Is the New Testament We Possess Today Inspired?

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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There is a specific question for this debate tonight, a specific question and it's on your program.

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It is, is the New Testament as it exists today the inspired word of God?

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That's the exact question that Shabir and James are going to go after. Now it's clear that these men cannot debate everything with regard to scripture from both traditions, so the student organizers and debaters agreed on this particular question as is appropriate in formal debates.

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Now some of you have commented that it seems like this question automatically favors the Muslim side in the debate because it puts the

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Christian on the defensive. Somehow that hasn't worried James White in the least, but I'm sure he'll do fine.

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I think that is an accurate observation though, but after all, this is Christian turf. This is literally our home court.

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Right, it's literally our home court. So, yeah. Yeah, in fact, if things go, if things get a little slow, we will lower the hoops.

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Because I'll bet if we take these three guys, I'll bet Shabir's got game. If we take these, we take these three guys, pick two random people from the audience, they would do better than the

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Lakers against Phoenix the other night, so. Now James White is from Phoenix, so that was to endear him to me.

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So. Now, one last important word. Relax, relax.

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We want everybody to take a deep breath. The future of civilization does not hang in the balance tonight.

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As John Matthews said, this is an educational event. It was started up by the students and it's been organized by them.

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We're helping them out. But they wanted to make this a learning event. Now these can be intensely valuable for learning with people who are brilliant and passionate proponents of their position get together in a formal setting and present their material.

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So I expect that we are going to have a great time. Let me introduce the participants tonight.

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The first one I will introduce is Shabir Ali. And as you will see, when the Christian students here chose debaters for this event, they did not try to find a patsy or a pushover.

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Shabir Ali, I've heard it said, is the finest Muslim debater in the English -speaking world.

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So we're honored to have him here. He flew all the way from Toronto. He's the president of the Islamic Foundation and Dawah Center in Toronto.

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He was born in Guyana, but moved to Canada in 1978 to find ice.

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Was that the program there? It would seem so. He earned a bachelor's degree in religious studies and an

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MA in Quranic interpretation. Is it true that you're the host of a weekly TV program called

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Let the Quran Speak, which is being viewed throughout Canada? He's the author of a range of essays and booklets on the defense of Islam, and he's married and has four children.

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James White is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona.

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He has taught Greek, systematic theology, and various topics in the field of apologetics. He's authored or contributed to more than 20 books, including

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The Forgotten Trinity and The God Who Justifies. He's an accomplished debater, having engaged in more than 50 moderated public debates.

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He's an elder of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. He has been married more than 22 years and has two children.

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Now, do the math. This is the real problem in the balance of Western civilization, is how many children are they having, right?

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We've got four against two. Fred Sanders is going to make it up because he's got two of his own. Fred Sanders is an associate professor of theology in the

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Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University. His main area of interest is the doctrine of the

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Trinity. His doctorate is from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He and his wife met when they were 11 years old.

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Now, they weren't married when they were 11. I know they were from Kentucky or someplace like that. They just met when they were 11.

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That is just a dear, dear story. They have two children. He is really beloved on campus.

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The Torrey students love Fred. And let me just let him take over at this point.

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Fred, the floor is yours. Thank you.

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Yes, it's true. My wife and I waited until the next summer to get married. Thank you for coming to this educational debate sponsored by the

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Associated Student Government and the new Religious and Academic Relations Department. It's an exciting event.

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It's obviously, they have picked a very controversial topic, though not as controversial as Craig's remarks about the

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Lakers. So, things should get easier here. We are entering into a

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Muslim -Christian dialogue here, and it's a dialogue that takes the form of a debate. Now, Craig mentioned

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I did my graduate work in Berkeley, and there, the word dialogue is an invitation to snooze, because everyone is so tolerant that they don't even have views.

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We all just get together at the table and affirm each other. Much head nodding goes on, and this we call dialogue.

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And it's supposed to promote coexistence and mutual understanding, but all it promotes is a kind of a laissez -faire postmodernism that lets 1 ,000 flowers bloom and wouldn't recognize a truth claim if it came in their seminar room and bit them.

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We're committed to dialogue here, and we're committed to dialogue in the hard form of debate, where we get people with strong, passionately held commitments, and have them lay out carefully structured positions, and really mix things up, and really come to terms with each other.

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The goal is still dialogue, but what the world needs now is some really good arguments.

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If people with strongly held religious convictions don't argue with each other, they will eventually fight with each other, physically or culturally or socially, in some way.

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So it's crucial that we come to terms and argue, and argue well. So we put together a formal debate structure in which this argument will happen.

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Now, I should mention that there is something a little bit distorting about this structured, argumentative approach that we're taking.

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For instance, since we're debating the question, is the New Testament as it exists today the inspired word of God, you can listen to this entire presentation and leave with the impression that Shabir Ali spends all of his time criticizing the

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New Testament, and the deeply held beliefs of Christians, as if his entire ministry can be summed up in such a negative project.

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Obviously, his entire ministry is built around a much more positive project of teaching from the

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Quran. You can also leave here thinking, with the impression based on the way we've phrased the question, that James White spends all of his time being defensive about his faith, scurrying around responding to critics, and that his entire ministry can be summed up as such a reactionary project.

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That is certainly not the case. You can hit James White's website and see that he has a well -rounded, positive

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Christian ministry, arguing his own point of view. But both of these public intellectuals have agreed to this debate as a structured argument.

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It's been carefully set up by mutual agreement around the question, is the

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New Testament as it exists today the inspired word of God? Let me just really quickly give you the overview of what's gonna happen.

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First, we will hear prepared speeches, 20 -minute, carefully crafted prepared speeches,

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I assume probably read from a manuscript, but at least very well -structured. Shabir will go first, and then

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James will speak second with his 20 -minute prepared remarks. Then we'll have rebuttals, nine -minute prepared remarks that do interact with the constructive speeches that have gone before.

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Then we'll take a break and we'll come back for the part that really looks like a debate, the way you think of a debate when you hear the word debate, the cross -examination, where our two speakers will take turns putting hard questions to each other.

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Throughout this period, this is where it's crucially important that both of the debaters are gentlemen who have agreed to argue in this very structured way so that at all times during the cross -examination, there's a clear questioner and a clear questionee or answerer.

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Then we'll take a few representative questions from students and we end the evening with closing statements of seven minutes each, first James and then

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Shabir. That's the plan for tonight. That is our dialogue in the form of a debate where we have passionately committed spokesmen who are not just phoning it in, but really arguing from the bottom of their hearts in defense of their views.

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The first opening statement goes to Shabir Ali, and he has 20 minutes. Thank you all very much.

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I want to begin by thanking and praising God, our creator, who has brought us together in this amiable atmosphere in which we can explore ideas, we can deal with differences, and we can settle questions of importance to us here in this life and for our eternal salvation.

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I want to also thank the human beings who have been involved in putting all of this together, without whose efforts we would not be here tonight.

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I want to thank in particular my colleagues my good friend Jonathan Matthew, Craig Hazen, Jimmy Prenn, and the other participants in this dialogue here tonight,

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Dr. Fred Sanders and Dr. James White. And I want to thank you most of all because if you hadn't come out here tonight, we wouldn't be having a discussion, would we?

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Since we've started out on such an amiable tome, I would like to begin with a joke that I heard on radio once, and there is a point to this which you will see eventually.

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There was this lady who lived with her husband and he put her through living hell for many years.

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I know somebody at the back of the room is saying I know that feeling. Eventually he dies and when the pallbearers pick up the coffin and they head out with him, they hit a pillar and this man wakes up.

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He lives on and he puts her through hell a second time for another 10 years until finally he dies again and now he's in the coffin and as the pallbearers pick him up and they move on with him, the lady cries out, watch out for that pillar.

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Now we'll come back to the point about this, but basically tonight our question is, is the

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New Testament as it exists today the inspired word of God? Now either the

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New Testament is the word of God or the work of man or both. I will argue tonight that the

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New Testament is both the inspired word of God and also the creative work of the human beings who wrote the individual documents that make up the

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New Testament and moreover the individuals who copied the documents over time.

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I will not spend so much time dealing with the copying of the documents because this in fact has been explored and popularized through the works of Bruce Metzger and most recently

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Bart Ehrman in particular in his two books, one entitled Misquoting Jesus, the story of who changed the

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Bible and why and another book which is a little bit more of a scholarly tome, a book entitled

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The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. But Ehrman has made a very important point towards the close of the first of these two books that I mentioned in which he has said that the kind of demonstration that he has given of the ways in which scribes and copyists have changed the documents they were working with over time led him to investigate also the changes that have occurred in the story about Jesus as this story is related in the four gospels within the

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New Testament documents. So this is where I will spend most of my time to show how the

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New Testament gospels in presenting Jesus to us have in fact over time modified the information about Jesus.

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My main interest in the New Testament as a Muslim is to find out who exactly was

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Jesus, what did he teach, what did he say and what did he do. Now when we turn to the

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New Testament documents we find that there are 27 in number, of them four are called gospels.

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Each gospel is something like a biography, a life history of Jesus telling us where he began and where he ended up and what he did in between.

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The gospels are named after the purported writers of these gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and this is the order in which they appear in the

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New Testament today. Now the fourth gospel, the gospel according to John has long been recognized since the great scholar

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Irenaeus to be a very different gospel. He called it the spiritual gospel. Scholars have seen that in fact the gospel according to John presents

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Jesus very differently than the other gospels do. The other gospels then are grouped together because of the singular way in which these three gospels can be viewed.

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They are referred to as the synoptic gospels, the gospels that can be seen together with John being the odd or very different one.

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In what ways then is the gospel according to John different? The gospel according to John has in fact presented

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Jesus in a more Christian understanding as that understanding about Jesus developed over time.

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We can see specific instances where, not to criticize the New Testament but only to understand how the stories about Jesus have been told so that we know how to read them, we can see that the gospel according to John has modified some very important factors regarding the life and teaching of Jesus.

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Now let me say one thing more here by preface before we go into this a little bit in some more detail.

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Most people read the New Testament gospels vertically. They start at the beginning and they go towards the end and then they start a new gospel after that.

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Now that is fine. Reading the gospels vertically, that's great. But we also have to read with peripheral vision.

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We have to read across horizontally from one gospel to another. In other words, when we come to an episode in a gospel, we have to keep our fingers there in the text and then flip over to another gospel where the same episode is related and observe how they are similar but also pay attention to how they are different.

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If one were to read the gospels in this way, what we would find is that the gospel according to John is very different from the others in some important matters.

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For example, in the gospel according to Mark, if we use Mark as the comparison point here,

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Jesus does not publicly declare that he is the Messiah throughout his ministry.

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He eventually makes that claim when he's under trial. But throughout his ministry, he keeps what scholars have come to term the messianic secret.

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So he doesn't tell anybody who he is. The gospel according to John has it differently, that Jesus right from the very start declares who he is.

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In fact, John the Baptist had declared him before that. Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

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Here we are hearing a specifically Christian formulation about who Jesus was coming right from the lips of John the

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Baptist in the very first chapter of John's gospel. In chapter four, Jesus speaks to the woman, the

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Samaritan woman, and he declares that he is the Messiah. There's no doubt about this.

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And throughout the gospel, we find the same thing. So either Jesus had the messianic secret as in Mark's gospel, or he declared it right from the start as we find in John's gospel.

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They're two different presentations. In fact, John's gospel, if I'm to put it this briefly, has shown that Jesus is more divine than the other gospels have shown.

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And John's gospel more clearly shows that Jesus came to die for the sins of the world.

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This is a point we've just noticed. John's gospel makes it quite clear that Jesus definitely died on the cross, no doubt about it.

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And finally, that Jesus really did resurrect and reappear to his disciples a number of times.

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So these are themes which, of course, are found in all of the four gospels. But the manner in which it is emphasized in the gospel according to John shows a new emphasis, a modification of the story.

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Let me give you a simple example of what happens in the gospel according to John. Because in John's gospel, Jesus came deliberately to die for the sins of the world, and this is clear from the start, what do you think about the prayer that Jesus offers in the

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Garden of Gethsemane where he says, Father, save me from this hour.

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Let this cup pass away from me, yet not my will but yours be done. Now, where does he make that prayer?

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Of course, in the Garden of Gethsemane, but in which gospels? Gospel of Mark, and he's followed by Matthew.

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But not in the gospel according to John. Now, why not in the gospel according to John? Because according to John, Jesus is a glorified figure who came into the world to die for the sins of the world.

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Now, why would he make such a prayer in the gospel according to John? In fact, he doesn't. In the gospel according to John, on the other hand, we have it that when

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Jesus entered Jerusalem, he says words which remind us of this prayer. Now my hour has come, and what shall

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I say? Father, save me from this hour? No, it is for this reason that I came into the world.

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So we have a different presentation here in the gospel according to John. The story has been modified from the way it had already been present in gospels prior to John.

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Not because something has been wrong with the previous stories, and John has to now correct it, but because the theology about Jesus is developing.

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People are coming to new understandings about Jesus, and that understanding comes to be represented in the gospel according to John, and the speech of Jesus and the events concerning his life are all modified to present that new understanding concerning Jesus.

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So now, what about Jesus' arrest? We know from the Synoptic Gospels that someone was to identify

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Jesus. Judas Iscariot, who was one of his followers, was to kiss

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Jesus, and by his kiss, the soldiers will recognize the person who is to be arrested, namely

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Jesus. Now, of course, he does that in the other gospels, but what about the gospel according to John?

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In the gospel according to John, when Judas comes in, we're in John chapter 18 now,

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Judas comes in with the group of soldiers to arrest Jesus, and Jesus comes forward to meet them, and he asks them, who are you looking for?

