Divine Scripture: Bible or Qur'an?

On my right here we have Mr. Abdullah Hamimi and Abdullah we're very thankful you can be with us.

Abdullah has contributed long -standing efforts working closely to mobilize large -scale collective action between Muslim university students associations all across Victoria leading many community initiatives.

Abdullah's dedication lies in educating and equipping his wider community to confidently practice and share

Islam with others. He is the Australasia outreach specialist for IERA and also an executive board member at his local

Muslim community organization Pillars of Guidance Community Center. Motivated by challenging existing ideological frameworks he is committed to uplifting his local and global Muslim community.

If you could please give a round of applause for Mr. Hamimi. And to my left here we have

Dr. James White. James White comes from Phoenix, Arizona. He is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

He is the author of over 24 books and has participated in over 170 moderated debates and we are very excited that he has come to Australia.

He has just recently ministered in Sydney last week and he is also a part of the Hills Bible Church Apologetics Conference this weekend.

So we are grateful for him if you could also give him a round of applause. Now before we formally begin our proceedings

I want to just tell you what you are going to be in for. We are going to have a time where there will be two 20 -minute presentations and these will be timed.

You'll notice that I have a beautiful captain's bell here. Listen to this. When that bell rings our speaker needs to finish up what he is saying and we want to be tight with the time so that we can be respectful to the program and I've always wanted to use that bell.

We're going to have two 20 -minute presentations and that will be followed by two 10 -minute rebuttals.

We will then move into a 30 -minute section where we are going to have some cross -examination and dialogue.

Each speaker will be given 15 minutes to lead those questions and that of course will also be timed and then we will conclude with two five -minute closing remarks and where possible at the end of the program if you have any questions

I'm sure we're available. The speakers would love to be able to talk to you and we will advise after this event in terms of where and when you can find the video and audio recordings of today and what

I would like to encourage everybody is when you are hearing the presentations if you could please show your respect by holding back any applause or comment until the end of the presentation.

We want to respect both of the speakers and give them the ability to be able to communicate these things clearly as we respectfully listen on.

I'd like to begin by first of all asking Dr. James White if he could come and bring our opening presentation.

Thank you Dr. White. All right well it is indeed a pleasure to be with you.

I am very glad that Abdullah was able to make it through that wonderful... I'm discovering that Australians have interesting difficulties with traffic.

It seems a little bit like the United States in that way but I'm very happy that you all were able to be here this afternoon and I wasn't exactly sure what direction to go in our discussion on the subject of the

Bible and the Quran. Abdullah was very kind to take this discussion on very in a very relatively short period of time and so we didn't want to do anything that was completely out of the norm and of course

I've done many dialogues before on the subject of the Bible and the Quran but thankfully

I think it was only about four or five days ago you had a dialogue was that at Monash University?

Was it Wednesday? Something along those lines with a Christian on this very same subject so I watched that and said okay there we go.

We'll be able to be a little bit more focused that way because when you talk about comparing two scriptures let's keep a few things in mind.

Not everyone knows the historical backgrounds of these two particular books but when you're looking at the

Bible you're talking about a collection of writings by more than 40 authors that was collected over 1500 years and so written in multiple languages

Hebrew in the Old Testament but of course Hebrew went through a lot of change and development during the lengthy period of time during which what we call the

Old Testament or the Tanakh was being written. There are about 12 chapters of Aramaic as well and then you have

Koine Greek in the New Testament and a much shorter time period for the writing of that of that but you have very very very ancient material in the

Pentateuch the writings of Moses less ancient once you get to the minor prophets who are up to about 400 years for the time of Christ then the

New Testament is written in a very short period of time relatively speaking and then you have with the

Quran you're coming 600 years later this is in historical let's not get into the debate today on the eternality of the

Quran I just did a debate with Yusuf Ismail in South Africa on that subject about two months ago if you want to take a look at that but at least as far as historical appearance of the

Quran comes about 600 years after that so Quran is not actually an ancient work in that sense because it's coming right at the beginning of the medieval period it wouldn't classically be identified as one of the works of antiquity like the

New Testament would be and so the Quran is also significantly smaller it's only 14 percent the length of the entire bible about 53 percent the length of the

New Testament as far as the number of words are concerned and so it's it's a much smaller volume and it's a relatively much more recent volume so in other words it only had to go through about 800 years of handwritten transmission before the invention of printing in the west whereas the

New Testament has to go through about 1400 years and portions of the Old Testament multiple thousands of years and so when we're comparing these two volumes we're comparing very very different works one is one one language and we're told one author versus a collection of over 40 authors collected over 1500 years in comparison to about 12 so very very different things and so I have often asked in my dialogues and discussions with Muslims when criticism is made of the

Old and New Testaments well we need to use the same standards we need to have as the Quran refers to equal scales we need to use the same standards of evidence and reasoning and so on and so forth and so when we do that when we talk about the bible in the

Quran we have to be very very careful most Muslims and Christians just simply look at it as a volume on the table and do not recognize the historical reality of how these books came together and a lot of Christians are not aware of the historical reality of how for example the

New Testament came together it's very important to recognize I think if we want to seek to compare and if any of you have my book what every

Christian needs to know about the Quran do you have that book you can get an autographed one yes we'll try to try to work that out but but you do but you have read it oh no okay well you may lose your copy today yeah okay in my book in chapters 9 and 11

I deal with this specific issue you could have known everything I was going to say if you just had you just had my I'll send you on YouTube it's okay okay so what is really important for both sides to understand is that one of the fundamental differences between the bible and the

Quran other than the things we've already mentioned here that is multiple authors different kinds of literature in in the old and new testaments you have apocalyptic and poetry and so on and so forth and there are a couple of different forms of various of the surahs in the in the

Quran but not nearly as wide a variety of literature as you have in the context of the bible but the most important thing

I think that would help advance the conversations that we that we need to be having between our communities and by the way if I could just say this

I'm really hoping that the conversations with young men like Abdullah will in the future lead to an advancement of our conversations between our communities to important issues

I'm afraid that in the past very often our conversations have gotten stuck into certain ruts and don't necessarily result in a lot of increased understanding of what either side actually believes

I want to see that advancement in in the future because it can be done with respect we don't have to be at each other's throats we we will always as long as Islam remains

Islam and Christianity remains Christianity be at disagreement with one another surah 112 ayah 3 if that is directly in reference to Christianity and I think that it is we will always have reason to be at disagreement on key issues but that doesn't mean that we cannot respect one another and that we cannot engage in this type of dialogue in a meaningful fashion and I think the whole world needs a whole lot more of the dialogue rather than the fighting personally and so I'd love to see an advancement of the topics and here's my contribution to that the fundamental difference between the

Quran and the New Testament let's focus upon the New Testament because the history of the Old Testament is so long and so far back in antiquity that's very very difficult the fundamental difference is between what is called a free transmission of a text and a controlled transmission of a text now what does that mean in the

New Testament the older of the two documents and the longer and the multi -authored document you have multiple writers writing it multiple times to multiple audiences so the apostle

Paul he didn't write all his letters in the same place the gospels probably weren't written in the same place the book of revelation was not written in the same place as other books so you have multiple authors multiple times writing to multiple audiences that meant that certain churches for example if you received a letter from the apostle

Paul then you would let copies of that be made and they'd be distributed to other churches but you'd have that one you'd keep that one particularly to yourself and eventually collections of those letters would be made and collections of the gospels were made and eventually those were put together with the letters of Paul and and you have a process going on and the important thing is it's not a straight line you don't have someone writing the

New Testament and then it copies made in the New Testament then it copies made in the New Testament the copies made in the New Testament you have multiple origination sources and hence you have multiple lines of transmission going up through history until they start being collected together now why is that important it's extremely important because what it means is there was never ever a time in the history of the

New Testament when any man or group of men could control what was in the

New Testament oh I know that's against YouTube and if you get your scholarship from YouTube you'll believe anything on any subject there is but there was never a time historically when any one man or group of men controlled the

New Testament Dan Brown Da Vinci Code Constantine that is all absurd from any historical perspective whatsoever it could not have happened there is no way that Constantine could have gathered up all the copies of the gospels and made wholesale changes he couldn't have found all of them we have manuscripts today that had already been buried in the sands of Egypt before Constantine was ever born he wouldn't have had access to those things and hence if he did make changes later on once we find those earlier manuscripts there would be huge differences between them but the reality is as we began finding the papyri they're called the papyri we started really finding them en masse in the 1930s uh the

British had stolen them from Egypt a long before during the colonial period and dragged them back to London and as we discovered these papyri did we discover a new

New Testament some new message no not at all they confirmed the accuracy of the manuscripts that we already had the great unseals like Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, Washingtonianus etc etc etc so that kind of editing could not take place in a free transmission of the text now the result of free transmission of the text is something called textual variation because for the first 300 years the church there's persecution especially between 250 and 313 there's empire -wide persecution the

