Is the Bible the Word of God? A Christian vs Islamic Discussion

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Good afternoon everybody. We are so pleased to have you here on a Saturday afternoon. We know there are plenty of things for you to be doing on a Saturday afternoon, so we are so delighted that you are here with us at RTS.

My name is Bob Amiat. I'm the Executive Vice President here. I serve Dr. Don Sweeting for this campus, for RTS Orlando. RTS is an organization, a seminary that's been around for 50 years, and we're going to celebrate our 50th year next year.

And this event is the brainchild of John Meather. John Meather is a very godly man who's been with us for over 30 years, who is undertaking a QEP, it's called, in our accreditation, our 10-year accreditation.

We wanted to get better at this, convening the public, having good constructive dialogue on very important topics. And so we are endeavoring to do that well. John Meather is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He had some meetings there this week and got stuck there, because they had five inches of snow yesterday. So I am pinch-hitting at this point, so pardon my, any thing that I may do that might not be as smooth as Dr. Meather.

But we are so glad to be here. I wanted to just tell you that there'll be a moderator today, and I wanted to introduce you to Mr. Michael O 'Fallon. Michael is here. And Michael will be addressing the public, and he will be telling you kind of the structure of how this afternoon's going to be going.

And so without any further ado, I'm going to bring Michael up to the podium.

Debate Format and Introductions

Well, good afternoon, and it's great to welcome all of you to today's discussion dialogue that we're going to be having. Thank you. Welcome, first of all, for all those of you, Presbyterians that are visiting, as well as all those of you in the Islamic community that are here.

I know Reformed Baptists are still coming in the door, late, back over here. Sorry, sorry, Dr. White. But it's a pleasure to be here. First of all, again, for the, I would also like to thank the Spurgeon Fellowship, Chris Hatton that's here, as well as Kyle Hauck, who have been putting in tireless hours to make sure that all of this happens.

We also have some guests here from Long Island, Michael Gaydosh, as well as Chris Arnzen, that have run many debates up in the Long Island, New York area. It's great to have you here. But without any further ado, I'd like to be able to introduce to you, first, our participants.

First, this gentleman serves as the Senior Imam, President and Chairman of the Board of the Islamic Society of Central Florida since 1993. ISCF is a Muslim community organization which operates 10 mosques in Central Florida.

He is the President of the Peace Institute, which establishes centers for peace to conduct outreach programs and services, and which partners with various religious government civic academic and business organizations to promote peace, justice, and respect among all people.

This gentleman is an advisor on Islam and Muslims to various agencies of the U .S. government, and is also active in interfaith network and public services. He is a member and past co-chairman of the Interfaith Council of Central Florida's Advisory Board.

He is a member of the Peace and Justice Initiative at Valencia College. Would you please welcome Imam Mohamed Masri, PhD. Our second participant is the Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

He has taught for numerous acclaimed biblical institutions, including Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Columbia Evangelical Seminary, and Grand Canyon University. As an author, he has written over 20 books and engaged in more than 100 moderated public debates.

He is a seasoned traveler, and he tries as best as he can to attend the services of his own church with as much regularity as possible. Would you please welcome Dr. James White. Our forum today will be split into two separate theses that we will then be discussing.

Firstly, we will be starting with the thesis of, Is the Bible God's Word? We will have two 20-minute presentations by each one of our participants, and then we will have approximately 45 minutes of open dialogue, followed by two 10-minute concluding statements.

At the end of that time, we will have a brief break. We will then return, and we will start our second thesis, which will be, Is the Quran the Word of God? Again, with two 20-minute presentations, 45 minutes of dialogue, two 10-minute presentations to conclude at the end, and then as well, we will have some questions.

Now, the kind folks at Reformed Theological Seminary will be passing out some cards that you can go ahead and write down some questions. We will then jointly go through those questions, pick out which ones we believe should be delivered to the participants, and then allow them both to answer and discuss those questions.