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They say, Jesus of Nazareth. He says, I am he, and when he says, I am he, they all fall backwards, as if by the very force of his pronouncement, they are driven back, falling behind.

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The gospel according to John specifically says, and Judas was among them, meaning that Jesus has already identified himself before Judas can give him the kiss of betrayal, and in fact, now, there's no need for that kiss of betrayal, and it is never mentioned in the gospel according to John.

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Jesus just simply says, I told you I am he. If you want me, take me.

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Let the others go. So Jesus hands himself over. Gospel according to John now, not the others, and it is in the gospel according to John, then, that Jesus is able to say, no one takes my life away from me.

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I give it up of my own accord, because I've been given the authority to lay down my life and to take it up again.

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A very different picture of Jesus, and in fact, most Christians will remember this picture much more than the other pictures, because this is what, of course, developed over time and contributed more to the formulation of the standard

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Christian doctrines. So I'm not here tonight to criticize the Bible on your own home turf, no.

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I believe that we need to understand Jesus, and to understand Jesus, we have to know how to read the gospels.

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The gospels were written by individuals. They were human beings. They saw things through the lenses that were available in their day.

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When John was growing up, and he read certain doctrines or certain gospels, he heard certain preachings, he had an idea about who

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Jesus was. He heard a number of different stories being circulated about Jesus. He had to select from among these stories and among speeches that were attributed to Jesus, and he had to then formulate a gospel that will represent what he knows to be the truth, the true

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Christian doctrine, as it was available to John by the time he was writing, around the close of the first century of the

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Christian era. Now, what about the joke that we mentioned in the beginning? It has a point.

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Now, the point is that, of course, in ancient times, people could not tell if a person had actually finally died.

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Nowadays, we put a person in a morgue, we make sure that there are no signs of life, we do a battery of tests, and then eventually we take him to his burial, and sometimes we hear strange stories about some mistakes.

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Now, in the gospels, it is clear that Jesus raised a dead person back to life.

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All of the four gospels agree on this, but the stories in which this is demonstrated are different.

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And the gospel, according to Mark, it is Jairus' daughter. Mark has Jesus going along in a crowd, and Jairus, the

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Jewish leader, comes forward and asks Jesus to go and heal his daughter, because he says, my daughter is at the point of death.

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We're in Mark chapter five. So he says, come and do something for her so that she might be well and live.

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Now, eventually he goes on and a message comes from the ruler's home that the girl has now died, so there's no need to bother the teacher anymore, but Jesus nevertheless persists, assuring them that the girl is not dead, she's only asleep.

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He goes there and he says to her, little girl, get up, talitha kumi in Aramaic, and she actually gets up.

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And he bids them to tell no one about this. Now, the gospel, according to Matthew, we are told, by Christian scholars, in fact, has followed

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Mark's writing. So even though Matthew is placed first in our New Testament, Matthew was actually written following Mark.

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Matthew and Luke, in fact, both use Mark as a source, and this is agreed on by a vast majority of modern scholars, although this has been resisted for a long time, but conservative scholars now tend, one after another, to accept, after they see the evidence, that this is so.

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F .F. Bruce, for example, writing about the fourfold gospel in the New International Bible Commentary has actually admitted this, and Dr.

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William Craig of, Dr. William Craig, William Lane Craig of Talbot School of Theology has, in fact, accepted the same view, that Mark is the first of the four gospels to be written.

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Now, once we understand this, we realize that Matthew and Luke, remember now we said that there are three gospels which are to be seen together, the synoptic gospels, they're

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Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The reason they can be seen together now is because they follow a basic outline, and as much as that outline is traced and studied within the three gospels, it has become convincing to modern scholars that, in fact,

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Matthew and Luke are simply following on on what Mark has related, step by step, episode for episode, pericope for pericope, one after another, often reproducing the exact words of Mark, but on occasion, making very important modifications, and those modifications are very interesting, because again and again, we see that what

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Matthew and Luke do with Mark's original narrative is that in their own gospels, they put it such that if there was something in Mark's gospel that may make

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Jesus appear to be less divine than he should appear, they modify it to make him look more divine.

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So if Jesus healed a few people in a certain incident in Mark, he heals many in Matthew and Luke.

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If he heals many in Mark, he heals them all in Matthew and Luke, and so the story goes. But now, what about Jairus' daughter?

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Matthew follows closely on Mark here, and he tells us that when the ruler came to Jesus, he said to him, teacher, my daughter has just died.

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So come and do something for her so that she may live, as opposed to Mark, where it says, my daughter is at the point of death.

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So come and do something for her so that she might be well and live. So you can compare Mark chapter five with Matthew chapter nine.

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Again, you put your finger in the page in Mark, then you flip over to Matthew, where the same story is there in chapter nine, and there you can compare the two.

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So Matthew then has modified the story so that the girl has been dead longer. So somebody now should ask, well, how do you know the girl was really dead?

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Didn't Jesus himself say that she was sleeping? Well, Matthew has it.

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She has been dead for some time, because now, right from the very start, that's the situation. The girl is dead.

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The girl has died. Luke does not have the story about Jairus' daughter, but he does have the story of the raising of a dead person.

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A man, the son of the widow of Maine, in Luke chapter 11 here,

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Luke chapter seven, rather. In Luke chapter seven, Jesus goes and he resurrects the son of the widow of Maine.

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This man was already in his coffin being taken to his burial, and Jesus says to him something similar, rise up, and he rises up.

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So now you have a person who's been dead for some time. He's already in his coffin onto his burial. What about the gospel according to John?

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There's also a story about a resurrection from the dead there. There we have Lazarus, and this time it is chapter 11 in the gospel according to John.

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Lazarus had been in the tomb already dead for four days, and he had been rotting, and we know that because the gospel according to John says in the

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King James Bible, which is so beautiful, he stinketh. So now here you have it that all four gospels agree that Jesus raised somebody back from the dead, but the fourth gospel is of a very different character, whereas the first three gospels might be explained in such a way as to say, well, perhaps this person by ancient standards was dead, but Jesus had some knowledge given to him by God on how to resuscitate and revive such a person.

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It was a miracle, no doubt, but it was a miracle that is understandable by the grace of God, whereas on the other hand, this other miracle that is reported in the gospel according to John has the guy definitely dead.

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He's at the point of no return, and yet Jesus revived him. That too is a miracle of God and understandable under the power of God, but at the same time, we can see that the gospels over time have modified the story about Jesus.

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As we move from Mark to Matthew and Luke, and then finally to John, we see that the story about Jesus takes on new dimensions until in the gospel according to John, it takes on a dimension which is more definable of the

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Christian faith. I believe that is not the original definition, and in short, the

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Bible is both the inspired word of God, which James will tell us about, and it is also the creative work of man, the men who wrote these gospels, for example.

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Thank you. It is indeed a pleasure to be with you this evening, a tremendous group who showed up this evening.

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I really hope that during this period of time, we will have the opportunity of truly entering into a very important subject that is the inspiration of the

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New Testament. This evening, we have the privilege, and I insist that it is a privilege. This dialogue could not take place in many nations in this world of engaging in forthright, believing, uncompromising dialogue and debate on the issues that separate two of the world's major religions,

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Christianity and Islam. But more so, I believe both representatives tonight believe strongly that these issues touch upon our very eternal destinies and define what it means to worship

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God in spirit and truth today. Is the New Testament we possess today inspired?

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This evening, this question can only be debated in one context, that of two men who openly and unashamedly confess absolute monotheism.

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We both confess that God not only can speak, he has spoken, and in fact, he has demonstrated his ability to preserve that which he has revealed in his scriptures.

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This is not a debate with an atheist about whether God has the power or the will to reveal himself. No, the argument this evening is between two monotheists, and I believe it is this fact that must be kept in the minds of all in attendance this evening, for it will determine the outcome of this debate.

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Why do I say this? Let me explain. I believe the Bible is the word of God. I believe the Old and New Testaments comprise the entirety of God's scriptural revelation for us today.

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I do not believe the Quran, coming over half a millennium later with almost no connection at all to my scriptures, supersedes them as the final revelation to mankind.

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Shabir Ali is a faithful Muslim, believes in Allah, the final prophet, Muhammad, and the Quran is the perfect and final word from Allah to mankind.

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Now, upon what consistent basis can a faithful Muslim reject the inspiration of the

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New Testament? I submit it cannot be by applying one kind of standard of the New Testament and another to the

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Quran. If Mr. Ali uses one set of standards, one stream of scholarship, one set of presuppositions in defending the

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Quran and the rest of his faith, but then applies a completely different set of presuppositions or draws upon a completely different stream of scholarship to deny the inspiration of the

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New Testament, then we will have to conclude that the inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument.

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For example, in listening carefully to Shabir Ali's public presentations on the Quran, Muhammad, early

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Islamic history, the Hadith, et cetera, I have found that he is well aware of the difference between humanistic, naturalistic scholarship that begins with the assumption that God has not and cannot speak, and scholarship that allows for faith and does not determine what

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God cannot do right from the start. I would never expect Shabir Ali to identify as sound mainstream

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Islamic scholarship anyone who begins with assuming the inconsistency of the Quran, someone who starts with the idea that the

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Quran could not be what it claims to be, that it could not possibly be the work of a single source, Muhammad, but must have developed over decades in the early

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Islamic community, and who then posits theoretical sources for this portion of a surah, creating internal contradiction and the like without a shred of historical documentation.

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I truly do not believe Shabir would accept such scholarship as sound mainstream, and he might not even identify those who practice it as true

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Muslims, I don't know. But in any case, if he consistently applies one standard to the

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Quran and another to the New Testament, then we know his position is untenable. And it is just here that we discover the problem with the denial of the inspiration of the

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New Testament. Consistently, not just this evening, but over the course of the past decade as far as I've been able to tell,

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Mr. Ali has adopted the most radically liberal, skeptical, naturalistic sources as the mainstream in Christian scholarship, while using the most conservative forms of scholarship in defense of the

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Quran. While he uses conservative dating for the sources of the Quran, he pushes the dating of the Gospels as far back as the scholars of the

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Jesus Seminar, asserting wholesale redaction and corruption of the original intentions of Christ and the apostles.

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While the original hearers of the Quran are credited with nearly perfect memories and spotless intentions, so that they communicate

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Muhammad's words with perfect accuracy, just the opposite is posited consistently regarding the writers of the

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New Testament. Though the Jews valued memorization of the days of Christ, somehow his true message could not survive nearly as long as the teachings of Muhammad.

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The original followers of Jesus are posited by Mr. Ali to have completely capitulated to a new leader and teacher, the dreaded apostle

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Paul, who perverted the teachings of Christ and basically introduced an entirely new God. Somehow Paul came up with a

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Jesus who was the son of God, was truly God, the second person of the Trinity, eternally preexistent, yet according to Mr.

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Ali, this was not what the original followers of Jesus believed. And without any historical documentation and nothing more than the fanciful theories flowing from the very kind of liberal skeptical scholarship that is rejected when it speaks to the

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Quran, I've heard it asserted that Paul created a false Jesus, which then determined even the views of the

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Gospel writers, so that we have to depend upon the Quran, written half a millennium later to get us back to the true

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Jesus. The contrast between the original Christians who either could not accurately remember

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Christ's teachings or lacked the zeal or temerity to defend his teachings, and the posited perfection of the original

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Muslims in maintaining Muhammad's words is quite striking. Now do not misunderstand me.

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I am not saying we should not apply the full wealth of meaningful scholarship to the study of both the

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New Testament as well as the Quran. I am saying we must do so consistently and we must do so without allowing secularism, humanism, and the spirit of our age to determine the outcome.

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Sound scholarship will tell us, for example, that New Testament writers quoted from and made allusions to books that they themselves did not consider canonical scripture.

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And we can learn much by examining those sources. At the same time, when we find the Quran giving credence to myths found in the infancy

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Gospel of Thomas or drawing from the Jewish Talmud in Sanhedrin 4 .5, this too is perfectly valid.

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We must then ask if the Christian view of inspiration allows for such references in the writing of the

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New Testament, as it surely does, and whether the Islamic view of the Quran can allow for its utilization of external, uninspired, even mythical sources.

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I shall leave that for another debate at another time. Now I truly do not believe Shabir can argue with my assertion that we cannot rely upon the conclusions of those who begin with the wrong worldview.

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He said in his debate with Dr. Robert Morey, you see the problem with this kind of an approach, it cuts both ways.

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If atheists want to discount the Prophet Muhammad on whom be peace, they can use this approach to their satisfaction because for them revelation does not happen.

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There are no such things as prophets of God because there is no God in the first place. However, when Christians use this approach, it must be seen as a misguided attempt to discount

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Muhammad on whom be peace, end quote. In that same debate, Shabir insisted that we have to read the

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Quran in its own context, examine the language, et cetera. I suggest that the same processes are allowed to take place in the examination of his objections to the inspiration of the

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New Testament, answers to those objections become readily available. When we come to the issue of the transmission of the text of the

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New Testament, we once again find the possibility of a double standard. The textual history of the New Testament is much different than that of the

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Quran. Remember, taking even the most conservative viewpoint of the history of the Quran, less than a millennium passed between its codification and the invention of the printing press.

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Almost a millennium and a half passed between the completion of the New Testament and Gutenberg's invention.

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Further, the New Testament is not the work of a single author in a single place over less than three decades, but multiple authors in multiple locations, key here, writing to multiple and differing audiences over five to six decades.

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And while the Quran's text was eventually determined in major part by what might be called governmental action, creating a single authorized text by a

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Uthmanian revision, wherein differing versions were destroyed by burning, the New Testament was copied and distributed as widely as possible to as wide an audience as possible, even during the period of persecution against Christians, which lasted approximately 260 years.

