Questions for Muslims

Well the Bible itself as agreed by non-Muslims themselves has been changed throughout the centuries, you even have variances between the Greek, and Latin texts, then the Protestant, and Catholic, and so on...

By corruption it refers to the additions to the Bible such as that.

And I think for the Torah it is the same, in other words that the text deviated from its original either slightly or enough for a new law to be needed to complete the cycle.

Originally posted by es_bih Well the Bible itself as agreed by non-Muslims themselves has been changed throughout the centuries, you even have variances between the Greek, and Latin texts, then the Protestant, and Catholic, and so on... By corruption it refers to the additions to the Bible such as that.And I think for the Torah it is the same, in other words that the text deviated from its original either slightly or enough for a new law to be needed to complete the cycle.

thanks for the reply!

There are many manuscripts from the Bible that date long before the Prophet and todays modern Bible (injeel). They do not differ from those ancient Manuscripts.
Codex Vaticanus - 325-350 AD
Codex Alexandrinus - 400 AD

Codex Sinaiticus 350 AD

24,000 manuscripts from the Injeel that show its accuracy. They found papyrus with sections of the Book of Matthew (Egypt) and even though they were fragments they supported the modern text.

With the Dead Sea scrolls, from 70 AD, all the books of the Torah have been found but the Book of Ester. Some of the script was written 200 years prior to 70 AD. Virtually no difference has been found from the these Dea Sea manuscripts and the modern Torah. I have seen this in several sources.

It does not say this in the Qu'ran so I tend to believe it is an assumption made by scholars of the Qu'ran.

1. Over time, through transmission from word of mouth, through reformations and cannoic councils, through schisms and forgetfullness.

2. Everyone. Either intentionally (say by both writing and destroying apocraphil gospels), or unintentionally (blending old pagan religions with Christianity). By people with good intentions (Martin Luthur) or people with bad intentions (Pope Innocent III)

3. They didn't. Do you know how many different versions or Christianity and Judaism are running around?

4. There are no original manuscripts. Thats the whole point. Every a Cannonical council is altering the religion. It is impossible to go back, over 1700 years of church changes, over 250 years of forgetfulness, and (non-)deliberate miswriting to discover the revelation of Jesus (pbuh) with any amount of accuracy. It is just as impossible to go back further, for similar reasons, to find ezikials (pbuh) revelation, or anyone elses.

The way it was written to begin with. The only way you can accept that is to have faith in the church*. Which we don't have.
The codex Vatinicus and Codex Sinaicus do differ from modern bibles as well. Sinaicus IIRC contains apocraphil works, and Vatinicus was actually written over by a mediaeval monk.

Yes, people corrupting the revelation is mentioned several times in the Quran. I'll get the quotes for you later.

btw, Injeel is not the bible. Its the revelation.

I think there should be only one bible(Acording to islam, bible is words of God).. Even having four bible is a proof for changing.

While we are at it, I have come accross this link as well, which contains an article linking the Dead Sea Scrolls to Quaranic messages...

I'm not an Islamic scholar, I base my opinions on my own beliefs, readings, deductions, however, the websites I just googled for your benefit to see some of the views from the other spectrum.

Originally posted by Omar al Hashim 4. There are no original manuscripts. Thats the whole point. Every a Cannonical council is altering the religion. It is impossible to go back, over 1700 years of church changes, over 250 years of forgetfulness, and (non-)deliberate miswriting to discover the revelation of Jesus (pbuh) with any amount of accuracy. It is just as impossible to go back further, for similar reasons, to find ezikials (pbuh) revelation, or anyone elses. The way it was written to begin with. The only way you can accept that is to have faith in the church*. Which we don't have.

 I can agree there are errors though but there are many errors in the Qu'ran as well.

If We are talking about God work, It should not consist of any errors.. If God has errors, why should I call it as god..

Hi Al Jassas and welcome to AE!

Thanks Kilroy for your salute.

 

As for your question eaglecap I would like you to read carefully my reply on the history of the Quran. The Quran that we have today is exactly the same that the prophet PBUH taught the muslims back in the early day of islam, and since I do not know the errors that you mention existing in the Quran, would kindly please tell me where they are so that I can give you a full reply. As far as I know, no book in history has been so thoroughly studied and analyzed like the Quran; Muslim scholars mention the existence of at least 52 inter-disciplines of Quranic scholarship and here are a few:

 

 1-Al-Qeraat: which concerns itself with different ways the Quran is read according to different notations and some variation in word that resulted in the different chains of narrators. There are 7 canonical readings of the Quran with difference in pronunciation and some words, but the effect to the meaning of the text is very minimal. There are many books that were written about this subject most importantly is Al-Shatibi (11^th century).

 

2- Tafseer; or the explanation of the meaning of the Quran, and the books written in this are in the thousands. Some were written to explain a single verse, others to explain certain verses that have importance to islamic jurisprudence, others were to explain certain suras and finally some were written to explain the whole Quran. Of the last kind here are a few of the scholars that wrote books: Al-Tabari (the historian), Al-Zamakhshari, Al- Sayuti, Al-Saadi, Al-Alosi, Ibn Kathir, Al-Baydhawi, Al-Shinqiti etc.

 

3- Tajweed or the correct recitation of the holy Quran.

 

4- Al waqf wa Al-Ibtida; which is concerned where are the places that certain notation must be placed (this has great importance in Islamic jurispudance).

 

5- The text of the Quran; most scholars agree that the Quran should be written in the same style that it was written during the time of Uthman; i.e. if the shape of the words should be kept exactly as it was written down in the Uthmani text even if it was contrary to the standard word shape, for example, the word for prayer is written as صلاة in standard Arabic, but in Quranic text it is written like this صلوة. But the real importance of this discipline is in word that are written in both the standard Arabic and Quranic shape in Quran, identifying these word is not simple. For example, the word for mercy is رحمة in standard Arabic is found in the Quran along with its Quranic form رحمت .

 

6- The statistics of the Quran, that is how many verses, chapters, words, letters, suras etc that exist in the Quranic text, and I think that the importance of this discipline is apparent. Also, many books were written here.

 

7- And finally, Al-Nasikh wa Al-Mansookh or the Editing verses as I roughly call it, and this is by far the most important of these discipline for both muslims and non-muslims alike since it deal with jurispudance. Certain verses that served their purpose were no longer needed were �edited� by new verses since the Quran was revealed a bit by bit. The editing was either to the text (canceling old verses), the rules of the text while keeping the old verses (the stages of forbidding alcohol) or canceling the text but keeping the rule. The importance of this discipline is apparent when looking to the verses of jihad. The famous �verse of the sword� (the first ten verses of the surat AT-toubah no. 10 I believe) is the center of the issue. Some scholars allege that this verse cancelled the rule of nearly 100 other verses that have favorable to non-muslims so much so as to announce that people have only one of two choices, islam or death  and these are in the minority and non of the mainstream schools adopt this harsh interpretation. Other examples for other verses exit but I am no scholar.

 

Other disciplines exit but I only mentioned the disciplines that will answer your question on why was not the Quran been corrupted as we claim.

 

As for your question about why do muslims think that the bible is corrupted I think that the existence of 40 completely different version of the same book with the earliest of them been written nearly 70 after the alleged death the source (Jesus Christ PBUH) by a man who did not see the source is evidence enough to point out the existence of at least some corruption in the Bible and I wont say anything about the torah or the old testament.

Thank you and sorry for the length.

 

Al-Jassas ibn Murrah