Can We Trust the New Testament?

The Debate Was Not About the New Testament

I'm afraid I should begin with an apology if you traveled a good distance to be here this evening to hear a debate, a scholarly debate on the text of the New Testament's reliability. That is not what we just heard.

We heard everything but the kitchen sink, a criticism of at least a dozen to twenty different topics, and we heard really nothing of any substance in regards to the actual subject of the debate this evening.

I'm very disappointed in that, but I would like to at least try to rescue some of the time to at least respond to the many falsehoods that were just proclaimed in regards to my faith, the gross mishandling of the text of scripture.

I'm sure any of you who actually know the Bible were amazed at some of the things that you just heard because the very basic level knowledge of the Bible would have kept my opponent from many of the basic errors that you just made.

And once again, I simply have to draw the massive contrast between what you have seen today. I listened to David Wood dealing with original sources, with Ibn Kathir and al-Qurtubi, and dealing with Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih al-Muslim, and the care that we as Christians attempt to take to read the Koran, to read the Islamic sources, and to read them in context and to understand them.

It is not my experience that Islamic apologists show any concern whatsoever for carefully handling our texts. The amount of eisegetical misreading the Bible that was heard is absolutely shocking to me, and I hope you'll recognize the vast difference in the approach that Christians take because I believe we have a very different view of truth.

We simply cannot respond in the same way. Now, I would just like to point out a number of the errors as we go on. My opponent said I talked about millions of manuscripts. Actually, I said there are 1 .2 million pages of text in the manuscripts that we have.

Inspiration, Authorship, and Canonical Recognition

He brought up the issue of unknown authors again. This brings us back to a different view of inspiration that we have. It is not the author that makes a work of scripture. In Christianity, it is the spirit that makes a work of scripture, and it's recognition by the people of God.

As I have pointed out before, Jesus had no problem with the fact that some of the books he quoted did not have a name attached to them as to an author, when he quotes, for example, from 1 Kings or something like that.

This isn't an argument. Christians do not say that we know the author of every book, and we don't need to know the author of every book for it to be scripture. Mr. Abdullah has demonstrated that he can read unbelieving commentary on scripture.

He can read atheists and liberals and things like that. Congratulations, I can read the same books, but I can also read the very same kind of scholarship about the Quran. That's out there too. He would reject it.

Why? Why should he accept the conclusions of naturalists who do not allow for the harmonization of scripture, who do not allow for the concept of inspiration, and just throw these things out there? Why does he accept their conclusions when he won't accept the very same conclusions the same authors would make about the Quran?

The inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument. By the way, just in passing, I don't want to get into politics, but anyone who actually read what Sarah Palin said knows that that was a gross misquotation of what she said, and I really don't appreciate when people take people so completely out of context as she was taken out of context within that context just now.

Manuscript Evidence and Textual Variants

I thought the debate this evening was on the New Testament. We then heard stuff about, we start walking through Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers, Deuteronomy and so on and so forth. The debate this evening is on the New Testament, and if there were debate judges here this evening, the debate would have been halted about five minutes into my opponent's presentation.

I would have been declared the winner, simply for violating the topic that we were supposed to be discussing. We were asked on what objective grounds, we finally got to a subject that's somewhat relevant, on what objective grounds would you reject his claim that there are even more scribal errors than what we see?

Well, I don't get the feeling my opponent has ever collated a Greek manuscript. I don't think he's ever looked at a critical edition of the Greek New Testament. This is a diagraph. This is the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.

It is the critical edition of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament bound together with the United Bible Society. This is the critical edition of the Greek New Testament. Down at the bottom of the page we have footnotes.

These footnotes note textual variants and provide you the manuscripts, early church fathers and early translations that read either side of a particular textual variant. These things are made available to us.

We can examine these things. We have a huge manuscript tradition. And the very question that was asked demonstrated that my opponent does not understand anything about the New Testament manuscript tradition.