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During this time, the full force of the Roman Empire sought not only to wipe out the Christian faith, but special attention was given to destroying the

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Christian scriptures as well. This means one could not go off to the local scriptorium and have a copy run of the epistles of the

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Apostle Paul, for example. They had to be copied by non -professionals and at the risk of their lives in many instances.

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But if the existence of textual variation is a sign that the New Testament is not the word of God or cannot be trusted, why then do we find differences even between printed versions of the

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Arabic Quran today? And is it not vital to recognize that while Christians press for the study and collation of earlier and earlier manuscripts of their scriptures, welcoming new manuscript finds that only solidify our knowledge of the original text,

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Muslims can only, in the most conservative reconstructions of the history of the Quran, go back to Uthman and not before him.

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By destroying the codices that existed before him and which differed from his own understanding of the Quranic text, Uthman did grave damage to the means by which the original text of the

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Quran could be determined. The creation of this one approved text destroyed in large part the very means

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Christian scholars use today to confirm the accuracy of our own Greek New Testament, that is, those early codices and manuscripts that were so close to the point of origin of the

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Quran. Thankfully, the Sa 'anaa manuscript find in Yemen may help shed light on that earlier period, but once again, we do not find many conservative

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Muslims expressing great joy at having these very early Quranic sources examined. This is not a new attitude.

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Muslim sources report that a man closer to Muhammad than Uthman, a companion to the prophet and a great theologian,

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Ibn Masud, refused to give his Quranic manuscript, which differed in many ways from Uthman's version, up to the authorities and suffered a beating as a result that led to his death.

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If Mr. Ali were to apply the same standards and textual studies to the Quran that he applies to the New Testament, he would have to reject it on even stronger grounds, but he does not do so.

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Why is the question that must be asked? Now, let me be clear. I believe a fair in -depth examination of the tremendous wealth of the

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New Testament manuscript tradition will provide a solid defensible foundation to my belief in the tenacity of the

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New Testament text. Tenacity refers to the fact observed by no less qualified experts as Kurt and Barbara Alon, that a reading that appears in a

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New Testament manuscript tradition remains in that tradition. If a mistake is made, it leaves its mark.

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It doesn't just disappear. While this may at first glance look like a bad thing, it most assuredly is not.

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The fact is that this likewise means the original readings are still there. In a small percentage of the text, we have to examine variants, the vast majority of which are rather easily determined, but we can be confident in the examination of those variants that one of the readings is the original.

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Due to the Uthmanian revision, the Muslim does not have this confidence and cannot have it. One, in essence, has to believe

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Uthman was as inspired as Muhammad. But there is another aspect of the textual transmission in the

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New Testament I should mention quickly, because early manuscripts like P46, P52, P66, P72 were buried and removed from view very early on the idea that wholesale corruption of the text could take place, such as inserting the deity of Christ or removing references to Muhammad in John 14 and John 16 is completely disproved.

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Any kind of massive change in later manuscripts would be easily detectable in comparison with these primitive manuscripts from the second and third centuries.

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Further, I assert, and would be glad to prove, that we can, in fact, determine without question the form of text that existed at the very time

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Muhammad uttered these words recorded in Surah 5, 46 through 47, quote, And in their footsteps, we sent

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Jesus, the son of Mary, confirming the law that had come before him. We sent him the gospel. Therein was guidance and light and confirmation of the law that had come before him, a guidance and an admonition to those who fear

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Allah. Let the people of the gospel judge by what Allah hath revealed therein.

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If any do fail to judge by the light of Allah, what Allah hath revealed, they are no better than those who rebel, end quote.

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I ask all here this evening, how could the people of the gospel, that is, Christians, judge by what

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Allah had revealed therein if they no longer could tell what was true and what was false in the

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New Testament? And since we do know without question the state of the text in the New Testament in the early seventh century, does this not prove that at the very least,

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Muhammad felt that the people of the gospel possessed truth revealed from God that was sufficient basis upon which to judge his own claims?

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Another common allegation against the inspiration of the New Testament made by Islamic apologists is based upon redaction criticism.

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Drawing from such sources as the interpreter's one -volume Bible commentary or the introduction to the Roman Catholic New American Bible, all sources guaranteed to be anything but fair and even -handed to anyone who would believe in such archaic concepts as inspiration, and hence, once again, inconsistently,

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I'd say, used by Islamic apologists, we are told that the gospel's the result of a lengthy period of editing and redaction, so that you have proto -Luke and intermediate

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Mark, for example, and somehow these scholars who are, of course, working with no hard materials, no manuscripts verify the existence of such stages, and hence, we have nothing more than guesswork to go on, are able to discern the very thoughts and intentions of unnamed and unknown authors.

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The fact that each one of these scholars comes up with different contexts, motivations, and conclusions should tell us something about the validity of these kinds of pursuits.

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They all share one thing in common, however. Whatever the New Testament says about Jesus, he couldn't have been that.

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So starting with the presupposition that the New Testament documents have to be the result of an evolutionary process because otherwise,

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Jesus would be divine and there would be a resurrection and a gospel that everyone must believe and miracles would take place and the

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Christian faith would be a divine institution and we can't have any of that, these sources set up arbitrary and often contrived mechanisms whereby they theorize about earlier forms of the text that no one has ever seen, and if we are quite honest with ourselves, ever will see.

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And so theories about the relationship with the gospels are taken as cold, hard facts. Somehow we know

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Matthew had Mark, not just the traditions Mark used, but had Mark and now we can climb into Matthew's mind or at least into one of the many authors allegedly behind Matthew and start determining just why it was

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Matthew did what he did to Mark's text. Of course, I can't help but remember N .T. Wright's response to Marcus Borg in a debate a few years ago when he very forcefully said, quote, we don't know when any of the gospels were written.

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We do not know when the gospels were written. We should all repeat that before breakfast, just like we do not know whether there was a cue.

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Scholars will tell you they know, but they don't. It's a guess, a hypothesis, end quote.

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And he is quite right, of course. Speculation is one thing, but denying the martyr's testimony to the inspiration of scripture based upon speculations without a shred of documentary evidence behind them is surely not a worthy means of argumentation.

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As I noted before, I truly doubt Shabir Ali would accept any such application of redactional methodology to the

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Quran. One could note vocabulary differences, for example, within the longer surahs, and on that basis, theorize about different authors and different settings, and given the form of the

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Quran itself, you could make quite a believable argument. Does Shabir accept such theories? If not, why not, since he surely has accepted and repeated and taught the same kinds of theories about the

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New Testament. Some Muslim apologists have alleged, for example, that Matthew and Luke seek to make Jesus look bigger than Mark.

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Some say, for example, that Matthew puts Lord in places where Mark has what the critic calls a lesser term for Jesus.

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So the view of Jesus is growing like a snowball. So some say that on the Mount of Transfiguration, Mark has

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Peter calling Jesus Rabbi, while Matthew has Peter saying Lord, and this proves some kind of redaction or change.

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What they forget to mention is that Luke gives us a third term, epistatop, which shows us all three are giving us

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Greek synonyms for a single Aramaic term of respect and honor. Ironically, I've heard Shabir Ali dismiss different readings in surah one of the

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Quran by saying that the different readings are simply synonyms and hence have no meaning to a Muslim, and yet here, when the three gospel writers use three synonyms, it is evidence of corruption and unreliability.

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Once again, inconsistency is the mark of a failed argument. And so we have allegations of redaction, unreliability in the original writings of the

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New Testament itself, and we have allegations of corruption in the textual critical realm. But finally, we have the ever -present accusation of contradiction in the text, and at this point, the apologetically -minded

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Christian cannot help but recognize the very same allegations of contradiction that we find being used regularly by atheists to attack the integrity of the

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Bible. In my rebuttal section, I will try as best as can to address the things that have already been said this evening.

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For now, I'll simply point out that the Islamic apologist must ask the same common respect for the language, context, and setting of the

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Quran that I, as a Christian, ask for the New Testament. For example, Mr. Ali, in his debate with Robert Morey, chided

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Morey for alleging a contradiction in the Quran, and he did so by appealing to context and asking that we read the

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Quran in a fair manner that allows for harmonization and that honors the original meaning. I simply ask the same for the

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New Testament. I've heard Mr. Ali allege that the Bible teaches that women do not go to heaven based upon the 144 ,000

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Jewish male virgins noted in Revelation chapter 14. Now, obviously, a fair reading of the book of Revelation speaks of a great crowd of the redeemed around the throne of God, not just 144 ,000, and of persons from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation being redeemed by the death of the

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Lamb. It is a acontextual and eisegetical reading of Revelation 14 to make the assertion that he has made in the past, and once again, it is inconsistent with his own methodology used in defense of the

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Quran, and so I set the stage for the debate this evening. The Quran says Allah revealed truth to Jesus and the apostles.

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Surah 2, 136 states, quote, Say ye, we believe in Allah and the revelation given to us and to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the tribes, and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to all prophets from their

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Lord. We make no difference between one and another of them, and we bow to Allah in Islam, end quote.

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The fact of inspiration taking place before the giving of the Quran is not contested this evening. The question tonight is, does the

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Islamic apologist have a consistent basis upon which to deny the inspiration of the New Testament while continuing to believe in the inspiration of the

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Quran? My assertion that I will seek in rebuttal and cross -examination to present, and which I believe will be substantiated fully by the studies of all here this evening, who will take tonight as a starting place for their own deeper and fuller inquiry, is twofold.

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First, the Islamic apologist must use one standard for the defense of the Quran, and a completely contradictory standard for his rejection of the

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New Testament. Inconsistency is the mark of a failed argument. And second, the reason Shabir Ali, or any other

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Islamic apologist, rejects the inspiration of the New Testament is just this. Muhammad did not have access to the

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Christian scriptures. He believed what he was teaching was consistent with what had been revealed before. However, he was in error in this matter.

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In later generations, as Muslims encoutered the Christian scriptures and Christian apologists who knew their scriptures, these differences became clear.

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And so, to maintain the authority of Muhammad and the Quran, the inspiration of the New Testament had to be denied. This, and this alone,

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I assert, is why the Muslim denies the inspiration of the New Testament. And so I close with this question. Do you reject the martyr testimonies of those who were eyewitnesses, and those in the first generation after the events of Christ, on the word of a single man in a different culture, speaking a different language, completely ignorant of the

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Old and New Testaments, dependent solely upon second -hand information, writing over six centuries later?

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And would any Muslim here this evening reject the inspiration of the Quran based upon the writings of a single man, six centuries after Muhammad, who did not even have access to the

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Quran in Arabic? That is the question that I would ask you to think about this evening. Thank you very much.

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Okay, those were our opening statements prepared before speaking past each other.

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We now enter a nine -minute rebuttal. These are the statements that have just been made.

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Nine minutes? Nine minutes. In my presentation,

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I argued that the Bible is both the inspired word of God and the creative work of the men who wrote it, and subsequently those who copied the documents.

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Now, I only presented the negative side. Unfortunately, I had to go first, which I didn't really feel would have been right for tonight's program, since usually the affirmative side goes first.

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And second, I don't want here, especially on your home turf, to be critical of the

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Bible. In fact, indeed, I don't need to be critical of the Bible, because I do believe that the Bible contains inspired teaching from God.

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But I was hoping that James would actually address that side of it and give us some positive reasons for thinking that the

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Bible is the word of God in general, or that the New Testament, more specifically, is the inspired word of God.

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In fact, I heard nothing of that from James. What I did hear from him is that Shabir's argument is inconsistent, or that Muslims in general have been inconsistent in trying to say that the

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Bible is not the word of God. However, we should be clear that, usually, if we pick up a book, one doesn't say, oh, this is the inspired word of God.

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Now, millions of books have been written, but inspiration has been claimed for only a few. If one claims that a book is inspired, he must have some positive reasons to present, to tell us that this book was originally inspired and continued to be as it was originally, or it wasn't inspired from the beginning, but eventually it was made to be inspired, or something.

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But we must have some positive reasons for picking up a book and saying, oh, this is the inspired word of God. Why?

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I didn't hear any of that from James. But what about the standards that he spoke about? It seems that he has studied my debates in the past, and he has, in his prepared speech, just simply given his rebuttal in advance of what he thought

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I was going to say. However, I do not believe that I, in particular, have been inconsistent in applying the standards.

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I think James is correct. If a Muslim will stand here and say that due to this or that discovery,

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I do not believe that the New Testament is completely the word of God, even though it contains inspired teaching, at the same time, one must be willing to apply the same standards to the

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Quran. However, in my study of both the Bible and the Quran, I did not find that the

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Quran can be subjected to the same sort of criticism that we have, in fact, seen with regards to the

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Bible here. Not to say that the Quran has not been criticized. The Quran has been studied widely by Muslims and by non -Muslims, and I'm very familiar with the writings of non -Muslim scholars and manuscript discoveries regarding the

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Quran. For example, the Yemenite manuscripts that James mentioned. I'm familiar with the history of the

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Quran, how it came to be compiled, and why Uthman ordered copies to be burnt. But if we were to go into another discussion about how the

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Quran came to be revealed, the positive reasons for it to be the word of God, as Muslims would present, a documentation of its history, dealing with variant readings that arose with regards to the

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Quran and all of that, that would be a separate debate. I do not believe that there is anything in what James has mentioned that should lead a

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Muslim to be doubtful of the textual integrity of the Quran and of its original nature as an inspired revelation from the

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Almighty God. Now what about Muslims speaking of Paul? In fact, this has been recognized not only by Muslims, but also by non -Muslim scholars.

