May 23, 2006

Broadcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602. Or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Debating the Uthmanian Revision of the Quran

Hi, good morning. Welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning. Today I've got a lot of ground to cover. I'm not sure how much we're going to be doing any phone calls today. We will see, depending on how quickly we get through this material.

The reason I say is I want to discuss some issues that have arisen since the Shabir Ali debate at Biola. Specifically, the fact that Mr. Ali has been in contact with me and it hasn't been specifically just on the subject of, in fact, we haven't really gotten around to much discussion of future debates.

Instead, very shortly after the debate, Mr. Ali contacted me and wanted references to the Ibn Masud issue. Now, if you have listened to the debate, you may have missed most of it since it was a very minor thing.

It was mentioned in passing. I talked about Ibn Masud, who was one of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad. I was discussing the Uthmanian revision. I mentioned this a number of times in the debate.

If you're not familiar with this, I need to try to keep everybody with me here. I think it is important that we discuss this. For a number of reasons, you need to know about this stuff, but also have backgrounds to debates and so on and so forth.

The conservative view, notice the use of the term conservative there. The conservative view of the origination of the modern text of the Quran, which is primarily based upon a 1924 manuscript, interestingly enough.

The conservative view is that within a few decades after the death of Muhammad, there came about a bit of confusion. I should have brought Sahih al-Bukhari in here so I could read it to you. You wouldn't even know where to find it, so it doesn't matter.

I could read you the whole section from Bukhari where he describes how the concern over the various readings of the Quran came to Uthman's attention. That people who were traveling through the Islamic world were encountering confusion.

They were worried about happening to them what they saw happening amongst Christians and Jews in regards to various interpretations and readings. It is interesting, I've always found Muslims to confuse both interpretation and reading as if they're the same thing.

They're not.

Uthman decides to come up with a single version and to distribute this. There's going to be unity based upon the fact that you just got this one Quran and things like that. In discussing that and discussing the fact that this is extremely important in understanding the transmission of the text of the Quran.

This is for the believing Muslim. There are liberals and non-Muslims who even question the Uthmanian revision. Even question those things as actually having happened in the way they're described as having happened.

But even amongst conservatives, and I'm dealing with a conservative Sunni Muslim in this debate. And that's the context that has to be placed in. This is extremely important because Uthman takes the other manuscripts, the other collections of the Quran.

Which differ on many levels. They differ on the order of the reading. Which of course would mess up, for example, the Quranic codes that Shabir Ali talks about at times. That would mess up the columns and the readings and the numbers and things.

There are variant readings and texts and so on and so forth in these manuscripts. These manuscripts, which would be to us extremely important. Because of the fact that they would go back closer than anything afterwards.

Those manuscripts were burned. And when you burn those manuscripts, when you engage in that type of activity. You are freezing the text in essence. You're freezing as far back as you can go in the study of that particular text.

In that context, I mentioned Ibn Masud. And as I was preparing for this debate, I was reading a lot on this particular issue. Because I knew that Mr. Ali would go after the textual critical issue. That he has made many comments about the textual critical issue in regards to the New Testament.

And so I wanted to do background reading and have material ready to provide contrast and things like that. Let's face it. The idea of coming up with a single text is nothing new to me. What is the parallel to this desire to have a single text without variations?

What's parallel to this? Either the textus receptus or King James only-ism. It's the exact same thing. It's the exact same desire. It has the exact same argumentation behind it. Except this time they did it within three generations.

Within three decades of the original period in the conservative viewpoint of these things. And so we're actually dealing with the results of it. Rather than doing it 1 ,500 years later or 1 ,600 years later or something like that.

So been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Know this attitude really, really, really well. And so I'm doing some background reading. And I kept running across a story. I saw it in about four different sources.

It was expressed in different language. But here is the specific. Here's one of the things that I read. And since nothing was ever indicated anywhere in all the sources that I was reading that this was controversial.

That this was some deep, dark secret. Anything alike. Here's what I read. Quote, the most serious opponent of Uthman's text was Ibn Masud. A companion of the prophet and a great theologian. Ibn Masud refused to give up his copy of the Quran to the president of the revision committee.

And thus incurred the wrath of the caliphah. By whom he was publicly chastised. He died a few days after from the effects of the beating he had received. This unnecessary and cruel act on the part of the caliphah was disapproved of by his contemporaries.

