Parallel Accounts in the Bible & the Quran

"'Read,' commanded the angel.

"'I cannot read,' Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasallam protested.

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 Lord, who created, created man from a clot.

Read, and your Lord is the most generous, who taught by the pen, taught man

what he did not know.

These were the first words of the Holy Qur 'an.'".

Tonight we're basically discussing two fields of study, 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 Qur 'an.

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.

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, I'm very well familiar and sort of, I got to know

both Dr. White and Yusuf Ismail exactly through Dr. 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.

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.

And then also Dr. White, I think tonight you are quite privileged because it is 150th

debate tonight, which is just absolutely incredible.

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, 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 what I had

last night.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

before Yusuf comes up, Yusuf is, 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 and that is just exceptional

to have him here tonight and to have him speak to us directly and I'm going to give it over to

Yusuf.

Before I start, I also want to take an opportunity to thank Dr. James White, Rudolf,

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

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

We hope to learn and share with each other.

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

translation.

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

to address Fir 'aun, to remove the impediments from him.

At his particular time, impediments were speech.

He was a stutterer, a man with uncircumcised lips.

And I recited the same prayer and in doing so, I greet all of you with the universal greetings of peace.

May the peace, blessings, and mercy of God be upon all of you.

I want to congratulate 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.

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 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 New Testament.

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

contained 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.

The first point is that the language that Jesus spoke was Aramaic.

So English, or I beg your pardon, 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.

The language he spoke was Aramaic.

That was the original language.

Do we have any manuscripts written by Jesus in Aramaic?

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.

Secondly, there arose a tradition a century after the alleged crucifixion of Christ that Matthew,

Mark, Luke, and John, in fact, wrote the Gospels.

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

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

person.

They're never written in the first person.

Let me give you an example.

If you open Matthew chapter 9 verse 9, you'd read an expression, and as Jesus was walking by the way, he,

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

and said unto him, follow me.

And he, Jesus, arose and followed him, Matthew.

Now clearly one can see this is not God speaking, this is not Jesus speaking, and this is also not Matthew speaking.

Because if Matthew were this right, he would have effectively written, and as I was sitting by, 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.

Can you see?

This is in the third person, and it's clearly not someone that Matthew's writing in

something that is not written by Jesus, and something that clearly is written by an external biographer

writing about the life of Jesus.

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.

We.

Who is we?

And there are many things which Jesus did, which if they should be written, every one, I suppose,

that even the entire world could not contain what was written.

Now check the pronouns, 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.

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 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.

Look at the dates.

According to most critics, they would date Matthew to about 100, John to about 110, that's radical criticism,

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

probably 60 to 65 of the Common Era.

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

of compilation.

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

1st century, the 2nd century, the Chester Beatty papyri, and so on, and if you analyze them, they're the

size of, for example, a credit card.

The complete unseals date to the 4th, 5th, and 6th century.

We're not going to focus on that tonight.

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?

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.

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

find them in Luke.

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.

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.

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 Q, the Q source, quela, symbol for sources.

And this leads us to something which is called the 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 I'm misquoting him here.

He says, it is popular today among laymen to think in terms of independence, meaning that the gospel's written

independently.

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 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.

Am I correct?

Does that make sense?

Right.

Now, he will say that if you look at the gospels, it's not that simple.

They don't seem to be independent.

And he said, this explanation falls short on several fronts.

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.

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

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.

Can you see?

So the approach is also naive regarding the role of the spirit in inspiring the authors of the gospel.

And here's the difference.

You see, for a Muslim, we believe in verbal revelation.

The angel Gabriel says, read.

And the prophet is made to recite.

But Christianity doesn't believe in verbal revelation.

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.

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

dissonance be attributed?

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?

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.

Now, here's the issue.

This is a relationship, as scholars point out, and this is a scholarly consensus.

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 Mark occurs in either Matthew

and Luke, meaning Matthew and Luke draw from this particular source.

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, Mark and Luke and Matthew and Luke, Mark, have certain verses

which are basically unique to them.

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.

And so when one compares the synoptic parallels, you find some startling results.

But effectively, what these double parallels reveal is two things.

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.

You find examples of parallels between Mark and Luke, like the healing of the

demoniac, the widow's mite.

What's the implications of this?

And then you've got parallels between Mark and only 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?

Here's two individuals.

This is F .F. Bruce and this is Richard Barkham.

Bruce is late.

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, Matthew second, and Luke third, they

pointed out that the stories of Jesus were changed to reflect the higher view of Jesus.

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

episode.

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.

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

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

fact, the Christology as contained in the particular gospels.

For example, on the occasion when Jesus was transfigured, in the gospel of Mark, Peter calls him Rabbi.

Mark chapter 9 verse 5.

But in Matthew 17 verse 4, same story, same incident.

Peter calls him Lord.

So Matthew changes the wording to reflect the higher Christology of Christ.

Can you see?

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.

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.

If you look at the Greek, the word is Hokirios tes oikias in Mark.

In Matthew, it's Hokirios haimon.

Can you see?

The Greek.

But there's an improvement from Mark to Matthew.

So did Matthew and Mark really use the same words?

And did they really communicate the same concept?

And if both were inspired by the Holy Spirit, then which account is accurate?

What about this?

At a place called Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked Peter whom He thought He was.

In Mark, He calls Himself, Peter says, You are the Messiah.

Mark 8 verse 27.

But in Matthew, same story, same question, and same issue.

You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

Can you see what's happening?

Can anyone see?

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.

But in Matthew, same story, same incident.

Whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother, mother and sister.

So can you see what Matthew has done?

Matthew has basically personalized the relationship between God and Jesus by making God described as a Father,

which is not contained in Mark.

Matthew made people pray to Jesus.

While Jesus was asleep in the boat, a storm rocked the boat.

Now, in Mark's gospel, the disciples awoke 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?

