Presenting the Gospel to People of the Muslim Faith, Part 5

Now it's not on mute, there we go. Alright, now you've got y 'all sugared up. That means about 20 minutes from now, the insulin kicks in and if you're next to someone who starts snoring, I'd appreciate it if you'd kick them in the ribs for me.

It's somewhat of a distraction when that happens. I had a guy once sitting right down front, right there. He was a very large man and when he went to sleep, let me tell you something, you couldn't even hear me talking over him.

And that was just one of the worst experiences at a conference I've ever had. You know, every once in a while I'd go around and then he said... It was something I'd really rather not repeat. Drew, would you help me out with that?

I've often said, especially given how bright my laser is, which is the ASU laser, given how bright my laser is, if you fall asleep with your mouth open, I shoot this right into your mouth and your eyes will glow.

We'll then take a picture and put it on YouTube and Facebook and that's just how it'll be. Someone did point out, it was somewhat ironic that we stopped where we did with what's on the screen. The Quran, direct words of God, not of men.

There you go. Nothing like knowing right where you are in the conversation. We will move on from there, thank you very much. Okay, as I mentioned briefly this morning, Muslims do believe that there is more revelation than what is found only in the Quran.

And here comes the Quran and the ladies who ran out to get their brownies before everybody else will get to see the Quran early. And we're going to pass it through this direction and then you folks in the middle will finally get a chance to see it.

But they believe that multiple books have been sent down by God and so there is a concept of revelation and in fact Muslims believe that many thousands, in fact I've heard over 100 ,000 prophets have been sent to various peoples, always in their own language and what binds them all together is the statement la ilaha illallah wa muhammadan wazoolallah.

Well okay, take the second part off. Just there is only one God, not Muhammad. That's the final version of it. But many books have been sent down and so there are other scriptures but only the Quran has the promise of being fully preserved at least in the minds of most Muslims today.

Now you could actually argue that from the Quran that you could argue other books would not be corrupted either but that's another issue. The Quran acts as a guard, a muhaiman over the other preceding books and as I mentioned briefly this morning, what most Muslims understand that to mean is that it's a corrector, it corrects.

That's why when I point out that they're basically looking at our books through the lens of their book, that's okay. That's the way it's supposed to be. It's the final revelation, it's what you're supposed to look back at all other books through, is through the Quran.

Remember when Shabir Ali, when I asked him, how can you know? He says, well, if it agrees with the Quran, it's inspired. If it doesn't agree with the Quran, it's not inspired. And that makes it very, very difficult to try to reason with most Muslims because they're taking their book and they're not applying standards of rational examination to their book but they will apply standards, sometimes not fair standards, to everybody else's.

And that's something to keep in mind as well. Now, the Quran experienced what we can only call a governmentally controlled textual transmission. And I think this is important. I was just talking about this to some of the brothers and I think this is something you really need to, I know it's, I've thrown a lot of stuff at you but if you can try to tune in here, this is somewhat important.

The Islamic state took responsibility for the transmission of the text of the Quran fairly early on. We're going to read some of the specifics here in a second. That means it has a generally unified textual history.

It's not like the New Testament. Like I said this morning, it wasn't like it went all over the place. Instead, you had a controlled version of it. And that means that generally, even though there are handwritten copies, that they're pretty much the same one to another in most instances.

Because of that, the one that you're all looking at that's going around is the 1924 Egyptian edition, viewed by most as the official version in Arabic. And there is a major difference between the centralized governmental control, the collation and transmission of the Quranic text, and the non-centralized, non-controlled transmission of the New Testament.

Very, very different. And the Muslim thinks that it's much better to have just one version. They think that's a sign of God's providential preservation of that text. I say to you, it's just the opposite.

That is, if you have an edited text, you have an editor, you have Uthman, who comes up with the final version of the text. That's not a good thing, because you have to trust that he got it right. It's much better to have what we have, a wide variety of manuscripts, because they don't all come from the same source.

Therefore, they truly do act as a balance upon one another. And that's why I think we have a much better argument for the originality of our text than they do. Now, finally, I've been promising to get to this.