He does not understand how the New Testament has come to be. He cannot examine these variants for himself. Because the question demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the most basic elements of this.

I'd like to contrast that, however, which is available for anybody. Well, not the really nice cover, but the rest of it is available anyway. With the current edition of the Qanon. This is a 1924 Egyptian version that has become the standardized Qanon.

There are no notes at the bottom of the page because there are no critical editions of the Qanon. Now, there are variants. I just recently purchased for around $250 a Turkish reproduction of an ancient, I think it was one of the Uthmanic family of manuscripts.

And at the front there are some charts showing seven different manuscripts and the difference between them in the Qanon. Variant readings between seven manuscripts. This will give you 20 ,000 manuscripts of the New Testament alone.

And you can buy a book from a place in Turkey that will give you seven manuscripts of the Qanon. But most Muslims just read this and assume it's always been that way. They don't know that. This just happens to be what was printed in 1924.

There are differences between the Qanons that were printed before that, but they don't know that. That's what this debate should be about this evening. Is the differences between the two sides and being open in dealing with the textual history of our relevant scriptures.

But at that point, that's where we basically left any discussion of the New Testament. And failing a major turnaround in the next rebuttal period of producing some serious discussion of textual critical issues, then that debate evidently is already over.

We did have mentioned just briefly the textual variant of Mark 16, 9 -20. The three largest textual variants of the New Testament are Mark 16, 9 -20, John 7, 53 -11, and 1 John 5 -7. 1 John 5 -7 isn't really even a textual variant.

There are no Greek manuscripts that contain that before the 15th century, so it's not overly relevant. But those are the largest textual variants, and we all know about them. They are printed even in English Bibles.

You'll find footnotes that talk about them. Again, the critical editions of the text will talk about these things. And the manuscript tradition is so early and so full that we don't have any difficulty in identifying the original readings in these places.

Merely pointing out what Christian scholars have known for centuries and centuries is not an argument. It's not how you engage in a debate. Now, there are a number of other things that were said. For example, the allegation that Paul contradicted the Old Testament because he called the law a curse.

He didn't call the law a curse. Paul called the law good and just and righteous. He said the law, because it's good, just, and righteous, brings a curse upon us because we break it. This is a fundamental, basic misreading of Paul.

It's just not reading the words on the page. He then said that Paul contradicted Jesus on divorce. Anyone who's ever studied what Paul actually said and what Jesus actually said know that they in part are very, very harmonious in what they say.

Paul does not say that the person is... I forget what the terminology he used a moment ago. But he said Paul did not know this. He did not know about the exception of Jesus. That's just not reading all of Paul.

He then accuses him later on of being contradictory because, let's see, yeah, marriage in Paul versus marriage to infidels. The Old Testament says you have to marry non-believers. Paul's writing to the Gentile church.

And if a person in a marriage becomes a Christian and the non-Christian leaves, that's what Paul's addressing. And somehow this is relevant to the same command in the Old Testament that Jesus would not marry non-Jews.

Again, I would be embarrassed if I stood before Muslims and manhandled the Koran the way a Bible has been manhandled this evening. You need to show some respect for the text. Even if you disagree with it, you still need to handle it accurately if you're simply going to show some kind of respect for truth itself.

John the Baptist, Eyewitnesses, and the Psalms

We then had, amazingly, for the third time today, my opponent demonstrated that he does not understand that there is a man named John the Baptist and there is a man named John the Apostle. And for the third time today, though corrected twice before, he quotes John not having yet been put in prison, which is John the Baptist, not John the Apostle, as if that was John the Apostle talking about himself.

I don't know how much clearer that can be. I have demonstrated so many factual errors in the past that just keep getting repeated that sometimes I wonder if the microphone just isn't on and no one's hearing me.

These are basic fundamental issues. Someone needs to admit when they've made an error. We are asked, 500 witnesses, well where are the books of every single one of these witnesses? This, again, is a demand for historiography that no ancient source, the Koran included, can ever meet.