So without any further ado, let me introduce first, for the affirmative, Is the Bible the Word of God? Dr. James White.

The Bible as the Word of God in Christian-Muslim Dialogue

Alright, it is a true honor to be with you here today, and I want to explain to you how unique an opportunity we have today. Unfortunately, most of the time when dialogue takes place between Christians and Muslims in the world today, the dialogue is either marked by a kind of compromise that does not actually represent historic, meaningful Christianity or historic, meaningful Islam, or it is marked by a kind of rancor, a kind of anger, a kind of distrust that means you end up with two sides just making speeches against the other without much of any meaningful dialogue taking.

Place.

It is truly my desire that over the course of the next couple of hours, what you're going to watch are two people who believe firmly in what they profess, what they teach, what they preach, interacting with one another in a spirit of not compromise, of not giving up the uniqueness of what we believe, but out of respect and a recognition that because both of our faiths make certain claims, then we need to interact with one another, we need to be honest with one another, and when we disagree, we need to disagree firmly, clearly, but with an understanding of where the other side is coming from and why they believe what they believe.

I'm going to tell my fellow evangelical Christians that I am very, very concerned at the attitude that I have seen amongst many of our people. When we ourselves are often offended by being painted with a broad brush, when we ourselves are asking the world, you need to understand that we're not all like Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, you need to allow us to be ourselves, we cannot therefore return the favor of broad brushing other individuals and putting everybody into one big old camp.

And I have taken a fair amount of heat from my fellow believers for pointing out that there are different kinds of Muslims in the world. And if you don't recognize that, if you don't try to understand where the different groups are coming from, and even within the major groups, that there are differences of opinions and viewpoints within them, we'll never get anywhere in actually communicating with one another.

It simply won't take place. Because if we have fear of one another, we will never open up our hearts, we will never as Christians truly extend ourselves, show the love of Christ, and engage in meaningful Christian testimony if our thinking is marked by fear.

And so I am hoping that what we do today will help to begin a dialogue. Obviously there are so many issues to address that we can barely even list them for you in the course of the time that we have today.

But hopefully, it certainly is my hope, and I would imagine that Imam Musri would say the same thing, is that you all would be the ones that would be continuing this dialogue amongst yourselves in a way that shows a firm commitment to your faith, and that that means you then therefore have a firm commitment to speaking to others.

Now in light of that, we're talking about two subjects. We're talking about the Bible as the Word of God, and the Quran as the Word of God. But immediately we have to come to an understanding of what this means.

You see, the Quran says that the Torah and Injil are sent down by God. Sent down, the very language of Revelation. The Quran says that in the Torah, in the Injil, are light and guidance. And associates with those who were a part of the provision of those scriptures, people like Moses and Jesus, the office of prophethood.

And one of the key texts that, especially during our time of communication with one another when we get to talk back and forth that I want to focus upon, is in Surat Al-Maidah, Surah 5. Now, once we get talking with one another, I'm going to use my iPad to project some of these texts on the screen for you so you can follow them.

And the Imam's better organized than I am this weekend, and he'll have a presentation for you to look at. But when we look at Surah 5, especially Ayahs 44 through 48, we discover that the Quran makes an argument from Allah giving to Moses the Torah, and giving to Jesus the Injil, and then giving to Muhammad the Quran.

And there is a chain very clearly presented in that particular text. And so ironically, we can immediately assert that the Quran itself says that the Torah and the Injil were given by God, and in fact, God holds men accountable for what is in the Torah and the Injil.

There in Surah 5, we're told, we are called the Al-Al-Injil, the people of the Gospel. We're addressed twice by that. Sometimes we're called the Al-Al-Kitab, the people of the book, but the people of the Gospel, we are addressed there in Surah 5, and we are told to judge by what is contained therein, and the only antecedent to the word therein is the Gospel.