And has ever since been looked upon by the Shias as an atrocious crime. Now, I had read that. I had also read another citation. Quote, Ibn Masud refused to deliver his copy to the committee whose president.

Although one of the readers of the word of God had earned much less trust and authority than he. This refusal incited such a level of indignation from the caliph. That he publicly whipped the old saint.

One notes that the old companion of the prophet had two ribs broken from the violence of the strikes. And that he died after three days. This cruelty that drew upon Uthman. The hatred of his contemporaries is today regarded by the Shias as an atrocious crime.

Now, that is T .J. Newbold, Journal Asiatique, December 1843, page 385. So, I had read this a number of times. And so, I made quick and passing reference to it in my opening statement. Certainly, it was not any point.

And in fact, all it was is an illustration of the fact that the manuscripts that were destroyed differed. Anyone who has looked into the sources knows that there were differences between these manuscripts.

If Ibn Masud's manuscript and his reading of the Quran was identical to that of Uthman. There would be no reason for this whole situation to have arisen at all. And in fact, if this didn't happen. And if Ibn Masud just, you know, initially just sort of resisted but then gave in.

I would have less respect for him, to be perfectly honest with you. I mean, if he was a companion of the Prophet, he had earlier and more primitive knowledge than someone coming along later. If he just rolled over, I would have little respect for him.

And isn't it ironic that Islamic apologists basically tried to cast Paul in that way? They try to say some later guy came along and overthrew the original people. Why should we respect the original people who couldn't fight for the truth and resist Paul?

Which of course isn't what happened but that's what I'd say has happened. I would honestly lose respect if Ibn Masud was in a situation where he knew better and yet he would give up. But I, anyways, I just mentioned this in passing.

Here's what happened. During the break, now some moderators are kind enough and I didn't mention this to the moderator beforehand. There's no way you could know this. But some moderators are kind enough to say beforehand, now the folks, please don't be rude and rush the podium and tie up the speakers.

We're going to have a very brief break. You know, sometimes they'd like to go use the restroom but I didn't get that opportunity. And we're going to go straight into cross-examination. Now I knew that once we got down to cross-examination, I was the first one up.

There's going to be the questions from the audiences and then my closing statement was going to be first. So I had to have everything ready for the rest of the debate right then and there. I had to have the files I wanted to have up.

I needed to have everything organized, the questions ready to go. Everything had to be done and we were taking a 10-minute break. Well, that wasn't announced and so we got flooded. And the first people up were Muslims.

They were young Muslim men. They were disrespectful. They were mean and nasty. Let's just put it that way. And they wanted a citation right now about Ibn Masud. And I'm like, what? This is even controversial?

And I didn't have it memorized.

Oh, you should have it.

You should bring your materials here.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And they were just, you know, in your face. You know, no meaningful response to anything else I had said. But they had their one thing they wanted to go after, which is always a sign of a lost position.

But anyway, so I asked some of the guys down in the audience to come up and hold people back, basically, so I could have at least a couple of moments. Almost the entire break had already been taken up.

I had, I would say, around two minutes to 90 seconds. And now I'm going, all right, so there's controversy about Ibn Masud. All right, what do I want to do here? And I remembered that I had some electronic articles I downloaded, text files, that I had.

Well, actually, they weren't text files. They were initially HTML files that I had saved as text files. Now, if anybody knows what that means, that means they're not going to be real pretty. There's going to be extraneous material in them, stuff like that.

But I had them in my documents folder. So I asked my system to do a search on Masud real quick in that one folder. And I picked the, what seemed to be the most likely candidate as far as the file goes, popped it open, searched for Masud, found the citation that I first gave you, which starts, the most serious opponent of Uthman's text was Ibn Masud.

Cut that, you know, copied it, pasted it into my notes, and then as I go back to the source document to get the actual, where this came from, the moderator starts speaking. I've got maybe 30 seconds now before the Q &A or the cross-examination is to start.

So I try scrolling up the document in a now a text file that was an HTML file. So footnotes, references have got all sorts of extraneous material in them, stuff like that. I'm trying to find this in about 30 seconds to find the source.

I scroll back to what looks like the first reference source that this was taken from, copy it out, stick it into my notes, and what I'm going to do is at the beginning of my closing statement, I'm just going to throw that out there.