Here is the specific text from the Hadith. Now let me define the Hadith once again very briefly for you. The Hadith is actually singular. Ahadith is the plural. And the Ahadith, the Hadith, as we would mispronounce it, I think, in English, are actions and statements of Muhammad that have been collected over the centuries after his death.

They have been collected into certain collections that are multiple volumes. My collection, for example, of Sahih al-Bukhari, I believe, is eight or nine volumes long. Sahih al-Muslim is eight or nine volumes.

You've got Jami at Termini, Sunan Abu Dawud. There's about six what are considered to be Sahih or sound collections amongst the Sunnis. The Shiites have Ashafi and things like that, which is a little bit different as to their collections of Muhammad's statements and actions.

They also include statements and actions of Ali and other of the imams and things like that. So there's differences between the Sunni and the Shia at that point. These collections, you can go to Al-Azhar University in Egypt and get an entire doctoral degree in nothing but Hadith studies.

And I remember last summer on one of the hottest mornings in Phoenix, come July in Phoenix. That's why if we didn't have July and August in Phoenix, everybody would live there. And some of the mornings, the low will be 93.

We've had actually a low of 96 in the morning with a lot of humidity during that period of time. And so I was up at about 2 o 'clock in the morning to do a ride. And I remember riding along just sweating profusely and thinking about how absurd it was that what I was listening to was a lengthy lecture on Hadith sciences by Sheikh Abu Amr Yasser Qadhi and exactly how you determine what a Sahih Hadith is and stuff like that.

And I thought, man, if I ever get hit by a truck out here, they're going to pick me up and start listening to my iPod and call TSA immediately.

We've got one!

It's just going to be really, really weird. But anyway, this particular narration is Sahih. That means it is sound. There is a... The science is it has to have what's called an Isnad chain. And that is it has to identify which of the companions it came from and then he narrated it to such and such a person who narrated it to such and such a person who narrated it to such and such a person.

This was the system that they developed over time. And they rate all the people as to their memories and all the rest of the stuff. It's an amazing thing. I don't think it's an overly historically accurate thing, but it's an amazing thing anyhow.

Here in Sahih al-Bukhari is the actual citation that I have mentioned to you more than once and we finally get around to actually reading it. Abu Bakr then said to me, Umar has come to me and said, casualties were heavy among the Qur 'an of the Qur 'an, i .e. those who knew the Qur 'an by heart, on the day of the battle of Yalmama.

Now I just normally stop right here, let the people laugh, especially the young people. I just stop.

They had a battle of Yalmama. I didn't know that.

I just let you get it over with because it's going to happen one way or the other. It just doesn't matter. You know, the first few times I read this in public, I just tried to get past it. But it was just, you know, when you try to suppress something, it only gets worse.

And so I'm just used to the battle of Yalmama. So what is being said is Abu Bakr is the first caliph after Muhammad. Now the Shiites would say, in fact, the Shiites, are you familiar with the term they use for the Sunnis? Bakrites, because of Abu Bakr.

The Shiites believe that Ali was meant to be, that the leadership of the Ummah was supposed to go through the relatives of Muhammad. And Abu Bakr was not a relative of Muhammad in that sense. And so we're looking at this from a sort of Sunni perspective here.

But Abu Bakr then said to me, Umar has come and Umar is the second caliph and then the third caliph is Uthman. So Umar has come to me and said, casualties were having among the Qurra, those who had memorized the Quran by heart.

The battle of Yalmama was one of the earliest and it's a very interesting battle because it was against a man who claimed to be a prophet. And so there was sort of a division amongst the Arabs at that point along religious lines.

What if they had lost? Islam would be a completely different thing than it is today, which is rather interesting. But notice what he says. And I'm afraid that more heavy casualties may take place among the Qurra, those who have memorized the Quran.

On other battlefields, listen to this phrase. This is from an Islamic source. You can get this online. This is considered to be Sahih, sound narration, whereby a large part of the Quran may be lost. Now I've had Muslims, I debated a Muslim.

At.

Duke University back in 2008 I think it was. And he insisted that at the time of Muhammad's death the Quran not only had been completely written down, but there were 30 ,000 people that all had it memorized the exact same way.

The Islamic sources just don't substantiate that. And here, if that was the case, then how could a, if the Quran had actually been written down at this point in any form, how could it be lost just from people dying in battles?

