00:00:00.000The Quran or the Bible? Which is the Word of God? For those of you who are wondering,
00:00:19.000we're going to answer that very question today. You came here for debate to make that happen.
00:00:24.540I have with me Ijaz Ahmad. Before we get started, let's get to know my guest. Ijaz is one of Islam's
00:00:31.140leading interfaith commentators. As a religious educator, researcher, and author, his area of
00:00:36.040specialty is textual criticism of the Quran and the Bible. He can be found weekly on some of Islam's
00:00:41.820leading shows and is always up for a good debate. Welcome to the broadcast, Ijaz. Thanks so much for
00:00:47.280coming on. Great to have you here. Thank you. So how can you accept the invitation to have this
00:00:53.740mini debate here on TV? Well, the Quran engages with Christians and Jews, and I know that you
00:00:59.820share a Jewish background. And so on that basis, I think coming together and discussing what our
00:01:05.280scriptures say matters more to me than anything else. Well, excellent. Good, good. So today we're
00:01:10.060going to confront the question, the Quran or the Bible, which is the Word of God? So my guest,
00:01:15.260Ijaz Ahmad, a leading interfaith commentator, you know, our views are very, very different. I also
00:01:21.140know you love a good debate. So let's do it. Ijaz, we'll both have equal amount of time, starting
00:01:26.340with three minutes for our opening statements. And when we come to the end of your time, you'll
00:01:30.720know because you'll hear this buzzer. All right, ready to go? Yep. Okay, your time starts now.
00:01:38.700Three minute opening statement. Bismillah ar-salatu wa salamu ala rasulullah. We all agree that the
00:01:45.560purpose of scripture is twofold. It informs us about who God is and how we can be saved.
00:01:51.040I don't intend to machine gun my interlocutor due to time constraints. So I will give a few
00:01:55.740powerful reasons why the Quran is the Word of God. One, the intelligibility of the Creator about
00:02:01.340Himself. And two, God's Word is sacred and preserved. In Suw'a Ikhlas, that's 112 of the Quran,
00:02:07.880that's one chapter, four short passages. The God of the Quran informs us about who He is.
00:02:12.720Almost any question about the nature of God can be answered in it. In every Suw'a, we are told about
00:02:18.620God's mercy and grace. And in the one Suw'a that does not start with these sacred words,
00:02:23.420within the first five passages, we are told about God's love and mercy. Intelligibility is about
00:02:29.120saying as much as you can in as little as you can, so that everyone from the scholar to the child can
00:02:34.040know their Creator. No Hellenistic philosophy required, as with Hebrews 1.3, Philippians 2.5-11,
00:02:40.220John 1.1 or 3.16, words never ever spoken or explained by Jesus Himself. In both our faiths,
00:02:48.540God is all-powerful and eternal, but in the Bible, it is God that suffers and dies. Dr. Brown teaches
00:02:54.040in volume four of his work that the truth of God's message is not preserved in any one manuscript. You
00:02:59.080have to go through all of the many Masoretic texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Samaritan Pentateuch,
00:03:03.740the Syriac translations of the Bible, then scour all the New Testament texts found in Koine Greek,
00:03:08.720Latin, and Syriac, in the hope that you can find generalized and vague prophecies using,
00:03:13.780as he agrees, error-prone exegetical standards that misled the Jews in Jesus' own time and to
00:03:19.560this very day. Forget the child. Can any one of us meet such an incredible standard today?
00:03:24.500No. Why would a loving God demand this? You will hear him say, perhaps, that all you need to know
00:03:29.580is that Jesus died for your sins, but does Jesus make that claim himself? That all is that what you
00:03:35.200need to know? No. Both the scriptures teach that God will preserve his word so that we can all come
00:03:40.740to know him. Quran 59 and Psalm 119, verse 89. But this promise is not true of the Bible. To quote
00:03:47.420Dr. Brown, editorial or copious errors could easily creep into the text. The use of scripture was much
00:03:53.060more free-flowing, yet he concludes the multiformity of the biblical text must be taken into account.
00:03:59.460I agree. Will he? God's word is sacred, and if, as he argues, our Hasidic brothers can be misled by
00:04:05.640their transmission and interpretation of scripture, then why should I trust teachings which have become
00:04:10.540tradition, which may not even be authentic to begin with? In footnote 13 of volume 4, he argues that
00:04:16.800changes by editors can become part of the standard tradition of sacred writings. His claim, not mine. I
00:04:22.660believe this is what happened with the Bible. The intelligibility and sacredness of scripture matters.
00:04:27.800Do they easily matter as much to you? Thank you.
