My complete debate with Sam Shamoun

[Yahya Sulaiman]

Here I will post every article from both Shamoun and myself over whether the terms "Law/Taurat" and "Gospel/Injeel" mean "Old Testament" and "New Testament" in the Koran. This will make it convenient for you, if you have the time. It may very well amuse you to watch me kick his *** all over God's green earth. Each post will contain one article.


TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. Six Reasons Why "The Law" And "The Gospel" Are Not The Old And New Testaments, by me
2. Six Points Establishing That the Quran Does Confirm the Holy Bible: Responding to Some More Muslim Polemics Against God’s Word, by Sam Shamoun
3. A Rebuttal to Answering Islam on a Previous Article, And Even More Solid Evidence of the Law And Gospel Not Being the Old And New Testaments, by me
4. Some Muslims Never Learn: A Follow Up Response to a Muslim’s Denial Regarding the Quran’s Confirmation of the Holy Bible, by Sam Shamoun
5. Article #3 on the Law And the Gospel: More of the Same, And Yet MORE Proof, by me
6. Yet Another Follow Up Response to a Muslim’s Continuing Denial Regarding the Quran’s Confirmation of the Holy Bible, by Sam Shamoun
7. Article #4 on The Law and The Gospel: The Proof Cannot Be Denied, Whatever Answering Islam May Try, by me

The last two are in italics because I haven't yet posted them.




Six Reasons Why "The Law" and "The Gospel" Are Not the Old and New Testaments

by Yahya Sulaiman, a.k.a. Ziggy Zag


Introduction

The most common argument against Islam I’ve heard from Christian missionaries and apologists is that the Koran validates the Bible, and the Bible (in many of the epistles by St. Paul the Innovator) deifies the blessed Jesus and speaks of his alleged death and resurrection as our only salvation. To support this claim, they cite verses of the Koran which say that it confirms the Law and the Gospel, and add to this claim the claim that the Law is the Old Testament and the Gospel is the New Testament. In this paper I am going to outline, in detail, why that interpretation of these words is incorrect.



The Reasons

1. Put simply, “There is no evidence of any parts of the Bible having been translated into Arabic before Islam” (1) Even so, the Koran repeatedly says or implies that the Gospel was known to the local Jews and Christians in Arabia at the time of the Koran’s writing (c.f. 3:65, 5:47, 5:63-68, 7:157).

2. There are events recorded in the Koran which involve biblical characters but are not found in the Bible, such as the account in 3:49 of the blessed Jesus making a bird out of clay and bringing it to life. This is paralleled in the Infancy of Thomas but not in the New Testament. Don’t you think it would be a little odd that “the Gospel” is confirmed in the Koran and the Koran contains this story, if “the Gospel” is the New Testament?

3. Nowhere in the New Testament is the phrase “the Gospel” used to refer to scripture. The only verse you could even make a case for in that respect is Mark 1:1, where the phrase stills seems to go by its literal meaning of “good news”.

4. In the book of Romans, the distinction between “Law” and “Gospel” is about the following of the Old Covenant and the preaching of the supposed salvation through the blessed Jesus's supposed death. Both terms refer to religious abstractions, not tangible scriptures. For example, Romans 2:15 says, “They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts.” And since this is the only place in the Bible where “the Law” and “the Gospel” are made distinct from each other, therefore there is no biblical evidence for these terms being used together to refer collectively to the older and newer scriptures.

5. Christians today do not refer to the New Testament as “the Gospel”, and as far as I know, they never have in all of history.

6. While the phrase “the Gospel” has a single, definite meaning, the phrase “the Law” is a little more ambiguous, when you take into account the information in #4 and the fact that in both Hebrew and Arabic the terms for “Torah” are the same terms used for the word “law”.


Conclusion

It would be too easy for a Christian to be able to refute the Koran simply by citing their own scripture, wouldn’t it? But as I have shown, such is not the case. The Koran does not claim to confirm the Bible at all, but only certain parts of it, and “the Gospel” isn't necessarily one of the canonical Gospels (see http://understanding-islam.org/related/text.asp?

type=question&qid=299) [Put together the two parts of the link into the search bar one after another and press enter]. It might be nice if life would always give us definite answers and have everything drawn in black and white, but such is not the case, here or elsewhere. The Koran does not confirm the Bible as a whole.



Sources

(1) Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings, with the assistance of John A. Selbie, M.A., D.D. and Louis H. Gray, M.A., Ph.D., Volume X (Picts-Sacraments), page 540. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons.

[Yahya Sulaiman]

More to come later. I'm trying to connect to Shamoun's original article but for the moment the computer "cannot find server".

[Yahya Sulaiman]

Six Points Establishing that the Quran Does Confirm the Holy Bible
Responding to some More Muslim Polemics Against God’s Word

by Sam Shamoun

PART 1 OF 2 (continued in the next post)

Another Muslim has taken it upon himself to show that the Quran does not confirm the authority, authenticity and preservation of God’s true Word, the Holy Bible. Our readers can find the claims made by this particular Muslim on this page. The author titles this particular section: "Six Reasons Why 'The Law' and 'The Gospel' Are Not the Old and New Testaments". As can be seen from the subheading, the author presents six reasons why he believes that the Quran does not uphold the integrity of the Holy Bible that is in the hands of the Jews and Christians. The author believes that the Quranic references to the Law and the Gospel do not refer either to the Old or New Testaments.

The focus of this paper will be to examine all six reasons and see whether they hold any weight. Since the translation of the Quran made by A.J. Arberry is the translation of choice by the Muslim author (see his credits section), we also will be using it here for our response, unless noted otherwise. Arberry translation is available online ([1], [2]). We will be following the versification adopted by the late Abdullah Yusuf Ali in his translation (e.g., here).

Before we proceed to our analysis of the claims of this particular Muslim, we need to first qualify our use of the Quran in substantiating the authority of the Holy Bible. We here at Answering Islam view the Quran as an early historical record highlighting the beliefs and practices of the first Muslims. As such, our use of the Quran is to document from the oldest extant Islamic writing available that the first Muslims did not believe that the Holy Bible had been tampered with. If this is the case, then the Muslims who claim to follow the example of Muhammad and his followers must also adopt the same view of the Holy Bible that they had. If it can be conclusively shown that the Quran presupposes, and that the early Muslim community including Muhammad himself held to, the integrity of the previous divinely inspired Scriptures then any Muslim who attacks the Holy Bible is no longer a true believer.