But in Matthew 14 verse 32, they say, Lord, save us, we are perishing.

Can you see?

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

This can only be viewed as an editorial improvement.

There is a change in the story.

So what's the implications of this?

And in all honesty, I hope Dr. White is not disappointed.

He is always disappointed in the rebuttal session with all the debate opponents.

I hope he's not disappointed.

This is an honest question that I'm basically asking.

In Mark 12 verse 29, the first of all commandments is a Shema.

Here is Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

But in Matthew, same episode, you shall love the 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.

If you look at the debate that we had yesterday in some context.

In Mark 10 verse 18, 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?

No one is good but God alone.

But in Matthew, same story, same incident, same person, same question.

He says, Why do you ask about what is good?

There is only one who is good.

So Jesus does not rebuke the attribution of goodness to himself.

Are you guys following this?

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.

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

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

For example, in John, Jesus says, I and the Father are one.

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

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 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, 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, Mark first, Matthew or Luke, then

Matthew, and then John last, you can clearly see that there is an evolution in the Christology of Christ in terms

of how He's in fact represented.

And that accounts for why you find that there may be what sometimes appears to be contradictory narratives.

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 which gospel you look at, or did He face it with the infallible knowledge that He would be so

raised?

You see, if He is God, then if He believed with human faith in God's ability to raise Him,

then He's not God.

But if He faced death with the infallible divine knowledge that He would in fact be resurrected, then what's the

great sacrifice?

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.

Now here's a problem.

Look at the genealogies of Christ between Matthew and Luke.

This is a genealogy according to Matthew.

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

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

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?

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 Babylonian captivity are 14,

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

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

How do you explain that?

What's the implications behind that?

Can you see?

What about Matthew 27, verse 51?

In Matthew 27, verse 51, we have what we would call a zombie apocalypse.

Michael O 'Connor, who is an associate of Debated, says that he's rejected this version as metaphorical.

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?

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?

Is this an important question to basically ask?

What about the resurrection narratives, the parallels and the differences?

What were the last words of Jesus?

Again, this depends on which gospel you read.

Who buried Jesus?

Matthew says it was Joseph of Arimathea, but according to the Acts of the Apostles, it were Jews, the rulers, and all

strangers to Jesus.

How many women came to the tomb on Easter morning?

Was it one, as is told in John?

Was it two in Matthew, three in Mark, or more in Luke?

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?

Was the tomb already open when they got there?

Matthew says no, but the other three gospels say yes.

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.

They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.

Matthew and Luke make clear that they did so immediately.

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?

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 Jesus, and they immediately go there.

And in Luke, the disciples are not told to go to Galilee.

They are told that Jesus had foretold His resurrection whilst He was in Jerusalem.

And Jesus appears on the road to Emmaus.

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

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?

Which gospel is right?

This, again, the narrative depends on which gospel account you're reading.

What did Jesus tell the high priest when questioned at His trial?

Again, it depends on which gospel you're reading.

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

He quotes the prophet Jeremiah.

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

Can you see?

This is a problem.

Mark and Luke and Matthew state that Jesus rode an animal when He entered Jerusalem.

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

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

Now, here's a problem.

Matthew literally describes Jesus as sitting on a donkey and a colt.

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

This basically means that two lines say the same thing.

But Matthew doesn't understand that.

So Matthew has literalized the poem and rendered two beasts when, in fact, there were only one.

Which means if you read 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 Matthew has done with Zechariah, but few will attempt to tell you why he has, in fact, done it.

And this is why.

Could Jesus have been doing that, like a rodeo?

The answer is clearly no.

So why does Matthew do that?

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.

One was a priestly messiah and a royal messiah.

So could Matthew have been answering those who expected dual messianism by using Zechariah, chapter

9?

Can you see the implications of what we find here?

When was the curtain of the temple ripped?

After Jesus died?

Or was it whilst Jesus was still alive?

Again, there are implications from this.

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 Christian, and you want to criticize the Quran, and use radical forms of

critique, then I can argue that the Bible will collapse by the very same standard.

Always be honest in your assessment.

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.

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 New Testament by Raymond Brown, a noted Christian scholar, Roman Catholic.

He's a believer.

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.

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

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 chapter 16 verse 9 to 20, and

Luke 24 verse 51, is thrown out as a fabrication?

In the four gospels, the ascension of Jesus is not there.

James and I agree about this, and he knows this, but in the vernacular and every Bible translation read

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

Why is this information not being put forth for people to basically view?

So, coming back to my issue, and the discussion tonight, I would argue,

don't just talk about even scales.

Don't just simply talk about evil scales, but practically demonstrate it.

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

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

Christmas.

Why do we celebrate Christmas?

We all celebrate Christmas, Christians, but James, Rudolf, and myself agree that this is a pagan festival.

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

I've made my points clear and articulated it to the team.

Thank you very much.

Thanks.

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

All right.

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.

My entire goal this evening is truly one of understanding.

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 Bible, and then looking at the fact, which is

not really discussed a lot amongst many 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.

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 or scripture.

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

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 Bible as the word of God is going to be different

than what I believe about that.

I am not a postmodernist.

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

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.

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 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.

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

by the Holy Spirit.

And see, we don't have just one person involved in the production of the Bible.

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

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

That's a major, major difference.

And so keep that in mind as we discuss these particular issues this evening.

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 Gospels.

What's a synoptic mean?

Well, synoptic means to look at in the same way.

And so the synoptic 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.

Now, the early Christians referred to the Gospel, singular, as the entire message of

Jesus, but it was always contained in the 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 first century.

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

that.

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.

Now, how are they related?

Well, we've had all sorts of discussion of that already, but let me try to just point out 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 Gospel tradition.

You need to remember that the living apostles, the eyewitnesses of the

events of Jesus' life, didn't just disappear when Jesus died.