Paul makes this claim during the life of the eyewitnesses themselves. He's making this as an argument. If he couldn't back it up, his argument would be vacuous and his opponents would refute him. He was constantly in argumentation at that period of time.

And so to say, well, we have to have a signed position from all 500 witnesses before it's relevant that Paul can make this argument is, again, historically naive and completely absurd. There is no functioning historian in the world that utilizes that kind of argumentation.

Not a single one. If you'd like to look more into the issue of the eyewitnesses of Jesus, an excellent book was published last year by Richard Falcon on that very subject that has turned the New Testament area of studies on its head.

Falcon is one of the leading New Testament scholars today and I would highly recommend its reading to you. It's not easygoing, but it is excellent work. Then, again, the view of inspiration comes out in saying, well, the Bible records apostles fighting with apostles and I guess God's fighting with himself.

You see, there's a fundamental difference between how Christians and Muslims view inspiration. We recognize that God uses men and their language in the context in which he finds them. Look at the Psalms.

The Psalms give us men rejoicing in God and praising him. The Psalms also give us men who are in the very pit of despair and sadness. The whole range of human experience is presented to us in the Psalms.

The Muslim says that means it can't be the word of God because the word of God is just simply God speaking. But the Christian says we have a much higher view of inspiration. God has chosen to communicate to us in our language and in our experience.

He uses men and their language. He uses their experiences to communicate to us. And our God is big enough to do that without giving us an errant scripture in the process. He doesn't have to just simply turn people into human typewriters, just dictation machines.

He can actually use human beings in the context in which they find themselves. And I'm very thankful he's done that because when I read the Psalms and I'm filled with joy and I'm worshiping God, I can find those words there.

But when the dark times of providence come across us, we also find in the Psalter and elsewhere in scripture those writers of scripture who likewise were going through those difficult times. And we can identify with them and we can be greatly encouraged by them.

I'm glad the scripture is not limited to a dictation machine. And so we have very different views of scripture. That is not an argument against us. That is just a recognition of, I think, a very inferior view of scripture on the part of Islam.

The Cross, the Wisdom of God, and the Spiritual Man

But we had an amazing statement. One of the most beautiful texts from all of scripture is Paul's discussion of the power of God and foolishness of man. And he uses irony. He speaks of the fact that the cross from the world's perspective is a sign of weakness.

The cross likes power and swords and defeating others like Islam does. But Christianity says that's not where the power of God is. The power of God is in love. The power of God is in service. The power of God is in giving one's life for the truth.

And so when Paul speaks of the foolishness of God, he speaks of the weakness of God, he's doing that in contrast to the wisdom of man. And anyone who's read that, with even the slightest bit of fairness, with even the slightest bit of trying to understand what's being said, would be well aware of what Paul is saying.

To assert that he's insulting God and blaspheming God, again demonstrates that my opponent this evening does not understand the Bible and has put no effort forward to understand it in the context in which it is found.

And I do not find that to reflect well upon the Islamic position. We then had Paul's discussion in the same section where he's talking about the spiritual man. He says, I was just translating this, sitting on the plane coming out here, this very same section just happened to open up today.

And there Paul is saying that the natural man does not receive the things of the spirit of God, they're foolishness to him. They are spiritually discerned. He says, but the spiritual man, the spiritual man understands these things.

The spiritual man discerns these things. And when it says he is not judged by any, there is no application whatsoever to the idea that pedophile priests, who would not be spiritual men in the first place to begin with, that pedophile priests are not to be judged by secular authorities or anything like that.

I cannot imagine a more amazingly errant and completely wrong application that has nothing to do with the original context, nothing to do with the original meaning whatsoever. We then heard, and I quoted this, I wrote this down, Paul was quoted as saying, I think I have the Holy Spirit inspiring me.

I hope that that was just a mistake because if it was a mistake, it's a lie. Paul never said anything of the kind, and we who know the Bible know that. Paul is speaking about his opponents who call themselves super apostles.