They had wanted a reference. Here's the citation since I hadn't cited it in my statements. Here's the citation. Here's the source, and move on from there. Well, if you've listened to the debate, you know that during the cross-examination, Shabir Ali made a reference to it.

And so I read what I had put into my notes, so I didn't have to use time in my final statement. So there's the background to how that ended up in the debate, and this particular citation, the most serious opponent of Uthman's text was Ibn Masud.

All right.

So I get back, and I had honestly put everything else off to prepare for this debate. And you can contact CRI and verify this. I had taken some very short-term projects in a sense of didn't have a lot of time to work on them.

I was sort of being of assistance. Sometimes I do that for the CRI journal where they have a hole that develops in their next issue, and they need something really, really fast, and they've learned over the years that I'm willing to work with them and produce material for them in a very short period of time.

And I had already done one review. I had reviewed Is the Reformation Over by Noel and the other lady. I had gotten that in in about three days, I would say. And I had a book, Latham's book on the Trinity, and a DVD to review for the CRI journal.

I am trying desperately to get Is the Mormon My Brother back in print, and I want to have the last bit of editing on the added materials that I've it's all in a file. It's just a matter of editing it all and getting it into a meaningful format to send to a friend of mine who's going to be putting that in and doing the pagination stuff before we can send it off to be reprinted.

And I want to do that before next week because next week I'm going to disappear for a little while to write pulpit crimes. And so I've got to be doing all the background stuff, getting all the citations and all that type of material put together so that I can have it with me while I'm actually working on writing the book.

So I've got a lot of stuff going on, and I've put it all aside to do the Shabir Ali debate. Well, within a day, well, 48 hours of the debate, Shabir Ali is writing to me, and he's graciously talking about Glasgow in Scotland.

I want to do that if we can talk the university into doing it, that is. And then he wants the references to this. Now, this is going to sound like gerrymantics, but I promise not to be using this argument a year from now.

Well, then again, I might because I'm not sure how fast the trees are growing for the wood for my shelves. But ever heard gerrymantics in our debates talking about how all his best books are packed up?

Well, all my books are packed up. In fact, I've got about 40, maybe 45 percent of my library here in my office. It's all in boxes. I have no shelves yet. My library is not functional. The rest of my library is back at the old office.

And for a while here at this office, my boxes were just out on the floor and single. But we've got more stuff in that office now because a lot of other stuff has been stuffed into my office. It isn't supposed to be in my office, but it won't be in my office forever.

So now they're stacked on top of each other. So I've got boxes stacked on top of boxes three layers deep. And so the books that are in the bottom of those boxes, they're simply not accessible anymore.

For a while, I could at least, you know, sort of rummage through boxes while they're all spread out. I can't do that anymore. So the fact matter is my library is non-functional. I've got a million other things to be doing.

And Mr. Ali wants references about Ibn Masud, which was not even slightly a central point of the debate to begin with. So I wrote back to him and I said, well, tell you what, all I've got, you know, I just don't have time to do this right now, but let me give you what I've got.

It's electronic. And that's it. I don't have time to be trying to dig through all this stuff and track this resource down, track that resource down. I don't have time to do that right now. So here's what I've got.

And when I have an opportunity to do more, I'd be glad to do so, but, you know, it's not exactly like this was the central portion of the debate. So since that time, in fact, it was yesterday or the day before yesterday, I get two papers back from Shabbir Ali.

And it seems similar to situations I've experienced in the past with, for example, Gerry Matitix. I remember very well when we did the Boston College debates that three days after doing the debate, when I got on the air with him on WEZE, he was still in debate mode.

He was still on the same subject. It was like we were 30 seconds after the debate. He was still in that mode. And it's almost similar here. Let's discuss all this stuff. And I'm like, you know, this isn't the only area I deal with.

I mean, I'm going to be writing a book on the centrality and importance of preaching in the church and how that's been abandoned in so much of modern evangelicalism. I've got John Shelby Spong and the homosexuality issue coming up.

I've got all these other things that I'm doing, and it's just like, hello. I don't have the foggiest idea what that was. We just might want to I don't know why because it didn't do anything in front of me here.

But anyway, I've got a lot of stuff going on. And I just don't could we do this a little bit more slowly? So I even said I'll get to it when I can. You just need to understand. I even linked to the Cantor stuff on my blog.