Oh, yes, there was persecution, but there were many thousands of people who had heard Jesus' teachings and

things like this, and so those eyewitnesses continued to exist within the 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 Jesus speaking and teaching.

And so in those first few years, we can find elements of this in the Gospel traditions and

in Paul and other places.

We can find out what those early Christians were believing, and by the way, we had a very good debate with

Shabir Ali at the 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 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, and I don't have any problem if especially Luke had written sources because he

says he used written sources.

He says he examined things, he gathered documents together, he did research, and some people say,

well, that proves that can't be the Word of God.

That, again, is one of the differences between us.

We don't believe that that precludes something from being the Word of God.

In point of fact, that just simply increases its historical accuracy and in no way

precludes it from coming from God.

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 Mark was first, 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.

And what it requires us to do is to become mind readers.

Well, hmm, I wonder what Matthew was thinking when he changes this, or I wonder why Luke

didn't like this, or something like that.

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

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.

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

people, and he wants to communicate to the Jewish people.

But Mark is not trying to communicate to Jewish people specifically.

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.

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 in the ministry of Jesus.

And so the point is, we have three different authors, and they are writing different

books for different audiences at different times.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Have you ever thought about that?

I mean, we do this all the time.

Let's say some of you decide to write up a Facebook article tonight about the debate that you attended this evening.

And let's say two of you decide to do that.

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

to work.

But you both want to put your Facebook articles up tonight.

One of you is probably going to write a pretty brief, quick review.

The other one might have time to write a very full review.

Does that mean you went to two different debates?

No, it means you're in different contexts.

You have a different context of how much time you have.

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

And so if you're going to, 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.

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

And very often we're told, well, there was 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.

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

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

says this.

Well, of course there is.

Matthew and Mark, if they are rendering from Aramaic into Greek, are going to do so in different

ways.

And they can do so perfectly accurately.

They may be drawing from different elements of the oral tradition.

All these things are perfectly explainable.

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.

That's not a matter of...

That's just simply applying a standard that no one in the ancient world would have been able to even begin to

understand.

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.

That's a modern, Western, I have an MP3 recorder type standard that

never existed in history.

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

We should not only expect differences between the Gospels, we should be thankful for them, for very often they provide a

richer insight.

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.

We're just about done.

We're just about there.

But very often, the differences between the Gospels are not contradictions.

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.

So let's look at an example of this.

The raising of Jairus' daughter is recorded for us in Matthew and Mark.

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.

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

shorter than Mark is.

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.

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.

Mark's version is 2 .7 times longer than Matthew's.

Now, let me just show you how that works out in the story.

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

daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.

Now compare this with Mark.

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, 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.

Now, notice something else.

There is a fundamental difference between these two statements.

And people have argued that this is a contradiction because, notice, my daughter has just

died versus my little daughter is at the point of death.

Now, if you just looked at that, you would say, see, there's a contradiction here.

Now, of course, if you believe in literary independence, then why in the world would Matthew

want to contradict Mark, which has already been widely distributed in the Christian congregation?

That's never made any sense to me as to why he would contradict these things.

Was he trying to replace Mark?

No one can prove anything like that.

So why would there be this difference?

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

Matthew is telescoping.

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.

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

Well, when we talk about telescoping, sometimes when I, 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, I'm paying a

certain amount of money per minute on my cell phone.

And so I'm going to telescope events.

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.

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.

Well, that's what Matthew's doing.

And what's going to, the reason for the difference here is found in this next slide.

Mark gives us a detail that Matthew completely removes.

He does not say anything about it.

He does not include it.

Maybe he didn't even know about it.

We have no way of knowing.

But notice what Mark tells us.

While he was still speaking, this is after Jesus had healed, on the way to raise 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 of the synagogue official saying your daughter has died, why

trouble the teacher anymore?

But Jesus overhearing what was being spoken said the synagogue official, 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 Jesus arrives at the house, when the

disciples come to the house, everybody knows that the little girl has already died.

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.

Remember, it's 2 .7 times longer, I believe, is the number.

And so he's giving us more information.

Now, it's just not fair to any historical source when you give more information to say, 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 fleshes the whole situation out.

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

We recognize Mark can have his intentions in having the fuller account.

Matthew can have his intention in summarizing the account and therefore putting things together.

No one in the ancient world would have considered either one of them to be lying, deceiving,

or doing anything of the like.

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 Gospels.

Here's another example, the sons of Zebedee.

In Matthew chapter 20, it says,.

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

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 on one on your left.

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.

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.

So, very often, Mormon missionaries will do this all the time, people like that, will say, Well, see,

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

But the reality is, we recognize that when someone represents someone else, they are held accountable

as if they were those people.

And so we're simply being given more information.

And it's interesting that it's 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.

But the point is, the mother's representing the sons, and they make a

request of Jesus.

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.

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.

What good would that be?

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

That doesn't make any sense.

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

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

The fig tree.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

It's a parable about the people of Israel.

That's easy.

The point is that again Matthew has telescoped and notice he says, And at once the

tree withered.

But when you read Mark, it was the next morning that they discover that fact.

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

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

one another.

Here's a good example.

This is not a synoptic parallel specific, but it deals with the synoptics themselves.

When did Jesus die?

Well, John talks about it being the preparation day, which is Friday,

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

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.

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 Roman time system.

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

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

whereas the 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.

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.

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 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 Quran on Laylat al -Qadr to Jibril and then Jibril gives it in portions to

Muhammad.

They're very different understandings of Revelation.

Very, very different understandings of Revelation.

That's going to come up a lot this evening.

I hope we can discuss it.

What does believing Christian scholarship mean?

We speak of such terms as inspiration and inerrancy.

I believe in inerrancy.

I am not afraid to affirm that fact tonight.

But one must understand what that means.

It is not a simplistic thing.

What is the difference between plenary verbal inspiration and the dictation theory?

That's a 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.

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.