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For example, Michael Golder and many other scholars who have written about the history of Paul have shown

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Paul to have, in fact, developed teachings about Jesus that came to be the formative teachings of the later developing

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Christianity, teachings that could not be so much credited to Jesus. And in that case,

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Paul would have to be regarded as at least a second founder of Christianity. Ian Wilson, for example, in his biography of Paul has made the same point.

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Now what about the Quran teachings concerning Jesus versus the New Testament? Should we believe a book that came 600 years later?

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Well, if this book is demonstrably the word of God, then I believe yes. If another book by comparison can be shown to include the creative work of human beings, then of course we have to regard it and read it as such.

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We have seen that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have each in their own way, I didn't demonstrate this with regards to Mark, by the way, but in case of the others, it has been demonstrated in my opening remarks that they have inserted their own thoughts and they have modified the information accordingly.

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In that case, a Muslim would feel more confident relying on the Quran, which they know to be the word of God and which they believe to have been preserved accurately over time.

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And I believe that the history of the Quran, in fact, vindicates that Muslim belief. What about the

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Quran's mention of information which is not contained in the New Testament? Does that go against the

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Quranic doctrine of inspiration? I do not believe so. For one reason I'll mention now, that material which has been deemed to be apocryphal in the early church does not necessarily mean false.

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It is possible that some information which is outside of the New Testament concerning Jesus is in fact true.

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And James feels that we will never be able to find documents that are prior to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.

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But how can we be so sure? More archeological work is being done and discoveries one after another do come to surprise us.

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It is very possible that we may discover, let's say, a gospel that is prior to Mark. In fact, we have already done so.

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The gospel according to Thomas is believed to be earlier than the gospel according to Mark. More so, we might find a document on which

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Mark itself was based. John Bowden in his book, Jesus, The Unanswered Questions, has made exactly the same point.

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He has said that just as we have seen that Matthew and Luke have modified the information which they found in Mark, we may be able to find a document on which

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Mark was based and we'll be able to see that Mark may have done the same thing with his source.

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So, altogether, I believe that James has not put forward a reasonable argument to show that the

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Bible is the word of God in general, or that the New Testament is the inspired word of God as it exists today.

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Now, James has said that, in fact, the errors that have been put into the copies have been tenacious and they have stuck with us.

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I hope James realizes how true that statement is. In fact, some of the errors have stuck with us and are now represented in our

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Bibles. Sometimes they are marked off as being doubtful passages. The John in comma, a verse which is so -called and is located at 1

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John chapter five, verse seven in the King James Version of the Bible, says that there are three that bear record in heaven and that these three are one.

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But now it is almost universally accepted, except for King James followers, who it is almost universally accepted that this verse is a later insertion into the

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Bible and this is why it has been removed from almost every modern Bible. If you look at a New International Version Bible, for example, you will find a note at that point showing that this is an insertion and it has now been removed once again.

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But some others are still there, very glaring, large portions. For example, the closing passage of the

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Gospel according to Mark. The earliest manuscript we have of Mark ends at chapter 16, verse number eight.

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Verses number nine to 20, therefore, which you will find in many modern Bibles, even if they are not marked off to be so, is a later addition into the

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Gospel according to Mark and therefore, this is of dubious and questionable origins. So I hope

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James understands to what extent his statement is true, that the errors are in fact tenacious.

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Some have even remained in our Bibles today. And finally, the Quranic instruction for Christians to judge according to the

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Gospels, I believe is true. If Christians were to read the Gospels and read the rest of the

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New Testament and study the life of Jesus and the history and development of Christian doctrine, they will come to understand that the main core teaching of the

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Islamic faith, that God is one and that Jesus is a servant and messenger, is the original truth that came to be modified in the

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Gospels later on, especially so in the Gospel according to John, as I've already explained. I believe

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I made a fairly compelling argument that this evening, I am not debating an atheist. I'm debating a man who believes that God has spoken.

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The Quran refers to Moses, it refers to the Torah, it refers to the Injil, it refers to Jesus, it refers to the fact there were followers of Jesus.

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This isn't a part of the debate between us. I don't need to be quoting 2 Peter, where it is very clearly stated that men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. I don't need to emphasize this audience, or I believe to Shabir Ali that Paul taught in 2

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Timothy 3, that all scripture is theanoustos, it is God -breathed, that this was the belief of all the early

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Christians. It was the belief of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. He had the highest view of scripture. The question is not whether the

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New Testament teaches its own inspiration. The question is, on what basis would an

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Islamic apologist say that we should reject the absolute perfection and full inspiration of the text of the

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New Testament? I want to give you an example, I think, of, again, if we apply consistent standards to what

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Mr. Ali has said. For example, I felt that the strongest argument that he made was looking at the

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Synoptic Gospels about Jairus's daughter. For the past almost four years in Sunday school, the adult

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Sunday school class at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, I have been teaching through the Synoptic Gospels using the parallel harmony of the

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Gospels from the United Bible Societies. And we've gone through this text, and we've dealt with the fact that there is a difference between Mark and Matthew.

01:00:05

What is the difference? Matthew is telescoping the event. Those of you who've studied the Synoptic Issues know what

01:00:11

I mean. That is, Matthew gives a much shorter version, he telescopes it, and the reason you have a difference between my daughter is dying and my daughter has died, look at the text.

01:00:20

Matthew doesn't even tell us about the second group coming and mentioning that the woman's dead. He doesn't even give us that information, he just simply tells us

01:00:28

Jesus is going to this house, and when they get there, they know that death has already taken place. Mark gives us a fuller account.

01:00:34

Now, very frequently, in looking at the Synoptic Gospels, that is the explanation for alleged problems, is recognizing that each one of these

01:00:42

Gospels is written for different purposes. Normally, Mark's the one giving the shorter account because he seems to be in a hurry.

01:00:48

There's only 15 ,000 words in Mark, there's 23 ,000 in Matthew, and 26 ,000 in Luke, and so some people had more paper to write on,

01:00:56

I guess. Mark seemed to have the least amount, or was in a hurry and knew the Roman soldiers were on their way over to his house.

01:01:02

Whatever the reason might be, they're also writing to different audiences, and so they emphasize different terms, for example.

01:01:08

But in this case, we have a clear example where Matthew is the one who telescopes this, Mark is the one who gives the fuller version, gives the second meaning, and that's how we understand these things.

01:01:17

That's why I'm saying that if Mr. Ali is going to say, well, you need to look at the text of the Quran, and you need to allow it to speak for itself, you need to, if you're gonna allege that there are contradictions, if you're gonna talk about the different numbering of days of the creation, he's gonna say, well, you need to look at this one, you need to look at this one, and you need to allow it to have its own context.

01:01:35

That's what I'm saying about the Synoptic Gospels as well, and if you do so, then you discover that you can, in fact, trust the teachings of the

01:01:44

Synoptic Gospels. Now, we just heard a discussion a little bit about the subject of textual criticism and the promulgation of the text given to the people that we, down through the centuries that we have now.

01:01:59

Can we, I have over on my desk, I have a critical edition of the New Testament. Those of you who are

01:02:04

Greek students here, undoubtedly have those same things in your library. And you can look at the bottom of the page, and any one of us can examine all the different manuscript information that's available to us today.

01:02:16

And we can, when we find new manuscripts, I did not say that they would not find earlier manuscripts. I'm talking about these alleged stages of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

01:02:23

I think that we may very well be able to find someday various and sundry manuscripts of the

01:02:30

New Testament that are even earlier than those we have today. But even as it is, we have a tremendously early amount of information to look at in that particular context.

01:02:40

And I would like to be able to have a critical edition of the Quran to show you, but I can't.

01:02:45

I know one that lists variant readings from printed manuscripts, but I can't hold up for you an

01:02:52

Arabic Quran that has critical information in it that would give to all of us the ability to examine those early codices.

01:02:59

I can't do that because they're not there. And why are they not there? Well, Uthman burned them.

01:03:06

And people like Ibn Masud, who had one, end up dying because he wouldn't give it up.

01:03:12

Now, that's what I'm trying to communicate. If you've not studied textual critical issues, I believe that God has given us the solid basis for refuting those.

01:03:23

Who, remember Shirley MacLaine a number of years ago? I may be dating myself a little bit here. Dr. Hazen, remember. But... But...

01:03:32

But you certainly would not, I'm sure. Remember when she was on her reincarnation kick and she was out on the beach going,

01:03:41

I am God, I am God, I am God. And I was going, no, you're not, no, you're not, no, you're not. And if you are, we're in big trouble and things like that.

01:03:48

And she was saying reincarnation used to be in the New Testament, but this council took it out and so on and so forth.

01:03:55

We can absolutely disprove that kind of accusation without any question. You see, because those early manuscripts,

01:04:02

I mentioned P72, I've seen P72. I saw it up in Denver in 1993. The earliest manuscript we have of 1st, 2nd

01:04:09

Peter in Jude. I almost got in trouble. The guards had to keep dragging me away because I'm looking at this, whoa, wow, look at that.

01:04:15

And everybody else is walking off going, it looks like a piece of paper we're scribbling on. What's that? I'm translating it.

01:04:21

This thing was written 1 ,800 years ago by a fellow believer who loved the word of God just like I do.

01:04:27

And it reads just like my Greek New Testament. It's so exciting to see that. But you see, that thing was not accessible to people for a long, long time.

01:04:34

And if people later on had tried to gather up all those manuscripts and make changes, it would have stuck out like a sore thumb once these earlier manuscripts are found.

01:04:43

But what has happened as earlier manuscripts are found? For example, Shabir mentioned 1 John 5, 7.

01:04:49

Folks, there's a, Shabir, that second book you have in your stack there is my book called the King James Only Controversy.

01:04:54

There's about eight pages on 1 John 5, 7 and about four on Mark 16, 9 through 20.

01:05:00

And these are two of the most well -known textual variants in all the New Testament. And there is no question that 1

01:05:06

John 5, 7, the Kamiohonium is original. That's, I can't think of anyone outside of King James Only advocates who attempt to argue that the

01:05:14

Kamiohonium is original. And see, the point is, folks, we can discover that. We have the manuscript tradition to determine these exact things.

01:05:23

It is so full and so rich that we are able to look back.

01:05:28

The Muslim can't do that. He can only go back to Uthman. He can't go any earlier than that. How much value would there be in those manuscripts that were burned?

01:05:37

And you say, well, you shouldn't bring that up. You're just defending the New Testament. What's been my thesis from the beginning? What's been my thesis from the beginning?

01:05:44

My thesis from the beginning has been, we need to have a consistent standard. And if we apply the same standards that accepts the inspiration of the

01:05:52

Quran that God has spoken, He can speak with accuracy, He can speak in human language and He can preserve it.

01:05:59

Then I submit to you that if we use the same standards in the examination of the New Testament, that the arguments used by Islamic apologists against the inspiration of the

01:06:08

Testament will be seen to be inconsistent and self -refuting. We've seen that in regards to synoptics.

01:06:15

We see that in regards to textual issues and the issue of redaction criticism and saying, well, you know,

01:06:21

John's coming up with all these different perspectives. Well, John is writing at a different time to a different audience.

01:06:27

Matthew is writing at a different time to a different audience. And to say, well, he's modified something.

01:06:32

What if John is writing to a completely different audience? He has a different purpose in writing. He even says in John 20, 31,

01:06:38

I've written these things that you may believe that Jesus is the Son of God and by believing might have life in His name. But he's writing long after the people that the earlier writers were having to protect because they were still alive, they're gone.

01:06:48

He doesn't have to protect them anymore. He can now reveal all the inside discussions that were taking place amongst the disciples.

01:06:54

He has a different purpose. He has a different audience and so he has more freedom. Matthew writing to the Jews is gonna emphasize things for them.

01:07:00

Mark writing to a different audience. If we keep all these things in mind, this isn't a matter of modification so that we had an original and now we don't know what it is anymore.

01:07:09

This is simply a recognition that these writers need to be given the same freedom that any one of us would demand today.

01:07:15

When I write a letter to my daughter and I write a letter to the President of the United States, I'm gonna use different language.

01:07:21

That doesn't mean I'm contradicting myself. They're simply different contexts that need to be kept in mind as we examine these things.

01:07:28

Thank you very much. Thank you to both of our speakers.

01:07:42

We have heard 29 minutes from each of them and when we come back from a break, we're going to see cross -examination by each of them to the other.

01:07:52

Great. Okay, let's get the debate back underway, please.

01:08:14

If you could please take your seats, we're about to enter the cross -examination phase of the debate.

01:08:25

Okay, I need silence before I start into the cross -examination. Thanks, sorry for the short break but we are trying to keep things on schedule and keep the word.

01:08:39

What we're gonna have now is 13 minutes for each speaker to cross -examine the other speaker. The rules of engagement here are very clear and pretty simple.

01:08:48

There will be, for a 13 -minute span of time, a questioner and a questionee. Shabir will go first, asking questions to James and at all times,

01:08:59

Shabir will be posing questions rather than making speeches. James will be answering rather than counter -questioning.

01:09:06

That's the direction of the traffic flow the entire time. I'm gonna stay at this microphone and glare at you warningly if I find that you're deviating from that in any way.

01:09:16

When that 13 minutes is over, then they will remain seated the whole time but James will then ask questions of Shabir for 13 minutes.

01:09:24

Understood? Okay. Let's begin the cross -examination.

01:09:32

James, you are correct in noticing that I did read your book. Thank you very much. You're a great scholar and I did learn a lot from reading your book on the

01:09:39

King James Lonely Controversy. Now, you did point out in there that 1 John 5 -7 is an interpolation and we dealt with that already.

01:09:49

How do you feel about Mark 9 -16 -9 -20?