Yet this leaves the Muslims in a major dilemma, since by coming to the conclusion that the Quran does confirm the Holy Bible they would then be forced to reject Muhammad and Islam. The Quran contradicts the Holy Bible on key, essential doctrines, showing that these books cannot have originated from the same source. Since the Quran confirms the Holy Bible, while at the same time contradicting its core essential teachings, the Muslim must therefore reject the Quran. Now we realize that just because the Quran may affirm that the Holy Bible is God’s preserved Word, this doesn’t necessarily prove that the Jewish and Christian Scriptures are genuinely from God. In reality, the Bible can be a corrupt book that falsely claims to be from God, which would then mean that the author of the Quran was incorrect regarding the origin and authenticity of the previous Scriptures. This too leaves the Muslims in a dilemma!

And now to the arguments. The author begins his discussion by noting: "The most common argument against Islam I’ve heard from Christian missionaries and apologists is that the Koran validates the Bible, and the Bible (in many of the epistles by St. Paul the Innovator) deifies the blessed Jesus and speaks of his alleged death and resurrection as our only salvation. To support this claim, they cite verses of the Koran which say that it confirms the Law and the Gospel, and add to this claim the claim that the Law is the Old Testament and the Gospel is the New Testament. In this paper I am going to outline, in detail, why that interpretation of these words is incorrect."

To begin with, the blessed Apostle Paul didn’t innovate anything, but accurately passed on the true revelation of God. All the evidence is in support of Paul’s legitimacy:

www.answering-islam.org/Paul/index.html

Even some of the earliest Muslim writers spoke approvingly of him:

http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamo...s_apostles.htm
http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamo...firms_paul.htm
http://www.answering-islam.org/Respo..._of_tarsus.htm
http://www.answering-islam.org/Respo...adersreply.htm

The fact of the matter is that it was Muhammad who was the Innovator by claiming to be a true prophet and yet distorting the true teachings of God’s real spokespersons and messengers:

www.answering-islam.org/Muhammad/index.html
www.answering-islam.org/Silas/index.htm

Furthermore, Paul wasn’t the only one who spoke of the Deity of the Lord Jesus, or of his death and resurrection. The other Apostles also taught these essential truths, as did the OT prophets:

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/trin01.html
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/samejesus.html
http://www.tektonics.org/jesusclaims...claimshub.html
http://answering-islam.org/Who/index.html
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...urthgospel.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...-Ally/acts.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses/Menj/tam1.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses/Menj/divinity1.htm

And for the overwhelming historical evidence in support of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, as well as some responses to common objections, please see these articles:

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billc...ocs/tomb2.html
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billc...ocs/guard.html
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billc...cs/bodily.html
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billc...ocs/tomb1.html
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billc...cs/easter.html
http://www.leaderu.com/everystudent/...cles/yama.html
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/hallucn.html
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/loftus.html
http://www.tektonics.org/gk/graverob.html
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/pricer06.html
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/physrez.html
http://www.tektonics.org/af/ebestart.html#rez
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nttextcrit.html
http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/gospdefhub.html
http://answering-islam.org/Case/index.html
http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/documents.htm

Third, the word Law in a strict sense refers to the revelation given to Moses. Yet, it is also used in a much broader sense to refer to the entirety of God’s revelation, i.e. the Old Testament scriptures, or to specific books of the Hebrew Scriptures. In fact, Christians aren’t the only ones who believe that the Law can also refer to the Old Testament, since the first generations of Muslims also believed this:

"... Al-Bukhari recorded it from 'Abdullah bin 'Amr. It was also recorded by Al-Bukhari [up to the word] forgoes. And he mentioned the narration of 'Abdullah bin 'Amr then he said: ‘It was COMMON in the speech of our Salaf that they describe the Books of the People of the Two Scriptures AS THE TAWRAH, as some Hadiths concur. Allah knows best.’" (Tafsir Ibn Kathir [Abridged], Volume 4, [Surat Al-Ar'af to the end of Surah Yunus], abridged by a group of scholars under the supervision of Shaykh Safiur-Rahman Al-Mubarakpuri [Darussalam Publishers & Distributors, Riyadh, Houston, New York, Lahore; First Edition: May 2000], p. 179; online edition; bold and capital emphasis ours)

Another Muslim, Shibli Zaman, writes:

"What is the 'Torah'? In Jewish tradition the word 'Torah', which literally means 'teaching', is often used to describe the entire gamut of Jewish religious learning. When so used, 'Torah' refers not only to the five books of Moses, but also to the Prophets, Holy Writings, Talmud, and Midrash--In fact all religious writings from earliest times to the present." [This is the Torah, Alfred J. Kolatch]

The word "Tawrah" in the Arabic language is used for the Old Testament and all Jewish scriptures. "Zaboor" is used for the "Psalms" (from the root "Zibrah" or "Zimrah" in ancient Hebrew and Aramaic) within the Old Testament. This is how it has been understood by the Jewish nation historically and this is how it was understood by the Arabs and early Muslims. (Source; bold emphasis ours)

For more on this issue, please read the following paper:

http://answering-islam.org/Responses...lly/taurat.htm

Finally, Gospel refers to the Good News of God’s Son, that God sent forth his Son to save the world through his life, death and resurrection. What we find in the New Testament is the inscripturation of that Good News which was first made known in the OT scriptures, manifested in the advent of the Lord Jesus, and initially preached orally by Christ and his followers. More on this below.

The author continues:

The Reasons [are first that] put simply, 'There is no evidence of any parts of the Bible having been translated into Arabic before Islam' (1) Even so, the Koran repeatedly says or implies that the Gospel was known to the local Jews and Christians in Arabia at the time of the Koran’s writing (c.f. 3:65, 5:47, 5:63-68, 7:157).

And in the footnote he provides this reference for his claim:

(1) Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, edited by James Hastings, with the assistance of John A. Selbie, M.A., D.D. and Louis H. Gray, M.A., Ph.D., Volume X (Picts-Sacraments), page 540. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons.

