13

And let us continue the discussion. Thank you, all of you. Thank you, James, for traveling all the way from Arizona. I hope we have these future discussions in the near future.

03:02:21

And thank you, Rudolf, for being such a generous guide. And God bless all of you. Thanks, Dr.

03:02:32

White. Five minutes. Well, once again, thank you very much for being here this evening and for sticking it out, the few of you that have to the end.

03:02:41

Let me just very briefly point out I do not believe that numerology and numbers is the way that we know the truth of God.

03:02:54

I do not believe that when people produce that in regards to the Bible, that that somehow was a relevant thing.

03:03:02

I never promoted that, nor could I ever promote that. And I would point out to you that just even in one of the examples that was given, it added up, as I recall, to 65, the things that make up man.

03:03:13

Who made the list of the things that make up man? I could have thought of another thing to add to it, and it would have completely destroyed the numbers, huh?

03:03:20

You see, it's so easy to come up with stuff like this. It is not a valid argument.

03:03:25

Please don't be deceived by it, no matter whether you're Christian or Muslim. We do not come to know the truth of God by arguments like that.

03:03:35

It requires the Spirit of God changing our hearts and our minds. It's not some type of trickery that does that.

03:03:43

This evening what I had hoped would happen is we would have a very focused conversation on the fact that we both have parallel accounts in our scriptures, and that by looking at how we handle them, at looking at the differences in terminology and the difference in language, that more light would be shed upon what we believe about the nature of inspiration.

03:04:06

And that did happen on one level. For example, Yusuf was just saying, well,

03:04:11

God wasn't speaking Arabic. I've spoken to so many Muslims that believe otherwise. And so I'm going to be able to tell them, well, actually, you're wrong about that.

03:04:20

If you think that God was speaking in Arabic or that the Quran was written in Arabic and eternity passed, you're wrong about that.

03:04:27

And give them Yusuf's email if they want to have an argument about it. But that did start to cast some light upon the idea that, well, no, there's something more dynamic here.

03:04:39

But then we get, yeah, but then you've got these numbers that prove the Quran is inspired.

03:04:44

Well, you have to have literal words. You have to have the specific words being given for those numbers to work.

03:04:52

And so I don't see how that works. I don't see how that's consistent. But at least we made the attempt.

03:04:58

And I suppose maybe that's something we can rejoice in, that we've made the attempt to try to understand, and maybe in the future there can be some more movement toward a further understanding.

03:05:11

Because I remain absolutely convinced that if we just stay at the level of Muslims only know about Christians what they hear from their imams, and Christians only know about Muslims what they hear from their ministers and their pastors, we will never end up talking to each other, we will never understand each other, we will never be able to build relationships that will allow us to actually advance the conversation beyond just repeating the same old, same old, over and over and over again.

03:05:44

And if last night's discussion of war and peace did not give us enough basis to want to move that forward and to give up on some of our die -hard habits of trying to do the gotcha moments and debates, then

03:06:02

I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen. We seem like a small group here tonight.

03:06:08

Okay, I understand that. But big movements can start from a small number of people. I've come here because it's said

03:06:17

I've been trying well, actually it was said this evening that I'm trying to deceive uninformed

03:06:22

Muslims. Well, it would be easy for me to say that Yusuf's trying to deceive uninformed

03:06:28

Christians. I would rather prove what Christianity is and thereby expose bad arguments against it than to simply make the insulting comments towards somebody else as a direct attack.

03:06:45

And so I have sought to present to you sound reasoning and I would simply ask you, take the time, watch the videos, check the resources and ask yourself a simple question.

03:06:59

Who this evening used even scales? Who this evening used the same standard?

03:07:06

And I am absolutely confident in the answer to that question. Thank you very much.

03:07:13

I want to take this opportunity to give two gifts. One is to Rudolf as a token of appreciation and one is to my friend

03:07:24

James White. I don't know if you want the gift. I'm giving it to you with love and affection. I really love you. I don't believe you're a deceiver.

03:07:30

I do believe you're a man of God. Thank you very much. Thank you for your patience everyone.

03:07:38

Have a lovely night and we'll hope to see you again. Thanks Abe. Alhamdulillah, one in five people in the world is a

03:07:54

Muslim. But have we considered that four out of five people may die without Islam. Four out of five may never get the chance to read the glorious Holy Quran.

03:08:03

Become a lifetime partner with the Islamic Propagation Center International Dawah Quran Project and help bring real solutions to the four out of five people searching for answers.

03:08:12

By sponsoring a Holy Quran, you give the gift of life, real life. IPCI Dawah Quran Project.

03:08:19

It's time to get involved. Call IPCI now. IPCI, encircling the globe with the message of Islam.