01:09:56

As I mentioned in there, the longer ending of Mark because it exhibits not only differences in vocabulary and subject but also because the manuscripts demonstrate a middle blank ending as well which that existence for me is what indicates the longer ending is most definitely not original with the

01:10:16

Gospel of Mark itself. So as I maybe didn't see it, it's in the second section is where, second section of the book is where I went into paramount depth on the subject of Mark 16 -9 -20.

01:10:26

Mm -hmm. Now, there have been other attempted endings at this gospel as well.

01:10:33

I mean, there's this longer ending and then there's the shorter ending. By middle, do you refer to the part that is in Codex Washingtonus where in verse 14, there is a further addition into it?

01:10:45

Right, well, no, actually there's, when we talk about the shorter ending, we're talking about what's just right at the end of it and then there's a middle length ending and then you have the full ending and then you have some that show a knowledge of both of those two.

01:10:59

And it's the fact that you have a multiplicity of endings which indicates to me that there was not a, any ending that we don't have today or anything like that there.

01:11:10

If there was one, there wouldn't be any reason why these others wouldn't have been made up. Why they wouldn't have been approved. So you feel that the gospel according to Mark originally just simply ended with a verse which says that the women fled from the tomb and said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.

01:11:23

That has caused a lot of people a bit of a problem but actually given the situation Mark was in and the fact that he was writing at high speed,

01:11:31

I don't think there's any question given Jesus' own prophecy of his resurrection what the situation was at the end of Mark.

01:11:38

There may have been reasons given he was so early. Obviously I would date him much earlier than you do. There may have been reasons in light of those people still being alive, why he didn't go into more detail as to what happened after the resurrection of Christ and given that I date him around the same time as Luke and the

01:11:58

Acts of the Apostles, those were things that were well known to the people at that particular point in time.

01:12:04

What do you say about the passage in John's gospel which has been marked off in the NIV as a doubtful passage?

01:12:11

753 ,311? That's right. I would likewise agree that that should be marked off as it is in various manuscripts with asterisks and obelis because it does interrupt the flow of the

01:12:23

Ohanian commentary at that particular point in time. And for me, any text that is found in another book in some manuscripts, sort of like a homeless person wandering around, that's probably a good indication that it doesn't belong where it ended up at that particular point in time.

01:12:40

So I think, as Metzger points out, it probably does have an early provenance in the sense of a story that circulated early concerning Christ.

01:12:49

But from my perspective, I don't think you should ever use a text that has that kind of textual questioning behind it in regards to the establishment of doctrine.

01:12:57

And of course, none of those texts do establish any particular Christian doctrine as the only place where you find that kind of teaching found.

01:13:05

Now, seeing the tendency of scribes to insert things which, of course, would help their doctrine, as has been pointed out by, let's say,

01:13:12

Bruce Metzger in his book, The New Testament is Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. And knowing that the nature of the manuscripts are such that we don't have as early as we would want manuscripts to be, do you feel that there are verses in the

01:13:29

Bible which have been affected by this kind of scribal change and which could not be removed for the very simple reason that we do not have the manuscripts to prove their corruption?

01:13:39

Well, you'd have to be more specific. You'd have to give some specific examples. But Dr. Metzger not only indicated that there were scribal changes in regards to doctrinal concerns, he also said that most of the time, the scribe misunderstood the text that made the change anyways.

01:13:54

I think that needs to be balanced out in the element that you're asking the question. And so, no, especially when we have manuscript evidence far earlier for the

01:14:04

New Testament than we have for any other ancient document, especially in regards to theological issues, no,

01:14:10

I, for example, I'm very opposed to the spinning of the material in the

01:14:17

New Testament made by Dr. Bart Ehrman in his misquoting Jesus. I have criticized his works in my writings on my website.

01:14:24

I've done radio programs concerning what he's saying. And I think that you can demonstrate that his thesis expressed in his earlier work, the more scholarly one that no one evidently read, so he wrote that one, that in reality, he is giving the worst case scenario at each particular point in time and that there are much better reasons why most of the variance he addresses exist than his presupposition that it's a scribe wanting to make some type of a doctrinal change.

01:14:53

Now, we spoke about the Gospels and you did brightly say that Mark is a shorter Gospel than Matthew's and you gave the statistics regarding that.

01:15:00

I'm amazed that you remember the number of words in each Gospel. However, as I recall from my own learning, the

01:15:08

Gospel according to Mark, though shorter, is episode for episode longer than the Gospel according to Matthew.

01:15:14

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.

01:15:22

But even if we accept that Matthew has telescoped the material in this way, doesn't that change the information in the sense that here we have a man coming up to Jesus and saying, my daughter is at the point of dying.

01:15:34

And Matthew changes it to have the man say, my daughter has just died.

01:15:39

They're two different things. Probably before I go to bed this evening, and by the way, I also know that you give that Koran codes and 6 ,555 and the whole nine yards,

01:15:48

I even memorized what you said about that. You're very good. There you go. Predominantly worthless information in my circles, but it's fascinating at parties.

01:15:59

But other than that, but probably before I go to bed this evening, probably early in the hours of the morning,

01:16:06

I'm going to be putting on my blog a quick update about the debate this evening.

01:16:12

And then when we get a chance to fly home, get a chance to, you of course have to go farther, but we get home and have some time,

01:16:18

I'm going to write probably a much fuller discussion of our debate and what took place. Now in the process,

01:16:24

I may telescope a number of your statements. I'm not trying to misrepresent you because I'll telescope mine as well.

01:16:30

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

01:16:38

I can expand it later on. Mark 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.

01:16:48

Then the elders come and say, don't bother, she's died. And then Jesus says, don't have faith, et cetera, et cetera.

01:16:55

He gives the whole story. All Matthew says is, come, my daughter's died. Doesn't give the second.

01:17:01

He puts those two together. Now, if you're saying, well, that's not how a reporter should do that if he's going to show up in a court of law and give an exhaustive account.

01:17:12

But if you call home tonight and give an account of what took place this evening, you're going to do the same thing, and I'm going to do the same thing, and no one's going to accuse you of lying in the process.

01:17:21

But we're not writing scripture, though. That's the difference. But again, the question you seem to be proposing is, can scripture use regular human language?

01:17:31

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.

01:17:39

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.

01:17:44

He only has X amount of space. He's only given a certain amount of information, and he chose to telescope it.

01:17:49

He's not contradicting what Mark said. 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.

01:17:56

I'm just telling you, Jesus raised her from the dead, and this is what happened in the process. So I do not believe it makes those two contradictory, and I honestly believe that there are certain instances in, for example, listening to your lectures on Hadith studies, where honestly, the way you make harmonization takes place amongst various, amongst

01:18:16

Bukhari and Muslim and so on and so forth, partakes of the very same concepts that I'm talking about now. But you see, we admit that Hadith narrators change the text over time.

01:18:26

They change what they have narrated, and this is why we go through the process of rating them, which is sahih, which is daif, which is strong, which is weak.

01:18:35

Can we do the same for Matthew and Mark and say that Mark is the original here, and Matthew is weak in the sense that it has modified the, although for the good reasons of telescoping, but nevertheless, he has put words into the man's mouth that the man didn't say.

01:18:49

But it doesn't, the point is that he is communicating the same information to us that Mark does in a shorter version.

01:18:56

He simply takes two events, beginning of Jesus's going, and then in the midst of his going, the meeting of the elders.

01:19:03

He takes the elders out. When Jesus gets to the house, he has the exact same information that the death has taken place.

01:19:10

That's what gives the context of throw all these mourners out in the mockery of Jesus. That's what makes the whole story hang together.

01:19:16

And so unless you're going to demand that every account given in the gospels would be what you'd have if I had an

01:19:24

MP3 player up here, which is not what we do of any ancient document, then I don't see that there's a problem in these accounts at all.

01:19:32

Now, Bart Ehrman, in his book, Misquoting Jesus, the Story of Who Changed the Bible and Why, has been stressing the point that if we do not have the precise words that were spoken on a certain occasion, then think of all of the sermons that have been delivered just on particular words and the words that have been used.

01:19:51

If the nature of the documents as we are discovering now, and we can agree with each other, is such that the writers did not see it necessary to report the exact speeches of people, even within the quotation marks that we now put in our translations, then how can we insist that Jesus said precisely this, this man said precisely that, when we're agreeing now that the gospel writers didn't write in this way?

01:20:12

Two things. First of all, there's a very different nature of Christian inspiration than is understood by Muslims in regards to the nature of the

01:20:19

Quran. Three minutes. We believe that the scriptures are God -breathed.

01:20:25

It is the scriptures that are God -breathed, not the individuals who are writing the scriptures. It's the result. That's how

01:20:30

God can, for example, use Paul's statements when he is angry, when he writes to the

01:20:36

Judaizers, or even the psalmist in the imprecatory psalms, Psalm 137, one that you've mentioned a number of times that you don't feel is a part of the word of God.

01:20:44

We believe that God can use the entire range of human experience and the result of that writing, not the person.

01:20:50

But the result, 2 Timothy 3 .16, is Thayanus thoughts, not the individuals. That's the first difference between us.

01:20:56

There's a different viewpoint that we have there. Secondly, I would point out that Bart Ehrman actually has said that the only way he could ever believe that God has spoken and given revelation in the past is if every single manuscript would be absolutely identical to every other manuscript.

01:21:17

In other words, he says there could never be scribal error. He would say there could never have been the reason for the

01:21:22

Uthmanian revision. He would reject the Quran as being inspired on the exact same basis that he rejects the inspiration in the

01:21:29

New Testament because he said, if it's inspired, there'll never be a textual variant. Now, I'm sorry, but no work of antiquity of any form, unless it was chiseled in a rock, has come down to us that a textual variant.

01:21:40

And so I would say to you, that's an irrational standard to apply, and it does influence the conclusions that he comes to in his work.

01:21:47

It really does. Well, of course, a number of things have influenced his conclusions, and I agree with you on this particular point that his argumentation here is weak in saying that because there are variations, this couldn't be the word of God.

01:21:58

Of course, it could be the word of God originally, and scribes made errors as they transmitted the word of God. That's not what he was saying, actually.

01:22:06

Actually, what he was saying was if it was ever the word of God, in essence, God would have struck any scribe dead before he miswrote something.

01:22:12

And I think I agree with you. His argument here is weak. But the other part of his argument, which

01:22:17

I didn't mention to you, seems strong, that if indeed the writers were not taking care to report precisely what people said, you can no longer give a sermon on precisely what

01:22:30

Jesus said, because you cannot have confidence that the writers are giving you the precise words. Even Mark may have telescoped,

01:22:36

John may have telescoped, Matthew telescoped, Luke may have telescoped. How do you guard against this telescoping?

01:22:42

Was that a question? Yes. A little bit more of an argument than a question there, but if I could quickly respond to that and then start my time.

01:22:51

As I was saying, the difference between us is that what we have in the scriptures that is the result of that is exactly what the

01:22:59

Holy Spirit would have us to have. And you would have to prove a contradiction where one says

01:23:05

X is true and the other says not X is true for that to be an issue, not that they are writing to different audiences and hence they use different language or they have fuller accounts or shorter accounts.

01:23:15

That is not an objection to inspiration. Okay, clean break, deep breath.

01:23:21

13 minutes of James White questioning Shabir Ali. All right.

01:23:28

Now Shabir, you have taught, I believe, that Paul gave what you would call a false and misleading view of Jesus in his letters in regards to him being the son of God and crucified on the cross and so on and so forth.

01:23:41

Would you say that's true? Well, I would say that Paul in his writings has actually presented

01:23:46

Jesus as an intermediary between man and God. In that way, he is following the

01:23:52

Greek philosophers who spoke of a mediator between man and God and Paul has expressed this very clearly in 1

01:23:57

Corinthians chapter 8 verse 6 where he says for us there is only one Father and one Lord.

01:24:03

He's differentiating between the one God and one Lord. So the Father is God and the Lord is Jesus so we have one of each.

01:24:09

But in doing so, he is, in fact, fuzzying the picture that Jesus left very clear where Jesus spoke of the one true

01:24:17

God that Jesus himself fell on his knees and prayed to. Now, would you say that the followers of Jesus, the original followers of Jesus, were victorious or were they defeated by like the followers of Paul so the

01:24:32

New Testament is correct? Well, your question reminds me of a verse in the Quran from Surah 61 which says that God aided those who followed

01:24:39

Jesus so that they have become victorious. And Muslim commentators have wondered what this could be.

01:24:46

My understanding of this passage is that God has, in fact, taken people as they are with the experiences that they are privy to, the knowledge and learning that they have been exposed to and God is judging them according to that.

01:25:03

I do not believe that God is judging everyone by Muslim standards because not everyone has been privy to a

01:25:09

Muslim sort of education. If I take this understanding, then I can understand that the earliest

01:25:15

Christians, even Christians who later came to be influenced by the teachings of Paul, who were not privy to an

01:25:23

Islamic sort of revelation, would be judged according to the options that are available before them. And in that case, they were good people and bad people and God helped the good people, those who could be called the followers of Jesus, even with modifications and all.

01:25:37

Is there any way that you can give to us this evening to explain to us how we can determine what is still inspired in the

01:25:47

New Testament and what is not? Well, I believe that Muslims have a simple answer to this in saying that whatever is in the

01:25:54

Quran, that would be a judge of whatever is there in the Bible. So whatever of the

01:25:59

Bible agrees with the Quran, that obviously is inspired. What is contradictory is obviously not from God.

01:26:06

And that which is neutral and neither in agreement nor in disagreement may be treated with some bit of silence.

01:26:14

Usually the classical scholars have recommended silence, but I believe that Muslims who are quite familiar with the

01:26:20

Gospels and familiar with the development of the text over time can make some judgments, though these judgments will be tentative.