RESPONSE: Let us quote the text in question, adding the immediate context for clarification:

From these quotations and borrowings it would not be permissible to infer that the author of the Qur’an had direct access to the Bible, Apocrypha, and Talmud; still less would it be permissible to infer from their inaccuracies that he had no such access; for the limits to inaccuracy in quotation cannot be fixed, and even in our own time, when numerous appliances make the verification of quotations exceedingly easy, we find experts in Homer confusing Andromache with Penelope, etc., and Biblical experts confusing Joseph with Daniel, etc. When verification was a cumbrous process, the standard of accuracy was far lower.

Now, the Qur’an exhibits intimate acquaintance with the books of Genesis and Exodus, out of which it reproduces numerous chapters--sometimes, it is true, mixed up with Midrashic matter; and this reproduction is often accompanied with serious inaccuracy, as when Moses is said to be sent to Pharaoh, Haman, and Qarun (Corah). In both matters its method resembles that of the NT, where, e.g., Stephen confuses Abraham with Jacob (Ac 716), and Paul uses Midrash as though it were Scripture (1 Co 104), though doubtless it differs in degree.

The latter practice seems to come from the constant association of certain comments with the text, and has its parallel in professedly scientific works of our own time, where, e.g., the statements of the Homeric poems are mixed up with inferences drawn from them by later authors. The most natural conclusion would be that the Prophet had at some time studied those two books (Genesis and Exodus) with the aids current among the Jews, and had afterwards reproduced his information without verifying his references. His acquaintance with other parts of the OT is much slighter, yet he displays some with the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings. In these cases, too, Midrash is mixed up with Biblical matter, and the attempt to reproduce the story of the scene between David and Nathan (xxxviii. 20-23) suggests that he had known the story at one time, but had afterwards forgotten its context and many important details.

The difficulty of assuming that the Biblical matter of the Qur’an was got at first hand from books lies in the fact that there is no evidence of any parts of the Bible having been translated into Arabic before Islam--even the tradition that Khadijah’s relative Waraqah translated a Gospel is obscure, and may mean merely that he copied it--and none of the Prophet having studied any language but his own, coupled with the circumstance that both the proper names and the names of religious technicalities in the Qur’an belong to some four different languages. Thus Jahannum (Gehenna) is Hebrew, Nuh (Noah) Syriac, Alyas (Elias) and Yunus (Jonas) Greek, Shaitan (Satan) Ethiopic. Of the form used for Jesus no satisfactory explanation has as yet been given. The Prophet had gone to school (vi. 105), that he had assistants (xxv. 5), or one foreign teacher (xvi. 103), and that his helpers dictated to him morning and night, though probably containing some truth, fail to account for all the facts.

Besides the error regarding Stephen and Paul (dealt with here and here), this source unabashedly states that Muhammad committed gross errors in transmitting biblical history. Hastings attributes these mistakes to Muhammad receiving information orally, without verifying the accuracy of this oral information. His statement regarding there being no evidence for Arabic versions of the Bible is written in light of this context, i.e. that this perhaps accounts for all the gross errors and inaccuracies Muhammad made regarding biblical stories and prophets.

Now we should note two things from Hastings’ comments. First, Hasting’s claim that no evidence exists for any parts of the Bible being translated in Arabic before Islam is not an ironclad statement. The most this proves is that there is NO RECORDED EVIDENCE or EXTANT DATA to show that there were Arabic versions of the Bible before Muhammad’s time. Thus far, scholars haven’t found any Arabic manuscripts that stem from before Muhammad. Yet, who knows what future discoveries may uncover, i.e. the finding of an Arabic version of one of the biblical books made before Muhammad. In fact, there are some references to biblical books being translated into Arabic right around Muhammad’s death:

The Gospels were translated into Arabic from the original Greek as well as Coptic and Syrian versions. Barhebreus writes of an Arabic translation made by a monophysite named Johannes, by the order of an Arab prince in A.D. 640. Oldest extant fragments of Arabic translations from the Greek date from the early ninth century. The oldest extant translation in the Syriac also dates back to the same time. It is likely, however, that portions of the Gospels were rendered into Arabic at a much earlier date that that mentioned above. George, a bishop of the Arabs of Mesopotamia, wrote a Scholia on the Scripture around the sixth century. But it appears that Christian teaching and preaching in the sixth century (A.D.) Arabia was done mainly by quoting from the Syriac or Ethiopic scripture and then giving a free rendering of it in Arabic ..." (Abdiyah Akbar Abdul-Haqq, Sharing Your Faith with a Muslim [Bethany House Publishers, Minneapolis MN, 1980], p. 29; bold emphasis ours)

And:

A Coptic version of the New Testament was current toward the end of the third century...The Gospels were translated into Arabic from the Greek, Syriac, and Coptic versions. Barhebraeus speaks of such a translation made between A.D. 631-640. George, bishop of Arab tribes of Mesopotamia, a friend of James of Edessa (d. A.D. 578) wrote a Scholia on the Scriptures. According to Al-Baidhawi and other Muslim commentators, their prophet received instruction from learned Christians like Warqa b. Naufal, Jubra and Yasara (Baidhawi on Sura 16:105). Also, traditions relate how the prophet used to stop and listen to these two men as they read aloud the Books of Moses (Torah) and the Gospels (Injil). Apparently there was a translation of portions of the New Testament that was extant in Mecca during the rise of Islam. Such a translation must have existed along with the full versions of the New Testament in Syriac and Syriac Lectionaries. (Ibid., p. 56; bold emphasis ours)

These quotes leave open the possibility that there may have been earlier attempts of translating the Bible into Arabic. We do know that there definitely were Arabic apocryphal Gospels available during Muhammad’s time:

In addition to translations of the canonical Gospels, there were numerous Arabic translations of the New Testament apocrypha. Some of the better known of these like Protoevangelion of James, Gospel of the Infancy, Apocalypse of Paul, and The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles were available in Arabic translation before the Koran ..." (Ibid., p. 29)

More on this below.