There's stuff going on here, and maybe you don't have other debates coming up or something, but I just don't know. So I get these papers back, and two issues. He goes after the Ibn Masud issue, and he goes after what was probably most memorable to most people, and that was the Mark 1335, Matthew 24 issue in regards to the term kurios.

So let's look at Ibn Masud first. First of all, the reference that I gave in the debate was wrong. The text wasn't wrong. When I was scrolling back trying to find what the citation was in that last 30 seconds before the cross-examination on my tablet PC, I got the wrong reference.

Now, I sent this to him going, now, this is just what I have in an electronic file. I can't verify this. But evidently the I can't verify this part got lost in a transmission somewhere. And it's what was in the debate, that's what I read it as.

The reference is not to Qadi, which is what I had tracked down. The reference is, quote, the recensions of the Koran by Reverend Cannon Sell, D .D., M .R .A .S., fellow of the University of Madras, Christian Literature Society, London, Madras and Colombo, 1909.

It is an English text, page 15, if you would like to track it down and read it for yourself. That's a direct citation from page 15 of that particular work. That's where the most serious opponent of Uthman's text came from.

I didn't see anything in what was sent to me about the Journal Asiatique, December 1843, page 385 citation, but that hasn't been discussed either. So the important one is the 1843 one.

Why?

Because the reference in the other one is the same one. It also goes back to the December 1843, page 385, T .J. Newbold article. And so there it is. So for those of you who think that I claim infallibility, I do not.

When scrolling back through text files or HTML files in 30 seconds in the middle of a debate, I can find the wrong reference. Now, that reference was in there, but it was for a different paragraph, and I got the wrong one.

So there's the actual citation. There's the actual paragraph. Same thing. Now you know exactly where it's found. You can verify it for yourself. So there's that, and if someone wants to, on the basis of the right text, wrong citation, dismiss everything else I had to say, well, then you've got to solve a little bit of a problem because if you go back through our blog, and I have sent some of these things to Mr. Ali, if you go back through our blog, I have documented many errors on Shabir Ali's part, errors citing the text, giving the wrong references, not seeing the proper Greek text or misrepresenting this or misrepresenting that.

And so if you're going to demand absolute perfection in finding every reference at high speed, and I mean obviously if I was presenting a paper on this particular subject, that wouldn't have happened because I don't just do it in 30 seconds just simply because some young man wanted to have a text provided to them.

But that is the situation there. And then right along the same time arrives, well, I would say within 10 minutes, arrived a paper wherein Mr. Ali is seeking to reclaim the Mark 1335 issue. And what was that?

Well, let me play for you the specific text or a specific example. This is Shabir Ali from, I believe, the University of Manchester. No, Birmingham. He's from the United Kingdom. And just to give you an idea of what it is he's been saying for many, many, many years that came up in the debate.

Let's listen.

Then Matthew made changes to the material in order to have people in the stories refer to Jesus as Lord. Two, in order for having Jesus himself describe himself as Lord. Three, for having people call Jesus Son of God.

Now, just notice what he's saying there. He's directly making the accusation that Matthew is corrupting the original teachings about Jesus. He's given his false view of Jesus. And he is changing the view of Jesus by calling him Lord.

Kurios.

Okay? So just make sure that you catch that.

And four, for calling God Father or for having Jesus himself refer to God as Father. So that the two will go hand in hand. Jesus calling God Father and people referring to Jesus as Son. Five, for having people pray to Jesus.

Six, for reducing Jesus' emphasis on the one God. And seven, for reducing the distinction between Jesus and his God.

By the way, there's eight points that he goes through. That seventh one where Matthew allegedly reduces the emphasis upon the oneness of God. That's all based upon the fact that at one point, Matthew does not cite the entirety of the Shema, Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad.

Here Israel, Yahweh is God, Yahweh is one. He's our God, Yahweh is one. And as Tony Costa pointed out to him, and as I would have if this had come up, that is, again, just one of the many, many instances where Shabir Ali does not recognize, or refuses to recognize, that the synoptic writers, and John for that matter, had a specific audience in mind.

Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience, Mark is not. And Matthew would be wasting papyri, papyrus, I guess is one sheet he's writing out at one time. He would be wasting his time and his energy to cite the entirety of the Shema, when the Shema is what every Jewish person repeated every morning.

