Chapter 1 -

Is the Bible in its original form or has it been changed?

 

 

 

 

One of the most common claims made by Muslims is that the Bible is not in its original form today; it was changed and distorted at some point. Many Muslims may agree that the Bible in its original form was correct and accurately reported the word of God; but then it was changed so much afterwards that it cannot be trusted anymore. They have said that the Koran has replaced the writings of the Bible so we do not need the Bible anymore. The Koran represents the final truth, the correct text, so why think it worthwhile to read other writings?

   But is this the truth? Have we any reason to believe it? We will study this issue in the light of the following examples:

 

What does THE Koran say?

 

When we begin to study this matter, it is good to start with the Koran that Muslims regard as their holy book. It is significant that the Koran nowhere indicates that the Bible has been changed. On the contrary, the Koran advises us to believe in the Bible. As a matter of fact, according to the Koran, no one can even be a decent Muslim if he does not believe in these earlier writings such as the Torah, Psalms and the Gospel (4:136). The Koran indicates that in these writings now  – not only at a some point earlier in time – can be found guidance and light, and that in addition to this, later writings prove the earlier ones right. This certainly would not have been said if these writings had been regarded as fakes at that time.

   We must, therefore, understand that at an early stage of Islam, there were no doubts about these books. They were not believed to have been changed. For if the Koran advises people to believe in them, they must have been in the original and pure form in the mind of the people at that time; otherwise, we would not find this advice in the Koran.

   If we consider that these Biblical writings were changed after the time of Muhammad, we can soon rule that possibility out as being impossible. Already during the time of Muhammad, there were hundreds of thousands of whole and partial copies of the New Testament around the world, so how would anyone have been able to change and falsify all these copies consistently and simultaneously? Would they not all have had to have been collected together and changed in the same way? This is quite impossible, especially if we consider the fact that the same sacred writings were already translated into several languages and had already spread around the world.

   If we consider that the writings referred to were falsified, then we face the possibility that the Koran and the following passages are lies, and/or the Prophet Muhammad is a liar. These are serious allegations, especially if Muhammad is the seal of the prophets and the Koran is the Book of God sent from Heaven:

 

Believers, have faith in God and His apostle, in the Book He has revealed to His apostle, and in the Scriptures He formerly revealed. He that denies God, His angels, His Scriptures, His apostles, and the Last Day has gone far astray. (4:136)

 

We have revealed the Torah, in which there is guidance and light. By it the prophets who surrendered themselves judged the Jews, and so did the rabbis and the divines, according to God’s Book which had been committed to their keeping and to which they themselves were witnesses…

   After them We sent forth Jesus, the son of Mary, confirming the Torah already revealed, and gave him the Gospel, in which there is guidance and light, corroborating what was revealed before it in the Torah, a guide and an admonition to the righteous.

   Therefore let those who follow the Gospel judge according to what God has revealed therein. Evil-doers are those that do not base their judgements on God’s revelations. (5:44,46,47)

 

Say: ‘We believe in God and that which is revealed to us; in what was revealed to Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the tribes; to Moses and Jesus and the other prophets by their Lord. We make no distinction among any of them, and to God we have surrendered ourselves.’ (2:136)

 

Children of Israel!… Have faith in My revelations, which confirm your Scriptures, and do not be the first to deny them. Do not sell My revelations for a paltry price; fear Me. (2:40,41)

 

Be courteous when you argue with the People of the Book, except with those among them why do evil. Say: ‘We believe in that which is revealed to us and which was revealed to you. Our God and your God is one. To Him we surrender ourselves.’ (29:46)

 

He has revealed to you the Book with the Truth, confirming the scriptures which preceded it; for He has already revealed the Torah and the Gospel for the guidance of men, and the distinction between right and wrong. Those that deny God’s revelations shall be sternly punished; God is mighty and capable of revenge. (3:3,4)

 

- See. Also! 2:4,91,97, 101 / 3:81,84 / 4:47,162 / 5:48 / 34:31 / 40:53,54 / 46:30.

 

CAN God NOT preserve his word?