This leads us to our second point. Hastings himself mentioned, but tried to brush aside, the Islamic traditions which speak of the existence of an Arabic Gospel during Muhammad’s time. We present those traditions here:

Narrated 'Aisha: "The Prophet returned to Khadija while his heart was beating rapidly. She took him to Waraqa bin Naufal who was a Christian convert and used to read the Gospels in Arabic. Waraqa asked (the Prophet), 'What do you see?' When he told him, Waraqa said, 'That is the same angel whom Allah sent to the Prophet) Moses. Should I live till you receive the Divine Message, I will support you strongly.'" (Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 55, Number 605)

...Khadija then took him to Waraqa bin Naufil, the son of Khadija's paternal uncle. Waraqa had been converted to Christianity in the Pre-lslamic Period and used to write Arabic and write of the Gospel in Arabic as much as Allah wished him to write... (Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 6, Book 60, Number 478)

[quote]...Khadija then took him to Waraqa b. Naufal b. Asad b. 'Abd al-'Uzza, and he was the son of Khadija's uncle, i.e., the brother of her father. And he was the man who had embraced Christianity in the Days of Ignorance (i.e. before Islam) and he used to write books in Arabic and, therefore, wrote Injil in Arabic as God willed that he should write... (Sahih Muslim, Book 001, Number 0301)

These traditions support the fact that even though we have no extant MS evidence to indicate that there were Arabic versions of the Bible during the seventh century, this doesn’t mean that no such version existed. More importantly, there is absolutely no logical connection with the Quran confirming the Holy Bible and the latter not being available in Arabic. So this is nothing more than a red herring. Is the author trying to say that the Quran cannot be confirming the Holy Bible since there were no Arabic translations of it at Muhammad’s time? Obviously not, since he himself admits that the Quran speaks of the existence of the Gospel in Arabia during Muhammad’s life. Then why even bother mentioning that there is no (or a lack of) evidence of an Arabic translation of the Gospel during that time period?

Besides, one doesn’t need an Arabic translation of the Holy Bible in order to know its contents, since there were converts who could have informed Muhammad of what was written in the previous Scriptures. In fact, Muhammad even had some of his scribes learn the language of the Jews and Christians so as to avoid being deceived by the Jews:

Narrated Zayd ibn Thabit: "The Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) ordered me (to learn the writing of the Jews), so I learnt for him the writing of the Jews. He said: 'I swear by Allah, I do not trust Jews in respect of writing for me.' So I learnt it, and only a fortnight passed that. I mastered it. I would write for him when he wrote (to them), and read to him when something was written to him." (Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 25, Number 3638)

Narrated Zayd ibn Thabit: "Allah's Messenger (peace be upon him) ordered him to learn Syriac. One version says he ordered him to learn the writing of the Jews, saying, 'I do not trust the Jews about what is written.' He said he learned it in less than half a month, and then wrote the Prophet's communications to the Jews and read what they had written when they wrote to him." Transmitted by Tirmidhi. (Tirmidhi Hadith, Number 1213– ALIM CD-ROM Version)

Since there were men like Zaid who could read the language of the Scriptures, then there was no need for Arabic translations of the Holy Bible. In fact, according to noted Muslim historian and commentator, al-Tabari, Muhammad even commanded Zayd to study the Jewish Scriptures:

Al-Waqidi says: "In this year, the Messenger of God married Umm Salamah bt. Abi Umayyah and consummated the marriage in Shawwal (which began March 6, 626). In this year also, the Messenger of God commanded Zayd b. Thabit to study the Book of the Jews, saying, "I fear that they may change my Book." (The History of Al-Tabari--The Foundation of the Community, translated by W. M. McDonald, annotated by W. Montgomery Watt [State University of New York Press, Albany 1987], Volume VII, p. 167)

But it seems that even this precaution didn’t prevent Muhammad from confusing biblical material with non-biblical traditions, since the Quran is filled with references from the Talmud and Apocryphal myths and fables. For more on this subject, please read the following articles:

http://answering-islam.org/Responses...lah/borrow.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Silas/borrowing.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Silas/saifdebate1.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Silas/saifdebate2.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Quran/Sources/index.html

But all this is beside the point. The lack of evidence for Arabic translations of the Bible does nothing to refute those Quranic passages that say it was "sent down" to confirm the previous revelation. It even says that it was sent down to confirm them in Arabic!

He has revealed to you the Book with truth, VERIFYING that which IS before it, and He revealed the Taurat and the Injeel aforetime, A GUDIANCE FOR THE PEOPLE, and He sent the Furqan. Surely they who disbelieve in the communications of Allah they shall have a severe chastisement; and Allah is Mighty, the Lord of retribution. S. 3:3-4 Shakir

Yet before it was the Book of Moses for a model and a mercy; and this is a Book CONFIRMING, in Arabic tongue, to warn the evildoers, and good tidings to the good-doers. S. 46:12

{Note: This last passage stating that the Quran confirms in Arabic the previous Scriptures presupposes that there were no known Arabic versions of the Bible, agreeing with what the author mentioned above. Yet this poses another problem, namely, that these statements contradict the Islamic traditions which specifically mention Waraqa translating the Gospel in Arabic! We leave it to the author to fix this mess.}

2. There are events recorded in the Koran which involve biblical characters but are not found in the Bible, such as the account in 3:49 of the blessed Jesus making a bird out of clay and bringing it to life. This is paralleled in the Infancy of Thomas but not in the New Testament. Don’t you think it would be a little odd that "the Gospel" is confirmed in the Koran and the Koran contains this story, if "the Gospel" is the New Testament?

RESPONSE: The author’s argument here only proves that Muhammad was mistaken, and confused the genuine revelation of the Lord Jesus with the apocryphal fables and myths which were written centuries later. The author is assuming that Muhammad was a true prophet and so must have been confirming a genuine event in Jesus’ life. In point of fact, that Muhammad even quoted this apocryphal legend actually proves that he wasn’t a genuine prophet of God. It shows that he tried to convince his contemporaries that he was a prophet by citing the legends and myths which they were believing. Little did he realize that this would actually backfire against him since it proves that he wasn’t actually God’s spokesperson!

Furthermore, even if we take for granted that the Gospel that the Quran confirms is the infancy Gospel of Thomas, then the author would still be left with problems. This Gospel is thoroughly Orthodox in its Christology, affirming the Deity of the Lord Jesus, contradicting the Quran. Since there are three versions of the infancy Gospel, we will quote from all three:

The stories of Thomas the Israelite, the Philosopher, concerning the works of the Childhood of the Lord.