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

For the Christian, backgrounds, language, the experience of the author, the identity of the audience, all are

vitally important and a part of regular believing exegesis.

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

exegesis of the Quran?

If you believe that the Quran has eternally existed on the 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.

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 Quran.

So, Yusuf, five minutes for you.

Oh, ten minutes, sorry, first.

In the name of.

God most gracious, most merciful.

Thank you, James, for that discussion that we had.

Now, I want to bring something to your attention.

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?

The one at half -past ten.

But now, 200 years later, you have two reports of an account.

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

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?

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

God.

So, who is now correct?

Are you going to blame God for that particular mistake that you have?

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.

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.

Now, I showed you those accounts.

You know, all these accounts comparing 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.

I mean, I gave you how many references?

How many references?

In the case of Jesus, the disciples probably drowning and in one instance, Matthew says,

and he changes it to a perishing.

Look at the example that James gave about Jairus' daughter.

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.

Jesus in Mark's gospel, we are told,

basically is called to cure the daughter on the basis that she's close

to death.

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

is dead.

Now, James says it's not a key difference.

But the point is that the difference may seem insignificant, but in actual fact, it is major.

It's a question of a difference, it's a matter of life and death.

Was Jairus' daughter dead or was Jairus' daughter not dead?

If you are at the point of death, then you are clearly not dead.

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.

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 Mark is the earlier gospel

and Matthew is a 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 Jairus' daughter from the dead.

Can you see?

He brought the daughter, she was dead, and now he brought her back to life.

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.

Can you see the implications behind this?

So now, the problem becomes far more compounded when you ascribe divine inspiration to it.

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

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.

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?

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?

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?

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, God is held accountable.

So now we have to put God in the box.

Like for example, if I could just borrow my this is not the synoptic, this is the

gospel of John.

John chapter 18 verse 9.

That the same which me fulfilled, that he spoke of them which thou gavest me, I have lost none.

But in John chapter 17 verse 12, whilst 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, Judas Iscariot, that the scripture might be fulfilled.

Can you see?

What's the difference?

What is the difference between one and none?

100 % difference.

So what was it?

Was it one or was it none?

How many disciples did Jesus in fact lose?

Can you see the implication?

Now if the writers are said to be inspired by the Holy Ghost, and even though you admit that your

concept of inspiration is different from the Islamic concept of inspiration, still, the point is that there would be factual

similarities.

The facts, the description would be factually the same.

But when you have differences, what's the implication?

The implications, the genealogy for example, the genealogies are grossly contradictory.

Both are attributed to Joseph.

The story in the resurrection narratives, who did the woman see at the tomb?

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

version.

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

same time.

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 Galilee to meet 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.

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.

We have clearly what can be seen as a contradiction.

They're clearly, what does Jesus tell the high priest when questioned at his trial?

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 prophecies in

Zechariah.

Now, this is clearly an error on the part of Matthew, or the author of Matthew.

J .B. Phillips, he wrote a book called 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.

Early tradition ascribed this gospel to the apostle Matthew, but scholars nowadays almost all

reject this view.

The author, whom we can still conveniently call Matthew, has plainly drawn

from Mark's gospel, and of course, the mysterious 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

throughout.

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 tried to accept, and I think 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.

But if these people were moved by the Holy Spirit, then surely, and he subscribes to the principle of

inerrancy, meaning without error.

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?

Can you see the difficulty?

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

the Gospels were written not as biographies, but as apologetic motifs to prove certain particular

theological points.

I've got two seconds left.

So I think these are important issues, and I hope in the rebuttal, 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.

Thank you.

Thank you, Yusuf.

And now Dr. White for 15 minutes.

Now, before you forget what was just said to you, which unfortunately happens to a lot of us very quickly,

I want to point out that Yusuf completely misunderstood my central

example that I gave this evening, and that was about Jairus' daughter.

If you just heard, you said, well, look, and this illustrates perfectly the danger

of taking the perspective that Yusuf is taking, and it's going to really become, I think, an issue in the next section,

because basically what he said is, which account is right?

They all have to go by the modern standard, and they have the same words, and so on and so forth.

We're going to discover that's not going to work for the Koran, but here's the issue.

He said, see, Mark doesn't have what Matthew has.

Matthew has Jesus raising a girl who has already died, but Mark

she's at the point of death.

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.

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

issue of blood.

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.

See what happened there is ignoring what Mark actually says.

Now we start going, I wonder why Matthew did this.

Matthew's trying to make Jesus look bigger.

That is also in 2006 I debated Shabir Ali at Biola University.

I had caught Shabir in a simple error based upon the fact that Shabir did not read Greek at that time.

In all of his lectures he had talked about, he talks about this alleged growth between Matt, Mark and then

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 I don't know how many times now was

Mark 1335 and Matthew 2442 for years Shabir had said here is this

evolution because in Mark you have the master of the

house and in Matthew it becomes the Lord and see there is this evolution.

I looked them up and they both used kurios.

They both used the same term.

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.

There is no evolution.

There is no evidence of change.

We need to stop citing that one.

We refuted it many many times now.

We need to stop going there.

I think it's very very important that we do that.

How many women were at the tomb?

Now I actually wrote this down Yusuf.

I said Yusuf owes Bart Ehrman some royalties.

Because if you're familiar with who Bart Ehrman is, Bart Ehrman is the most

prolific English speaking critic of the New Testament.

He's an apostate.

He's a former Christian.

And you've got some of his books.

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?

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?

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.

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

evening.

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.

So there can't be any difference.

So if one gives more information, we were just told, well which one's right?

And the problem is in dealing with any accounts written by any

individuals including the accounts in the Koran, we are going to see that is an

absolutely insustainable argument.

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

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 Koran.

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

We were just told that Matthew quoted the wrong prophet.

There are a couple places in the 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.

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

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

John 3 .16.

There was no John 3 .16.

Alright?