Romans are trying to destroy the New Testament and so the Christians are having to make a lot of copies of the New Testament so to make sure that people have the scriptures and they didn't require you to be a professionally trained scribe to make a copy if you want to make a copy of of first Peter for your church because your church didn't have a copy of first Peter they didn't say let me see your scribal accreditations card please before you we allow you to do that no you were allowed to make a copy and so when we look at those early papyri we see varying levels of skills and clarity of writing and so on and so forth and the result is something called textual variation if I took a handwritten document and gave it to everybody in the front row and asked them to copy it and give it to everybody in the second row and then they gave their copy to the third row by the time it got back to the back we would have a number of differences in what was originally given but if we could find your copy and your copy and your copy and your copy on the way and compare them together we'd have a very good ability to reconstruct what was given to the people in the first row that's similar to what we have in looking at the transmission of any ancient text but especially in regards to the

New Testament that is the result of the free transmission of the text the cost is textual variance which we need to study to this day but the good thing is there could never be any substantial editing or changing of any of those documents that would not stand out in clear display as earlier and earlier manuscripts have been found that's gives us the free transmission gives you the highest level of confidence the more lines of transmission that you have the higher the level of confidence that you have we have over 5 ,000 almost 5 ,800 fragments of the

New Testament in Greek plus you add in the Latin Syriac Boheric Coptic etc etc we have over 25 ,000 handwritten manuscripts of the

New Testament as Bart Ehrman said in the debate we did in 2009 the New Testament has the earliest attestation of any work of antiquity no other work of antiquity comes close every other work written contemporaneously with the

New Testament the average amount of time between the first manuscript that we have in the extant now and when it was written is between five and nine hundred years for the

New Testament we have fragments for example the Gospel of John p52 little credit card fragment from John chapter 18 verses 31 to 34 and 37 38 is from around 125 so four times earlier than any other work of antiquity that would be contemporaneous with the

New Testament that's what we're dealing with now what is a controlled transmission a controlled transmission is

Sahih al -Bukhari volume 6 pages 509 and 510 which I will allow Abdullah to narrate for you because he did earlier when he gave the presentations a few days ago specifically a controlled transmission is when there is an external authority or power that is involved in revision or control of an official text and has the power to actually enforce that and so fundamentally when you have

Uthman specifically creating an official version of the text and then sending that official version to the major Islamic cities and saying this is the that you are to use and anything else is to be destroyed and they have people like Ubaid bin

Kab and Ibn Masud who are going well Kab not so much but especially

Ibn Masud going no no no no no Muhammad said I was one of the people you come to for the

Quran and I'm not giving mine up and so there's there's dispute but when you have the governmental authority saying this is the version you are to use destroy anything else that is not a free transmission of the text that is a controlled transmission of the text now for most folks you'd rather have the controlled one now

I don't know about you I do not want the United States government approved version of the Bible that that concerns me greatly it really really does but what if it's a religious government what if it's the successor of Muhammad then why not that would be a good thing to have and a lot of people don't like the fact that in the margins of your

Bible you know it's in little teeny tiny print but it says right over there some manuscripts say this and some manuscripts say that and if you're a

Christian you've got to admit there were times you looked at and said I don't know if I like that you should be very thankful that that is in the margin of your

Bible you should be very thankful you have that kind of information available to you because the controlled transmission of a text can only give you confidence back to the last revision of that particular text so let me give an illustration some of you may remember the movies with Indiana Jones years ago

I'm dating myself here some of you will watch some of the oldies channels and you remember the search for the holy grail and they they the holy grails in this remember the cave with the dude that had been sitting around in there for 700 years as a really boring job and didn't even have cable and and I'm not sure how you live for 700 years then a

Nazi can shoot you and you die immediately but anyway it's the believability was sort of rough but but a lot of people would like that let's let's just have one version of the

New Testament and it's kept in one place and if we need to know we go ask the guy who lives for 700 years and protects it that way we'd have no notes we'd have no no concerns whatsoever except for one thing how do you know what he's been doing in there for 700 years you've got no way to check maybe he decided he could do a better job than the original writers did you have no way of knowing because unless you have a free transmission of the text and hence can compare many many manuscripts if you only got one you have to trust that whoever produced that one got it exactly right and so what if Uthman was successful what if he produces the final edition and he sends it out and says everything else needs to be destroyed and everything else was destroyed it wasn't that's the one of the issues we need to discuss you have this on a manuscript papyri and a manuscript finds things like that but what if he was successful how far back then could you go in the transmission of a controlled text only back to the last successful revision now

I remember I debated Adnan Rashid on this subject in London a number of years ago and he said hey as long as we can get back to Uthman that's perfectly fine with me so there you go as long as that's your ultimate authority there you go but you're admitting we can't go back to the original we can only go back to the last revision in a controlled transmission of a text now when you have controlled transmission you're going to have much less than the way of textual variation there are textual variants and manuscripts of the

Quran that is not even a questionable thing I'm sure that's not going to be disputed today that's been admitted by many of my opponents easily documented but you're not going to have nearly as many because you don't have nearly as many copies being made so what's the situation we face today one of the things that we need to we need to understand is that issue of the free free transmission versus control transmission and then it's a little bit unfair but we have critical editions of the

Greek New Testament today I have one over there I can talk to you about a little bit later on we have the

Nessie on the 28th edition we're working on what's called the ECM the edition critical mayor supposed to be done by 2030 it's going to be huge probably about 40 volumes long in regards to the manuscript evidence the

New Testament could be awesome to have all that information available to us but we have many critical editions available to us with the manuscripts listed and so on and so forth there is not yet a critical edition of the

Quran they're working on it there is a there is a project undergoing but as far as having a even close to complete catalog of all the manuscripts their contents collations of the manuscripts the availability of information the critical study of the

Quran is in its infancy in comparison to the New Testament and that means the conclusions that we come to in this type of a dialogue and discussion have to be that they can't be final

I'm not going to be one of those people that says and as a result this is what you must believe no there is more information to come but the reality is that one side has significantly more data from which to draw than the other side does as for the history of their text which is a little bit interesting given the fact that the

Quran is 600 years younger and hence was written much closer to the time period of the modern modern time as well those are issues we'll have to be getting into hopefully that wasn't too much information too fast but it's a good foundation to get us started we've got a lot more time to talk about it thank you very much for your attention

I needed to ring that bell thank you

James I'd like to now begin a 20 -minute presentation as Abdullah brings this one to us now all right good afternoon everyone

I'd like to thank the organizers for providing this opportunity and also seeing

James White in real life I've only seen him on on the computer so far and I look forward to reading his book

I echo a lot of the sentiments that he expressed in terms of dialogue between either faith and the nature of respect and reflection not necessarily to answer questions but perhaps to get us to think a little bit more deeper about our own beliefs and our own foundations for them for both sides so I'll begin my presentation you might actually get an opportunity to ring this bell on me because I've got quite a few things to run through but let's go into it so have you have you ever thought about how religious scriptures how the religious scriptures that we have today have been passed on throughout history and thanks to innovations like the printing press in the world that we live in which allows for the mass distribution of information we don't have to really worry about the loss of our religious texts or because of the printing we only have to account for a small portion of our history of most of our religious texts because of that which span thousands of years the vast majority of religious texts today have been passed down to us through scribal traditions whereby manuscripts are copied word for word hand by hand using materials such as ink and leather and so the question here is is is this method of preserving information reliable so have a think about communications of the modern world such as email, text messages, have you ever sent an email or a text message that contains spelling or grammar mistakes and even with the benefit of modern computers, phones, even with professional media outlets and spelling and grammar spell check and whatnot now imagine if you have a copy of an entire book with hundreds of pages by hand and it's been copied by hand and only with paper and ink without relying on any modern technology now naturally