I. I, Thomas the Israelite, tell unto you, even all the brethren that are of the Gentiles, to make known unto you the works of the childhood of our Lord Jesus Christ and his mighty deeds, even all that he did when he was born in our land: whereof the beginning is thus:

II. 1 This little child Jesus when he was five years old was playing at the ford of a brook: and he gathered together the waters that flowed there into pools, and made them straightway clean, and commanded them by his word alone. 2 And having made soft clay, he fashioned thereof twelve sparrows. And it was the Sabbath when he did these things (or made them). And there were also many other little children playing with him.

3 And a certain Jew when he saw what Jesus did, playing upon the Sabbath day, departed straightway and told his father Joseph: Lo, thy child is at the brook, and he hath taken clay and fashioned twelve little birds, and hath polluted the Sabbath day. 4 And Joseph came to the place and saw: and cried out to him, saying: Wherefore doest thou these things on the Sabbath, which it is not lawful to do? But Jesus clapped his hands together and cried out to the sparrows and said to them: Go! and the sparrows took their flight and went away chirping. 5 And when the Jews saw it they were amazed, and departed and told their chief men that which they had seen Jesus do.

VII. 1 Now when Zacchaeus the teacher heard such and so many allegories of the first letter spoken by the young child, he was perplexed at his answer and his instruction being so great, and said to them that were there: Woe is me, wretch that I am, I am confounded: I have brought shame to myself by drawing to me this young child. 2 Take him away, therefore I beseech thee, my brother Joseph: I cannot endure the severity of his look, I cannot once make clear my (or his) word. This young child is not earthly born: this is one that can tame even fire: be like this is one begotten before the making of the world. What belly bare this, what womb nurtured it? I know not. Woe is me, O my friend, he putteth me from my sense, I cannot follow his understanding. I have deceived myself, thrice wretched man that I am: I strove to get me a disciple and I am found to have a master. 3 I think, O my friends, upon my shame, for that being old I have been overcome by a young child;- and I am even ready to faint and to die because of the boy, for I am not able at this present hour to look him in the face. And when all men say that I have been overcome by a little child, what have I to say? and what can I tell concerning the lines of the first letter whereof he spake to me? I am ignorant, O my friends, for neither beginning nor end of it (or him) do I know. 4 Wherefore I beseech thee, my brother Joseph, take him away unto thine house: for he is somewhat great, whether god or angel or what I should call him, I know not.

VIII. 1 And as the Jews were counselling Zacchaeus, the young child laughed greatly and said: Now let those bear fruit that were barren (Gr. that are thine) and let them see that were blind in heart. I am come from above that I may curse them, and call them to the things that are above, even as he commanded which hath sent me for your sakes ...

IX. 1 Now after certain days Jesus was playing in the upper story of a certain house, and one of the young children that played with him fell down from the house and died. And the other children when they saw it fled, and Jesus remained alone. 2 And the parents of him that was dead came and accused him that he had cast him down. (And Jesus said: I did not cast him down) but they reviled him still. 3 Then Jesus leaped down from the roof and stood by the body of the child and cried with a loud voice and said: Zeno (for so was his name called), arise and tell me, did I cast thee down? And straightway he arose and said: Nay, Lord, thou didst not cast me down, but didst raise me up. And when they saw it they were amazed: and the parents of the child glorified God for the sign which had come to pass, and worshipped Jesus.

X. 1 After a few days, a certain young man was cleaving wood in the neighbourhood (MSS. corner), and the axe fell and cut in sunder the sole of his foot, and losing much blood he was at the point to die. 2 And when there was a tumult and concourse, the young child Jesus also ran thither, and by force passed through the multitude, and took hold upon the foot of the young man that was smitten, and straightway it was healed. And he said unto the young man: Arise now and cleave the wood and remember me. But when the multitude saw what was done they worshipped the young child, saying: Verily the spirit of God dwelleth in this young child.

XVII. 1 And after these things, in the neighbourhood of Joseph, a little child fell sick and died, and his mother wept sore. And Jesus heard that there w as great mourning and trouble and he ran quickly and found the child dead: and he touched his breast and said: I say unto thee, Child, die not, but live and be with thy mother. And straightway it looked up and laughed. And he said to the woman: Take him up and give him milk, and remember me. 2 And the multitude that stood by saw it and marvelled, and said: Of a truth this young child is either a god or an angel of God; for every word of his is a perfect work. And Jesus departed thence, and was playing with other children.

XIX. 1 And when he was twelve years old his parents went according to the custom unto Jerusalem to the feast of the passover with their company: and after the passover they returned to go unto their house. And as they returned the child Jesus went back to Jerusalem; but his parents supposed that he was in their company. 2 And when they had gone a day's journey, they sought him among their kinsfolk, and when they found him not, they were troubled, and returned again to the city seeking him. And after the third day they found him in the temple sitting in the midst of the doctors and hearing and asking them questions. And all men paid heed to him and marvelled how that being a young child he put to silence the elders and teachers of the people, expounding the heads of the law and the parables of the prophets. 3 And his mother Mary came near and said unto him: Child, wherefore hast thou so done unto us? behold we have sought thee sorrowing. And Jesus said unto them: Why seek ye me? know ye not that I must be in my Father's house? 4 But the scribes and Pharisees said: Art thou the mother of this child? and she said: I am. And they said unto her: Blessed art thou among women because God hath blessed the fruit of thy womb. For such glory and such excellence and wisdom we have neither seen nor heard at any time. 5 And Jesus arose and followed his mother and was subject unto his parents: but his mother kept in mind all that came to pass. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and grace. Unto him be glory for ever and ever. Amen. (Gospel of Thomas Greek Text A; Source)

The Writing of the holy Apostle Thomas concerning the conversation of the Lord in his childhood.

I. I, Thomas the Israelite, have thought it needful to make known unto all the brethren that are of the Gentiles the mighty works of childhood which our Lord Jesus Christ wrought when he was conversant in the body, and came unto the city of Nazareth in the fifth year of his age.