Clearly, the Quran exists at this point solely in an oral sense, with some portions of it having been written down rather haphazardly in one way or another. So, therefore I suggest that you, Abu Bakr, order the Quran be collected.

Now this is taking place right, just a couple years after the death of Muhammad.

So,.

So I started looking for the Quran and collecting it from what was written on palmed stalks, thin white stones, and also from the men who knew it by heart. So, there had been some things written down.

Some of the surahs are actually almost, well surahs 113 and 114 are sort of magical incantations, really. And so people, very early on, started writing them down and carrying them with them and stuff like that.

So, there were some sections that were written on palmed stalks, thin white stones, camel's shoulder bones, and things like that. And, also from the men who knew it by heart, till I found the last verse of surah al-Tabah, al-Tabah means repentance, that's surah 9, with Abu Kazami al-Ansari, and I did not find it with anybody other than him.

Now, that's interesting to me.

That.

The man, that Zayd ibn Thabit here, is one who's narrating this, that he admits that at least one of the verses of the Quran, he found with one person, nobody else remembered that verse. Now, it may have been one of the last ones narrated that might have explained why that was.

But, remember, people.

Died.

At those battles before this. Was something lost then? Good question. There's no way of.

Knowing.

It's interesting that this is admitted. So,.

Then.

The complete manuscript, the copy of the Quran, remained with Abu Bakr till he died, then with Umar, he's the second caliph, till the end of his life, and then with Hafsa, the daughter of Umar, that's Sahih al-Bukhari 6509, the very next section goes on to say, Hudayfa was afraid of there, the people of Sham and Iraq's differences in the recitation of the Quran.

So, he had been traveling, and discovered that amongst, this is about 18 years later, this is around 6, somewhere between 650, 652, 653, around in that time frame. And he's been traveling, and he's discovering that there's differences between how people are quoting the Quran.

And notice what is said. So, he said to Uthman, O chief of the believers, save this nation before they differ about the book, the Quran, as Jews and Christians did before.

So, you see.

Those Jews and their Christians? They're always arguing about their scriptures. So, save us from that. Make, keep us unified. Now, we look around Islam today, that didn't really work. That really didn't work.

Because even if you unify the Quran, the Quran does not exist in of itself. It exists within a tradition. And that tradition really becomes the matrix in which it is understood and interpreted. Primarily coming from the Hadith.

So,.

Uthman sent a message to Hafsa saying, send us the manuscripts of the Quran, so that we may compile the Quranic materials in perfect copies, and return the manuscripts to you. So, in other words, Hafsa still had that first one, that had been done under Abu Bakr.

And so, she sends it. Hafsa sent it to Uthman. Uthman then ordered Zayd bin Thabit, Abdullah bin Az-Zubair, Sayyid bin Al-As, and Abdur-Rahman bin Harith bin Hashim. You try to say these things really fast.

It's really sort of fun. To rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies. So, a second committee is set up. And Zayd bin Thabit had been on the first.

Committee.

To write the manuscripts.

In perfect copies. Uthman said to the three Qurayshi men, so in other words, they're of the Qurayshi tribe, as Muhammad had been. In case you disagree with Zayd bin Thabit on any point in the Quran, then write it in the dialect of the Quraysh.

The Quran was revealed in their tongue. Okay, so they do their work. They did so. When they had written many copies, Uthman returned the original manuscripts to Hafsa. We'd love to see that. No one knows where that is.

Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied in order that all other Quranic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt.

Now,.

Muslims will say, well, that's what you're supposed to do with holy books.

That's that.

He wasn't trying to hide anything. It's just that this is the final version and anything else is still a holy book. But the only way to dispose of it is to burn it. The problem is that there were numerous other people at this point in time that did not think that these men were the most qualified men to come up with this final version in the first place.

And one of the biggest names there was Abdullah ibn Masud, who was one of the companions of the Prophet, and the Prophet had pointed to Abdullah ibn Masud and had said, if you want to know the Quran, ask him.

And he even claimed he could tell you when every surah and any ayah of any surah, where it was revealed and when it was revealed. And he had his own version, and we'll look at that in just a second. Zayd bin Thabit added, now this is the second compilation.