I think it's reasonable to agree and I think we both agree that it would be probably filled with some mistakes and so this is exactly what we find when we compare manuscript copies of religious texts from the past they're filled with many spelling mistakes, missing words, sentences, there have even been scribes that have made intentional changes to suit a particular agenda and I'm not going into conspiracy theories although some of them are interesting it was easy to do this without most people realizing because literacy rates in the ancient past was really, really low and there were very few scribes now extend this copying process over hundreds of years and even a thousand years now you can imagine how this text will change over a long period of time accidental or intentional or changes will eventually gradually creep in now imagine if you had this task of evaluating all these written copies with all their differences you would have to compare each of them to the original word by word, line by line now this would be an extremely time -consuming task but if you had enough time or enough people helping you eventually you could work out which copies were the most accurate compared to the original now imagine if you had to perform this task of evaluating all these variations but this time you didn't possess the original to compare it against it would almost be impossible to determine accuracy this brings us to another major problem with relying with manuscripts only and the preservation of information over time they can be lost they can be damaged and so we don't always know or have access to the original or even the early copies of the originals and so therefore we lose the ability to determine which of the copies we possess is the most accurate now that we have now that we have a background of the transmission of ancient texts we can have a better appreciation of the transmission of the new testament the earliest physical manuscript which was mentioned by dr white is the new testament manuscript known as p40 p52 dated by the earliest part of the new cent the second century nearly a hundred years after jesus it was from the gospel of john and it's about the size of a credit card that's all we have the first uh the front contains the first seven lines from the gospel of john and the back contains the seven lines from verses 37 and 38 both in greek now the earliest copy of the new testament in is codic sinaticus and that was dated in the fourth century now to trace this timeline that's 300 years after jesus and so just about how many new testament manuscripts are there and how different are they from one another the original language of the new testament is in greek and this is the language that most ancient manuscripts are in there is almost 6 000 we had a number of 25 000 in total of new testament manuscripts but no two pages are identical this is according to the interpreter's dictionary of the bible and i quote um there is no one sentence in the new testament in which the manuscript tradition is wholly uniform and so the famous alexandrian scholar origin was aware of the scale of the variance of the new testament as early as the third century and he says the differences among the manuscripts of the gospels have become great either through the negligence of some of the copyists or through the perverse audacity of others they even neglect to check over what they have transcribed or in the process of checking they lengthen or shorten what they as they please the third century codic and then the codic sinaticus one of the oldest surviving manuscripts of the new testament has a fascinating scribal comment in the margin which provides great insight into the variance from this point of view from the copyist and it says some of the new testament uh present uh some of the new testament presents a bewildering number of variant readings across the pan manuscripts for example coliseans 2 2 with 15 variations so this raises an interesting question which version of the new testament is inspired as the word of god and and since there are so many uh variants in existence how do we choose and so faced with a massive number of variant readings how do christian scholars go about determining what may be with the word of god and maybe the word of man so let's take an example here luke 10 10 uh luke 10 1 yeah and we i'll provide the example from the niv uh the rsv as well so in the niv um it's uh it says uh that verse after the lord appointed 72 others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go that's in the niv in the rsv it's i quote after the lord appointed 70 others and sent them and sent them on ahead of him two by two into every town and place where he himself was to come so as you can see the editors have two there's two different versions of the bible and two different readings yeah on one hand it says 70 on the other hand it says 72 but in the new in the original new testament so which one is the original new testament 70 or 72 so bruce metzger a christian expert in the greek biblical manuscripts and is widely recognized as one of the most influential uh 20th century new testament scholars this is what he had to say about the evaluation of this textual problem in the wake of luke 10 10 1 he says and i quote the the external evidence is almost evenly divided the fact is bringing the evaluation of its internal evidence whether involving transcriptional or intrinsic possibilities are singular elusive it is likely that they're in most most of the early manuscripts the numeral was written in letters of the alphabet it was easy therefore for either number to be accidentally altered so evenly balanced there's two probabilities now more or less as you can see the criteria here and this is just one example that has been developed by textual scholars depend wholly on probabilities often the textual critics must weigh each set of probabilities against each other the range and complexity of the textual data are so great that no mechanically divided set of rules can be applied with mathematical precision so each one of those variant readings need to be considered in itself and not judged according to a basic rule of thumb and so bruce metzger concludes by saying the following about the evaluation of the readings he says by by way of conclusion let it be emphasized again that there is no single manuscript and no one group of of manuscripts that a textual critic may follow mechanically all known witnesses of the new testament are to a greater or lesser extent mixed texts and he goes on for a larger quote and if anyone everyone's interested i can go into this and so answering the question whether the bible is the word of god we have to have we have the difficult task of identifying which which version may be the word of god and so as we've seen ultimately it's fallible editors that decide what goes into the new testament not matthew mark luke or john now we can appreciate why the why there may be different versions of the bible in existence today and scholars of the bible uh those who are experts in sifting through the huge number of variants that exist in the manuscript tradition can't agree on which copies are the most accurate this is because they have the tough task of estimating which copies are closest to the original without possessing the original to compare i'll say that again their task is to come is their task is to come as close as they can to the original because they do not have the original to compare it so with each version of the bible that exists is a patchwork of different copies combined together and this represents what a particular scholar or a group of scholars estimate as the closest match to the original therefore with the new text of the text love the new testament there we've relied on a copy uh the manual copying of preservation and so with this we we rely on estimates and we can't say with a hundred percent that what we have today is however the accurate or represent or representation of the original now you might say hey so what are the theological consequences of the new testament variances yeah spelling errors sentences passages um you know doesn't matter at all now i wanted to press on about three different um three different examples actually four make that four if i've got time now uh i'll run through them and hopefully maybe in the dialogue that we have in the next segment i can go into them deeper otherwise i won't get an opportunity to go through the quran the first one is did uh john first john five seven yeah for for their for their three that bear uh record in heaven the father the word and the holy ghost and these three are one this is an austin quoted passage to demonstrate um the trinity although the trinity is larger than just a sequence of um of uh persons um co -equality co -equality um uh is is core to it so anyway we can discuss that a bit later i'm sure um uh dr white's got many many debates on the trinity now this verse um mentions supposedly mentioned the trinity now it used to be present in all bibles it remains in in some versions but in the king james version today there's a there's an interesting um quote however the editors of the modern versions of the bible such as the rsv and the niv have removed this particular quote now compare one john five seven um uh in these different versions of the bible notice that in a version uh in verse seven now if you've got the if you've got the rsv or niv pull it out and have a look um i don't have a projector on me here um but there's a slide on this so notice how verse seven in the rsv is different to verse seven in the kjv the rsv does not contain the mention of the threeness uh also notice that the verse seven in the niv is different from not only the kjv but also the rsv the niv does not contain mention of the threeness now here is the niv quote regarding um regarding that verse um in the late manuscripts of the vulgate uh uh of the vulgate testify in heaven the father the word and the holy spirit and these three are one and there are three that testify on earth and this and then there's a then then there's a bracket not found in the original greece greek manuscripts before the sixth century so if you're an auditor you could only go you could only go up to the sixth century you've got six centuries to account for which you are which you you can't you can't determine without any um level of accuracy and this is this is a quote that um that people use for the trinity very very core and so without this verse there's no mention of god's threeness in the bible so one has to wonder if the trinity is even a genuine doctrine of the bible in this case why is there only one explicit mention of god's threeness in uh and only in later editions it seems that it has to be inserted into the bible in order to lend support for this particular doctrine so that's the first example the second example is the story of the the adulterous woman now um and to refresh your memories the quote goes um let any of you who is without sin be the first to cut to throw the stone at her how often have you heard this in sermons now this section of the gospel of john verses 7 53 and 8 11 is the famous story of the adulterous woman who is about to be stoned because of a charge of adultery now in these verses jesus was questioned about her her punishment and that is the famous words let he who is without sin cast the first stone now this whole story is another later edition in the new testament in the in the earliest new testaments and it's not found until the 5th century and the and the vast majority of of those prior to the 8th century lack this story and so here's a here's an interesting footnote regarding the this verse in the niv it says the earliest manuscripts and many of the ancient witnesses do not have this in john a few manuscripts include this verse but holy or only in part and so christian theology teaches jesus teaches that jesus came to do away with the old testament for punishment of crimes of passion such as adultery and these verses are commonly cited by christians to support this claim and so without these verses we find no other examples of jesus not following the old testament laws and dealing with the punishment of the crime now they're two i think they're two very core doctrinal um consequences of the variation that exists and there's a couple more that i'll quickly gloss over but there's there's hopefully we have time for it and the third one the third one is is um uh the ending of mark right and the shortest ending in mark is found in uh some of the oldest complete copies of the new testament in uh in venaticus and also sinaticus which is still three and a half centuries after jesus died that's the earliest we have yeah and they stop at verse 16 8 and most of the other later manuscripts contain some additional verses and mark 16 9 to 20 which are not always the same seem to have an added added to the gospel at a later point in time and so in this additional verses that mention the believing christians will be able to survive handling snakes and deadly poison you might have seen youtube videos around that i'm not sure if this church does that um i don't think so and so it has it has consequences yeah and the third and the fourth one is the role of women in church in the church yeah women and and i'll quote corinthians yeah women should remain silent in the churches they're not allowed to speak but they must be in submission as the law says if they want to inquire about something they should ask their husbands at home for a disgraceful for women to speak in the church now for many centuries women have not been allowed to lead or to teach in the churches based on these verses however there is strong evidence to suggest that these verses are not in the original paul's writings but they were added as latest scribes and so for a start these verses seem to contradict what paul wrote earlier anyway and he says but every woman who prays or prophesizes with uh with her head uncovered dishonors her head and is the same as having their head shaven since it's quite clear that paul has no issue with women openly prophesying and praying it makes no sense that he'd immediately follow it up with what he said about silence and speaking and so they they're the four points of uh what are the consequences of the particular variation so the variation exists in terms of words sentences some passages and but in many ways those core differences have got core doctrinal problems in them right and how do we determine that is it disciples is it apostles is it jesus who's deciding this and and if we if we in hopefully in the next couple of segments will unveil that the people who are deciding this are church fathers who are not disciples who are not eyewitnesses who are not connected to jesus they're disconnected by many centuries and our our our closest auditing trail is at the best coda sanaticus which is about three and a half centuries after jesus died right that's the best and after that we have thousands and thousands of um uh of manuscripts prior to that the closest we can get is a credit card size p p 52 of gospel of john that's as close as we can we don't have we don't have the originals of matthew mark luke or john now the transmission of the quran we might say what about the quran the preservation perhaps was uh was uh could have been compromised based on what um uh james said but the author of the quran makes a very very bold claim that this doesn't exist in the bible specifically and particularly on the point of uh the the gospels matthew mark luke and john none of them claim to be inspired anyway but the the quran makes a very clear uh statement here and i quote in uh surah 15 chapter sorry chapter 15 um verse 9 we have sent down the quran ourself and we ourself will guard it this is god's promise that god bless his final revelation with the quran with something that is not bestowed on any prior scriptures he promised to protect and preserve it from any corruption you might be wondering about why this such a bold claim and how it could be true in light of um you know about the in light of consistent corruption of previous religious scriptures throughout history including the new testament so unlike this scripture these scriptures the primary means of preserving the quran has been and always was memorization and and the and the quran reminds us this in chapter 54 verse 17 and we have certainly made the quran easy for remembrance so so there any who will remember and any memorization is really practical in preserving quran the reason being is because it's got a unique style that it's easy to memorize like poetry and so have a think back when you were at school you've probably forgotten the finer details of science of or or or any of those boring subjects that you have mathematics and physics but um i'm a fan of maths by the way um this is because we haven't used this knowledge after we've left school for example and human beings naturally forget things um but how often is it that you can recall a nursery rhyme or the words of lyrics of a song like just like that right and you haven't heard it for ages so the prophet muhammad peace be upon him uh was tasked by god with memorizing transmitting and explaining the verses of the quran to the muslims as they were revealed by god to him through that spirit of angel gabriel um and in turn muslims who had learned the quran directly from the prophet himself were known as the companions passed on what was memorized to the neighboring tribes and nations so see the difference here it's the companions it's the companions who not only heard the quran in person they memorized it