So he only repeats the portion that goes directly with what Jesus is talking about there, as if somehow, writing to Jews, Matthew would want to de-emphasize the unity of God. And I think Jay Smith has pointed this out too, but Shabir Ali isn't listening, and the Muslims aren't listening.

They need to recognize that they need to allow for the synoptic writers to address a particular audience, just as they recognize that various of the surahs in the Quran were written, for example, after particular battles in the life of Muhammad, to give the context.

And without that context, you wouldn't have any idea, understanding why that particular surah addresses what it addresses. So once again, what was the thesis that I had during the debate? Shabir Ali uses different standards of the New Testament than he uses for the Quran.

He uses different sources of scholarship. He will accept, as I point out on my blog, he'll use people like Thiem Perkins, who are liberal Jesuit theologians at Boston College. But then when it comes to the Quran, you better only cite Muslim sources, and believing Muslim sources, and conservative believing Muslim sources.

Because if you cite any type of liberal Islamic sources, then that's just to be dismissed, and those are enemies of the faith, and blah, blah, blah. Well, I think liberalism is an enemy of the Christian faith, just as much as he thinks liberalism is to the faith of Islam.

Just because it calls itself Christianity doesn't mean anything. If you don't believe that God can speak, if you don't believe that God can inspire scripture, then why call yourself a Christian? Okay, I mean, someone needs to, I'll do it, someone needs to send Shabir Ali Machen's classic on liberalism and Christianity.

Because they are different religions, and there's reasons for that. But anyway, I continue with his own words.

And eight, for covering up the human limitations of Jesus. Now, these might sound like startling claims until I show you the evidence, until I show you the specific verses. But if all of these claims can be proven, then what will be shown is that in fact the image of Jesus as presented in the Gospels today is not necessarily the image of the historical, the real Jesus.

So there's basically the presentation he makes. And in this very same lecture, he uses the Mark 13, 35, Matthew 24. In the context of trying to prove where Matthew uses Kourios where Mark didn't. And what did I ask him?

What was the cross-examination question? Do you not see, do you not recognize the fact that you're looking at the English text, you're looking at master of the house, owner of the house, and you haven't looked at the Greek, you haven't looked that up, and you haven't checked this for yourself, and you are in error.

At that point, he graciously conceded the point that that therefore would mean that that argument at that point is wrong. Unfortunately, he's, and I really do mean unfortunately, because this really seems to me to be an unwise move on Mr. Ali's part to seek to try to regain this point.

It really, really does.

Let me quote from what he's saying here. He says, the difference is significant. In Mark, the word Kourios is used in construct with house. That's interesting to me, but he'd use the term in construct.

That's Semitic language. That's Arabic. That's Hebrew. That's not Greek. As I quoted it in the text, it's ha-kourios teis oikios, and the master of the house, the lord of the house. It is interesting to see the transfer of terminology.

It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the genitive at that point, but if it's reflecting an Aramaic underlying, then that could be in construct.

Who knows?

Anyway, in Mark, the word Kourios is in construct with house, thus giving a different meaning to the word. Whoa, back up the truck.

Really?

Where does that come from? I mean, certainly every word syntactically that has a genitive modifier, that genitive modifier is going to tell us something about the lexical, semantical domain that we should be looking at for that term.

That's quite true, but a different meaning? There is a great deal of difference between your lord and the owner of the house.

Really?

Both are addressed to slaves. Both are addressed to servants. And in Mark, the phrase Kourios of the house, who is the house?

The servants of God. Who is the Kourios?

God?

The Lord?

It's not the idea that somehow it's much lesser, and by taking the house away, somehow Matthew is exalting Jesus?

No.

They're both giving the exact same message.

One could argue for the reverse. One could argue, since this is what you can do, once you start playing with this redaction criticism stuff, and once you start hypothesizing, well, I think Matthew is just sitting there and he has Mark in front of him and he's just slavishly going, I'm going to change this and edit this,.

And all the rest of that kind of stuff.

Once you start there, you can come up with anything you want because you start playing mind reader. Why does Matthew do what Matthew does? Why does Mark do what Mark does? What's all the interaction? You can come up with anything you want at this particular point in time.

And so what ends up happening then is you look at this one, and I could argue that, well, actually, Lord of the House, Master of the House, to the Jews would definitely raise issues about Yahweh, and so Matthew is trying to avoid that, and he just simply says, You're Lord.