So in the days of Muhammad, sometime before the end of 632 A .D. in our calendar, there was a time when there could be a revelation come forth that says to the Christian people, you are to judge by what is contained in the Injil.

What does that mean? That means that they possessed the Injil. Otherwise, the words have no meaning. How could we be held accountable for judging by something we no longer possess? It wouldn't make any sense.

Well, if we had the Injil in 632 A .D. or sometime thereabouts, so those words can have meaning, the question is, do we continue to have those words to this day? And certainly most of us who have studied biblical history know that most assuredly, we not only know what the Gospel, the entirety of the New Testament contained before 632, but we know hundreds of years before 632.

All we have to do is look at such manuscripts as Sinaiticus or Vaticanus, which are almost complete records of the New Testament that are dated a good 300 years earlier than that, 250 to 300 years earlier than that.

And so we know what the New Testament said before the days of Muhammad, we know what it said in the days of Muhammad, we know what it says after the days of Muhammad, and that we continue to possess that very same document to this very day.

And so one of the questions will be, and I don't know exactly what position Imam Musabi takes on the transmission of the text of the Bible, but in my conversations in the past, what I have generally heard is, well, you need to understand the Quran is the final revelation, and there in Surah 548 it says it's a muhaimanun, it's a guidance, it's a protector, or in some translations, a corrector of the previous scriptures.

We'll probably have to discuss what that particular word actually means. And so the general view, and again, until we hear from the Imam I can't predicate anything on this, but the general view that I have encountered in the past is that the Quran is the only uncorrupted word that we have from God, and while the Torah and the Injil, parts of it may still exist, they have to.

Why do they have to? Because of Surah 616 and Surah 717. What do those say? Well, those texts in the Quran say that we, the people of the book, read about Muhammad in our own scriptures. Well, then there still must be something of the Injil, something of our scriptures that has come down to us for that to be relevant in the days of Muhammad, that there would still be prophecies of Muhammad contained in the scriptures, and when we ask what those prophecies are, we're generally told that, well, it's Deuteronomy chapter 18, John chapters 14 and 16, et cetera, et cetera, though the Quran never defines those things.

And so generally the assertion that is made is, well, there has been great corruption, and so the Quran becomes the lens through which you read these previous documents. We're also told that, well, the Torah only refers to what Moses gave.

Yes, there is a reference to the Psalms of David and a few things like that, but we're only looking at a small portion of the Old Testament. And then, the understanding of many is that the Gospel was a specific book given to Jesus.

Even though there is no historical evidence of any such book ever having existed, no one for 600 years made any type of reference to a special book that only Jesus knew about or that Jesus wrote or anything along those lines.

And certainly, again, if the exhortations that the Quran has for us Christians are going to have any meaning, then there has to have been understanding in the days of Muhammad as to what the Christian scriptures were.

Here's the problem, and here's where we get into some of the conversation. We need to have a conversation about these things. I think it's vitally important for us Christians to know that we are addressed by the Quran directly.

Obviously, it doesn't work the other direction, and anachronistically, the New Testament can't address the Muslim population because that comes 600 years later, but we are addressed directly by the Quran.

And we need to know what the Quran says to us and why it says what it says, and I hope that that will be some of what we'll talk about today. But if we are to take seriously, for example, the Quran saying that we must not go into excess in our beliefs, so we are to say only what is true about God, then does it not follow that the author of the Quran should be accurate in his understanding of what the Christian faith and the Christian scriptures are?

If we're going to believe that the Christian scriptures have been altered on the basis of the Quran and canonic teaching, then we should have a very firm foundation in believing that the author of the Quran was very familiar with the entire content of the New Testament, but to be honest with you, I see no evidence of that whatsoever.

I've never seen any evidence that the author of the Quran knew anything about the canon of the New Testament, knew anything about the book of Hebrews, the Pauline epistles, knew anything about the fact there were four gospel writers, because it's very common for even Christians to this day, and it was in that day as well, to talk about the gospel as a singular thing, but also to recognize we have the gospel of Matthew, the gospel of Mark, so on and so forth.