So citation of text, especially when you have a scroll, how do you cite a scroll?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

Well, then 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 Matthew is not intending to give us any kind of

exhaustive genealogy of Jesus.

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

into sevens.

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.

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, 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.

I mean, Matthew knows what he's handling.

Matthew knows what he's doing.

There is a point that goes far beyond.

And it's the same thing with Matthew 2751 and the zombie apocalypse, really.

Read Matthew 2751.

There was a resurrection of some who had died.

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.

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 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?

What is the basis for this assertion?

They must be identical to one another.

What's the basis?

I have not heard a basis.

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 Gospel narratives?

We haven't been given that explanation yet.

And I'm looking forward very much to hearing what that explanation might be.

Thank you very much for your attention.

No worries.

25 minutes.

Dr. White for the second part on the Quran.

I'll set my time as well.

There you go.

Alright, thank you very much.

Now, here's where.

The rubber meets the road.

Here's where there's never been a dialogue like this before to my knowledge.

You ever heard of anybody talking about this?

No.

Um, 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.

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.

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

We have fundamental disagreements.

Tomorrow night I'm debating the old subject is Jesus God.

Okay?

Big disagreement.

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.

And so I want to thank Yusuf for being willing to do these things.

He's doing Star Trek.

He's going into unknown countries and so on and so forth here.

And I appreciate that.

But here's the issue.

We need I try my best to only

use arguments in my defense of the Christian faith or even my criticism of Islam that would be

consistent with how I defend my own faith.

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 I just said about my text

and how a Muslim will understand the differences that exist between parallel accounts.

Now, we're aware of the fact there are parallel accounts.

Of course, Tafsir literature has dealt with this for a long, long time.

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

had never thought about that before.

For example, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is told four different times

in the Quran.

In Surah 7, Surah 26, Surah 27 and Surah 29.

And when we look at them, oh, there's a lot of similarity here.

But there's also differences.

Will you commit foulness such as no creature ever did before you?

Surah 7.

One, of all creatures, do you come unto the males and leave the wives

your Lord created for you?

Will you commit abomination knowingly?

You commit obscenity such as no creature did before you.

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

scholars.

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

underlying Arabic differences.

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

Do you come unto men and rob on the highway?

Where is that in Surah 7?

Where is that in Surah 26?

Where is that in Surah 27?

Where in Surah 27?

No, you are a muddy people who are ignorant.

Well, where is that in Surah 29?

You will see differences between these

narrations of the same event.

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

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.

The authors have the right to express those things in different ways.

But here is where the difference comes in.

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

issue of the Quran being one author, no human

intermediation.

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.

I wish I knew so I could incorporate here but we'll find out here.

And this is where I'll find out.

But for many 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 Muslims with whom I have spoken, the Quran existed in eternity past,

uncreated upon that heavenly tablet.

And it has been sent down on to Jibreel here to the earth,

parceled out to Muhammad over time between 610 and 632.

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

a different audience, Mark has a different vocabulary than Matthew has, that's why there are differences and

that's how God chose to give us his word.

He's big enough to, he made us, he's big enough to use us with the results still being exactly what he wants us to have.

He's big enough to do that.

But how does the Muslim understanding of the transmission of

the Quran and its uncreated nature, at least in Sunni

orthodoxy, my understanding is the 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

Sunnis, how does the idea that these were written on a heavenly tablet, which

one's perfect?

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.

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.

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, I'm just guessing at that, for a period

of time was there ignorance amongst people because they didn't have the added information?

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

dealing with.

Let's look at another one to illustrate it.

Oh, it helped, you know what?

It does not I want to blame my technology,

but it was user, error exists between user and keyboard, and that would be me.

What was said to Lot in this situation?

In surah 27, drive them out of your city.

They are people who keep themselves pure.

Surah 26, if you cease not, O Lot, you will soon be of the outcasts.

Surah 27, expel the household of Lot from your city, for they are people who purify themselves.

And surah 29, bring Allah's torment upon us if you are truthful.

Well, was it all of it together?

What about when there's differences?

Who keep themselves pure, who purify themselves, pretty much the same thing.

But there's nothing about purity here in surah 26.

And here's Allah's torment, which isn't found any place else.

So which one is the perfect accounting?

Now, that's not the standard that I would apply here.

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.

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 New

Testament by Muslims need to be rethought critically in light of a meaningful

defense of your own text.

I think that's vitally important.

That's what I'm calling for this evening.

That's what I'm calling for this evening.

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.

There are bad arguments against Islam.

I try not to repeat them.

Do I get resistance from my own people about that?

Yep, sometimes I do.

Might you get resistance if you say, you know what?

That argument's not a really good argument.

We need to abandon it.

Well, you might.

But for a Christian, truth is the ultimate issue.

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?

Good question.

How.

Thank you.

How did the law punish the evildoers?

Well, Surah 7, And we rained a rain upon them.

See how it was the end of the criminal.

Surah 26, We rained on them a rain.

And dreadful is the rain of those who have been warned.

Surah 27, And we rained a rain upon them.

Dreadful is the rain of those who have been warned.

Surah 29, We are about to bring down upon the people of the city punishment from the sky

because of their corruption.

And we have left a clear sign for people to understand.

Two points.

If these two are right, Stop that.

If these two are right, this one's wrong.

Because this is past.

This is we're about to.

Isn't that exactly what we have between Matthew and Mark?

We were just told they're contradictory.

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.

But there's something else I want you to see.

These two, even though there's a slight difference in the English rendering, in the Arabic, are identical.

Now why did I put that up there?

Because it points out that if the author of the Quran wanted to say it in the exact same way, he could.

He did right there.

In two of the accounts, it's identical.

In the other two, it's different.

Why?

Now you see, 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.

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

themselves.

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 Jibreel and then given the

Muhammad and it's written down and that's it, there's no room for making choices about

words.

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

words.

But remember what 2 Timothy 3 .16 says.