III. 1 Now Jesus made of that clay twelve sparrows: and it was the Sabbath day. And a child ran and told Joseph, saying: Behold, thy child playeth about the brook, and hath made sparrows of the clay, which is not lawful. 2 And he when he heard it went and said to the child: Wherefore doest thou so and profaneth the Sabbath? But Jesus answered him not, but looked upon the sparrows and said: Go ye, take your flight, and remember me in your life. And at the word they took flight and went up into the air. And when Joseph saw it he was astonished.

VI. 1 And on the morrow he took him by the hand and led him to a certain teacher, Zacchaeus by name, and said unto him: Take this child, O master, and teach him letters. And the other said: Deliver him unto me, my brother, and I will teach him the scripture, and I will persuade him to bless all men and not to curse them. 2 And when Jesus heard that he laughed and said unto them: Ye speak that ye know, but I have knowledge more than you, for I am before the worlds. And I know when the fathers of your fathers were begotten, and I know how many are the years of your life. And every one that heard it was amazed. 3 And again saith Jesus unto them: Marvel ye because I said unto you that I know how many are the years of your life? Of a truth I know when the world was created. Behold, now ye believe me not: when ye shall see my cross then will ye believe that I speak truth. And they were astonished when they heard all these things.

XI. 1 And when he came to the eighth year of his age Joseph was required by a certain rich man to build him a bed, for he was a carpenter. And he went forth into the field to gather wood, and Jesus also went with him. And he cut two beams of wood and wrought them with the axe, and set one beside the other and measured and found it too short; and when he saw that he was vexed and sought to find another. 2 But Jesus seeing it saith unto him: Set these two together so that the ends of both be even. And Joseph, though he was perplexed concerning this, what the child should mean, did that which was commanded. And he saith again unto him: Take firm hold of the short beam. And Joseph took hold on it, marvelling. Then Jesus also took hold of the other end and pulled the [other] end thereof and made it also equal to the other beam, and saith unto Joseph: Be no more vexed, but do thy work without hindrance. And he when he saw it was exceedingly amazed and said within himself: Blessed am I for that God hath given me such a son. 3 And when they departed into the city Joseph told it to Mary, and she when she heard and saw the wonderful mighty works of her son rejoiced, glorifying HIM with the Father and the Holy Spirit now and for ever and world without end. Amen. (Gospel of Thomas Greek Text B; Source)

IV. What Jesus did in the city of Nazareth.

It is a glorious work for Thomas the Israelite (Ismaelite) the apostle of the Lord to tell of the works of Jesus after he came out of Egypt unto Nazareth. Hear (understand) therefore all of you beloved brethren, the signs which the Lord Jesus did when he was in the city of Nazareth: as it is said in the first chapter.

2 Again, he took of the clay which came of that pool and made thereof to the number of twelve sparrows. Now it was the Sabbath day when Jesus did this among the children of the Hebrews: and the children of the Hebrews went and said unto Joseph his father: Lo, thy son was playing with us and he took clay and made sparrows which it was not right to do upon the Sabbath, and he hath broken it. And Joseph went to the child Jesus, and said unto him: Wherefore hast thou done this which it was not right to do on the Sabbath? But Jesus spread forth (opened) his hands and commanded the sparrows, saying: Go forth into the height and fly: ye shall not meet death at any man's hands. And they flew and began to cry out and praise almighty God. But when the Jews saw what was done they marvelled and departed, proclaiming the signs which Jesus did.

VI. How Jesus was treated by the Master.

2 But when Jesus heard Joseph saying these things, he said unto Zacheus: Verily, O master, all things that proceed out of my mouth are true. And I am before all men, and I am Lord, but ye are the children of strangers: for unto me is given the glory of them (or of the worlds) but unto you nothing is given: for I am before all worlds. And I know how many are the years of thy life, and when thou shalt raise that standard (i. e. the cross) whereof my father spake, then shalt thou understand that all things that proceed out of my mouth are true.

3 But the Jews which stood by and heard the words which Jesus spake, marvelled and said: Now have we seen such wonders and heard such words from this child, as we have never heard neither shall hear from any other man, neither from the chief priests nor the doctors nor the Pharisees. 4 Jesus answered and said unto them: Wherefore marvel ye? Do ye think it a thing incredible that I have told you the truth? I know when ye were born, and your fathers: and if I should say more unto you, I know when the world was created, and who sent me unto you.

8 Now when Zacheus saw that he so divided the first letter he was confounded at such names, and at his teaching, and cried out and said: Woe is me, for I am confounded: I have hired shame unto myself by means of this child. And he said unto Joseph: I beseech thee earnestly, my brother, take him away from me: for I cannot look upon his face nor hear his mighty words. For this child is able to subdue the fire and to restrain the sea, for he was born before the worlds. What womb bare him or what manner of mother brought him up I know not. 10 O my friends, I am astray in my wits, I am mocked, wretched man that I am. I said that I had a disciple, but he is found to be my master. I cannot overcome my shame, for I am old, and I cannot find wherewithal to answer him, so that I am like to fall into heavy sickness and depart out of the world or go away from this city, for all men have seen my shame, that a child hath ensnared me. What can I answer any man, or what words can I speak, for he hath overcome me at the first letter! I am confounded, O ye my friends and acquaintances, and I can find neither first nor last to answer him. 11 And now I beseech thee brother Joseph, remove him from me and take him unto thine house, for either he is a sorcerer or a god (Lord) or an angel, and what to say I know not.

VII. How Jesus raised up a boy.

1 Now on a day, when Jesus climbed up upon an house with the children, he began to play with them: but one of the boys fell down through the door out of the upper chamber and died straightway. And when the children saw it they fled all of them, but Jesus remained alone in the house. 2 And when the parents of the child which had died came they spake against Jesus saying: Of a truth thou madest him fall. But Jesus said: I never made him fall: nevertheless they accused him still. Jesus therefore came down from the house and stood over the dead child and cried with a loud voice, calling him by his name: Zeno, Zeno, arise and say if I made thee fall. And on a sudden he arose and said: Nay, Lord. And when his parents saw this great miracle which Jesus did, they glorified God, and worshipped Jesus.

VIII. How Jesus healed the foot of a boy.

1 And after a few days a certain boy of that village was cleaving wood, and smote his foot. 2 And when much people came unto him, Jesus also came with them. And he touched the foot which was hurt, and forthwith it was made whole. And Jesus said unto him: Arise and cleave the wood and remember me. But when the multitude that were with him saw the signs which were done they worshipped Jesus and said: of a truth we believe surely that thou art God.