This is in the 650s. A verse from Surat Azab was missed by me when we copied the Quran, and I used to hear Allah's Apostle reciting it. So we searched for it and found it with, guess who, Qusaymi bin Thabit al-Ansari.

The verse was, among the believers are men who have been true in their covenant with Allah, Surah 33 -23. So, even the one that Hafsah had had, that one manuscript didn't contain this. So there was a continuing compilation, even at the time of Uthman, even from the Islamic sources.

Now I mentioned briefly before, what's really important about this is after Uthman comes Ali. And Ali is caliph for only a short period of time. And basically, civil war breaks out amongst the Muslims during Ali's time.

He has this big battle with Aisha, who is one of Muhammad's wives, and it's quite the mess. And you really have the origins of the Sunni-Shia split right at this time, and it's focused upon succession.

And so you've got Uthman compiling the Quran at the very time that everyone's arguing about who's supposed to be the leader in Islam. And then he burns all the sources he used. Hmm. You would think that would make most people go,.

Hmm.

But most Muslims have never even given a thought.

It's just,.

You know, the Quran exists as a Quran. It's history. Well, let's be honest. I grew up in a Christian home, and I figured the Bible had always had a leather cover, and gold edges, and thumb indexing. I didn't know much about the history of it and how it had come together and stuff like that.

Most Muslims are in the exact same boat. In fact, you know more about the history of the Quran right now than most Muslims in most Muslim countries, because this is not something that's normally discussed.

I mean, how many of you had seen P72, or P52, or P66 before this morning, or even knew that they existed? So we can understand how some of that works.

Now,.

In Ibn Abi Dawud, in his book, Kitab al-Masahif, page 23, he notes, many of the passages of the Quran that were sent down were known by those who died on the day of Yamama, but they were not known. See, I can now go past it, you've been inoculated, and it's okay now.

Except I'm noticing the pastor really likes the battle of Yamama. You get a real kick out of that one,.

Don't you?

Is that going to end up in a sermon pretty soon?

Sunday,.

It's coming Sunday. You don't want to be.

At the battle of Yamama!

That's not going to be the only thing you remember from this, is it, please? That and the laser thing, that's going to be that's about it. Funny, Scottish looking guy, bald guy, he's talked for a while and talked about the battle of Yamama, that's all I remember.

Anyway,.

They were sent down, were known by those who died on the day of Yamama, but they were not known by those who survived them, nor were they written down, nor had Abu Bakr, Umar, or Uthman by that time collected the Quran, nor were they found with even one person after them.

So here is an early source saying parts were lost. Parts were lost. I don't have this quote up here right now, but Aisha, Muhammad's favorite wife, the youngest, Aisha indicated that there used to be a verse in the Quran about stoning of adulterers and it had been written down on a piece of parchment, but the day that Muhammad died, they were so distracted by dealing with his death that a tame goat entered into a room and ate it.

And that's why it's not in the Quran. It's in the Hadith. It's in the Hadith, isn't it? It's there. I'm not making this stuff up. It is there. One of the earliest Christian writers to write against Islam.

This is one of the areas of real fascination. I'm really hoping the Lord opens up opportunity for me to do further graduate work in this specific field. That is the earliest Christian responses to Islam and what they can tell us about what Islam was like at that time.

But the Apology of Al-Kindi from around AD 830 says then the people, now listen, this is a Christian writing. Listen to how similar this is to what we just read from Sahih al-Bukhari which would not have, Al-Kindi would not have had access to this at this point in time.

Then the people felt a variance in their reading. Some read according to the version of Ali which they follow to the present day. Those would be the Shiites. Some read according to the collection of which we have made mention.

One party read according to the text of Ibn Masud, Abdullah Ibn Masud as I said, and another according to that of Uba Ibn Kab. When Uthman came to power and people everywhere differed in their reading, Ali sought grounds of accusation against him.

One man would read a verse one way and another man another way and there was change, interpolation, some copies having more and some less. Now what we do know that Abdullah Ibn Masud had a fewer number of surahs than the 114 today.

Uba Ibn Kab had 116. So there's even a different number of chapters or surahs in these various collections. When this was represented to Uthman and the danger urged of division, strife, and apostasy he thereupon caused to be collected together all the leaves and scraps that he could together with the copy that was written out at the first.