Very easily, we move back and forth between the two. We understand that, but that seemed to create some level of confusion, and as a result, then it raises the questions, well, when the Quran does seek to interact with the Bible, does it show real understanding of what the Bible says?

So those are some of the things I want to expand on a little bit more when we talk specifically about the Quran, but the point is, this is a discussion between a believing Christian and a believing Muslim, and therefore, when we talk about is the Bible the word of God, well, the Quran says that it is.

The only real issue is, are we still in possession of what the Quran affirmed to have been Natsal, sent down to contain light and guidance, or have we lost that? That really becomes the question. Now, down to the history of Islamic thought, I'm sure the Imam will verify this, there were two streams of thought on this particular subject.

And that was, there were those Muslims who believed in Tarif al-Mana, which means that the Christians and the Jews had misunderstood their scriptures, had misinterpreted their scriptures, and then you have Tarif al-Nuts, and that is the idea that the very words of the scriptures had been changed.

Now, I won't have time today to develop this, but I would argue that the author of the Quran would have had a hard time specifically asserting that the very words of Allah could be changed. Yeah, I know about Surah 279, but I think there's a context there that needs to be looked at, but there are lots of other places that would seem to indicate that the author of the Quran would have had a problem with that.

But leaving that aside, what you need to know is that historically, something happened very important in 1864 that probably will deeply impact our conversation today. The publication of a book called Itzaar al-Haqq, the Confirmation or Vindication of the Truth.

And that one book has had more impact around the world in changing Islamic views about the Bible than any other book ever did. It was written by a Muslim, it was written against the British missionary work amongst the Muslims there in India.

And it is a huge compilation of alleged, and I say alleged, I've read all of it, alleged errors, textual variations, contradictions in the Gospels, etc., etc., etc. So important has that book been historically, that the vast majority of Muslims with whom I have dialogue today would assert that the Bible has experienced that more severe form of corruption, tarif al-nuts, that that is how we should understand that there are only portions of God's truth left in the Christian scriptures, and that's why you need the Quran as the lens through which to look to see this Word of God.

Now hopefully, what we won't have to deal with today is the odd development that has taken place over the past number of decades amongst those who are doing dawah, those who are calling to Islam, and that is, there has become this strange dalliance between naturalistic materialism and the presentations that I'm encountering all the time.

In fact, it seems that the favorite post-Christian, ex-Christian author of many of the Muslims with whom I have dialogue is Bart Ehrman. Now I don't think Bart Ehrman even likes that, personally, but that kind of naturalistic approach to looking at the New Testament and the Bible, we're not, if there are any naturalists here today, you're in the minority.

If you're a Christian, you're a supernaturalist. If you're a Muslim, you're a supernaturalist. You should not be starting with the assumption that there cannot be divine revelation, and yet when you start with people like Bart Ehrman and people like that, you're starting with the assumption that there is no such thing as divine revelation.

And so one of the things that I am calling upon both Christians and Muslims to do, and I will have, I can call Christian friends as witness to this, is I say to both sides, we need to use equal scales.

We cannot apply one standard to one side and one standard to another side. So let me start with my side on that. If we are to criticize the Quran, then we cannot just glibly grab onto the argumentation of liberal Orientalists, or atheists and skeptics, and just throw it out there without even thinking through the fact that they would use the very same type of arguments against the Bible.

We can't, as Christians, if we follow Him who is the truth, we cannot be using different.

Standards.

It doesn't matter how effective, quote-unquote, on a pragmatic level that argument might be, that is not an option for a Christian. And the same way, I have over and over again asked my Muslim friends, do you realize that the argumentation that you're using, if you applied the same standards to the Quran, would.

Disprove the Quran.

