Video from the First Night of Class: #2

Textual Criticism and the Preservation of the Qur'an

Colleague of Vancouver, Washington for dr. White. Hey, dr. Wright. I'm originally from Saudi Arabia, but um well. My question is is that you made a claim that? Or a statement that other man destroyed some earlier Qurans.

Yes, which is true on. But here's my question now are there any first century or second century writings that were destroyed by the church and in the light? of tonight's You know debate or tonight's the title of the debate.

Why were they destroyed if there were any destroyed and like why also in the same way in the same breath? I would say why did a fan destroy these crowns?

First of all the only Thing I could think of about any books being destroyed was when a cultic books were destroyed by people who are coming to know Christ record in the book of Acts. You need to remember something that when you say the church the church was a persecuted minority who were having their members put on Stakes and burned by Nero in the first century.

So they had no authority or power to be destroying anything if there were any books being destroyed. They were being destroyed by the Roman Empire. And there were the Christian scriptures which took place for about another 200 years until the piece of the church in 313.

And so there is no parallel and could never have been any parallel in the history of the New Testament. You have to the Uthmanic revision found in al-bukhari and In which I've got right here al-bukhari when you when you say why were they destroyed.

Variant Readings, Uthmanic Revision, and the Authority to Standardize Texts

Good question? I as I read the narrative of this hadith there can be only one possible reason and That is that there were people who were very very concerned That the Muslims would become like the Jews and the Christians and dispute over there to over their scriptures.

The only reason therefore to destroy those other materials is that they contain variant readings and That would indicate that at a very early period because this is within 20 years 23 years maybe depending on where exactly where you put this of the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

These issues were already coming up and so I do not believe and in fact This is an area that I'm doing intensive study in I do not believe that there is any parallel between the early Transmission of the text of the Quran and that of the New Testament for many many reasons.

But one of the key issues is the difference between having a Religious state that uses the power of the sword as you know with one then copies these and has them sent to these centers and they Become the standard.

The early Christian Church could never do that when you're hiding from Roman soldiers. It's really really hard to be trying to track down a variant copies of your alleged scriptures. That the early church did not have the power and authority to make that kind of change.

That's vitally important in seeing the differences between the two books. We spoke about the Gospels and you did rightly say that Mark is a shorter gospel than Matthews and you gave the statistics. Regarding that I'm amazed that you remember the number of words in each in each gospel.

Mark and Matthew as Different Kinds of Gospel Summaries

However, as I recall from my own learning the gospel according to Mark those shorter. Is episode for episode longer than the gospel according to Matthew. Matthew is longer because it includes material which is not found in Mark.

But if the material is in Mark and Matthew Matthew is the shorter of the two. But even if we accept that Mark Matthew has telescope the material in this way. Doesn't that change the information in in the sense that here we have a man coming up to Jesus and saying my daughter is at The point of dying and and Matthew changes it to have the man say my daughter has just died.

They're two different things probably before I go to bed this evening. And by the way, I also know that you give that Quran codes and six thousand five hundred fifty five and the whole nine yards. I even memorized what you said about you very good so Predominantly worthless information in my circles, but it's fascinating at parties, but other than that.

Telescoping Details Without Changing the Meaning

But probably before I go to bed this evening probably early in the hours of the morning I am going to be putting on my blog a quick Update about the debate this evening and then when we get a chance to fly home get a chance to you.

Of course have to go farther, but we get get home and have some time. I'm going to write probably a much fuller discussion of our debate and what took place now in the process I may telescope a number of your statements.

I'm not trying to misrepresent you because I'll telescope mine as well. I mean, I want to get to bed sometime tonight. That does not mean I'm changing the information. I am simply giving the information in a shorter version and then I can expand it later on.

Mark is is giving us the specific blow-by-blow. He comes he says what's happening the healing of the woman with the issue of blood. Then the elders come and say don't bother she's died and then Jesus says Don't have faith etc. Etc.

He gives the whole story all Matthew says is Come my daughter's died doesn't give the second he puts those two together now. You're saying if you're saying well that's not how a reporter should do that if he's gonna show up in a in a court of law and give an Exhaustive account, but when you if you call home tonight and give an account of what took place this evening.

You're gonna do the same thing and I'm gonna do the same thing and no one's gonna accuse you of lying in the process. Well, we're not writing scripture though. That's the difference. But again the different the question you seem to be seem to be proposing is can scripture use regular human language?

I mean Matthew only had so much room to write in he had to choose how much space he was going to dedicate to any Particular story that is very different than we have today. If you and I want to write big huge long books, we can write big huge long books.

He only has X amount of space. He's only give certain amount of information and he chose to telescope it. He's not contradicting what Mark said. He's if you put the two of them in a room, he would say yeah, of course I know that but I just didn't want to go into that level of detail.