This is a Christian. Doesn't have access to Sahih al-Bukhari. It's the exact same story with just a few slight differences. But they did not interfere with that which was in the hands of Ali or of those who followed his reading.

Uba was dead by this time and as for Ibn Masud they demanded his exemplar but he refused to give it up. Now it's interesting there is a contradictory story as to what happened with Uba, with Ibn Masud.

Basically if you have Shiite leanings Ibn Masud was sort of a hero who opposed Uthman and would not give up his manuscript and in fact was beaten by the governor and died because of his beating. The Sunni tradition is more that Uthman.

And.

Ibn Masud sort of got together and Uthman came and visited him when he was dying and all was good and so on and so forth. I think the Shiites got this one right because I've read enough about Abdullah Ibn Masud.

This guy.

This guy was how would I describe him? He was a man's man. He was on his deathbed. He was singing with Frank Sinatra.

I did it my way.

I just don't get the idea that he decided that oh okay I'll go ahead and give up my readings of the Quran and let these other guys. I don't believe that for a second. His readings continued on for a very long time and this specifically says that Ibn Masud they demanded his exemplar, his manuscript, but he refused to give it up.

Then.

There's the source at the bottom of the page. It is reported from Ismail Ibn Ibrahim, from Ayub, from Nafi, from Ibn Umar who said let none of you say I have acquired the whole of the Quran. How does he know what all of it is when much of the Quran has disappeared?

Rather let him say I have acquired what has survived. That's an interesting again early perspective on the fact that there were elements of the Quran that were missing by that particular point in time.

Now many Muslims believe the Quran has no meaningful textual history. That the Quran they possess today is a mere image of Uthman's version. But the fact is that there are textual variants in the early copies of the Quran and evidence of an early editing process seeking to remove Ibn Masud and Uba Ibn Kab's influence on the text of the Quran itself.

Now what you're going to see here I can guarantee you 99 .99 of the Muslims living in the world have never seen. I remember presenting this material in a debate at a very large Presbyterian church in the Bronx.

And.

This was one of those beautiful Presbyterian churches that had been built back in the 1800's. You could seat a thousand people in there. Well you're only supposed to seat about 800. We got a thousand people in there.

And there hadn't been more than 20 people in this place in the past 50 years that had gone way liberal and they had a couple little folks that met in there and they let us have a debate in there. I'm not sure they'd ever let us do it again but we had about a thousand people and 800 of them were Muslims.

And I presented this information and you could hear a pin drop. Hopefully not a grenade pin but you could hear a pin drop.

Uh.

When I presented this stuff I mean it was eerily quiet as I made this presentation. It was very very strange so you're going to see stuff that as I said the vast majority of Muslims in the world have never ever ever seen before.

We already looked at that one I'm not sure why that's there twice.

Now.

If you see the Quran going around this looks like the page in this is surah 3.

158.

Alright and what you've got here is I sort of blow up the text for you a little bit here and here is the text under consideration and here is the same text from chronic manuscript 328 found in the National Library of France in Paris as dated to around a hundred years after Hijra.

So what was the Hijra? It was in 622 that's when Muhammad went from Mecca to Medina. And so here you have the printed text and then here is the text and you say how do you have something from the National Library of Paris?

Well.

This is one of the areas I've really wanted to study and so the Lord's people provided me with the funds. I have in my library a museum replica this literally when it's open is about this big and it is a museum quality replica of both the London and Paris manuscripts of the Quran.

They were 1400 bucks a piece. There's about three sets in the United States and yours truly has one of them thankfully. And so with a good photocopier we were able to pull these things out and so as reading Hijazi text is hard even for those who read modern Arabic.

Let's expand the text a little bit. Now what you can see is that the Paris manuscript has an extra aleph not found in the modern printed Quranic text but in this case that extra aleph completely changes the meaning.

In the ancient text it says that those who die will not be gathered to Allah while the modern 1924 printed text says they will surely be gathered to Allah. Now please make sure you understand why I point this out.

I'm not saying that we can't figure out the original reading but I am pointing out how important it is to have a full unedited widely dispersed manuscript tradition with which to make such determinations.