IX. How Jesus bare water in his cloak.

1 And when Jesus was six years old, his mother sent him to draw water. And when Jesus was come unto the well there was much people there and they brake his pitcher. 2 But he took the cloak which he had upon him and filled it with water and brought it to Mary his mother. And when his mother saw the miracle that Jesus did she kissed him and said: Lord, hearken unto me and save my son.

XV. How Jesus raised up a boy.

After a few days a child that was his neighbour died, and his mother mourned for him sore; and when Jesus heard, he went and stood over the child, and smote him on the breast and said: Child, I say unto thee, die not, but live. And immediately the child arose: and Jesus said unto the mother of the child: Take up thy son and give him suck, and remember me. 2 But the multitudes when they saw that miracle said: Of a truth this child is from heaven, for now hath he set free many souls from death and hath saved all them that hoped in him.

All these things have I, Thomas the Israelite (Ismaelite), written and recorded for the Gentiles and for our brethren, and likewise many other things which Jesus did, which was born in the land of Juda. Behold, the house of Israel hath seen all these from the first even unto the last, even how great signs and wonders Jesus did among them, which were good exceedingly. And this is he which shall judge the world according to the will of his Father, immortal and invisible, as the holy Scripture declareth and as the prophets have testified of his works among all the peoples of Israel: for he is the Son of God throughout all the World. And unto him belongeth all glory and honour everlastingly, who liveth and reigneth God, world without end. Amen. (Gospel of Thomas Latin Text; Source)

In light of the foregoing, does the author want to say that this is the Gospel which the Quran confirms? And is the author now suggesting that the Gospel isn’t simply what God gave Jesus to preach (the common Muslim view) but also includes the very life and deeds of Jesus as well? The author obviously doesn’t believe this since he writes elsewhere:

...Note that: the real Gospel was one Jesus (peace be on him) himself wrote, not one of the third person accounts you have in the Bible...

Thus, according to the author, the Gospel is what Jesus wrote down. Then why is the Quran quoting a Gospel not written by Jesus but by pseudonymous authors writing centuries after Christ's death, resurrection and ascension into heaven? No matter how he answers these questions, the author is left with major problems.

[Yahya Sulaiman]

PART 2 OF 2

3. Nowhere in the New Testament is the phrase "the Gospel" used to refer to scripture. The only verse you could even make a case for in that respect is Mark 1:1, where the phrase stills seems to go by its literal meaning of "good news".

4. In the book of Romans, the distinction between "Law" and "Gospel" is about the following of the Old Covenant and the preaching of the supposed salvation through the blessed Jesus's [sic] supposed death. Both terms refer to religious abstractions, not tangible scriptures. For example, Romans 2:15 says, "They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts." And since this is the only place in the Bible where "the Law" and "the Gospel" are made distinct from each other, therefore there is no biblical evidence for these terms being used together to refer collectively to the older and newer scriptures.

RESPONSE: The author’s comments are brimming with errors. First, Romans 2:15 is indeed referring to the Law given to Moses, as the immediate context shows:

For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

But if you call yourself a Jew and rely upon the law and boast of your relation to God and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed in the law, and if you are sure that you are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth--you then who teach others, will you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law?

For, as it is written, ‘The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.’ Circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law; but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then those who are physically uncircumcised but keep the law will condemn you WHO HAVE THE WRITTEN CODE and circumcision but break the law." Romans 2:13-27

What Paul is saying in context is that the moral code revealed in the Law of Moses has also been revealed within the hearts and consciences of the Gentiles, so that they too know the good and bad and will be judged because of it. Second, the Old Covenant does in fact refer to "tangible scriptures" as the following passage proves:

But if the ministry that produced death, carved in letters on stone tablets, came with glory so that the Israelites could not keep their eyes fixed on the face of Moses because of the glory of his face (a glory that was fading away), how much more glorious will the ministry of the Spirit be? For if there was glory in the ministry that produced condemnation, how much more does the ministry that produces righteousness excel in glory! For indeed, what had been glorious now has no glory because of the tremendously greater glory of what replaced it. For if what was fading away came with glory, how much more has what remains come in glory!

Therefore, since we have such a hope, we behave with great boldness, and not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from staring at the end of the glory that was fading away. But their minds were closed. For to this very day, the same veil remains when they HEAR THE OLD COVENANT (diatheekees) READ. It has not been removed because only in Christ is it taken away. But until this very day whenever Moses IS READ, a veil lies over their minds, but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed." 2 Corinthians 3:7-16 NET

The Greek word for Covenant (diatheekees) is the same word where we get Testament. In fact, notice how the KJV renders the above verse:

But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the OLD TESTAMENT; which vail is done away in Christ. 2 Corinthians 3:17

Here, Paul refers to the Hebrew Scriptures, specifically the tablets containing the Ten Commandments, as the Old Covenant/Testament! Third, a careful reading of Paul’s words will show that he was contrasting the written Law with the Gospel which he was now setting forth in his epistle:

What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all; for I have already charged that all men, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, AS IT IS WRITTEN: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have gone wrong; no one does good, not even one.’ ‘Their throat is an open grave, they use their tongues to deceive.’ ‘The venom of asps is under their lips.’ ‘Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.’ ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood, in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they do not know.’ ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes.’

Now we know that whatever THE LAW SAYS it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For no human being will be justified in his sight by works of the law, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus." Romans 3:9-26

After speaking of what is written in the Law, Paul proceeds to quote a litany of OT texts to support his position! This shows that Law here definitely refers to the Hebrew Scriptures, to the inspired writings. And Paul’s entire purpose of writing Romans was to present the Gospel of Jesus Christ through written means! Thus, Law and Gospel do refer to tangible Scriptures. Here are some other references supporting the point that the Gospel does at times refer to the written form of the proclamation of Christ:

At all times we are obligated to thank God for you, brothers who are loved by the Lord, because God chose you to be the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through faith in the truth. With this purpose in mind, he called you through OUR PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL so that you would obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm, and cling to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or BY OUR LETTER." 2 Thessalonians 2:13-15

Paul refers to the Gospel that was passed down both orally and through writing. The Apostle John wrote:

Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not recorded in this book. But these have been recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and so that through believing you may have life in his name." John 20:30-31

The very purpose of the Gospel is to lead people to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God's power for the salvation of everyone who believes, of the Jew first and of the Greek as well. For in it God's righteousness is being revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous will live by faith.’" Romans 1:16-17

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message about the cross is nonsense to those who are being destroyed, but it is God's power to us who are being saved... Jews ask for signs, and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. He is a stumbling block to Jews and nonsense to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is God's power and God's wisdom." 1 Corinthians 1:17-18, 22-24

Since this was John’s stated purpose, to preach faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, this essentially means that John knew he was writing down the very Gospel of God!