I mean, if we're believing Muslims, then you believe in the Miraj and the Isra, you believe in supernatural revelation, you believe that the Quran was sent down in Laylatul Qadr, and was given by dictation by Jibril to Muhammad over a certain period of time, and you believe all those things which all those liberal scholars you like to quote against the Bible would never accept, and would dismiss, and would therefore make the same arguments against your text that you are now making against the Old and New Testament.

And so, I have been calling for years now, I'll call for it again today, equal scales. Even the Quran says, use equal weights in scales. Now they're talking about buying things, but I think it's perfectly applicable to this.

As well.

We have to use the same standards, and I would invite all of you to listen carefully to any criticism that we offer, to any argument that is made, any position that is enunciated, are we using the same standards when we talk about someone else's scriptures?

And given that this is a dialogue between people who believe that God has spoken, I would be shocked if the imam would disagree with what I'm about to say. You cannot be a Muslim and not believe that God has spoken.

And clearly, you cannot be a Christian and not believe that God has spoken. Just not possible. So we are people who believe that God has spoken, God wants us to know what his truth is, and yet we have conflicting beliefs because we have differing ultimate sources.

But here's the problem. This is why especially Christians and Muslims have to talk. We have to talk. It's because Islam, I know from the Islamic perspective, is the original religion and is first, but historically in manifestation and as far as scripture goes, Islam comes after Judaism and Christianity and speaks often of both.

And since in the very words of the Quran, we are addressed, we are spoken to, a connection is made that cannot be broken. For example, one of the most important surahs in the Quran is surah Taliqlas, surah 112, closest you'll get to a doctrinal statement, a creedal statement within Islam.

And what it says in its third ayah is, لَمْ يَلِدْ وَلَمْ يُلِدْ God is not begotten, nor does he beget. Now what's that talking about? We as Christians could agree with the first, second, and fourth ayah of that particular surah, but that third one seems to be directed directly to us.

And according to one hadith, Muhammad said that to quote surah Taliqlas is to quote one.

Third of the Quran.

So it's very important. And so if in the central documents of the faith, we have a connection between, in the Quran, between Islam and Christianity, we must talk. We cannot afford to just simply listen to what others tell us about the others.

We need to talk with one another. And that's what we're supposed to be doing today, and that's what we've just begun doing. I believe that the Bible is the word of God for many reasons, but today, in the context of a Christian-Islamic dialogue, I believe that it is so because even the Quran recognizes that God sent it down to Moses, God gave it to Jesus, and that's what we continue to have.

To this very day.

And that's where the focus needs to be. I'm excited about you being here. I'm excited about Imam Musri being here. Thank you very much.

God bless.

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. White. We now have 20 minutes for an opening presentation by Imam Muhammad Musri. Please stand by. Technical difficulties.

Which Bible and Which Canon?

Well, again, I want to also thank you for coming, and I'm greatly honored to be on stage with a great scholar, Dr. James White, and I have read his book on the Quran. He graciously sent me three of his books for free.

So that gave me the opportunity. I never, honestly, I never did a debate. I never heard of Dr. White, and then I received this book. And like I said, this great man has traveled the world and talked to, debated a hundred, you know, Muslim scholars, and I don't even know him.

So it's quite an honor to be on stage with him today and to echo what Dr. White just said. We are both people of faith, people who believe in God, people of the book. We all believe that God exists. God is one, and God sent revelations.

Now the question that is at hand at this moment, if that, if the Bible is God's word, and we will look at in the second part of this discussion if the Quran is God's word. Now for most people, they know, they are familiar with the Bible.

Even Muslims, being a minority in this country, they see the Bible and discussions about the Bible all the time on television, in public schools, in the courts. So it intrigued our interest to look in here, okay?

But Muslims do not follow the Bible, do not study the Bible. We have a separate scripture, the Quran. So for us, this question, is the Bible God's word? First maybe it's none of our business. If there are people who believe it's God's word, that's fine with me.