So I could come up with a theory that Matthew is actually trying to deny the deity of Christ, or I could go the other direction. See, you can do whatever you want once you start playing games like this, and remember, folks, you can do the same thing with the Koran.

All you've got to do is just start with your presuppositions that God hasn't spoken, that there's an evolutionary process involved here. No, I can't prove it, but, hey, scholars say it, and I can find this scholar here and that scholar there, and we can play these games until the cows come home, and now we can start taking apart the various suras, and we can say this came from over here and this came from over there, and we can do what Old Testament scholars do to the Old Testament.

You can go to Moses, and you've got your Yahweh source and your Elohim source and your Deuteronomy source and your priestly source, and we can chop it up into a million pieces. Sure, we can do that. We can do that with the Koran, too.

Will Shabir Ali allow that? Of course not. Inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument. Made the point then. I'm making the point now. And if Mr. Ali wants to keep trying to regain a point where he was wrong, I'll just keep proving this over and over and over again.

And, you know, I can't help it if there are certain people who refuse to hear, if they don't have ears to hear. I can only be concerned about the people who actually want to see who is being consistent in their handling of the materials.

So, you know, that... So he goes on to say, It is clear that while Matthew retains from Mark the use of the word Lord, he has removed it from its original construct phrase, Lord of the house, and presented it in a new construct, your Lord.

In applying the latter designation to Jesus, Matthew has heightened the image of Jesus in this passage as he does elsewhere in his gospel. Let's see if Shabir Ali is consistent. Let's see if this is just simply, as I believe it is, a selective reading of inconsistent scholarly sources based upon using the Koran as your starting point.

The Koran teaches this. Therefore, if it's contradictory with the Koran, it must be untrue. Is that not what Shabir Ali admitted in cross-examination? That's the only way that we can know what is inspired is what agrees with the Koran, right?

So, we're looking backwards through the lens of the Koran. That's what I see Shabir Ali doing, and I think he admitted that. Let's see if that holds true. And I told folks in the channel they needed a piece of paper and a pencil today.

Turn with me to the story of the Gadarean demoniacs, because there is more than one, even though a couple of the Gospels only focus upon one. Gadarean demoniacs, that's Matthew chapter 8, verses 28 to 34, Mark chapter 5, verses 1 -20, and Luke chapter 8, verses 26 -39.

Now, just giving you the references there, what do you notice? Matthew 8, verses 28 -34, that's only six verses. Mark 5, verses 1 -20, that's twenty verses. Luke 8, verses 26 -39, thirteen verses. Who gives you the longest story?

Mark does. Mark gives you the fullest version here. And so, taking Shabir Ali's point, Mark has the most material, and now Matthew's going to try to tweak Mark to exalt Jesus, right? Isn't that what we're told?

That's Matthew's whole purpose here. For some reason, even though Mark identifies Jesus as the Son of God, he says all sorts of things that no Muslim could ever, ever agree with. Matthew doesn't feel he goes far enough, and so we need to tweak the view of Jesus, right?

So, what does Matthew leave out? He only gives us a certain number of verses. He doesn't give us the whole story. What does he leave out? Does he exalt Jesus? Does he do what Shabir Ali says he does, in trying to make him look greater and bigger?

Actually, when you look at the two, something fascinating happens. Look at Matthew chapter 8, verse 29. And behold, they cried out, What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?

Now, Jesus there is identified as Son of God, and that's one of the points that Shabir Ali says. That's a later belief, and it wasn't really a part of the Scriptures. In fact, I've heard Mr. Ali, and I know, I'm going to make sure to email him.

He may be listening live right now, for all I know, which would be fine. Hi, Shabir. Nice to have you with us. I have heard him mention, for example, the addition in Acts 8, which is actually from the Latin Vulgate, something I discussed in the King James I controversy.

As if this was, I mean, it's a very, very, very late addition. No possibility of originality. And he's actually presented as if, well, see, people were trying to prove that Jesus was the Son of God, as if there was some fight about this.

Jesus, as the Son of God, is the most primitive teaching in the New Testament. It's at every level. There's no question of this. Could not possibly be a question of this. And to utilize that textual, I mean, such a weak textual critical example, just one of the many things that if we got into, I just do not believe that once we actually got into the original text, Mr. Ali would fare very well at all.