 

In the paragraph above, we mentioned that the Koran teaches that the older writings have remained unchanged, so the Koran also emphasizes that no one can change the words of God:

 

Proclaim what is revealed to you in the Book of your Lord. None can change His words. You shall find no refuge besides Him. (18:27)

 

Perfected are the words of your Lord in truth and justice. None can change His words. He hears all and knows all. (6:115)

 

Those that have faith and keep from evil shall rejoice both in this world and in the hereafter: the Word of God shall never change. That is the supreme triumph. (10:63, 64)

 

So if God is almighty, great, and strong (The Koran: 2:106 and 59:23 24), and nobody can change His words, how can the alleged change of the earlier writings be factual? By whom and how were they changed? When were they changed? Why did God permit these changes?

   If God’s will was originally to send His infallible Word, why did He send it if He knew someone would immediately change it? Why did He originally give it to us if He knew in His almighty power that people would immediately falsify His words? This is a contradiction. Both cannot be true.

   Seen from another perspective, if God’s power was too weak to preserve the truth of His Word, then why should we consider the Koran to be reliable? Is it not possible that similar changes were made in the Koran? Is it not reasonable to suspect that changes were also made in earlier Koranic writings?  These are reasonable questions, and they should be considered. The next text addresses this concern:

 

   Basil replied: “We believe in these words because we are Muslims. No one tries to study the possibility of a fake in a neutral and objective way by asking,  ‘Did God send the Old Testament, the Psalms, and the New Testament from Heaven?’.” After my replying to the affirmative, Basil continued. “Is there anyone who can change the words of God?” I reminded him of verses in the Koran that mention that we cannot change the words of God. Neither people nor angels can change them because God is omnipotent, almighty, and the most powerful, and He protects His books. To this Basil remarked, “So, nobody can change His words; so how did He allow all his holy books to be falsified, except one? How did He allow the falsification of the Old Testament that was sent to Moses? How did He allow the changing of the Psalms that were sent to David? And finally, how did God allow the changing of the Bible that was sent to Jesus (Isa)? Is it possible that 600 years later, when many generations had already lived and died with faked holy books, God were to send a Book that no one can falsify? Suddenly God becomes Omnipotent and Almighty and suddenly He preserves His Word from falsifiers! For a long time, all His books had been falsified and His servants had gone astray. How then could God – who was unable to preserve His own Book from falsifiers, changes, and spoiling – be able to preserve people who worship Him?”

   I thought about these questions and I have no solutions or an answer that would save God from the difficulty that He had caused Himself. (1)

 

THE EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THE ORIGINALITY OF TEXTS

 

Many Muslims believe that the Bible is not in its original form. They believe this despite the fact that none of them can say which passages were changed, or when and by whom the changes were made. Though their belief is not supported by facts, they continue to insist that Biblical text was changed at some point in the past.

   On the other hand, we have several sources for our confidence in the accuracy of the Holy Bible. Among them are:

 

The abundant number of manuscripts. Although the original texts of the New Testament have not survived, many copies from quite early times have been preserved, and these show that the text is the same. As a general rule, the greater the number of preserved manuscripts of a text, the easier it is to verify its original form.

   Over 24,000 Greek and other early (100 - 400 A.D.) manuscripts of the New Testament or parts of the New Testament exist. When compared with the second-longest antique text, the Iliad of Homer (of which only 643 documents survive) – these early manuscripts represent a huge sample –, almost 40 times greater than the Iliad texts. Another example, texts from the war of Caesar in Gaul, includes just 10 documents, a very small number compared with the number of New Testament documents. Still, nobody doubts the reliability of these works. The following list describes the number of copies still available (information from Christianity: Hoax or History? by Josh McDowell):

 

Work Caesar Livius Plato (tetralogies) Tacitus (annals)      Tacitus (smaller volumes) Plinius the Younger (history) Thukydides (history) Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum) Herodotos (history) Horatio Sofocles Lucretius Catullus Euripides Demosthenes Aristotle Aristophanes Homer (Iliad) New Testament

Number of copies 10 20 7 20 1 7 8 8 8 193 2 3 9 200 49 10 643 over 24,000

                       

Short interval. The time interval between an original text and its earliest copy can provide insight into the quality of its preservation. Generally, the shorter the interval between creation of an original text and its earliest copy, the more probable it is that the text was not changed.