off the prophet himself and not one companion not two companions but thousands of them memorized the word for word whilst simultaneously later on was also being written down now this is very attested to by i've got a minute or two that's it that's it all right it's attested by our ancestors orientalist scholars as well and we'll get into it in the next segment thank you thank you very much abdullah and thank you for letting me ring the bell i really wanted to do that i'd like to ask james now to bring the first rebuttal and this will be 10 minutes the problem of course with debates is it would take 30 minutes to adequately engage each of the subjects that were just that were just raised that's that's the problem i'd like to begin by uh giving abdullah some gifts sorry i'll give you some some later on but um here is my my book whatever christian needs to know about the quran and also bruce metzger is a textual commentary on the greek new testament uh that he was just quoting from i don't know if you actually have the whole volume but you will know all right um i won't spend a whole lot of time on each one of the variants because those of you who listen to my program know that only two weeks ago i spent about 90 minutes on the comma johannium uh that is first john 5 7 i went through all the manuscript evidence uh when it was said for example that it used to be present in all bibles that is simply not true obviously uh it is an insertion of the greek text that the earliest testimony we have amongst greek manuscripts is from uh the 15th century approximately uh i have examined the actual manuscript that forced desiderius rasmus to put into this third edition of his novum instrumentum uh in uh the trinity college's reading room in dublin ireland a codex manfortianus uh it was not written by john it is not part of the greek manuscript tradition it is a latin gloss that first appears in the fifth and sixth centuries went into the latin vulgate uh became popular it was never used by the for example church fathers at nicaea to prove the doctrine of trinity i've written an entire book on the trinity never quoted first john 5 7 because it is not a proof text for the trinity in that sense in any way shape or form so we are not dependent upon it it has been well known by all scholars anyone familiar with the new testament that it is a later edition so when it is said it's a quote people use to prove the trinity not by people who know their bible it may be used by others but it is not used by those who actually understand the foundation of the doctrine of the trinity every talk i give on the subject of new testament reliability i make sure everybody understands that there are two major texts in the new testament that involve a major block of texts that are variants that is the pre -adultery in john 753 3 8 11 and the longer ending of mark mark 16 9 through 20 there is significantly earlier evidence for the longer ending of mark than there is for the adultery which first appears in codex vesa canterbridge yensis in the fifth century which is a very unreliable manuscript i call it the living bible of the early church not only that but the adultery appears in three different places in the gospel of john and two places in luke in the manuscript of tradition that is a story that was looking for a place to land again scholars are well aware of this you do not base any dogmatic teaching upon a textual variant so it's not the basis of anything in regards to jesus and the old testament law or any of those things these are well -known variants the evidence is all right here so anyone who wants to go out can purchase this is an seal and edition of the greek new testament you can buy the united bible societies these are all available digitally they're all available on phones and tablets and everything else today and you can look those up and there's the bottom the page all the variants laid out for you now this has more variants than the ubs text does how many variants are there well it depends on whether you count just simply for example is there if there's a difference in one single letter or whether you're talking about variants that actually could be original and actually change the meaning of the text if if you're talking about bulk variants including spelling and everything else in the about three million pages of new testament manuscripts in greek there's about 400 ,000 variants that's a lot but when you boil it down to what could be original and could actually be explained to someone who doesn't read greek there's between 1 ,500 and 2 ,000 now here's the issue to understand everything that was given to us by the apostles of jesus christ is right here it's either in the text or in the notes we have not lost any of the original readings now there is nothing like this for the quran the only reason that wadullah can raise issues about textual variations is because we have enough information about the early texts of new testament to identify them look at the arabic text of the quran that most everybody in this room if you're a muslim reads from are there any notes about the page are there any notes on the side of the page nothing it was created in 1924 in cairo egypt it was not done by a bunch of scholars and yet it has become worldwide not completely pakistan has its own reading so on so forth but has become worldwide the standard and yet it doesn't come from doing meaningful manuscript study it is just simply printed in that way and there are no notes so the reason that we're talking about variants in the new testament rather than variants in the quran is because there are only a very few sources of information about the variants in the quran and so when you're reading the arabic text you don't know if that's a variant or not you've got no information there i mean the top copy printing has a has a chart with a few variants in that and you can go dig up some of the books on the sa 'ana manuscripts and discover the the large number of variations that are found in those but the fact is there's this doesn't exist in islam yet so which is better to know the history and have all the data in front of you or to just have an established text and not even know what its history is and say well it was memorized well the problem is in the very narrations in sahih al -bukhari what was the primary reason when people approached uh uthman to do his revision there were differences in the recitation amongst the people in iraq and sham so there were differences so how do we know what those differences were when when that collation was done verses were found that were not in the original one that were done a number of years before that in the original manuscript well not original manuscript the original collation manuscript there were verses that were found a verse in surah 9 that was found at that time what other verses we don't know because we don't have enough information and so when right now we are living in a day where something tremendous is happening and i i do not have time to explain this but right now when we talk about the difference here i am actually doing a phd program uh my doctoral advisor did his phd under metzger so you've already heard metzger mentioned so you get get the idea and what i am specifically focusing upon is something called cbgm coherence -based genealogical method you can go online it's only available for acts in the general epistles so far there's it's this is an ongoing project you can go online for any one of these variants and you are able to i know only a few of you can see this but click on any one of these manuscripts here are the relationships of manuscripts etc etc etc we are wide open in our recognition of the existence of variation but the point is we have hundreds of manuscripts upon which to be able to determine the range of even possibilities for any one of them there are numerous scribal errors for example there's something called homo teleton when you're copying a document and in your language there are common endings to words t -i -o -n -e -s -i -n -g these are common english endings to words it is very easy for a scribe upon writing a word that ends with t -i -o -n -e -s -i -n -g when looking back at what they're copying they find another word that ends with t -i -o -n -e -s -i -n -g they think it's the same word but actually it's a few words down the road and they inadvertently skip what's in between now if we only had one manuscript or if we had a revision of manuscripts then we wouldn't know what the original was but we have hundreds of manuscripts and we're able to compare them and because we have multiple lines of transmission you can go oh look at that for example in first john 3 -1 if you compare the king james with modern translations the king james doesn't have a phrase and such we are what what great love the father has shown us that we should be called the children of god and such we are that and such we are is not in the majority of greek manuscripts but we know that it's what john originally wrote why because it's homo teleton it is an example of seeing similar endings and inadvertently the i skips over and you lost two words kai esmen that's all it was so we recognize scribal habits we are open about these things and we have the biggest oldest manuscript tradition of any work of antiquity we can't even begin to have this discussion about the qanon because we don't have that information and by the way when you say well you know you've got cymaticus and then you've just got that one scrap that ignores all the rest of papyri i am working on papyrus p45 p45 contains sections of matthew mark luke john and acts it's the only early manuscript we have that contains those particular books it goes between 200 and 220 um it has major major portions of that text and it's one of just many that we can compare with one another that go into that time period between p52 not only that we have something called p uh p 75 which when it agrees with cynaticus goes back to as early as p52 there is much more information that we actually have my point is because of the free transmission we can look at all this we've got all the data right here where's the where's the corresponding quran it doesn't exist and we're being told well it's because it was memorized documentation is something we can examine a dead person's memory we cannot that's a major difference thank you thank you very much uh dr white for the book um i need i'll get your autograph uh after the debate um so uh i think i think a lot of things were left to be said because i missed out on the last bit but i'm more or less uh i'll cover the end of i've got 10 minutes so i think i've got enough time what dr white's doing is he's demonstrating a lack of uh he's trying to explain um more or less is uh through titling it a free transmission um that trying to put pieces of the puzzle back together right um and the is uh i only got up to the purely the oral transmission for the islamic uh um or for the quranic um understanding but again as i mentioned there wasn't it wasn't purely based on an oral transmission we have we have entire codices yeah the topaki the birmingham uh um manuscript go google it if you want to have it for more information and we can talk about it later within the first century right within the first century we have an oral transmission of multiple chains of narration multiple from the prophet himself to the companions to um to absolute to even to this day right through all the modes modes of recitation and thereby that they're from the people who witnessed it we have we the closest um uh full code codex that we have is one of the copies of ottman's ottman's text which was compiled by companions it wasn't compiled by one person the first compilation of the quran was within two years of the prophet's death during the time of abu bakr he commissioned zayd ibn thabit um to not to bring together verses and each verse that any uh each verse that any companion had to bring had to have two witnesses it had to be written down it had to be memorized in uh um in the presence of the prophet and they also had to do two witnesses so a controlled um a controlled transmission is a scientific transmission if that makes sense it can be audited right we can we can confidently uh conclude that this is uh whether you agree with the contents or not we're having if we're having a historical discussion i'm not trying to turn this into a theological discussion but at the very very least you can agree that a controlled transmission done by the very people that it was revealed to that witnessed the revelation and then carried on to others that's always going to be a more faithful representation of what the actual text was now when when dr white mentions uh p45 p52 72 codex sinaticus codex sinaticus yep that's the only full codex that we have of the um of the new testament right and again when we when uh just to quickly track back a little bit we sort of glossed over the old testament the old testament is a whole a huge part of christianity it might not form modern christianity as determined by paul but it's a huge part of the text it's part of the bible and in the oldest manuscript of the old testament it's probably um the dead sea scrolls at best and that's about four thousand years four thousand year history and we can only go 300 years bc how do we know we're linking and we're attaching we're attaching our salvation in the hereafter this is a really important discussion we can have a discussion around okay this is it's a book of faith i have no problem with that but if we're going to have a historical discussion if somebody had to objectively audit this they would determine they would have to determine how how they can compare it to the originals now that brings me to a really interesting point about matthew mark luke and john right the fact that we have p40 p52 which is within the start of the second century we don't have the original of matthew mark luke or john right the best we have is a credit card statement of um of uh some of the verses of john right so in what how can we possibly audit uh the original how can we know what's the original compare that to the quran it was not only was memorized it was also written down it was put together twice but during the time of uh the caliphate of abu bakr which was the first caliph two years after the the death of the prophet and then ottman within 20 years within 20 years was brought together and yes it was uh the one of the triggers of ottman uh commissioning the compilation or the ottmanic compilation was because there was different recitations now the question of difference in recitations we're talking about potential different recitations but we at least have the we at least have a close um a prescription of the text what three and a half centuries later in codex sinaticus that's a that's the whole book by the time we have that this i put your imagination um uh or put your historian hat um on and and just imagine uh the transmission of ancient texts not only scribal errors uh times where someone made an error and then someone tried to fix that error not knowing what the original was and i keep going how do you how can you determine that certain parts of and i and i and i respect that dr whiteworth made those admissions there's certain parts of the the new testament that we can now confidently determine that it's not part of the new testament and there were later forgeries because they don't exist in for example codice sinaticus which we only we only um found that recently so prior to that people were taking that as faith now as a muslim if i if i confidently knew that if i found out that a certain part of the quran was not the quran or i think i would have um that would be powerful i think at the very very least um now so we the muslims do have a written transmission yeah there's no critical textual uh studies uh in the way that um dr white is describing because it's so controlled right the whole point of textual criticism is to determine what the original text is and because there's so much variance that's the that's the auditing task for many christian scholars um in the islamic faith there's a very very strong introspective and reflective tradition within the tradition to determine and that's called isnad system the system of chain of narration so in the islamic tradition we only take from people that we know people that we know who they are so we know the chain of transmission this person studied under this person spoke to this person spoke to this person and we know who this person is we know his biography we know whether he's reliable we don't take from this guy was old his guy this did for example this guy didn't have um a good memory or he had certain biases and that sort of stuff so the controlled for something like this for something as heavy as heavy as as determining our salvation and our faith um uh i think it's incredibly important for us to determine the accuracy but nevertheless from the islamic point of view we we believe that um the bible was never meant to be preserved anyway there was no promise there was no divine promise that we will be preserved um and so for that reason the quran the god allah comes in the quran says and he he guards the quran not only does he um uh does he does he claim that it will be preserved that it will be preserved but he asks he doesn't just say that this is the word of god and just believe me he asks he asks mankind three falsification tests three falsification tests the first one that it will be preserved the second is that you would you will not find contradictions or mistakes within it and the third you will not be