00:04:33.140All right. Thanks for your opening statement. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one
00:04:41.800comes to the Father but through me, as simple and plain as you could possibly imagine. What's remarkable
00:04:49.120is that the Quran points people back to the Torah and the gospel. The Quran points people back to the
00:04:55.840people of the book. He even says, ask them things. So I'm so glad to be able to answer these questions.
00:05:02.180The text of the Torah and the gospel that we have today in our Bibles is the same text that existed in
00:05:09.220the days of Muhammad when allegedly Allah told him to go to the people of the book, to the Torah,
00:05:15.240and to the gospel. Here's what we know. We have eyewitness accounts of the crucifixion from the people who
00:05:23.220were there recorded within a generation of it happening. We have the major Roman historian of
00:05:29.280the era Tacitus referring to Jesus dying and being executed. We have eyewitness accounts preserved in
00:05:37.060thousands and thousands of manuscripts, and yet we are supposed to believe the Quran, which comes 600
00:05:43.620years after, and denies the crucifixion. We have eyewitness accounts of what happened 3,000 years,
00:05:51.9402,500 years before the Quran. We're told, no, don't believe that. Believe something that came later.
00:05:59.220It would be like me getting a revelation about something that happened in Muhammad's day,
00:06:03.200and I tell you, believe me, not the record you have there. No book in the ancient world has been
00:06:09.200preserved with the accuracy of the Bible. Nothing even close to that. I'm talking about letter-for-letter
00:06:15.740accuracy. I'm talking about word-for-word accuracy over a period of many, many centuries. Not only that,
00:06:23.260the Bible uniquely lays out the history of the world. It uniquely lays out the treatment of the Jewish
00:06:29.560people scattered to all the nations, preserved in the midst of judgment, and yet regathered. It lays out
00:06:36.780the messianic prophecies, how the Messiah would suffer and die and rise from the dead before the
00:06:41.980second temple was destroyed in the year 70. How he would be rejected by his own people, Israel. How he
00:06:47.120would become a light to the Gentiles, and then his people would turn. It even speaks of Jerusalem being
00:06:52.720a city of controversy for the whole world. How did the biblical authors know this? They knew it because
00:06:57.740they were inspired by God. When it comes to the preservation of the Quran, one major manuscript study
00:07:03.820from, discovery from 1972 in Yemen, actually indicates errors and differences. And we do know
00:07:10.800that the third caliph, Uthman, gathered together the different sources that had different readings of
00:07:15.900the Quran and destroyed them, so you were left with only one. The Bible, the best preserved book in the
00:07:22.200ancient world, and it talks about our Heavenly Father. With all the names for Allah in the Quran and
00:07:28.620tradition, Father is not one of them. And there's plenty of division within the Muslim world about
00:07:33.660what to believe. All right, very clear. We've laid out our opening statements of three minutes. Now,
00:07:42.600Ijaz, over you for your two-minute response, and then I'll follow you. Go ahead. Clock is on.
00:07:47.600Thank you. You said, Jesus said, no one can come to me except to the Father. As you know,
00:07:52.480Christians call us to believe that we don't have the very words of Jesus. They fall under
00:07:56.440ipsissimum vox and not ipsissimum verba. You can read more by Daniel Wallace about this.
00:08:01.420Secondly, the Quran never says go to the Bible. The Bible in Arabic will be majumul kutub or kitab
00:08:05.620al-muqaddas, two terms that never uses. So that would be unequivocation. You say that the text that
00:08:10.600you have today is the same. I beg to disagree because no Christian today uses a diplomatic edition
00:08:14.680of the Greek New Testament. You use critical editions, which are not based on all of the manuscript
00:08:19.040tradition, as evidenced by the ECM using the CBGM, that is the coherence-based genealogical method to
00:08:24.940reconstruct the New Testament. Secondly, you said that you have eyewitness accounts of the
00:08:28.560crucifixion. Wrong. What you have are assumptions that the gospel authors are eyewitnesses, but this
00:08:33.520is not the case and cannot be evidenced. Remember, church tradition does not mean that church tradition
00:08:38.040is true. You would need to validate and verify it in the same way that you disagree with what the
00:08:42.340rabbis say about their own traditions in the Talmud. You mentioned that Tacitus was a witness.