It says, all scripture is theanustas, not every scripture writer.

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.

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 Christians who either have never thought about this or have a very low view of scripture,

and I'm sorry about that.

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 Quran, they don't want to apply the principles of life to themselves.

I'm not trying to hold you accountable to them either.

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?

It can be said identically, but it isn't always said identically, which is where

the issue comes up.

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

We are about to.

Is there something in the context that changes that?

Again, if these are all Allah speaking, then which one is what he actually

said?

Now, here is a special example.

This is in regards to the angels at the creation.

In Surah 7, Allah says, prostrate yourselves before Adam.

But in Surah 38, it says, 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.

Now here is a bit of a problem.

And I'll be interested in the understanding these are not words describing what

Allah did.

These are the very words of Allah.

This is Allah speaking.

Prostrate yourselves before Adam.

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.

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?

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

And that's why I'm here to find out from Yusuf how he understands that.

But something tells me, and I think Yusuf will probably confirm this, that there might be

some differences of opinion amongst the Muslims here this evening as to how that works.

Maybe even might disagree with Yusuf's explanation.

I don't know.

We'll find out.

We'll find out.

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

evening battering their IQ by watching television, you

will have spent this evening learning something more about someone else and maybe increasing in your own faith.

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.

It's in the exact same context of the creation, so which one's right?

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.

Not identical, but it's the same command.

So you have to come up with the idea that, well, yeah, 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.

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.

That's why I call for even scales.

Same arguments for both.

How about Adam's fall?

Adam's fall.

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

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.

The holiness of God, salvation, it all goes back to Adam.

Are we fallen in him?

You all don't believe in original sin.

We do.

That has a huge impact on understanding 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.

This is all important stuff.

We would think the Quran would be mubinun, clear in this issue.

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

In Surah 2, Satan causes Adam to slip therefrom, which is not

exactly a decisively clear description.

To slip therefrom.

To slip from something.

Evidently, he's right -standing with God.

But he...

Satan is the one who causes Adam to slip.

That's all it says.

You go to Surah 7, Adam says that he and Eve have wronged ourselves.

Well, see, I automatically put those two together.

Satan's involved, but they accept their responsibility, so they've wronged themselves.

Wronged ourselves.

In Surah 20, it is said that Adam forgot, and that no firm intention was

found in him.

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.

We need to put them together.

But that door was already closed in the first half of the debate.

Unless we want to open it up and say, um, 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.

Maybe that would 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.

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

of an eternal tablet?

That's what we're going to have to discuss.

Because I don't know how 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.

Here's another question.

What did Allah say to Satan?

Now, once again, we're talking here about the very words of Allah.

What did Allah say to Satan?

In Surah 7, then go down from it, that is the garden.

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.

Well, again, these are the very words of Allah.

Did he say both of them?

Did he say get out, go down?

Did he mention the garden, not mention the garden?

Did he mention the curse?

Did he say something about arrogance?

There's nothing about arrogance here.

So is one adding information?

Is it wrong to add information?

When I just pointed out that my Gospels add information, that was called a

contradiction and error.

So do we do the same thing here?

No.

I'm saying, no, we don't.

That's not appropriate.

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 Jabril, then the question that has to be asked is,

why does Allah report his own words in different words?

Because when Yusuf got up in his rebuttal, what did he do?

He talked about what time we got out last night, remember?

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

That was his point.

Well, if you use that standard, which one's 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, 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.

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.

Finally, what did Satan threaten in Surah 7?

Now, because you have sent me astray, 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.

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

among them.

I don't know about you, but that is clearly a summary statement and compilation

of what's here.

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.

Right?

Even scales.

Consistency.

Gotta have it.

It's a good thing.

Now, when Muslims engaging in Dawah raise issues regarding the Synoptic Gospels, do

they do so using a double standard?

Do they apply the same standards they apply to the New Testament, to the Quran?

If not, they are not arguing in accordance with the Quranic imperative, and your Arabic is much better

than mine, but the standard translation is argue with them in

beautiful ways.

Hassan, is it beautiful ways, or sometimes they translate as accurate ways, or things like that.

The point is, 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.

One of the 99 names is Al -Haqq, is it not?

The truth?

And so, double standards cannot be something that either I, I cannot use

them, because I follow him who is the way, the truth, and life.

As a Muslim, you can't either, if one of the 99 names is Al -Haqq, right?

But in particular, how does the orthodox Sunni idea of the uncreated Quran, and I

hope you know in your history, that developed over time.

That was a development over time.

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 Quran.

Especially when Allah is quoting Allah.

How do you deal with that in light of your position?

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

today?

If we can begin to ask questions about the motivation of the author, alterations of the text, so as to communicate a nuanced meaning, et cetera,

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

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, changed the dynamic of the Bible's

parallel passages.

The questions that must be asked of the Quran's focus upon its compilation, Canada in particular, upon the theory of

inspiration, these are the things we need to discuss this evening.

Thank you very, very much for your attention.

Bismillah ar -Rahman ar -Rahim.

Now, I want to thank 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 Al

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

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.

Now, here's a problem, before I go into the main presentation.

You see, James presented us passages of the Quran, which purportedly appeared

to say the same thing, but in different perspectives.

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

Surah 7, verse 80.

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?

Surah 27, verse 54.

Will you commit abomination knowingly?

Surah 29, verse 28.

You commit obscenity such as no creature did before you.

Now, the question is what's the difference there?

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.

So, if I were to say James White, get out and go to Arizona, and Rudolf reports the

next day that Yusuf said that James White needs to leave and go back to Arizona, would he be saying what

I basically conveyed?

Yes!

But the point is that the choice of words is different.

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

I was looking at factual differences.

You see, one or none.

How many disciples did 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 Babylonian captivity, right up until Jesus, you have 13 generations.

Can you see?

There's a problem.

Factual differences basically mean someone says X and another person says Y.