01:26:29

So everything about the cross, resurrection, atonement, deity of Christ, Jesus is the son of God, the

01:26:35

Holy Spirit is a divine person, not an angel Gabriel. All of that stuff is uninspired and a corruption of the original intention of the

01:26:43

New Testament in light of the Quran. A Muslim would say that the Quranic revelation is here now as a pristine word of God that teaches us that there is only one

01:26:51

God, that Jesus is his Messiah, but nevertheless a servant and messenger of the one true

01:26:57

God. And so anything that is contrary to that, something that teaches, for example, that human responsibility as described in the

01:27:04

Quran is to be somehow evaded. That would be contrary and would be thought to be a later development.

01:27:12

Now, of course, that could be studied from another angle. One can look at the history and development of Christian teaching over time.

01:27:17

One can look at the Gospels even without Islamic presuppositions. And it seems to me that many biblical scholars are coming to conclusions which are very close to the main conclusions which

01:27:29

Muslims insist on, that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet like the prophets of the

01:27:35

Old Testament. He preached the belief in God similar to the belief that was known from the

01:27:42

Jewish prophet since he himself was Jewish. He lived in a Jewish milieu. You mean people like the Jesus Seminar, John Dominic Cross and Marcus Borg.

01:27:49

It doesn't have to be them. The scholars are so numerous it'll be hard for us to list them and to name them now.

01:27:55

So is there any New Testament book that Mark, for example, which you've referred to many times,

01:28:03

Mark clearly identifies as the Son of God, puts words in his mouth that you would never be able to accept as a Muslim. Isn't that correct?

01:28:08

Well, it is clear that even Mark must have suffered from a similar sort of phenomenon that we described in the case of Matthew.

01:28:17

And John Bowden has made specifically that point in his book, Jesus, The Unanswered Questions. If we look at Mark 1, verse 1, which in many

01:28:24

Bibles began the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is noted in the NIV, for example, that the title, the

01:28:31

Son of God, in this particular verse is not found in some of the most ancient and reliable manuscripts.

01:28:37

So I'm not saying that the Gospel according to Mark does not present Jesus as the Son of God, but we have to be aware of scribal changes that have affected the

01:28:45

Gospel according to Mark in places as well. And in fact, we are working with the Gospel according to Mark only as it has come down to us.

01:28:52

Knowing the history of scribal changes, we would not be out of our grounds to wonder if in fact we do really have the original

01:28:58

Markan Gospel. Would you admit that you do not have any hard manuscript evidence from the first or second centuries that gives to us a

01:29:08

New Testament that looks like a Muslim would expect it to look like? We do not have such a document. What we do have are documents which when compared with each other show a certain trend, the development away from what

01:29:18

Muslims understand to be the true teachings and toward what our Christian friends differ with Muslims about.

01:29:24

Issues like the deity of Christ and the fact that Jesus died for the sins of humankind and so on. So if we take that trend and we just extrapolate a little bit backward to pre -Markan

01:29:34

Gospel traditions, it looks like we're dealing with something that is Q or even prior to Q.

01:29:39

And there, in Q, there is no mention that Jesus dies for the sins of the world. There is nothing that promotes him as the unique and divine son of God.

01:29:48

It seems that Q is closer to Islam than Mark is. And if we can even go prior to Q to the earlier decades of Christianity, we may find something that is very, very close to what

01:30:01

Muslims do believe even now. I think I heard you say, but I was somewhat, I'm not certain.

01:30:06

Did you say you believe the Gospel of Thomas is earlier than Mark? This has been claimed by many scholars, including

01:30:12

Faye Perkins in her book, Reading the New Testament. It is generally believed that the Gospel according to Mark was written somewhere between 66 to 75

01:30:21

AD and that the Gospel of Thomas was written somewhere in the 50s.

01:30:27

So it was definitely earlier than Mark, although the manuscripts of the Gospel of Thomas that we do have are from the second century.

01:30:34

There's no doubt about that. How could the Gospel of Thomas be earlier than Mark when the Gospel of Thomas presents

01:30:41

Valentinian Gnosticism, which didn't develop until at least 145 AD? Well, the current

01:30:46

Gospel of Thomas that we do have does in fact contain some of these teachings that you're referring to,

01:30:52

Gnostic teachings in general. However, where the Gospel of Thomas touches upon information that is contained within the synoptic

01:30:59

Gospels, it has been found that where this is compared with the Gospel according to Mark, the

01:31:05

Gospel of Thomas preserves an earlier form of some of the sayings and parables which are found in the

01:31:11

Gospel according to Mark. So this is a theoretical redaction of the Gospel of Thomas that no one has ever seen that's earlier than Mark.

01:31:17

Of course, nobody has seen Mark. Nobody has seen Mark sitting down to write a Gospel. You said yourself that N .T. Wright said that we just do not know.

01:31:25

You've said it as a positive statement in your favor, but I wonder if you've thought about the implications of that. If we don't know who is

01:31:30

Mark and who is Matthew and how they wrote and when they wrote, where they were, then how do we claim that these are inspired writers on behalf of God?

01:31:39

You have said that Mark and Matthew, that Matthew is trying to elevate the position of Jesus by changing words in Mark, specifically the term kurios.

01:31:50

You have focused upon that many times. Is that not true? This is one term. In fact, the term kurios, which means

01:31:57

Lord, is a specific title that can, on the one hand, refer to an ordinary human being, but on the other hand, it can refer to God.

01:32:06

So it is ambiguous. If Mark has the clear teaching that somebody comes up to Jesus and addresses him as teacher or a master, and then

01:32:14

Matthew reporting the same event, almost the same wording, but just simply changes master to Lord, he is now introducing the ambiguity where a later

01:32:23

Christian can read Matthew and think, oh, Christians were calling Jesus Lord. That means he's God.

01:32:29

So would one example of that be Mark 13, 35, where Mark has master of the house and then

01:32:35

Matthew 24, 42, where he says, you do not know when your Lord is coming. Is that not one you've presented?

01:32:40

I do not remember the scriptural references, but the passage as a whole makes sense.

01:32:47

Here we have a passage in Mark's gospel where Jesus speaks of the time of his return.

01:32:53

He says, you do not know when the master of the house will come. And Matthew has changed it, as you're rightly pointing out, or as you're asking about.

01:33:01

Matthew has changed it to have Jesus in this occasion represent himself as Lord in the same saying.

01:33:08

You use a synoptic gospel. In fact, I think you've recommended this particular one here as the one that you utilized by Throckmorton.

01:33:18

Barton Throckmorton, Jr., yes. And it's based upon the RSV, right? Based upon the Revised Standard Version of the

01:33:24

Bible, yes. Have you ever looked at a Greek parallel? I have not. In fact, I still need to learn the

01:33:29

Greek language, which I began studying some years ago and I neglected. But due to stimulus from yourself,

01:33:34

I will be taking it up again. Are you aware that if you looked at a

01:33:42

Greek parallel, that the term that was translated by the RSV in Mark 13, 35, which you have at least three times in my studies, said

01:33:50

Master of the House is a change, is actually ha kurios teis oikios. It's the Lord of the

01:33:55

House. It's the exact same Greek word as Matthew uses in Matthew 24. So you're saying that Mark used the same term?

01:34:01

Identical. In that case, I have to submit that point. Do you, you have said, for example, in your presentations concerning the alleged corruption of the text in the

01:34:18

Testament, you pointed to Luke, for example, and you said that Luke it seemed good to me at the beginning of Luke 1, 3 to record these things.

01:34:28

And then you said certain scribes felt that that was inappropriate. So they added the

01:34:33

Holy Spirit. You know what I'm talking about? Yes. Okay. Do you think there's any question as to what the original text was?

01:34:43

You were referring to Metzger. Do you think Metzger had any question as to what the original text was? No. Here, just so everyone understands what we're speaking of,

01:34:51

Luke begins his gospel by saying that it, as many have drawn up gospel accounts prior to him or written works concerning Jesus.

01:35:00

Here, he has reviewed them and he has decided, or rather, it seemed good to me also to write a connected account so that the one who loves

01:35:09

God will have this as a document and so on. Of course, I'm telescoping his words.

01:35:14

Thank you. Thank you. But I'm not writing scripture. Yeah, I might add, yes. So Luke then has left it like this and one may very well ask, well, if Luke was writing under inspiration, why did he say so right at this point?

01:35:30

This was an appropriate place to tell us that he's writing under divine inspiration. Why did he say it seemed good to me to write?

01:35:36

So one of the scribes who had the same question obviously inserted a phrase to make us feel that Luke wrote under inspiration and this has been pointed out by Metzger.

01:35:47

But no, in referring to something like this, I'm not claiming that Metzger believes that the original text here was something else than what we do have.

01:35:56

My point being that there is not a single Greek manuscript that has that edition. It is only one translator.

01:36:03

And so my point being that don't you understand that when Metzger makes note of these variations, most of the time he's doing so to illustrate the fact that we know what the original was.

01:36:13

And the manuscript tradition is so rich that we are able to detect these things very easily and they're not even a challenge.

01:36:21

Isn't that how you've read Metzger? Isn't his point that we have a really good manuscript tradition here? I've never raised this point to say that Metzger thinks that the verse could be read this particular way with reference to this particular verse of the gospel according to Luke.

01:36:37

But Metzger does in giving these numerous ways in which scribes have over time altered the text in a deliberate manner has left the impression that since the gospel since the gospels have been written and copied and we do not have the original documents we have copies of copies of copies then since we notice this trend in copying that people have changed things along this way we should have that in the back of our minds as a general trend when dealing with the entire

01:37:08

New Testament tradition because this is how they have the texts have been affected. Okay, in recognition of the fact that this entire event was student initiated and student planned and although because of the sensitive nature of the debate we didn't want to just put an open microphone in the audience during the

01:37:28

Q &A time we did select some students to ask representative questions of the kinds of things that students are interested in at an event like this.

01:37:39

So here's what we're going to do. We're going to have a student come forward ask one of these questions which the debate planners in conjunction with the

01:37:47

Associated Student Government have selected. We'll have the student ask a question first a question to Shabbir Ali then a three minute response and then

01:37:58

James White will have a minute to respond to the response to the question and we'll do that three or four times and then we'll be done.

01:38:05

I mean, I'm sorry then we'll be ready for the closing statements. Done with the Q &A.

01:38:10

Do we have a first student questioner? Hi, my name is

01:38:18

Scott Swingle. I'm a Bible major junior Bible major here at Biola and I just want to thank you Shabbir for coming out and sharing with us.

01:38:27

The nature of this debate has really been focusing on the reliability of the New Testament and you've offered many on the offense and offered many arguments to undermine that and I've been pleased to see it stand up under some careful scrutiny by some of the arguments.

01:38:42

I'm sorry, I'm not hearing you very well. Can someone raise his microphone? I'm sorry about that. I think it needs to be raised in general anyway.

01:38:50

OK. We may have shorter questioners. I guess my question here is

01:39:00

I'm curious about the reverse question on the reliability of the Quran and under the same careful scrutiny that you are offering to the

01:39:09

New Testament. How would you respond to the same types of criticisms leveled against the

01:39:17

Quran? How would you defend the Quran under that nature and a different question such as is the

01:39:26

Quran as it exists today the inspired word of Allah and would you be interested in even a future debate under that question?

01:39:36

The last part first, yes. I would be interested in a debate on that question. Second, the

01:39:42

Quran first of all begins to claim that it is the revelation from God.

01:39:48

So we don't have to make that claim for the Quran. Moreover, the textual history of the Quran is such that it is all very clear.

01:39:55

The Quran has been memorized within the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. Whereas by comparison, we do not have anything written by Jesus himself.

01:40:04

We know, for example, that one passage of the Gospel according to John says that Jesus wrote but he wrote on the sand.

01:40:10

And so that is not preserved. Moreover, the passage in which this is mentioned has just been discussed by James and I.

01:40:17

And James has characterized this also as a dubious passage. So one passage says that Jesus wrote something on the sand and the passage itself is dubious.

01:40:27

Whereas in the case of the Prophet Muhammad, you see we're dealing with something completely different here and it would not be appropriate to sidetrack the debate to now start to deal with the

01:40:37

Quran because now we have to describe the entire history of the Quran, what it is, how it is composed, what it is as a book, what is it meant to be, who does it speak to, and so on.

01:40:48

Then we have to deal with the textual history which is very different because the Quran right from the very start was memorized by the

01:40:54

Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and many of his close followers. James spoke of Ibn Masud.

01:40:59

I think he got his facts a little bit wrong. Sorry, James. Ibn Masud wasn't killed for refusing to hand over the

01:41:04

Quran, although there is a mention in some of our sources that he refused to hand over his copy of the

01:41:10

Quran, but he wasn't killed for that. In fact, the sources continue to say that eventually he relented and he only refused initially because he felt that the

01:41:18

Quran compiled under the Caliph Uthman was compiled under the leadership of Zayd bin

01:41:24

Thabit who was younger to him, and as he put it, this man was still in the loins of his father and I was already a

01:41:31

Muslim at the time. So he felt some personal grudge over that as he admitted and that's what made him hesitate.

01:41:37

Otherwise, Ibn Masud was a good follower of the Muslim community. He recited basically the Quran that we have today.

01:41:43

There are reports about variations in the way in which he read things or pronounced things and that these to be discussed now would be an entirely different discussion because they refer, they relate to the

01:41:54

Sabah to Ahruf, the seven different modes in which the Quran was said to be revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

01:42:00

So there is a doctrine that in fact incorporates variations from the very start, variations which are said to be approved by God and therefore nothing to worry about.

01:42:09

This does not mean that when people try to memorize the Quran or even to write it down, they did not make mistakes.