00:08:47.700Correction, Tacitus was not a witness. He's writing after the year 115 or 117,
00:08:52.160after Emperor Trasian had died. And he actually calls Jesus Christos, not Christos. He got that
00:08:57.180major detail wrong, his very name. Secondly, he never mentions the crucifixion. He says in Latin,
00:09:01.820be most severe punishment. So there is no need to equivocate here. We need to be specific with
00:09:06.000the claims that we make. You say that the Quran comes 600 years after. I beg to disagree. God can
00:09:10.700reveal revelation at any time in history, just as he accounted for the Genesis accounts many thousands
00:09:16.380of years after, but Moses, peace be upon him. You also mentioned that, let me see here,
00:09:22.020the messianic prophecies. As I said, these cannot be qualified. This is based on a poor understanding
00:09:26.340of Jewish exegetical standards, as you yourself claim, had led the Jews to be misled about who
00:09:31.540the Messiah is. Lastly, Codex Sana does not actually matter because it is not used as an archetype
00:09:36.580for the Quran. And we know that that has lapsus kalami, as evidenced by Dr. Alba Fadeli and her
00:09:41.320great work on it. Lastly, Uthman burns the Quranic manuscripts, which were different and incorrectly
00:09:46.900written with the incorrect rassum. You go in papyri, not parchment. Thank you.
00:09:51.200All right. So number one, you admit that there are errors or discrepancies in the Quran. They've
00:09:56.880just been suppressed. Number two, we have a wealth of evidence, and there's something called textual
00:10:01.600criticism, where you sift through it to come up with the most accurate reading. And you can have
00:10:05.420Hebrew manuscripts from 1,000 years after Jesus that are in letter-for-letter agreement with
00:10:10.040manuscripts from 100 years before Jesus. This is a simple fact. I didn't say that Tacitus was an
00:10:15.440eyewitness, but rather a historian. As for the disciples being eyewitnesses, Richard Balcombe's
00:10:20.020written an excellent book on eyewitnesses of Jesus, where he gives clear evidence. I also said that
00:10:24.540Tacitus said that Jesus was executed. I did make that correction as I was saying it. As for your
00:10:30.040misrepresentation of what I wrote in my own books, no, it is with doing solid biblical exegesis that you
00:10:36.580see the prophecies are what they are. As for the idea that we don't have the words of Jesus, of course
00:10:40.640we have the words of Jesus. When he quotes things, where does it say that those are not his actual
00:10:45.140words? You may have a scholar debating various things there, but of course they are presented
00:10:49.440as the words of Jesus. We have every reason to believe them. What's so remarkable is that even
00:10:53.980within Islam, you have these massive divisions between Sunni and Shia. If things were presented so
00:10:58.860clearly and beautifully and wonderfully, you'd think that there'd just be everybody believing the same
00:11:03.320thing. What's also remarkable with the emphasis on Allah, the fact is that you can work your
00:11:09.620hardest. You can do your very, very best. You can follow all the five pillars of Islam and you still
00:11:14.540do not have assurance that when you die, you go to paradise. In fact, you've got to pray in a certain
00:11:19.720order and live a certain way because at best you are a servant of Allah, whereas the Bible tells us how
00:11:25.000you can have a personal relationship with God. As for Jesus, not saying he was dying for our sins at the
00:11:30.260Last Supper, he said, this is my body, which is given for you. He also said that his life was a
00:11:34.820ransom for many. And he pointed to Isaiah 53, which tells us that he bore our sins. The Bible, again,
00:11:42.560far and away, the best preserved book in the ancient world. And when Muhammad received his revelation,
00:11:47.480it was 600 years after the time of Jesus. All right, it's about to get a little bit more interesting.
00:11:54.640We're going to do rapid fire. So it's one minute back and forth three times, then 30 seconds back
00:12:00.540and forth three times, starting as always with my esteemed guest, Ijad, over to you.
00:12:05.820So no, I don't admit errors in the Quran. We concede that there were changes in the manuscript
00:12:10.020tradition, otherwise known as lapsus kalamai. Textual critics do not consider lapsus kalamai,
00:12:15.080which is transcriptional errors, errors by the eye, parablepsis, as being actual errors. Errors would be
00:12:19.840change the text like an emendation with what we have of the Greek New Testament. Secondly, you say
00:12:24.280we can know what the manuscripts say because of textual criticism. This is actually incorrect.
00:12:28.560If you bother to read the UBS through the Greek New Testament, it actually gives a rating
00:12:32.040to each variant unit in the New Testament. Only 9% or rather 8.9% of all the variant units chosen
00:12:38.700are certain about 90 plus percent. They have doubt. So if your textual or your own textual scholars
00:12:44.520can doubt what the Bible says, that's on you, not on me. Borkham does not prove that these are
00:12:48.680actually eyewitnesses, and nothing actually demonstrates that in his work. I have read
00:12:52.800it in detail. So the question comes to you, how do you know that these are the words of Jesus
00:12:56.740other than an assumption without evidence? Can you please give one basis of textual evidence
00:13:01.600within the first century to confirm this? Thank you.