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

they're contradictory.

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.

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?

Will you commit abomination knowingly?

You commit obscenity such as no creature did before you.

What is a contradiction?

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.

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

now criticize the New Testament whereas you have something similar like that in the Quran?

No, James, it's not the same.

One and none is not the same.

There's a hundred percent difference between one and none.

Can you see?

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

Now, I want to move on to the particular discussion.

The Quran quite clearly states, and I think from this perspective, I'm going to expand my issue on some of the aspects that

James has read and add additional material.

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 Quran having

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

What is the excuse?

You see, the main particular problem which I want James to state

and convey to us is that he disagrees with the Quran.

He disputes that the Quran is a divine word of God.

Why not come open?

Why not be open about it?

You see, traditionally, missionaries when referring to the Prophet Muhammad,

they had certain charges that they laid against him.

If you look at someone like for example, 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.

Now, the problem is that in missionary tautology, which is what James represents,

they have to have all three at the same time.

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.

Am I correct?

If someone is lying, then he cannot be possessed by Satan.

Am I correct?

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

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

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 Quran, you are to say,

when you read my book, seek protection in Allah from Satan, the accursed one.

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.

So from that particular aspect, the argument simply falls down.

Is he lying?

Is he lying?

Lying would mean that he's an imposter, he's a deceiver.

Now, there are many examples in the life of the Prophet Muhammad, where by certain issues

raised, which basically raise certain aspects.

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.

And in that particular narrative, if the Prophet was

crazy or mad, he would have claimed and said, yeah my... and his

child had passed away, 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.

What did the Prophet, peace be upon him, said?

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.

But when you see it, you invoke God and seek His pleasure and worship Him.

Doesn't sound crazy?

Doesn't sound somewhat mad.

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 Prophet was mad?

Does he believe that he was possessed by Satan?

Does he believe that he's lying?

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.

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.

Now, here goes a problem, and if we look at the issue of borrowing.

The main theme of the theory of borrowing is as follows.

If a later text shows similarities to an older text or tradition, or is similar to what is known or

thought before, then the later text has borrowed, plagiarized, copied, utilized, or previously known.

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 Quran, that were borrowed from Jewish

folklore and fable.

To show parallels from pre -Quranic sources, thus demonstrating that the Prophet Muhammad borrowed from the

spiritual owed debt to the Judeo -Christian heritage.

But the problem with this, let's assume that Prophet Noah was given certain examples, then the Prophet

Moses was given certain examples, after in certain commandments.

Now, if we were to see that the followers of the Prophet Noah, accusing the followers of the Prophet Moses, how do we accept the

followers of Prophet Moses to respond?

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.

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

me.

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.

I hope he's not disappointed tonight.

But the problem is, I'm disappointed that he never chose to even focus on any of these particular issues.

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.

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

Or what did Lot say to the people of Sodom?

Or how did Allah punish the city of Sodom?

Let's look at this example.

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

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

27 verse 28, we rained a rain upon them, dreadful is the rain of those who have been worn.

Similar to surah 26.

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.

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?

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.

But does that detract from the message?

Does that in fact come close to the examples that I presented in the New Testament,

where you find clear distinctions.

Did the women with the instructions given to go to Galilee, or did they not go to Galilee?

There is a difference.

But here it's the same thing, but in a different choice of words.

When you look at the concept of revelation, wahy, Arabic, English, every language of the

world is human.

The Quran says, وَإِن مِّنْ أُمَّةٍ إِلَّا خَلَافِهَا النَّذِيرُ.

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

وَلِكُلِّ قَوْمٍ هَادٌ.

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 wahy, revelation, and uses language and employs parables and

stories as a means of communicating a particular message.

Now what James had to say, he should have shown us a verse in the Quran which says, and we reigned a reign

upon them.

And then surah 26, Allah says, and we did not reign a reign upon them.

We did not punish them.

Can you see, that's a contradiction.

Because in the one verse it will say, Allah punished them.

And in the next verse 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 New Testament.

You see the specific examples I could show could be numerous.

I could show several similar passages in the 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.

But I illustrated points where there were factual scenarios given, and

there were different facts mentioned on the same incident.

Now here we do not have a different fact.

If James could have shown that one particular surah, Allah gave a punishment and in another surah

there was no punishment, then that would be a problem.

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, now does that mean that there is no divine inspiration?

Does that mean there's no divine revelation?

If we accept the principle of Quranic revelation, that the 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.

But, will do so from the perspective that God himself is revealing and dictating the

particular words.

So for example, and we rain down a rain upon them.

It is as if God himself is speaking.

Can you see?

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

Now, coming back to the idea, suppose the Quran was totally devoid

of similarities, would you then accept the Quran, James?

And the answer again is unlikely.

You would probably argue for the theory of innovation.

Because it is not to be found in an earlier revelation.

Now, the point is that you damn either way.

This deals with the issue of missionary tautology implication, and the idea of parallel sources, which James hasn't

dealt with.

But I want to basically point out this particular fact.

The methodology is used not to prove why they don't believe in the Quran, rather to deceive

uninformed Muslims, to have doubts about the Quran, and to make them accept the Bible.

As well as to prevent others from considering Islam.

Yesterday, I stated quite categorically and I said again that James has an agenda.

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, 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 Calvinistic interpretation of Christianity.

Can you see?

That is the agenda, and that is the historical bias.

Why not come open and say openly and boldly, either the prophet is mad, either he is a

liar, or either he is possessed.

Make that claim.

I dare you.

I dare James to make that claim tonight.

He will not make that claim.

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, 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 the particular key issues, which was raised by

Dr. Jamal Badawi some years ago.

One, who is the mysterious teacher through whom Muhammad might have learned all of this?

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?

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?

You see, because if one were to look at James' theory, he's presenting this to say, look, there may be a human

development.

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.

So answer these questions.