01:42:15

Of course they did. People make mistakes today even in printing the Quranic text. You can have a Quran come out with several pages blank.

01:42:22

That's a printing error. But that does not alter the fact that the Quran has been preserved as the word of God and is confidently held by Muslims throughout the world as one text that could be read in a variety of ways according to the

01:42:34

Sabah to Ahruf or seven modes of recitation. One minute. One minute.

01:42:41

Just in reference to the Ibn Masud situation, I was referring to Abu Ammar Yasir Qadhi's work and introduction to the sciences of the

01:42:49

Quran where he says the most serious opponent of Uthman's text was Ibn Masud, a companion of the Prophet and a great theologian.

01:42:55

Ibn Masud refused to give up his copy of the Quran to the President of the Revision Committee and thus incurred the anger of the Caliphate by whom he was publicly chastised.

01:43:02

He died a few days after from the effects of the beating he had received. That was the reference that I was referring to at that point.

01:43:07

The point is that there were variations in the text that existed at the time. There wouldn't have been any reason to destroy those other manuscripts if there weren't.

01:43:16

And so, yes, there is a good reason to have a discussion of the Quran and the origination of the

01:43:21

Quran, which we can't get into fully tonight. But the point is, if we are utilizing textual critical analysis in regards to the

01:43:30

Quran, then we need to use the same textual critical analysis. It doesn't mean, well, if there are variants here, then we can just simply dismiss the

01:43:37

Quran. It could not possibly. God could never use this methodology to bring us his word. I'm just simply saying you have to be fair.

01:43:43

You have to be consistent and apply the exact same methodology in regards to the New Testament. And when you do so,

01:43:48

I believe the New Testament manuscript tradition stands up better in giving us the testimony to the earliest form than the

01:43:56

Quranic one does. It just needs to be done consistently. OK, for our next question from a student, a question for James White, I believe.

01:44:06

Good evening, my name is Mia Blessing and I'm a senior communications interdisciplinary business major. And our next question is for James.

01:44:13

James, there seems to be so much scholarship that comes from people who identify themselves as Christianity that calls into question the accuracy of the

01:44:20

New Testament text and its pictures of Jesus. To what do you attribute this rejection and questioning from people with top degrees and professorship?

01:44:28

Doesn't this large body of scholarship support the idea that we should be very skeptical of the text of the New Testament? Three minutes.

01:44:38

Three minutes. So much in three minutes. That is something that we face in Western society today.

01:44:48

We have all our Bart Ehrmans. Last late August, September, I debated

01:44:53

John Dominic Crossan on the reliability of the Gospels in Seattle. Myself and Jim Renhan debated

01:44:59

Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan a few days later on the resurrection. There are discussions going on right now about further discussions along those lines.

01:45:06

And given the fact that there is tremendous popularity to these writings,

01:45:13

I mean, if Bart Ehrman sneezes, CNN is there to cover it. It's just absolutely incredible.

01:45:19

And you have a Gnostic Gospel that appears that Irenaeus had dissed 1800 years ago and now

01:45:28

National Geographic is all over it and it's all over our cable television channels. And we see all of this stuff.

01:45:35

When they find manuscripts that helped, again, to verify the text of the New Testament as they've done over and over and over again, the mainstream media doesn't care.

01:45:45

And you're not going to get yourself published in too many journals talking about stuff that supports traditional

01:45:50

Christianity. So sadly, we live in a day and age where we are being trained to disbelieve.

01:45:56

We're being trained to be skeptical about everything. But in reality, as I said in my opening statement, there is a kind of scholarship that starts the presupposition that God could not possibly have communicated

01:46:06

Himself. There is a type of scholarship that begins with the idea that if it has been believed by people before us, we shouldn't believe it any longer.

01:46:17

I reject that. And when I listen to what these people say and I listen to their theories and you start digging down to the bottom, it all starts with the idea that Jesus couldn't have been who

01:46:26

He was. He couldn't have truly been God in human flesh. And so we have to come up with some way of explaining this.

01:46:32

We have to come up with some way of casting doubt on this. And it must have been evolutionary. It must have grown over time.

01:46:37

But when you ask for solid documentation, when you ask for something, well, give me something and put my hands on, well, you know, those things have disappeared and we can't really do that.

01:46:46

And it's all an application of an evolutionary way of thinking. And when you really get into it, it really comes down to those basic presuppositions that you start with.

01:46:56

And that's why I said at the beginning of my presentation that two people who are monotheists, who believe there's one

01:47:03

God who created all things and can speak to us, which we both, I believe, believe. We, to debate this issue, must debate this issue within the context of our shared belief that God can speak.

01:47:16

We can't imbibe in that kind of scholarship that in essence gags God and says, no,

01:47:22

He can't speak and He hasn't spoken and we have to look at everything in a naturalistic, materialistic world.

01:47:27

I'm not a naturalistic materialist. And so I'm not going to find naturalistic, materialistic scholarship to be compelling in any way, shape or form.

01:47:35

And so I understand what the question is all about, but we have to dig past those levels and see what's really being said.

01:47:42

One minute response. Very quickly, I agree with James in that we cannot just simply take what naturalistic, materialistic scholars say and run with it, whether it be

01:47:53

Bart Orman or the Jesus Seminar or anyone else. In reading Bart Orman's book,

01:47:59

I get the feeling that he has come a long way. He started out as a

01:48:05

Christian who was very convinced that the New Testament was the inspired Word of God in totality. He went to study in order to try and prove that to the world, but eventually his studies led him to a different sort of conclusion.

01:48:18

Now his conclusion, I believe, has in fact shifted him to the other extreme, like a pendulum that has swung the other way.

01:48:24

And I believe the correct way is to be balanced in between. Yes, there is information which can be offered by these scholars in which we should pay attention to, but we should not drink in everything hook, line, and sinker.

01:48:36

We should differentiate between the demonstrable proofs that they are presenting to us and the materialistic presuppositions which we must necessarily reject.

01:48:48

Next question, I believe for Shabir Ali. This question is on the topic of abrogation in the

01:48:57

Quran. On a number of occasions, a prophet has overturned or disregarded previous revelations.

01:49:05

And that is said in Surah 2, 106 that confirms the doctrine of abrogation.

01:49:13

My question is, how do you reconcile the doctrine of abrogation with Surah 10, 64 that states that no change can be made to the word of Allah?

01:49:22

And further, how can the Quran be the eternal word of God that was brought down from heaven without the touch of human hands?

01:49:31

Which says in Surah 85, 22, how does abrogation go along with this doctrine of the

01:49:39

Quran being preserved in eternal tablets in heaven? Well, I'm sorry to say that our topic tonight is the

01:49:50

New Testament as it exists today. Is this the inspired word of God? And we get questions about the

01:49:56

Quran which are welcome, but unless we're dealing with that as a whole topic so we have a chance to explain exactly what the

01:50:03

Quran is, where it came to be revealed, how and when and so on, we're really taking like shots in the dark here.

01:50:09

But very quickly, the verse that you refer to in Surah 2, verse number 106 says that whatever verse

01:50:16

God abrogates or causes to be forgotten, he brings one better in its stead. Do you not know that God is able to do all things?

01:50:24

Now this has been variously interpreted by Muslim scholars. The classical interpretation of this has been that within the prophetic career of Muhammad on whom be peace, there were revelations given to him over time of a progressive nature, not affecting any change in doctrine, but revealing to him more, a greater understanding over time.

01:50:46

And more specifically, with regards to the practices of Islam, there might have been something that was given to him as an instruction at one time, but later on in the view of changing circumstances, he's instructed something different, which of course does not imply anything like a change of mind on the part of God, but a change of his instruction in response to different circumstances.

01:51:07

In that regard, many Muslims would see that the New Testament in a similar way abrogates the

01:51:13

Old Testament. And the book of Hebrew says that many commandments and regulations have been laid aside due to their imperfection.

01:51:20

And it is always understood that there have been laws and regulations given at one time, especially to the

01:51:26

Jewish people, that was for a limited dispensation and a new dispensation comes in the form of Jesus, for example.

01:51:34

So in that sense, classical scholars understood that the first of the Quran can abrogate another one.

01:51:40

In my own understanding, it seems that the claims that a certain verse has abrogated another one in this way in the

01:51:47

Quran, does not really hold up. Many scholars like myself believe, not that I'm a scholar,

01:51:53

I'm only a student, but we believe that what classical scholars spoke of under the term of abrogation is really under the term of tafsiz, or specification, where a certain verse gives a general impression of something and a later verse gives more specific details about that thing.

01:52:14

And in that case, all of the verse still continue to be applied and the classical doctrine of abrogation, the way it has been described, has been in fact overstated.

01:52:23

It should be restated as in fact tafsiz, or specification. I have to admit,

01:52:30

I fully understand Shabir's frustration at being asked a difficult question. In many of my debates with Roman Catholics, I'm asked in 60 seconds to explain the entire canon process of the

01:52:39

New Testament. It's a little bit frustrating. The only thing I would say in response to that was I don't believe that the argument of the

01:52:47

Book of Hebrews is parallel to the Islamic concept of abrogation, because the writer of the Book of Hebrews is not saying that you were once told this, now you're being told this.

01:52:56

He's saying, this is what you were told, this is why you were told, it has now been fulfilled in Christ, this was what it was pointing to, and fulfillment is not the same as abrogation.

01:53:05

So I would disagree with that particular application of that particular concept at that point. But I think it is actually somewhat relevant.

01:53:12

I think this would come up if we were to debate the issue of the Qur 'an, because it seems to me parallel to part of the argumentation that you're making in regards to the writers of the

01:53:21

New Testament, how they handled information. So I think maybe that's where the question was coming from, but I recognize it's difficult to address in a short period of time.

01:53:29

Okay, we have a fourth and final student question. All right,

01:53:37

I'd like to thank you both again for your investment in this evening, and this final question reads as follows.

01:53:43

In a mention of Jesus in the Last Supper in Mark 22, 17 through 19, specifically regarding an addition of the phrase which...

01:53:51

I'm sorry, what was the reference? I didn't hear the reference. Mark 22, 17 through 19. There is no Mark 22.

01:53:57

Okay, I think we found that early manuscript.

01:54:07

Should I follow through? Okay, the question reads...

01:54:14

Oh, Luke. Okay, let's follow through with Luke on this one. Okay. Thank you.

01:54:24

Hard to find the references. Yeah, variant. In Luke 22, 17 through 19,

01:54:32

I suppose. I'm sorry about this delay as well. Sorry. In specifically regarding the phrase which has been given to you, if this addition later took about 2 ,000 years to discover that this addition was made, how does that coincide with a belief that the

01:54:50

New Testament was preserved throughout this time? And how is this argument pertinent in regards to how this is the only passage that talks about Jesus to die for a man's sin?

01:55:02

Thank you. I'm having trouble seeing what the specific reference being.

01:55:13

Are you talking about verse 19, which is given in behalf of you in Luke 22, 19?

01:55:18

Is that the question that's being asked? Can I just get a nod? Okay, there's a nod coming on over there.

01:55:24

So I'll go with the nod. I'm not sure what you mean by it took 2 ,000 years to discover that this is an addition.

01:55:33

If you look at the textual data at the bottom of the page in the Ness Valen 27th edition, you'll see that there's actually, especially in the

01:55:42

Lord's Supper materials, a number of what are called parallel corruptions in later scribes.

01:55:48

That is, there were, interestingly enough, later scribes thought that Matthew, Mark and Luke should say the same things in the same ways.

01:55:57

There are certain critics today that think they should say the same things in the same ways. And so they made changes to the text.

01:56:04

And that's a bit of a problem. But I don't understand the statement that it took 2 ,000 years to discover this, because obviously, there are numerous manuscripts that read exactly along those lines.

01:56:16

And hence, it was not a matter of it being unknown. Maybe what's being asked is the

01:56:23

Byzantine text type and the Textus Receptus became the standardized text.

01:56:29

And so maybe someone's saying, well, because that was a standardized text and it contained this, and that means that for a lot of people, or it didn't contain this, one of the two, then it was unknown for all that period of time.

01:56:40

I would just simply say that's simply not the case. I believe that the creation of a standardized text,

01:56:48

I understand why people want to do that. I understand why people don't want to have these little notes down here at the bottom of the page.

01:56:54

But what I'd like to try to communicate to everybody is it's these little notes down here at the bottom of the page that allow us to respond to the

01:57:00

Bart Ehrmans of the world today. It's these little notes down here at the bottom of the page that show us we are open with our text.

01:57:06

Here it is. Any one of you, you sell this and you guys got this in the bookstore someplace, the bookstore manager around, know if you got this.

01:57:14

I bet you do. You can get ahold of it yourself. We don't hide any of this kind of stuff. We don't want this kept from anyone's examination.

01:57:21

We believe everyone has the right to examine these things. And when you do examine these things, that's when you're able to say, see, here's the manuscripts to say this.

01:57:30

Here's the manuscripts to say that. We can examine the text. Does Homeboy tell you it's uninvolved? Is there one of the reasons why there would be a variation here?

01:57:37

And we can be open and have these types of discussions. And if we didn't have that ability, if all we had was one single text someone created then burned everything else, that's as far back as we can go.

01:57:48

We can't go any farther than that. And so I thank God that there are textual variants because I would rather be dealing with whether you should have one little phrase there than worrying about whether Shirley MacLaine was right that the deity of Christ and the entire concept of reincarnation got ripped out of the

01:58:03

Bible and we wouldn't have any way of knowing. One minute response. I think

01:58:10

James is right that we need to pay close attention to what is written at the bottom of the page. And what's written at the bottom of the page in my

01:58:16

Bible here is that this text is of dubious origin. If I telescope what is written here.