00:13:04.540And point to fact, you have no clue if Muhammad made up every word or someone gave it to him.
00:13:09.440In other words, you can't prove what you believe, that you just believe it. Most of the textual
00:13:13.620errors that you pointed to, that's the same thing we have in scribal transmission of biblical
00:13:17.700documents, and scholars can point that out. And point to fact, there is not one major doctrine
00:13:23.380that is in question whatsoever in terms of what the Bible teaches based on the various textual
00:13:29.640readings. As for eyewitness accounts, we didn't have cameras back then. We didn't have videotape
00:13:36.220running. But according to the best evidence, these are eyewitness accounts. And according to what we've
00:13:41.300seen in the unfolding of history of Jesus backing his word, then we see that he continues to speak,
00:13:46.520he continues to act. But ultimately, there is a taking something by faith, you taking the Quran
00:13:51.060being inspired, me taking the Bible being inspired. But, you know, Surah 2946, believe in that which
00:13:56.460was sent down to us also. I'm telling you what was sent down to us. It's found in the Bible,
00:14:01.200which has been wonderfully accurately preserved.
00:14:03.640All right, so thank you for your response, Dr. Brown. I beg to differ. As Dr. David Allen Black points
00:14:12.740out in his book on an introduction to textual criticism, he says that there are many actually
00:14:16.860important textual variants which do affect doctrine. Specifically, he points out of the
00:14:22.340variants where Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus and says that he's in both heaven and earth. That is a
00:14:27.360variant. Secondly, the use of the word monogamous, for example, is another variant. Does it mean begotten or
00:14:32.060uniquely created? These are terms which have led people into errors. And as you would know,
00:14:37.460Baker's Encyclopedia and other sources basically say that this term was misused by Jerome when
00:14:42.820translated from unicus into unigenitus in the New Testament. So I do beg to differ on the textual
00:14:47.660variants. Lastly, you mentioned in your book that there were important distinctions and variants
00:14:52.520between the two forms of the first Ten Commandments. Your claim, not mine. Lastly, the Quran does not say
00:14:58.680your book. It says what Allah has revealed in Quran 2 or 4 ayahs, 51 to, sorry, Quran 2 or 5 ayahs, 46 to 47.
00:15:07.140In point of fact, the Torah and the gospel that are referenced were the only ones that existed.
00:15:12.780In other words, there was not a different text at that time. When Allah allegedly told Muhammad
00:15:16.980about the Torah and the gospel, it's what we have as the Torah and the gospel. It was not
00:15:21.360subsequently changed. And again, why on earth would I believe someone 600 years later denying
00:15:27.440the crucifixion of the Messiah when people who were there or people at the very least within a
00:15:33.160generation, we have manuscripts going back that far, attest to what had happened. And it's not an
00:15:38.000account that you would come up with because of the ignominy of crucifixion. When it comes to David
00:15:42.300Allen Black, you'll also know that he's absolutely confident in the text of Scripture and has been
00:15:46.900involved in Bible translation because he knows we have God's word. And the one disputed text in John
00:15:51.6403 about said a man, which is in heaven, has almost universally said, no, this is a later edition.
00:15:56.920You're giving a misleading impression about textual science. And again, Uthman takes the many
00:16:01.380variants and even trying to find who said what, do we even have this in the Quran, and destroys the
00:16:05.400other. That's why you have more uniformity. The others were destroyed.
00:16:10.260Okay, to respond to that quickly, that would actually be incorrect. We have the Qiraat.
00:16:13.920And as Dr. Cook actually mentions in his 2004 paper, we know that they come from one source
00:16:19.220earlier. You mentioned how can we know using the science of stematics, something that cannot be
00:16:23.240done with the New Testament because we don't have any archetypal text. I will also continue here.
00:16:27.580You said I misrepresented Dr. David Allen Black. Actually, I'm not. He himself says it's a major
00:16:32.940doctrinal variant, not me, his words. I would also add here, no, you cannot know what Jesus said,
00:16:38.440and that you assume that they are eyewitnesses is not proof that they are eyewitnesses.
00:16:42.240To claim that it was written within the same generation, again, is a supposition. We have
00:16:46.200no New Testament text within the first century CE, and according to at least papyrologists,
00:16:51.160when we date the gospel, sorry, paleographers, when we date the gospel's paleography,
00:16:56.240the terminus antiquem and the terminus postquem, that unit of time, actually spans between 100
00:17:01.840and 150 years. So we may not have even a single New Testament document within the second century CE.