And as he is giving instructions to the church, he is speaking in this instance of a topic where he does not have a tradition directly from the Lord Jesus Christ in regards to what Jesus taught on that subject.

And so, by his apostolic authority, he gives instruction as to how that particular situation is to be addressed, and he says, I believe I have the Holy Spirit. He is speaking of the source from which his instructions come.

He is in no way, shape, or form saying, I think I have the Holy Spirit inspiring me. If my opponent would like to come up here and show me from the Greek language where Paul ever said that, I would be most thankful.

He will not be able to do so because it's not there. Finally, there was the books mentioned that are not in the canon. A whole list was given to you. And of course, I remember the first time I began dealing with this about 22 years or so ago, 23 years or so ago, when young Mormon missionaries would likewise make this kind of argument.

Now, of course, if anyone looks at any of these books, and some of them we don't have, some of them we do, but some of them were mentioned in the New Testament, part of the New Testament, the Epigrapha and things like that.

As I've had to say to Mormons for a long, long time, why do you believe that God's word cannot mention the existence of any literary work without making it part of Scripture? If the Bible were being written today, and Jesus were ministering in Los Angeles, and one of the Gospel writers were to mention an attack upon Jesus found in the L .A. Times, does that mean the L .A. Times becomes Scripture?

Of course not. So why is it that when the Bible mentions that people wrote other books, you automatically assume those other books are supposed to be part of the Scripture? I mean, if the Kingdom of Scripture is something that God himself creates, and I believe that it is, then God can't lead his people to an accurate knowledge of what he would have them to do.

Again, I find it just amazing to find Muslims using such naturalistic arguments, arguments that assume the non-existence of God. The early Muslims did not do that. The early Muslims did not attack the Apostle Paul the way that modern Muslims do, because they had not yet come to the understanding that the Quran is fundamentally contradictory to the revelations that came before it.

It was only after that that they began to embrace these kinds of arguments and use this kind of naturalism. And I'm still waiting to find my first Muslim who will be a consistent Muslim. Muslims believe God speaks.

Muslims believe that God is a creator. And I'm still waiting to find the first Muslim who will use arguments against my position that are consistent with his worldview. I've done a number of debates now on this subject, and I have not met anyone who did not have to borrow from an unbelieving worldview to come up with a position.

And so the presentation I made to you has not even been touched. Nothing that has been said is even slightly relevant to the presentation I gave to you. I presented to you the fact that the New Testament is the most heavily documented work of literature in the ancient world, that we have thousands of New Testament manuscripts, we are able to compare them to one another, we are able to engage in textual criticism, the examination of those textual variants where they do vary from one another, but I also showed you on the screen how incredibly pure that text is.

There is no reason to believe, for example, many Muslims, and I would love to debate a true Muslim scholar, if we could find one that would defend this. Muslims like to tell you that John 14 and 16 have been corrupted.

Did you know that? Muslims believe that Muhammad has prophesied, many Muslims, believe that Muhammad has prophesied in the New Testament. And that the section in John 14 and 16 about the Holy Spirit, the Paracletos, was actually about Muhammad.

Tomorrow I will be wearing a tie from Codex Alexandrinus that has John 14 and 26 in it, and you can see the word Paracletos right on the tie, and that manuscript was written over 270 years before Muhammad came along.

They would like to tell you that these changes have been made. Well, tonight is an opportunity for Osama Abdullah to stand here and provide you with real scholarly documentation to back that kind of claim up.

Instead, we have heard about everything under the sun, attacks on Paul, and canon issues, and stuff from the Old Testament. This is a debate about the trustworthiness of the New Testament, and so far the debate hasn't started yet.

And so, in 30 seconds, my opponent is going to have 20 minutes. I want to challenge him. I want to challenge him to start the debate. Show us real scholarship. Show us that you can stay on the topic. Show us why we should not believe that the New Testament documents are reliable.

Thank you. Osama Abdullah, 20 minutes.