   In this respect, the New Testament stands in good position. The average interval between creation of original works and their earliest copy is approximately 1,000 years. For New Testament books, only decades (depending on the time when the Gospel of John was written) separate the original from its copies -- a considerably shorter period than for the other texts. This short interval and the large number of preserved copies prove that New Testament texts have survived in their original form.

   The following list shows the interval between original and earliest copy of various texts of antiquity (information from Christianity: Hoax or History? by Josh McDowell):

 

Work Caesar       Livius   Plato (tetralogies) Tacitus (annals) Tacitus (smaller acts) Plinius younger (history) Thukydides (history) Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum) Herodotos (history) Horatio        Sofocles     Lucretius    Catullus      Euripides Demosthenes Aristotle      Aristophanes Homer (Iliad) New Testament

Interval between original text and earliest copy 1,000 years 1,200 years      1,000 years 900 years   750 years   1,300 years 800 years 1,300 years      900 years 1,400 years                                100 years 1,600 years                                1,500 years 1,300 years 1,400 years 1,200 years 500 years 25 years

 

The same text. New Testament texts were preserved in many old manuscripts, and there are very few differences – so few that from a practical point of view they are insignificant. When it comes to the uniformity of the texts, F.C. Grant stated:

 

To an attentive reader it is apparent, that (…) checking has not affected even one doctrine of Christian faith because of the simple reason that from the group of thousands of ways of reading the manuscripts there has not appeared even one that would require checking of the Christian doctrine. (13)

 

Also, Sir Frederic Kenyon commented on the same issue:

 

The interval of the original writing and the earliest preserved evidence is so short that it is insignificant, and the last ground for doubting that the Bible has been essentially altered is now removed. The authenticity of the books of the New Testament, that they are genuine and unchanged, can now be deemed completely confirmed. (14)

 

Quotes from the New Testament. Other evidence pointing to the originality of the books in the New Testament is the early church fathers’ quotes from its letters during celebrations of church festivals 300 years after Jesus’ life and death. Even if copies or parts of the New Testament texts had not survived, we could still reconstruct nearly the whole New Testament (except for 11 verses) from these quotes that have been preserved. According to research done by the British Museum, it is possible to find about 89,000 passages of the New Testament from among the writings of the early church. This number is very significant, and indicates how much the New Testament was used already in the early times. As to the number of these references, Sir Frederic Kenyon stated:

 

We cannot stress too much that the Bible’s – in this case especially the New Testament’s – main textual content is infallible. The number of the manuscripts of the New Testament, early translations and quotes that earlier writers of the church have used is so great that it is practically sure that for every passage that has been under suspicion, the right reading has been preserved, at the least in some of these texts. This cannot be said about any other ancient book in the world. (15)

 

THE TEXT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

 

In the previous paragraphs, we have mainly dealt with the text of the New Testament. However, there is also evidence supporting the preservation of the texts of the Old Testament as well, such as:

 

Quotes in the New Testament. One good piece of evidence is that in the New Testament there are quotes from and references to the Old Testament. There are up to several hundreds of these quotes and they appear, for example, in the words of Jesus and also in the letters by Paul.

   It is essential to realize that these hundreds of quotes prove the accuracy of the text of the Old Testament. They show that texts were identical to the original, in the same way that quotation of passages from New Testament books during celebrations of church festivals points to the accuracy of New Testament books. They show that the texts of the Old Testament – of which the most recent reached their final form about 400 years earlier – were not changed.

 

The Dead Sea Scrolls are another compelling piece of evidence in the case of text accuracy. These scrolls, the oldest of which date back to about 300 B.C., were found very near the Dead Sea. Their text does not deviate from the texts of modern Old Testament books. On the contrary, these scrolls – in which were found all the books of the Old Testament except for the Book of Esther – are quite similar to those currently used. Thus, the allegation that changes have been made to the text of the Old and/or New Testament books is false. There exists no proof for such a claim. Instead, we are supplied many material proofs that exactly the opposite is true: the texts have been faithfully preserved.