able to replicate even a chapter like it so we provide it gives mankind an opportunity to falsify now muslims never had a i mean islamic civilization has never had a shortage of enemies uh or people who are motivated to undermine an entire civilization and god has basically just said here you go be my guest give it a shot right to determine the to demonstrate the divine authorship through reflecting um so i don't know how many minutes i have left two minutes okay i'll just quickly uh cover up um uh there's a few other points um so we don't have the highest level of we have the highest level of confidence that that you can have uh for the new testament right up to the third century at best and even then there's there's variations within that three and a half centuries well i mean you can just go through christian history and don't pretend that it's like um that it's this uniform history and uniform doctrine that um that you know it was literally passed on you know um all the church fathers all the different denominations all the different beliefs all the different um bringing together of the the creed of the trinity putting the the holy spirit uh within there so many things that the church fathers had to decide at the time um the last point that i wanted to touch was particularly the anonymity of matthew mark luke and john of the uh of the four of the four gospels the fact that uh they don't it was never they were authored anonymously in the sense that it was not ascribed to matthew mark luke or john uh it was these were ascriptions that were given to them at least a century and a half later justin during for example justin martyr that's the time that's probably the first time uh in history that these gospels were titled matthew mark luke and john to begin with right um and you compare that to the quran we know exactly who it came to we need we know exactly um who uh who attempted to compile it and who preserved it and to this day those chains of transmission exist and to this day um we have many many manuscripts i wish i bought i bought that book in the other um uh in the other debate um the timeless quran i think that's called by mustafa azami basically what he's done he's provided manuscripts manuscript evidence yeah taken up from from uh the manuscripts themselves um from from um india all the way to north africa and from each from each century of the islamic civilization so we can demonstrate from both from an oral tradition as well as a textual tradition that the islamic scripture is faithful thank you thank you james thank you abdullah uh we're now going to move into a 30 minute section where we are going to have cross examination and some dialogue each speaker will be given 15 minutes to lead those questions so i'd like to ask dr white to begin in the first 15 minutes all right abdullah just a few quick questions um how long after muhammad did imam bakari live a few hundred years a few hundred years and so the narrations that you are depending upon for the establishment of the accuracy of the quran were collected as long after muhammad as codex sinaiticus was written after the end of the new testament age right the parallel of the hadith versus the the actual scripture of god um i don't i don't buy that they're too in the islamic tradition uh the hadith and the quran are not one so to represent them as one um i wasn't assuming that i'm simply saying that if i'm simply asking if you can have accurate information that is foundational to your position in bukhari and that's collected hundreds of years and yet you're saying that if sinaiticus is hundreds of years that that that somehow is a problem it seems it seems to be inconsistent so uh bukhari was penned 300 years right so all bukhari did was bring the hadith together bring the authentic narrations of the prophet peace be upon him together into one book they existed way before bukhari in fact they existed during the time of the prophet where where um uh where and this is just one one canonical book right there's many compilations of hadith prior to bukhari uh he's he's he only has a particular special uh section because of his motive such as such as muqattal's collection right there's many and yet imam imam malik's muatta was within uh within less than a century uh of um but but isn't it true that muqattal is not viewed as having authority because he didn't use the later development of of isnad standards that only come a couple hundred years later the is that standards existed from uh right from the beginning that was that was core of the the uh the arab and the islamic tradition in the beginning imam malik's muatta demonstrates that very perfectly then why didn't muqattal use them imam malik so what it is is they compiled hadith into a book imam malik's hadith there's many of imam malik's hadith that are also in for example bukhari's hadith or or muslims hadith so for example let me give this example um uh in many of imam malik's hadith the chain of narration because he lived in medina so close to the death of the prophet the chain of narration is two people three people right so uh that demonstrates the time lapse between how isn't it true that of all the hadith that bukhari or muslim examined that the majority they rejected is not being sahi they had a very there's so there's levels of classification right sahi hasan so on so forth but it's a little bit more than that um so uh mutawatir uh and that's that's the highest level of classification where that's mass transmitted to an extent where uh by multiple independent chains of narration yeah so it was in it's impossible for all these people to come together and conspire that level of hadith there's only there's only a small percentage of them right the other hadith there there um uh you know many of them are yeah as you said uh authentic um reliable uh weak uh fabricated but this classification system exists because but my islamic scholars sought to discern that i i understand his ad sciences my my point is that there were many many hadith that existed at that point in time that had isnad chains that were rejected as being unreliable is that not the case that's fine that's fine yeah so it is the case well okay there was a hadith that was rejected because they were not reliable that's the point that's why they rejected but they all had isnad chains or they were not even exam okay all right so when you say that for example uh let me let me just make sure we get a chance to uh you said when you gave uh the standards for abu bakr and utman's creation of their mushaf uh you said that there had to be multiple witnesses and and all the rest of these things where are you getting that information from how long after that event is your earliest reference to that standard so you're saying can i please explain that a little bit so when when you you very quickly mentioned um and i've i read the book that you gave to joash i was hoping to actually give that to you but you can i have it i have a very good library actually i've read the book and the argument there is that the and it's been repeated to me in numerous other debates is that there is there was this standard that was in application at that time for the creation of mushaf including multiple attestation multiple witnesses so on and so forth i what i'm asking you is what is the earliest historical evidence you have to substantiate that claim so those those uh that narrative of course comes from uh yes and i agree it comes from the hadith but the hadith were they were written and memorized then and there they were only bought into books in the later centuries so certain scholars sought to comply compile them so the hadith existed during the time of abu bakr during the time of omar so that's within 2 to 20 years but but your first knowledge of it comes from hundreds of years later no it doesn't it was the first time it was printed in a book comes uh printed in a book like that yeah yeah it comes a couple hundred years later and there and and if you just read bukhari 6 519 and 510 those those standards are not included in that narration by bukhari are they the standards the standards differ amongst the scholars but that's that's fine so the standard about having multiple uh attestation and witnesses is not found in bukhari is it i'd have to check that okay all right i just want to make sure because that was a that was a uh a very important issue um i don't think i don't think the argument rests on that point though okay one solitary narration so um i i it's all right let's let's talk a little bit about anonymous authors um if jesus was a prophet then he would have only quoted uh from reliable sources is that true jesus okay so when jesus quotes from the broad portion of the old testament and we don't know who wrote many of the sections he quoted from was he in error for quoting from the sections i would clarify that no i'm not i'm not saying uh that uh that there's no truth contained within either the old testament or the new testament i'm just saying i'm putting a question mark in terms of how can we determine that truth i i didn't and how can we know that's how we know is the divine truth so i can say that generally okay but that's that's not what i asked jesus said that the scriptures cannot be broken in john chapter 10 you can't use the new testament to you taking the new testament for granted you can't that's a circle that's circular reasoning there is no possible way to talk about what jesus said without going to the quotations of him from the first century but that assumes that the new testament or that quotation is reliable and authentic quotation of what jesus said and you believe every word about jesus in the quran right of course yeah okay and yet there's 600 years between the quotations of jesus in the quran and when jesus lived and can you show me any historical evidence whatsoever during 600 years that jesus said those words the the challenge brought to man that god makes we're saying that this is this book is authored by by god not by jesus right and so god has got eternal knowledge or uh all -knowing and whatnot so if we can determine if we can test that that that falsification test that god gives all all of mankind we can establish a confident foundation of that text altogether and in doing so that answers that question from an epistemological point of view so i'm trying to see because you you said we need to use the same standards you're you're saying i cannot quote from first century materials written by the disciples of jesus and say jesus quoted from this or jesus quote from that but you accept the words of jesus that are found in the quran that have absolutely positively no historical pedigree for 600 years that's a really interesting point the first point let's take it one step at a time um which for which uh which textual writings of of any of the disciples are you referring to that we have at the moment you said that you mentioned you were referring to the text written by the disciples yes we have any of them at all well the specific quotation i gave you is when jesus said the scriptures cannot be broken in john chapter 10 or i can give you matthew chapter 22 i'm asking i'm question i'm quick the reason why i'm questioning it is because you're taking that for granted so if you're saying that this is the this is actually what this is we have the text of the disciples i think we need to put a we need to ask that in a more reflective point of view do we have the text of the actually yes there's no they're they're okay if you want to raise all the questions please do if you want to raise any question concerning any of those texts as to their text i'd be happy to address it there's no textual variation that's relevant at this point my point is that we can't have a discussion about what our texts say if you say well you can't quote from the new testament as having relevance to jesus but i can quote my text is relevant to jesus but i have zero historical so you just simply have to accept my my acceptance of a text that comes 600 years after my argument was not based on that my i didn't the only verse that i mentioned was the verse that asked mankind or challenged mankind to test the veracity of of the quran it didn't i didn't make any i didn't make any reference to jesus i didn't make any claim to truth so the only claim to truth that i made was to question the foundation of the text itself but i was simply pointing out that jesus in the first century documents quotes from the old testament and books that we do not know who they are which first doc which first century document are you referring to because the new testament if if p if p uh p52 if i really got that i'm right here if p52 was within the turn of the second century and that was the earliest thing we have what do we have from the first century we don't have anything from the first century that's my point you would not expect to have anything the first century i would be the closest any other work i'm sorry i'm making an argument there i'll be glad to refute that later on but so do you have any first century copies of the quran if not you can't quote from yeah the topaki and the birmingham manuscript are very very close within the but neither one of those are complete so any other sections of the quran you can't quote from they're very close it's it's i mean if we're making a comparison discussion compared to the complete version of which is codice sinaticus that's three and a half centuries so but we have but we have the vast majority of the new testament in the papyri that go to the first to go to the second third centuries you're just not aware of the existence of those those those books but the point is if you're going to say but the point is are you actually saying that we cannot quote from anything in the gospels unless we have a first century i'm not saying you can't i'm just saying that if you do you uh you fall into that potential fallacy of you taking a taking um assuming uh the the authenticity of the text to then determine the authenticity of others why are why aren't you assuming the corruption of the text rather than the authenticity no it's the way the way logic works and i'm very sure you're very aware of it if you're making the claim you have to deter that you have to substantiate it i'm asking a question you're making the claim that it is a faithful representation so it's the onus of responsibilities for you to demonstrate that it is so so so who do you who who are your experts that say that matthew mark luke and john are not first century documents um uh textual criticism scholars no not even bart ehrman agrees with you i've debated it actually i've watched that that's one debate that i've watched um uh not even bart ehrman believes their second century documents so well actually can you say that claim again just so i can i can answer you bart ehrman does not even argue that matthew mark luke and john are second century they're first century i'm not arguing that's not my i'm not that's what i had asked you i said what scholar you don't have first century material you don't have matthew mark you don't have it you don't even have no one no one has ever claimed that we do okay it's irrelevant to anyone who puts together ancient documents i think it's really relevant to this discussion today because but you don't have the original how can you determine what the original looks like okay you don't have the original quran so therefore you can't know but we have a control transmission and we have a very close original uh we have within two years it was compiled in one book but okay okay so so you're using one standard you don't know what that book looked like you're pushing the date of the mushaf back so you can say that you have a first century one if you use that standard neither one of us can quote our books right uh no because we have two modes of uh preservation and transmission where you where the the new testament has only got one nobody memorized the new testament it was passed on a story to story copy to copy and and that what we have left okay so so the the the extra the writings of the new testament uh writings that outside of the new testament such as clement the diddy k uh ignatius all these things within within 100 years of the original you just discount their quotations of the new testament that's not the original i'm not saying it's the original yeah but that's that's but but you're saying you can see that there's no original i'm happy i'm happy with that um and no and no one has ever argued otherwise okay and and no historian has ever argued as well that's why i'm just trying to understand how you don't have an original of the quran and you you will say but i can still quote it and then you say but you can't quote from anything in the new testament even though it's a first century document and we have the earliest attestation of any work of antiquity that goes back to that point i don't understand that how this is how you can say this is consistent this is a comparative discussion between the quran and the bible so if we're going to compare it and maybe if i had a if i would have had a project i could draw a table of comparison yeah uh so we have one that would that we have the the uh the first time we've actually even agreed on uh matthew mark or the 27 books of the bible was uh or during the time of athanasius so about three centuries anyway coitus sinaiticus three and a half centuries compare that to the quran within the first two years it was written in a book within um within 20 years it was um it was standardized we had we had an oral transmission and a written transmission you only had a written