How could many Jews and Christians amongst his contemporaries become Muslims and believe in his truthfulness if they believe he was copying?

How could he have hidden himself for so long?

Now are these fair questions?

And James, are you willing to answer these questions?

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 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.

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.

Just say it, and it becomes so.

And that's a problem that we have.

Now anyone familiar with the history of the Quran will know that the Quran is a collection of inspired messages.

And we believe that it's a product of the 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.

And a number of instances of surprising coincidences have basically been found.

And this is not mentioned in the Quran itself, but people in looking at the Quran have found numerical

similarities in the expression and utilization of certain words.

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 Bible itself.

There's something else entirely.

But again, what are the implications of this?

What explains the incidence of correspondence in the Quran?

Is it by human design or by divine design?

For example, there's a statement in the Quran of the seven heavens.

It's repeated seven times.

The creation of the heavens, is also repeated seven times.

The number of repetitions of words, for example, plant and tree, is used 26 times.

The word shaytan, Satan, is used in the Quran 88 times.

The word angel, use the same number of times, 88.

The word faith, iman, without the genitive form, is repeated 25 times throughout the Quran.

And the word infidelity, kufr, repeated 25 times.

The word paradise and hell, in its primary form, are repeated 77 times each.

The number of times the word man and woman are repeated in the Quran is 23.

23, check it up.

The total number of human chromosomes is 46, 23 each from the mother and the father.

The word salawat, appear 5 times in the Quran, and Allah has commanded man to perform salat 5 times a

day.

The word wine, khamr, and intoxication, sakara, are repeated in the Quran the same number of times, 6.

The word tongue and sermon are both repeated 25 times.

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.

David and Solomon appear the same number of times, son and father, 16 times.

The word land appears 13 times in the 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.

And if you look at the total references to land and sea, 45, divided by the number of references to the sea in the Quran,

you find the figure 32.

That's approximately 71 point so many percent.

Extraordinarily, those figures represent exactly the proportions of land and sea on earth today.

Now what's the implications?

What's the implications from this?

Wait.

What is the implications?

Look at the word human being.

Insan, 65 times.

And if you look at the composition of human beings, soil, 17, drop of sperm,

12, alaka, the embryo, 6, a half -formed lump of flesh, 3,

bone, 15, and flesh, 12, and you add the two, you get a total figure of 65.

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.

What are the chances and what are the probabilities, think aloud, of words and expressions and phrases

used in the Quran that appear identically the same time in different instances and in different contexts?

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 Quran are fabricated.

This is clearly an observational view of certain passages and words in the Quran as they appear in different

words.

I'm asking you, James, in all humility, account for that.

You have to account for that.

Because, you need to be bold enough and say that either the 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.

But according to missionary tautology, he is in fact all three.

And that is a ludicrous position that we have to say.

Let's look at the birth of Christ.

You see, in the Quran, the enunciation is mentioned about the birth of Christ.

He will speak to the people, and Maryam asks, how shall I have a son when no man has touched me?

And the Quran is made to say, وَإِذَا قُدَ أَمْرًا فَإِنَّمَا يَقُولُ لَهُ كُنْ فَيَكُونَ.

And when He has decreed a plan, He, Allah, merely says to it, be and it

is.

For Allah to create millions of Jesuses or millions of human beings, He would simply say, 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.

Then let's contrast this with the original.

The original says, how shall I have a son when no man has touched me?

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.

And more explicitly, before she came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

Now what are you saying?

We know that we are both saying the same thing, but when you compare the two, the differences are remarkable.

So, when in Genesis it says, and the Lord visited Sarah as He had promised, and the Lord did unto

Sarah as He had conceived, as He had said, and Sarah conceived, what did the Lord do to Sarah?

We know it doesn't mean that.

We know it's a conception at a later time, here immaculate conception, but what's the implications of

the language that is being used?

And if the 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?

How did the Holy Ghost come upon Mary?

How did the Almighty overshadow her?

Can you see the implication?

That gives the atheist, you're giving the atheist and agnostic a stick to beat you with.

So how can a forgery be better than the original?

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 Quran.

So coming back to this, and I want to basically leave us

with this particular issue.

Let us not maintain a duplicitous double standards.

Again, let us maintain even scales, your words.

Let us look at the Quran and the Bible with ever fresh opening eyes.

The Christian critique against the Quran simply does not stand and does not hold any respect

within academic circles and is only popular amongst polemicists and missionaries.

Why is it that not a single, very few Quranic scholars of note, if you look at the 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.

The question is why?

Look at the works of Angelica Neuwirth.

Even look at the historical revisionists who are analyzing the Quran.

Why is it that this kind of work and this kind of argument is only familiar in missionary and common in

missionary circles?

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?

Why do it through a means in terms of which you are basically going behind the scene?

Thank you very much.

God.

Bless you.

Thank you Yusuf.

Now for Dr. White.

Well, I tried.

I tried to.

Initiate a discussion where we sought to understand each other better or we could

grow in our understanding of one another's views to move the ball forward.

That attempt was just repudiated in fullness by probably

the most glaring example of smoke and mirrors that I've had in 150 debates.

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.

I honestly, in 150 debates, have never heard anything like what I just listened to.

What I asked and the issues I raised were completely, totally ignored.

All sorts of other issues were addressed that I didn't even raise.

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.

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.

When I was trying to point out, you know, we all have issues to be thinking about here.

Why is it that when the 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.

And yet we heard the exact opposite standard being applied when Mark says

something or Matthew says something.

Evidently, since no answer was given, the debate's over 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.

Let's stop the thinking.

Let's get the emotions going.

That's the exact thing I've been saying.

We need to stop.

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.

How are we ever going to get past throwing rocks at each other if

we don't try to understand?

I don't understand it.

How are we going to do it?

I raised important issues.

I stuck to the topic of the debate.

I used the exact same standard that I used in defense of the New Testament not to