00:17:07.560Please answer these questions. I'd appreciate it.
00:17:11.520In point of fact, we have manuscript evidence even from within the first century.
00:17:16.480The second thing is in terms of comparing to other evidence, it's remarkably early when you look at all
00:17:21.360the other evidence, when you look at various historical documents and famous poetry.
00:17:26.460It's remarkable how many witnesses we have. You're turning the thing exactly upside down.
00:17:30.640It's for David Allen Black. Again, look to where he says that there's major dispute.
00:17:34.260We don't know what this doctrine says. No, there's agreement on what the doctrine actually is
00:17:38.800in the text. In point of fact, as I've said again, the Quran points to Torah and gospel.
00:17:44.880We know what Torah and gospel were in Muhammad's day. We know where he got things wrong based on
00:17:50.040information he had that he misunderstood. We know where the confusions come in the Quran,
00:17:54.020where biblical figures are misunderstood and things like that. We know all of that.
00:17:58.000Go back to the eyewitnesses. And you say, how do we know they're eyewitnesses?
00:18:01.240Because their disciples and their followers repeated it and repeated it. And we have a strong
00:18:05.700and clear tradition going right back to the cross, going right back to Jesus.
00:18:12.580So we actually have no evidence, like I said, that this is eyewitness to eyewitness transmission.
00:18:16.960Again, this is church tradition being read back into history. I want evidence, not assumptions.
00:18:21.500Lastly, you're equivocating with what the Quran says. It never says go to the Torah and the gospel
00:18:26.020specifically. As you know, in your own book, you testify there is no one Torah textual tradition.
00:18:30.400And secondly, what Christians considered the euangelium, the good news to be, differed across
00:18:35.200the empire, especially when we had more apocryphal works being read in Egypt than anywhere else at
00:18:39.880the same time as the prophet, peace be upon him.
00:18:42.620Right. Again, when the Torah and gospel are pointed to within the Quran for alleged validation,
00:18:48.980we are told go to them because they prophesy of Muhammad. What Torah and gospel existed in
00:18:54.660Muhammad's day? The same Torah and gospel we have.
00:18:57.740That Torah and gospel does not at any point ever mention Muhammad, hinted Muhammad, except
00:19:02.860to warn about false prophets who will leave the word astray. Quran points to Torah and gospel.
00:19:09.020Torah and gospel do not point to Muhammad. Fact.
00:19:11.940Not fact, because again, I said you're equivocating. It never says your gospel, Dr. Brown. If you were a Christian living in Egypt at that time, you would be reading the non-apocryphal works and not the canonical gospels.
00:19:27.420Again, I would suggest that you look at the manuscript record. Lastly, you claim that there was first century manuscript evidence for the crucifixion and for eyewitness testimony.
00:19:35.300Dr. Brown, what is that evidence? Because no New Testament textual critic in anywhere in the world claims that you have that early evidence.
00:19:42.760It's either second or third century CE to start with.
00:19:45.000Yeah, I'm not equivocating. You are putting words in my mouth.
00:19:48.760There are New Testament manuscripts and a single papyrus in there that have been dated within the first century.
00:19:55.080I did not say that it was specifically about the crucifixion.
00:19:58.000Secondly, you know, Islamic apologists are constantly quoting the Bible we have and alleging that it points to Muhammad and then saying it's not the real Bible.
00:20:06.380Which is it? Either we have the real Bible and allegedly points to Muhammad, but in fact it doesn't, or we don't have the real Bible.
00:20:12.780You can't have it both ways. It's double-minded to argue that.
00:20:17.400So it doesn't matter what other Muslim apologists say. What matters is what I say.
00:20:21.000So if you want to use a false dichotomy or equivocate with their statements in mind, that would be incorrect.
00:20:25.540Secondly, like I said, we have nothing dated to within a hundred years of Jesus.
00:20:29.920That can be said to be accurately, textual, critically, manuscript-wise dated to within a hundred years of his time.
00:20:36.720The earliest one is possibly P-52, but the paleographic date range extends into the third century CE based on the Comparanda provided by C.H. Roberts and Dr. Brent Longbrook.
00:20:46.440So friends, any of you can check earliest New Testament manuscripts, get online and search for yourself.
00:20:54.620Again, when you have 5,000 manuscripts within the first centuries, no ancient document in the world has been preserved like that.
00:21:03.120And then here's what you have. You have the eyewitnesses who are willing to die for their faith and their disciples writing in the generation immediately thereafter.
00:21:11.160You have a transmission, which is second to none.
00:21:13.720It points us back to Jesus, who said, he is the way, the truth, and the life.