transmission the earliest the earliest um uh manuscript within a century earliest manuscript full manuscript within three centuries why do you if we're just having a discussion why do you keep saying full manuscript your top copy is not full there's missing parts we have the top hockey and the birmingham but they're not complete they're fragments they're very they're not fragments i think that's i think that's a very well they're fragmentary they're missing portions i mean if if you call they're missing portion like 75 percent or 80 percent of a fragment um i think we've got more than that yeah no you don't need to ring it we already stopped no please i'm happy to just continue where we left off um mainly because i mean i'll give you another opportunity to ring that bell anyway um so given what you mentioned about uh i guess i think we've established that the originals don't exist right and we've got lovely good site yeah the readers don't exist the copies of the originals don't even exist and they were and the mode of transmission that you described was the free transmission of the text which i'll read more about in your book um uh and that editing took place in certain times there's certain there's certain what do you mean editing so for example we mentioned how there was certain insertions or certain parts of the that's that's what we know about we know about yeah that's not editing you don't call that an edit no okay no it's it's real simple in in the ancient world when you would make a manuscript and you made a mistake and missed something you would write it in the margin the copyist if he could not ask you if you weren't alive and that didn't always happen you know that's why that's why there's so many differences could i could i finish the sentence lovely okay i need to finish the sentence um and therefore you had things called glosses the copyists were conservative and so they would not want to miss anything and so for example john chapter 5 verse 4 was probably a marginal interpretation that became incorporated in later manuscripts so that's not editing because editing would involve the purposeful changing of what is there this is just simply a copyist doing the best he can to make sure he copies everything that's in the exemplar before him okay so given uh i mean that's essentially the question the question that we're asking what uh what reasons do we have to believe that this is actually actually the first question i should have asked is this really um do you believe that the bible is the inerrant word of god i do you do um and so in in and you'd also believe that god does not make any mistakes yes would you also then say that god will preserve his uh his word he did through the manuscript tradition in a particular fashion through the free transmission of the text yes so if you if you qualify preservation as uh um uh variation that we only we only were able to determine only after we reveal only after we found sinaticus for example you you have you have a you have a very ahistorical understanding of sinaticus it wasn't found just recently von tischendorf was in the 19th century codex vaticanus preceded it it was known to erasmus in the 16th century so prior to that prior to those prior to those prior to those uh revelations how did we understand uh the text they were not revelations i'll prime in prior to those finding out that we found those uh and the the greek manuscript tradition had been going along just fine uh up until that that period of time so do we have more information upon which to do textual criticism today than we have in the past of course that does not mean that at the time of the reformation for example there was not a perfectly adequate greek manuscript tradition that communicates the exact same message that we have today that's what you need to understand is that these variations do not change the theology of the text they might change the number of verses that we quote in support of a particular reading but they do not change the theology of the text and even bart erman recognizes that and admits that yeah i'm not but i meant so good for him um but you seem but you seem to like his sources oh yeah dude you're really um that's good uh what else is there but no you are not bart erman you're much nicer than bart i love the thing you wouldn't i can tell you stories but i will not take your time to do something um what else do we have here uh ask me some more about those variants yeah i'm coming i'm coming i'm coming i had to talk way too fast um all right so let's just make a direct comparison yeah let's not make a direct comparison between the bible and the bible and and and the quran could i could i point out that we that i pointed out that we can't do that we have as best as we possibly can this is the nature of today's discussion surely but but but this is this is where my objection is um there is a 600 year difference there is a language difference and we're only talking if we're talking about the bible it's more than 600 years but if we're just limited to the new testament because you keep mentioning sinaiticus so you have multiple authors you have a different language and you have a 600 year difference so when we compare them that always has to be included okay that's okay we can still make a comparison and the fact that the quran is its initial uh promulgation is in a time period where people are friendly in the islamic world to its text over against 250 years for the new testament where the roman empire is not friendly to its text at all those are there there are major differences that have to be historically taken yeah so and and we can fairly uh we can fairly attribute or appreciate the context of either in in making that comparison yeah yes very much so okay so uh if we can if we can determine the chain of transmission uh orally and textually which is the quran can how is that a weakness as opposed to a strength because what you've described in terms of the mode of transmission for uh for the new testament in particular you've highlighted particular challenges with if anything requires more answers which makes it more difficult which uh which is the whole point of this discussion right actually actually i think the problem here is that that you seem to be interpreting the massive amount of data that we have that no other work of antiquity possesses with it being a problem what it means is we just have to do harder work we have lots of data in the quran i don't i don't i don't i don't agree with that assertion that there's i mean yeah in terms of numbers absolutely but there's huge amount of data of um uh of manuscripts um within uh in the centuries for islamic the islamic world i am unaware of unaware catalog well i should have brought it i actually i actually have a catalog for you i should have brought it in that includes collations of manuscripts and the citation of variations that the author azami yeah he's before it before he passed away he actually published that we um we had manuscripts from all 14 centuries of the islamic civilization from across the world and he compared uh word by word um is that a question no i'm saying that you i'll be giving you a reference right i'm just my point is um that that's not that's not the same that's not how people do textual criticism of ancient documents and and even if we put the quran into that into that category there there is no weighting of manuscripts there is no critical edition where you and i can sit there and look at the manuscripts and analyze what the variants are and what their meaning might be did he i don't i do not believe that that included the sa 'ana readings at all did it it does the the manuscripts in yemen he actually in the in the book in the preface he describes that he had special access to them and he included in that but included in any collations i'm okay i'm answering can i ask the last one last question let me let me go back to answer what you what you actually said you seemed you you say isn't our way superior and that is assuming the accuracy of the isnad chains and the entire concept of hadith sciences and my question to you was to point out that in my understanding the majority of the hadith that imam bakari or imam muslim examined were rejected by them they all had isnad chains so simply having an isnad chain i don't know of anyone outside of medina or al -azhar who thinks that that is a truly valid historical mechanism for doing historical study you want to have manuscripts you want to have you want to have citations of manuscripts in other words external writings uh muqatal or someone like that and yet muqatal is is put off to the side and not allowed to speak to these things because of that artificial application of of the isnad concept so i i i don't accept the idea that that is a a greater way of transmitting things and it does strike me that again six let's look at the time period um the quran in writing in my let me put this in the form of an answer the quran tells the people of the book that they have nothing to stand on unless they look to their own scriptures right surah five as i recall it makes a qualification after it says that that then talks to in light of muhammad's revelation of the quran yes i'm aware of that but it says that to the people of the book and then it says to muhammad if you have any doubts talk to those who are reading the scriptures before you so it seems to me anyways that this hyper skepticism that is the modern islamic perspective really goes back to it's aral hawk and does not go back to muhammad it's aral hawk you're familiar with the book uh 19 1864 oh my god it predates that sure it predates that far we have but the but the hypers in the 11th but the hyper skepticism the hyper skepticism i know subjective i'll give you i'll give you a couple i'll give you a couple of um of quotes that from orientalist scholars and also a bible scholar as well so oriental scholar and i'll finish i get to respond to them yeah of course you can yeah um i can give it to you if you want anyway um so oriental scholar at welch says um from for muslims in the the quran is much more than scripture or sacred literature in the usual western sense it's a primary significance for the vast majority through the centuries has been uh in its oral form in the form in which it appeared as a recitation chanted by muhammad and his followers over the period of time of about 20 years and the revelations were memorized by some of muhammad's followers during his lifetime and the oral tradition that was thus established also had a continuous history ever since in many independent ways and also through the written quran through the centuries the oral tradition of the entire quran was being maintained by the professional reciters until recently this is the significance of the recited quran has seldom been fully appreciated by the west now a bible scholar kenneth clark no wait wait wait you're filling the whole time more citations that's you're cheating a little bit over there okay i'll go four minutes okay so because because as i pointed out the motivation for the revision under uthman was differences in citation you know that there are different aroofs as a way it is it is actually cited and i am really concerned when i read bukhari to see that there were entire uh ayat that were located found after the original abu bakr collation that were inserted at a later time which ones were they we only know the there's there's one reference given to us but it's very clear from the narration that there were other ones which ones were they how do we know there is there is there there is a lot of questions that are raised as to how you can go from multiple reciters into a written text and i have sources that are contemporaneous with yours from christian sources that knew of the hadith that say that there had been there had been things that were lost by that point in time so i can go to the same time period and provide quotations if you want me to we don't have time anymore but i i gave i gave them they're they're actually in that little book right next to your elbow right thank you so just on that point so you're you're referencing the hadiths uh hadith uh sciences or the collection and then questioning them at the same time there's many things that bukhari said as well that we're aware of that so if we we can't pick and choose and what we take the second uh the second i'm sorry did you say we can't pick and choose we can't pick and choose absolutely absolutely not um if you're gonna if you can selectively pick and choose and decontextualize uh um uh certain hadith that's not how that's not how um okay i just want to understand what you're saying are you saying that you that you either take all of bukhari if you're going to take a bukhari as a reliable source of evidence to throw back here well then you've got to take the rest of it too you can't just pick pick what and pick what you uh potentially and decontextualize that as well could could i could i could i point out that from my perspective bukhari clearly contains really important information i think 6519510 is particularly important for one simple reason it's a little bit embarrassing and that means i think it has greater evidence of being historically accurate and i can find bukhari the core of what bukhari was saying in non -muslim sources that means it's really really solid but are you saying that we cannot critically analyze what sources he would have what i'm saying is that the islamic tradition as you've already demonstrated has has a version of textual criticism for the in the fact that if muslims if bukhari for example you know why did he bother to narrate that if he if he didn't have a reflective introspective approach all right the islamic tradition has a reflective introspective approach to their own texts which is why certain criticism of certain claims are also preserved within the tradition and this has been analyzed by scholars this is not something that um uh is is a revelation if i can use that when you say this has been analyzed by scholars let me point out every variant that you've mentioned has been analyzed by scholars all the way back to the early church i'm not bringing anything new that makes sense yeah yeah that's right but the way that you presented it it almost sounded like you were pointing out things that we didn't know for example the kamiohanium i i i mean no one at council of nicaea quoted the kamiohanium in defense of their positions so obviously it was not relevant to the early churches we're allowed to state the obvious in this i mean i'm not assuming anyone's knowledge on anything so let's just we can we can have discussions from uh you know from first principles i don't mind i don't mind doing that um so for that reason 30 seconds thank you very much dr white thank you thank you thank you both very much we're now going to move into a time of some closing remarks each speaker is going to be given five minutes to bring these and then at the end we'll bring all of these proceedings to a close so if james could come and bring his closing remarks first i heard someone yawn right then i'm sorry hope that's not a commentary oh white speaking again okay i get a little nap here for five minutes all right well i'm sorry if we uh if if we got into the weeds a little bit there but it it's going to happen and and it needs to happen i'm glad you're here to observe it it can be done without people flying over desks and attacking other people and beating them with books and things like that um this is a very important discussion and what it does highlight my fellow christians those of you in the audience who are is the need for us to know the history of our text uh i have for over 30 years been seeking to and i don't think you're 30 years old yet right i'll take that okay um i have for over 30 years been seeking to educate christians about the history of their text to realize that it was given to them in a particular fashion the book of romans was once a papyrus that was in a leather bag being carried by a man along the dusty roads to rome and that man had never heard of deodorant it happened in history you need to understand that and for a long period of time longer than the quran that was transmitted to us in handwritten copies now thankfully we have very excellent early manuscripts of the new testament and in fact i didn't get a chance to do this let me just point one out we have one uh gospels manuscript that contains almost all of luke and john called p75 and we know we can tell by the readings that p75 is related to codex vaticanus so p75 is about 175 ad codex vaticanus is about 325 350 they both go to a preceding ancestor vaticanus is not a copy of p75 we know that but they both had an ancestor that means that when p75 and and vaticanus have the same reading that reading goes back to at least 150 probably 125 as early as p52 the little credit card that has been mentioned numerous times before but p75 is entire books it's not just a little shred so you see we have in the papyri far more information than i think abdullah is familiar with in regards to that period of time but the reality is if you use the standard that i think he was using and that is you either need to have the originals we do not do not claim to or you have to have something from the first century was that the first century 100 years after the time of of the writings well if if paul's writing as late as 60 that's 160 we're getting pretty close with something like that but why is that and who made up that rule and if you follow that we know nothing about history because our history our knowledge of Rome is based upon uh