And so it really changes oops sorry I needed to click one more time I guess so you can see that. There we go. So the printed text says we'll surely gather them. The ancient text says we'll not gather them.

So in other words it's a negation. It's yes or no. That's a fairly major difference between the two texts. Now we also have the impact of Ibn Masud. The fact is that there were competing readings in the earliest centuries of the transmission of the Quran.

Specifically the tradition of Ibn Masud as well as that of Uba' Ibn Ka 'b persisted in the earliest manuscripts of the Quran long after the Uthmanian attempt to enforce a particular set of readings. This can be seen in the earliest Islamic traditions for example in reference to Surah 1793.

Regarding that, Abd Razak mentions a tradition from Mujahid who said we did not know what a house of ornament was until we saw in the Quran of Ibn Masud a house of gold. So what does he mean here? Well here's the text once again.

And here is the relevant text blown up so we can see it a little bit better. And then we bring it up. The current reading found in the Uthmanian version and the current 1924 Egyptian version speaks of a house of ornament while the Ibn Masud reading has a house of gold.

Once again, without the materials destroyed by Uthman, how does one logically and truthfully determine such issues? That's the problem when you have editing. Is that how do you know the editor got it right the first time?

So is it a house of ornament or is it a house of gold? The difference would be right there. Depends on which reading you take and who you believe as to who had the greatest impact. Now Surah 2 222 provides another example this time based upon Fogg's palimpsest manuscript.

Now let me explain what a palimpsest manuscript is. Let me just ask, does anyone know what a palimpsest manuscript is?

Why are you laughing?

We have seminary guys down here. You all know what palimpsest.

Manuscripts are, right?

I just heard him say just shake your head. I may be old but I ain't deaf. A palimpsest manuscript, remember these were written on parchment. Parchment is leather. So what you could do is you could wash off the ink of what had been written before and reuse that piece of parchment.

The problem is you would be writing on it with a quill or something like that which means you would scar the surface. So a palimpsest is where by using infrared or ultraviolet light depending on the situation, we can actually read what was originally written on something that had been washed off and reused for something else.

You're reading the text that had originally been written on it by looking at the scarring on the actual parchment itself. So you can read that underlying text even though it's been washed off. That's a palimpsest manuscript.

We have New Testament manuscripts that are palimpsest manuscripts that are very important in the study of the New Testament text as well. And so we have something called the Fogg's Palimpsest.

Manuscript for the Quran.

And so using ultraviolet light we can often read the original writing. When we read the original text in the Fogg's manuscript at Surah 2, 222 which I have here on the top and compare the current edition, we see not just variation, we see wholesale editing.

Words are changed, the word order is changed, verbal forms are altered, grammatical terminations are changed, etc. This is clear evidence of the continued attempt at least a century after Uthman of reading the Quran of the readings of Ibn Masud.

So the underlying text and if you know anything about Arabic you know that once you start changing what a subject is or something like that now you're going to be changing the grammatical terminations of other words down the sentence you're going to have to change the word order.

This isn't just a scribe being lazy or not having good close-up vision or being distracted by a flea. This is editing. This is specific editing of the text which represents the difference between Ibn Masud's readings which are found in the Fogg's Palimpsest manuscript and then Uthman's readings which are found in the later version of it.

And if we had even fuller manuscripts like this how many other of these types of variants would we be able to find is the question. And this is when it was really, really quiet in my debate with 800 Muslims, some of which standing alongside the walls just staring at me as I showed them things like this.

This is why Sufyan al-Thawri's relatively short tafsir. A tafsir is a commentary.

It's a.

Commentary on the Quran, sometimes very brief commentary, sometimes more in-depth. The earliest ones tend to be very brief. This is why Sufyan al-Thawri's relatively short tafsir for instance can list 67 variant readings 24 of which are attributed to Ibn Masud.

And so here you have an early commentary on the Quran written by a Muslim and at the time they don't have any problem mentioning the fact that well Ibn Masud said it read this way and Uthman said it read this way.

They didn't have a problem with that. They hadn't yet started doing Christian apologetics and so they hadn't developed the orthodoxy that oh no there's never been any changes in the Quran. The existence of these textual issues has been well known to Muslim scholars for centuries but has fallen out of general Islamic recognition especially in our lifetimes.