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.'".

Parallel Accounts in the New Testament and the 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.