Pliny and Tacitus and Suetonius and the earliest manuscripts we have of anything they wrote are at least 500 to 900 years later that means you can't quote any of those things we don't know anything about history that's why i was saying this is not how scholars do history this is not how scholars do textual criticism the fact that Matthew Mark Luke John Paul they're all first century documents is really not disputed by almost anyone they are first century documents and given that when we begin to have the early attestation of them guess what they all say the same thing oh but there's a word different here we're different there i remember an atheist asking

Bart Ehrman on a on a show once so Dr. Ehrman in light of all the textual variants what do you think the new testament was originally all about and Bart Ehrman is like it was about Jesus as the son of God coming and dying on the cross and rising again for the salvation of the world and the atheist is like oh he thought it was like space aliens or something like that but the point is

Ehrman knows anyone who studies textual criticism knows that the manuscript tradition is united in the fact that it presents one message and here's the key issue the message it presents was not known to the author of the

Quran he did not know what Paul taught about Jesus he did not know what John taught about Jesus there is no evidence whatsoever that he was aware of that and yet all the manuscripts from wherever they come from contain the same message the same gospel that really is one of the key issues that hopefully has been made clear this evening that you all get to think about more because this is just the beginning of a conversation not the end of the conversation and I thank you for being here to listen to it thank you thank you for the opportunity to engage with Dr.