But if we want to engage in a scholarly discussion and look back at the development of the Bible, and if I'm going to be dragged into answering that question, as a Muslim, I would say the Bible, all of it, is not God's word.

But, as Dr. White mentioned, we believe in parts of it to be God's word. And that's a big difference. So if you take the Bible, that's my call for prayers on my phone. If the Bible, if you take the Bible and you go through it, okay, basically from beginning to end, you won't run into the word Bible, right?

So nowhere in there God says, I revealed this Bible, this is a Bible. There's no speech about Bible. There is a lot about Torah, there is a lot about the Gospel. And we do believe in the Torah that God sent to Moses, and we believe in the Gospel that God sent into Jesus.

And this does not represent that. If there is a book called Torah and a book called Gospel that we can verify belong to these two great prophets, we more than gladly will accept this. Now what's in here is a lot of books.

The word Bible means the books, okay, from the Greek and Latin. That collection of books. Now who made the decision to collect these books? I personally don't know. Multiple councils throughout history have decided in various parts of the world and the various emperors to say, this belongs in the canon and this doesn't belong in the canon, okay?

And I wasn't there to know their entire reasoning. But what I'm faced with today is a Bible that I can buy from a bookstore or look online and say, this is the Bible that a Christian gives me. But then there are this Bible, and then there's this Bible, but these Bibles are not the same.

So if somebody gave me consistent Bible all the time across the world, so we are talking about the same book, then I would say, okay, now we are talking about the Bible. But which Bible are we talking about?

Is it the Catholic Bible or the Christian Bible, the Protestant Bible, the King James? What's the difference between this and this? You know, this has 66 books, so the collection is limited to 66. This has 73 books, seven additional books.

When I go to the Orthodox Church, there's additional books, so they have 77 books. I go to the Ethiopian Church, they have 81 books in their Bible. And so my simple confusion here is, which Bible are we talking about?

I believe, because God told me in the Quran, okay, that God revealed the Torah to Moses. And I say, let me see where is the Torah in here? I go to the Jews and say, where is your Torah? So they gave me a Torah, and I'm going to, since the technical difficulties, I'm going to help myself to getting the Torah.

And this is the modern commentary on the Torah, a gift that the rabbi at Temple Israel here in town gave to me. So I look at this, it's really limiting only the five early books of Moses. It's not covering the entire Bible that the Christians use.

As a matter of fact, we see there is a clear division between the Old Testament and the New Testament. So these are at least two main documents in one. They're not one continuous document. And the scholars of Judaism, they will stop here or even less than here.

They do not, they do with this King James, but they will not accept the additional books called the Apocrypha in this Catholic Bible. So that is really our dilemma. Is it fixed? Now, so this is initially, if we can enlarge this so I can see it here.

Okay.

So what we see here is my simple answer of no for the whole document, but the answer is yes, this is a word of God or the word of God is contained within most of its books.

Okay.

And to be clearer, we really take the, these are the numbers I showed you earlier that as a Muslim, as an outsider, I don't know really the differences between Eastern Orthodox Christian who say they are original Christians to Catholic Christians to Protestant Christians to Baptist, Methodist, Lutherans, Presbyterians.

And I want to say, what was Jesus? I want to know Jesus, Esau, the son of Miriam. Was he a Baptist? Was he a Catholic? Was he an Orthodox? I love him. I know him. I believe in him and what he received.

But I'm not going to get in the middle between all these Christian groups. There's over 40 ,000 of them to say which one is the correct one. Now these are, there are endless list of versions, but these are the most prominent versions.

The King James, which was by the order of King James of England in 1611. And here in the States, the American Standard Version. And then the one of interest to me is the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

Now the Bible sections, you know, when I look at the New Testament, I told you about the extra books in the Old Testament that when your scholars make up their mind what belongs in the canon or doesn't, we'll talk about that, but at least they agree on the New Testament.