01:58:23

The most important Western textual manuscripts do not have it and some other ancient manuscripts and papyrus especially do have it.

01:58:34

Now what does this all mean? Here we have an instruction from Jesus do this always in memory of me when he passes around the cup and everyone is doing it in memory of him.

01:58:43

But does that instruction actually go back to Jesus? It's only in one place in the Gospels right here and it's of dubious origin.

01:58:50

Now why is it not in all of the Gospels? Everyone should remember that Jesus said do this in memory of me. Why did they forget this particular instruction?

01:58:58

Or why did they not consider it to be important? Only Luke does. Now if this is originally from Luke it seems that he got it from Paul which was written before and that emphasizes a point that may be made before that Pauline teaching has actually influenced the

01:59:11

Gospels. And if it is not from Luke and added by a scribe the same point holds that it has now become a part of Christian teaching about Jesus that he said do this in memory of me whereas in fact his saying about that is only in one

01:59:23

Gospel and that particular place is of dubious origin. Time. Okay, we are ready for closing statements.

01:59:31

Each speaker has been given seven minutes to summarize his case and make the final statement of what he has to say.

01:59:40

James White will go first and then immediately hand off to Shabir Ali for the final words. Seven minutes.

01:59:58

Now before you all forget what Shabir just said I want to point out that what Shabir just said was the exact kind of reasoning that resulted in scribal emendation.

02:00:07

In other words well why didn't all the other Gospel writers say it? Because they didn't have to and the idea that they all have to say the exact same thing in the exact same way is what led to so much of the parallel corruption that takes place in later scribes.

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And so I found that to be a fascinating thing and then he said well see this probably came from Paul. Well that means it goes back to the 40s that means it goes back to the lifetimes of the people who heard this the people who are still alive who heard it.

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Why would we presuppose in light of that that they would allow Paul to corrupt that in his preaching when they were the ones going around preaching at that very point in time?

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And if we were consistent that that would mean that the recitation of the Quran within the first 10 or 20 years could be completely corrupted as well.

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My point being consistency in the application of these things needs to be our goal and when we are consistent then the vast majority of arguments used against the inspiration in the

02:00:55

New Testament simply are not going to follow. Now I would like to in my closing statement first of all thank Shabir Ali for traveling all the way to Toronto.

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I'm flying to Toronto in September to speak up there and I would like to say I'm hoping I'm still hoping that Shabir and I can arrange a debate at the

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University of Glasgow next May. I hope that that would very much happen and Shabir I'll tell you what if we can arrange that I will promise to do something for you that many people here would like to see

02:01:21

I'll wear a kilt for the debate. How's that? Would that be? Now I would like to thank

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Shabir by doing something for him. I would like to give him a copy of my book The Forgotten Trinity a book

02:01:38

Scripture Alone that I wrote a book on the doctrine of justification that I wrote and I've heard

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I've been listening to Shabir now for a full year I've listened to hundreds and hundreds of hours and I keep hearing him quote from the

02:01:50

New American Bible which I think is just one of the world's worst translations in the whole world. I work for the

02:01:55

Lachman Foundation on the New American Standard Bible I'm a critical consultant this is a premier New American Standard Bible and I'm giving it to Shabir Ali.

02:02:05

Thank you very much. I'm going to be listening for you quoting from the

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New American Standard Bible in the future. We have discussed many things this evening we have talked about a lot of different subjects and I would like to compliment all of you on your interest in being here this evening the vast majority of you are still here even the people in the nosebleed section up there thank you you stuck through it all what do

02:02:41

I want you to leave here thinking about? Tonight we were not debating whether God can inspire anything we were not debating whether the

02:02:49

New Testament claims to be inspired it clearly does there was no question that the early church believed the New Testament was inspired when you look at the very earliest writers outside of the

02:02:57

New Testament they're quoting Matthew, Mark, and Luke and Paul as scripture we even have within the

02:03:03

New Testament canon people quoting each other as scripture and so that's not the issue the issue is why would a

02:03:10

Muslim who is a supernaturalist not a naturalist why would a Muslim deny the inspiration of the

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New Testament we read to you for example surah 5, 46 -47 in that phrase let the people of the gospel judge by what

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Allah hath revealed therein how can we do that? how could the Christians in the day of Muhammad have followed the exhortation of surah 5, 46 -47 if what

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Shabir Ali said this evening is true because in the cross examination I asked him is there any

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New Testament document that you can point us to that still gives us the pure word of God and well well as long as it agrees with the

02:03:49

Quran well how can you prove that Muhammad is a prophet of God except the Quran if the actual argument is well as long as it agrees with the

02:03:57

Quran it's inspired and anything else you need to reject it doesn't work I think you can make a very strong argument tonight's not the time to do it it's been done in previous debates a very strong argument that the

02:04:08

Quran does not teach the corruption of the New Testament because Muhammad didn't know enough of the New Testament it hadn't even been translated into his language yet and he certainly could not have read it even if it had been so the issue was not this evening can we find references to the inspiration in the

02:04:23

New Testament and prove the inspiration in the New Testament to an atheist the question is to a Muslim who believes that God has spoken upon what basis does he reject the inspiration in the

02:04:34

New Testament and I repeat my assertion to you as I look at the situation this evening what we are being told is that we should take the word of an individual who wrote over 600 years after the

02:04:48

Christ event without any access to the original languages of the Old and New Testaments without any direct knowledge of the

02:04:56

Christian scriptures we are to take that and we are to allow that to supersede that which is found in the first century that which is found in the very earliest external writings to the

02:05:08

New Testament the consistent testimony to the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ the consistent testimony for example found

02:05:15

Ignatius writing in 107 AD where he calls Jesus Christ God 14 times and seals his testimony with his own martyrdom as did many of the apostles and disciples we are to take what was written by someone far removed in a different language in a different culture and allow that to supersede the testimony of the martyrs and as I said in my opening statement would any

02:05:37

Muslim this evening and we have a number here would any Muslim this evening accept the word of a man who lived in the middle of the 13th century who never read the

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Quran never even had access to the Quran had heard about the

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Quran who in his writings misrepresents the Quran shows he doesn't even understand the Quran would any

02:06:00

Muslim here take the word of that individual if he claimed to be a prophet of God and that he in fact was superseding the

02:06:07

Quran and that Muslims should follow him I don't think there is a person here that would do that I'm simply saying that if we allow consistency to be our guide and is that not how do you define truth using the word consistency if we apply the same standards to the

02:06:26

New Testament then the objections raised in regards to text in regards to the origination in regards to teaching simply do not hold true and as a result there is no consistent basis for the

02:06:40

Muslim to deny the inspiration of the New Testament the thesis is established I hope this evening you will take this as a starting point not the end but a starting point for your own research into this subject thank you very much for being here

02:06:53

God bless in closing

02:07:12

I want to again thank God for bringing us together in such a cordial atmosphere and making it possible for us to think about some of the things that we all hold dear and to sort out some of the questions that we have in our minds

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I have learned a lot from James tonight and I want to thank you James for all of the generous gifts you have offered me

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I really appreciate that you're a scholar and a gentleman finally in putting together the threads of this debate

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I'd like to draw some attention to the Quran as the revealed word of God since so much has been asked about the

02:07:50

Quran tonight what reasons do we have for believing that the Quran is a revelation from God well there are several we do not have time to detail these but I can list a few points very quickly the

02:08:02

Quran was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad some 1400 years ago and had this been his own work then we would expect to see his own mental acumen being translated into the text on the contrary what we find is that the

02:08:15

Quran speaks about past history revealing information that were not known to Muhammad speaks about the future and only

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God knows the future describing things which modern scientists are finding to be accurate from a modern scientific point of view and amazingly so and puzzling for this to be in a 7th century book unless this is a revelation from the

02:08:37

Almighty God now we can go on and on but the point is that it was not our topic tonight to debate whether or not the

02:08:45

Quran is the word of God but because questions have been asked I'm trying to now try to balance the picture in this way second the

02:08:53

Quran has been preserved over time in the memories of people and in manuscripts many of which are now available to us very old ancient manuscripts at one time

02:09:03

I debated persons like Jay Smith who denied that any manuscripts of the

02:09:08

Quran from the 1st century exist and he saw that as a basis for questioning the integrity of the

02:09:13

Quran but since then manuscripts from the 1st century of Islam have in fact been found especially at Sana 'a in Yemen and it has been found that these manuscripts do not show any significant variation from the

02:09:28

Quran as Muslims read it today variations that have been cataloged and shown by scholars like Arthur R.

02:09:34

Berry in his book Materials for the History of the Quranic Text have not shown any reliable reported variation from the ancient scholars whether Ibn Masud or anyone else that should affect the integrity of the text that we have today scholars have discussed the variations that have been reported from scholars and reciters such as Ibn Masud Ubaid bin

02:09:56

Ka 'b and others and these relate to a time when the Quranic text was known perhaps by some a little bit vaguely more vaguely than in the case of others but as the scholars who were contemporaneous with the

02:10:11

Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him those who saw him lived with him walked with him and memorized the

02:10:16

Quran directly from him gathered together as a group and compiled the written text from pieces that were available with the writers who copied these directly from the

02:10:28

Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him within a few years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad they have produced a text which is essentially what we're reading today all over the

02:10:37

Muslim world the skeletal form of the text without the diacritical reading aids so that text can be read in a variety of ways but without any substantial difference that affects anything of Muslim theology what is very clear whether the

02:10:54

Quran is studied from the point of view of Muslims or from non -Muslims is that it has never been shown that any

02:11:01

Muslim over time copying the Quran or reciting the Quran in a variation has deliberately altered the

02:11:09

Quran in order to satisfy doctrinal considerations whereas we find in the texts of scholars such as Bruce Metzger and most recently

02:11:18

Bart Ehrman that in the past scribes of the New Testament have in fact changed the text they were working with specifically to meet certain doctrinal considerations more so we have shown in the opening presentation that not only the scribes have done this but in fact

02:11:36

Matthew, Luke and John have done this as far as we can compare them with Mark we have seen that in specific cases

02:11:45

Matthew has telescoped what was written in Mark he has changed the wording of a certain person's speech so that what we're reading in quotation marks that a certain person has said in the

02:11:54

Bible in the New Testament in particular especially in the Gospels as we have shown we cannot take to be the

02:12:00

Gospel truth we cannot say that Jesus said specifically this and let me tell you what this should mean and deliver a whole sermon on it because Jesus may not have said exactly that it may have been telescoped because when that man came according to Matthew and said my daughter has just died

02:12:16

Mark had said that the man said my daughter is at the point of dying they're two different things so we've asked then what positive reasons do we have for thinking that the

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New Testament is the word of God even if I'm completely wrong in anything I've said even if the

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Quran is not the word of God okay how do we know that the New Testament is the word of God which is our topic tonight now

02:12:39

James has mentioned to Peter and to Timothy but none of these say that the Bible and especially the

02:12:45

New Testament is entirely the word of God and we do not have a presentation from James to show that the

02:12:52

Bible according to the Bible itself is entirely the word of God and specifically the

02:12:57

New Testament 2nd Timothy chapter 3 verse 16 speaks about the scriptures which Timothy knew from childhood those were the

02:13:03

Old Testament scriptures particularly the Septuagint version of the Old Testament the New Testament documents were not yet compiled in the lifetime of Paul 2nd

02:13:12

Peter spoke about prophecies of old again he's referring to the Old Testament in short where in the

02:13:18

New Testament does it say that the entire New Testament is the revealed word of God inspired

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Holy Scripture absolutely and perfectly true the way James has put before us in fact nothing of the

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New Testament says that if we are to assume that we would be crediting to God and attributing to him statements that he didn't inspire so we should be careful about this whether Muslims or Christians we should not attribute to God something that he did not inspire he did not reveal or he didn't say we can say that the

02:13:47

New Testament contains revealed knowledge and inspiration from God but it also contains the creative work of man and we have seen that creative work working through the

02:13:56

Gospels especially in the Gospel of John where a new presentation of Jesus is given and so if we think again about the joke that I began with and the story about the raising of the dead person we have four raising stories but three of them are quite similar the

02:14:13

Gospel according to John is very different this guy had been in his grave for four days rotting and smelling it's a very different narrative the story has changed from Mark to Matthew and Luke and then further along to John if we trace that trend just go back a little bit we'll find what the

02:14:29

Quran is calling us to look at judge by the Gospels and find out what exactly Jesus really said and did before the creative work of human beings transformed it into something else thank you very much well we are right on time which makes me very happy we had a whirlwind introduction tonight to a variety of subjects the synoptic problem

02:15:03

Gospel parallels textual criticism manuscript transmission critical historical studies of the

02:15:09

New Testament and right at the very end there the beginning of discussion of the Quran with its textual history and its reliability this has been a wonderful learning opportunity my guess is that for most

02:15:22

Christians in the audience you've never spent an hour listening to an advocate a Muslim intellectual defend his views and put forward a good case from his point of view that alone is a major beginning here that's been made tonight for a lot of us many

02:15:36

Muslims in the audience have probably never heard a spirited defense of answers to these criticisms and so we've come some distance tonight together

02:15:45

Craig you want to come up? thanks for your kind attention this really does just kick off a wild week of events tonight

02:15:59

Tuesday night in San Juan Capistrano Friday night our big intelligent design under fire evening we have a big

02:16:07

C .S. Lewis kickoff event on June 1st and an entire lecture series one of the lectures covers the historical reliability of the

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New Testament so if you want to hear that side from a Christian scholar in depth for three hours you're welcome to sign up if your heart has been strangely warmed by all of this by reason and evidence and service of the gospel you really should consider the