White as someone I've I've watched or I've grown up at least 30 years um I'm a bit younger than that um so it's a it's a privilege to to have to share this platform with him and I echo the point on history

I had a and actually before I do that before I forget I think Dr. White's a very big fan of Bart Ehrman and if he is um you should go check him out but the point about history um actually after the debate we had in Monash um a good friend of mine

Rob he might be in the crowd here they sent me a video um or something to listen to and the speaker the first thing he said was that a lot of a lot of um

Christians go to secular universities and learn about the bible and they lose faith in it once they go into into textual criticism for many reasons and he might be wrong on that but the point was what

I what I took from that is the importance of knowing a history and being academically faithful and um and academic uh in it and uh in doing in doing so and so the history is really really rich history doesn't come from one perspective um and there are many perspectives and many many conclusions that are brought forth um

I wanted this particular discussion not to be one about um necessarily about faith per se more about a historical accuracy right um in the sense that um people believe in whatever they like to believe for whatever reasons they like to believe that's fine right um and maybe perhaps many people associate religion in that way as well but in terms of if we're going to have a an academic um comparative discussion um you almost have to sort of uh take that away a little bit in order to do that now um

I'd like to end with uh that or to highlight uh that the islamic history is incredibly rich incredibly rich and incredibly informative and um and scientific in the sense that it can be audited if that makes sense so the history is uh is attested to by multiple uh chains of narration of reliable sources not just having the chain in and of itself um uh that um and these reliable sources can be known and audited to this day coupled with a textual tradition um

I think that's incredibly strong and incredibly reliable irrespective of what you think of the contents of the book at the very very least you can conclude uh that um with with beyond reasonable doubt that at least there's a faithful transmission of what we had and that's what

I sought to um present today that the uh that at the very very least we can we can demonstrate that within two years of the death of the prophet we can demonstrate the the the the compilation and the preservation uh of the revelation now in terms of um uh the new testament um uh naturally there's we there's questions around it but as a muslim

I don't I don't necessarily expect the new testament to have been preserved anyway because god never um promised to do that with with that particular um uh revelation and that the quran was brought for all of mankind um as as the criterion uh between truth and falsehood and so the quran came to confirm the scriptures before it including the gospels right and what

I mean gospels is the revelation brought down to the messenger jesus peace be upon him and so in that way the quran acts as a guardian over them and I encourage you to um read learn um open up a quran and learn a little bit more about it just as just as much as you do for your bible so thank you very much again um and I'll get my autograph soon thank you just one more time that had one more minute thank you thank you very much

I'd like to thank both of our speakers James White Abdullah Hamimi uh we are very grateful for the time that you've given us it is a wonderful opportunity for us