And there, there are four Gospels, not one Gospel. We're told the Gospel according to Matthew, and the Gospel according to Mark, and the Gospel according to Luke, and the Gospel according to John. And there are a bunch of other Gospels out there that are not part of this canon, okay?

The Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Barnabas, the Gospel of I don't know who. We say, you know, I want the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I want the Gospel of Esau, the son of Miriam. What did he preach? They're all referring to him.

These are different points of view referring to one Gospel. We want that Gospel. That's what we believe in. So I have to harmonize at least four Gospels here to kind of get the message of what did Jesus really say.

In the process, there's a lot of minutia there that I personally am not interested in. I'm not interested in the opinions of Matthew, and Mark, and Luke, and John, and Paul, and anybody else. I want to know what Jesus said, because that's what matters.

What God said and what his great prophet Jesus said, that is where we need to follow. But everybody giving me a different take and opinion on it, twisting the story to his liking, is not helpful to me.

Now, these are the five books of the Old Testament, which are referred to as the Torah, which we accept. And we accept also from the Torah, we are told in the Quran that God gave revelation to every prophet.

So in there, there are three major prophets, and there are 12 minor prophets. And their books are in the Old Testament, and we generally accept them with some exceptions. When we go to the New Testament, I would take out the letters of Paul and the letters of other people.

I would say, let's focus on the four Gospels, let's harmonize them into one, and then we can say, this is the Christian Gospel that God is asking Christians to follow and we would believe in. Who wrote the Gospels?

Well, it wasn't necessarily inspired as most Christians believe, but Luke's introduction in his letter, this is his letter of the Gospel of what happened. He admits that it wasn't God or Gabriel came to him, or Jesus told him.

This is, it seemed good to me also, proposition. So in other words, nobody really officially asked him, but he felt as a scholar, as a And by the way, we believe he is a Greek person, okay, a Greek physician.

He is not one of the disciples who lived and walked with Jesus. So it seemed good to him also. When we look at books in the Old Testament, even Bible scholars don't know who wrote them. They're just there.

They're incorporated as a library into this library called the Bible. But are they authentic? Well, that's a different discussion. So in the third document that came of interest, I came across the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

We had purchased a church building, and they left some Bibles there, and I said, this is a book of God and I should keep it and respect it. But when I was reading it, it was interesting. This is from 1952, Revised Standard Version, and right there in the preface, it said, gave the history of the development of the scripture, and it said that the King James Version has grave defects, too many and too serious as to call for revision.

And that's why the Church of England commissioned 32 scholars, Bible scholars, not Muslim scholars, from different denominations to come together to look at the earliest sources and work together to produce a more cleaned up version of the Bible.

So that, because today we have computers, we have search engines, we can look online and say, I'm looking for this verse, and all of a sudden I get all the verses that say one thing. And I start comparing them and say, hmm, it says this here and it says that there, and they're talking about the same thing.

That doesn't make sense. So it is a very large document. I mean, this is very fine print, okay? And it's not possible for someone, even me, to be reading here and then find, remember what I read, and say, they mentioned something there that's not correct here.

But with the advent of computers and comparisons, it became very clear that this work needs to be done to clean it up. And so it is Christian effort to try to fix this issue, and we welcome it. Hopefully, down the road, I don't know, in 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 years, we may reach back to the most ancient manuscripts that can tell us exactly what the gospel of Jesus was that we can accept.

And we say, yes, that's what God is speaking about. But in the meantime, I don't know which Bible we're talking about. Thank you.

The Canon, the Gospels, and the Question of Jesus' Identity

Would you please thank Imam Muhammad Mursi? We're now entering into a time of open discussion with Dr. White and with Imam Muhammad Mursi regarding is the Bible true? We'll lead this discussion with Dr. White.

All right.

Well, where do we begin? Those were interesting statements that were made. Let's start, let me just ask you, please feel free to ask me questions, because I'm actually the one you should be asking questions of, because I'm the guy on the positive side here.