Christians are not the only ones who understand that John was writing down the Gospel, since there have been a few Muslims who also believed this. For instance, the first Muslim biographer, Ibn Ishaq, quoted the Gospel of John and claimed that this was the very same Gospel given to Jesus:

Among the things which have reached me about what Jesus the Son of Mary stated in the Gospel which he received from God for the followers of the Gospel, in applying a term to describe the apostle of God, is the following. It is extracted FROM WHAT JOHN THE APOSTLE SET DOWN FOR THEM WHEN HE WROTE THE GOSPEL FOR THEM FROM THE TESTAMENT OF JESUS SON OF MARY: 'He that hateth me hateth the Lord. And if I had not done in their presence works which none other before me did, they had not sin: but from now they are puffed up with pride and think that they will overcome me and also the Lord. But the word that is in the law must be fulfilled, "They hated me without a cause" (i.e. without reason). But when the Comforter has come whom God will send to you from the Lord's presence, and the spirit of truth which will have gone forth from the Lord's presence he (shall bear) witness of me and ye also, because ye have been with me from the beginning. I have spoken unto you about this that ye should not be in doubt.’ The Munahhemana (God bless and preserve him!) in Syriac is Muhammad; in Greek he is the paraclete." (Alfred Guillaume, Life Of Muhammad [Oxford University Press, Karachi, tenth impression 1995], pp. 103-104; bold and capital emphasis ours)

Ibn Ishaq was quoting John 15:23-16:1, and had no qualms identifying this Gospel, from which the citation was taken, as the very Gospel of Jesus! Fourth, the Gospel wasn’t written down for the first time during the life of the Apostles and their companions. Both Jesus and his followers taught that the Gospel of Christ was already revealed within the pages of the Old Testament Scriptures:

And he said to them, ‘O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them IN ALL THE SCRIPTURES the things concerning himself." Luke 24:25-27

"Then he said to them, ‘These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that EVERYTHING WRITTEN ABOUT ME IN the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus IT IS WRITTEN, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.’" Luke 24:44-48

"From Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who according to the flesh was a descendant of David, and who according to the spirit of holiness was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead - Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 1:1-4

"Now I'm making known to you, brothers, the gospel that I proclaimed to you, which you accepted, on which you have taken your stand, and by which you are also being saved if you hold firmly to the message I proclaimed to you - unless, of course, your faith was worthless. For I passed on to you the most important points of what I received: Christ died for our sins in keeping with the Scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day in keeping with the Scriptures - and is still alive!" 1 Corinthians 15:1-4

"Because the Scripture saw ahead of time that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, it announced the gospel to Abraham beforehand when it said, ‘Through you all nations will be blessed.’" Galatians 3:8

"The prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired about this salvation; they inquired what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things which have now been announced to you by those who preached the good news to you through the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look." 1 Peter 1:10-12

Again, we are not the only ones to see it this way, since there are some Muslims who agree. Ibn Ishaq, commenting on surah 2:113, wrote:

When the Christians of Najran came to the apostle the Jewish rabbis came also and they disputed one with the other before the apostle. Rafi said, 'you have no standing,' and he denied Jesus and the Gospel; and a Christian said to the Jews, 'you have no standing' and he denied that Moses was a prophet and denied the Torah. So God sent down concerning them: 'The Jews say the Christians have no standing; and the Christians say the Jews have no standing, yet they read the Scriptures. They do not know on the day of resurrection concerning their controversy,' i.e., each one reads in his book the confirmation of what he denies, so that the Jews deny Jesus though they have the Torah in which God required them by the word of Moses to hold Jesus true; while in the Gospel is what Jesus brought in confirmation of Moses and the Torah he brought from God: So each one denies what is in the hand of the other. (Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad, p. 258; bold and italic emphasis ours)

Renowned exegete Ibn Kathir agrees. He commented on S. 61:6, saying:

Isa said, "The Tawrah CONVEYED THE GLAD TIDINGS OF MY COMING, and my coming CONFIRMS THE TRUTH OF THE TAWRAH. I convey the glad tidings of the Prophet who will come after me. He is the unlettered, Makkan, Arab Prophet and Messenger, Ahmad." (Tafsir Ibn Kathir (Abridged), Volume 9, Surat Al-Jathiyah to the end of Surat Al-Munafiqun, abridged under a group of scholars under the supervision of Shaykh Safiur-Rahman Al-Mubarakpuri [Darussalam Publishers & Distributors Riyadh, Houston, New York, London, Lahore; First Edition: September 2000], p. 617; online edition; bold and capital emphasis ours)

Modern Muslim scholar and writer Mahmoud M. Ayoub quotes another renowned Muslim commentator, Ar-Razi:

Razi then raises the following question: ‘It may be argued that latter statement contradicts the one before it. This is because it clearly indicates that he came to make lawful some of the things which were unlawful in the Torah. This would mean that his legislation was contrary to that of the Torah, which would contradict his saying, "I shall confirm the Torah which was before me."’ Razi, however, holds that ‘there is actually no contradiction between the two statements because confirming the Torah can only signify the belief that all that is in it is true and right. If, moreover, the second purpose [of Jesus’ apostleship] is not mentioned in the Torah, his making lawful some of the things which are unlawful in it would not contradict his having confirmed the Torah. Furthermore, SINCE THE TORAH CONTAINS PROPHECIES CONCERNING THE COMING OF JESUS, then neither his coming nor his law would be contrary to the Torah.’ (Ayoub, The Quran and Its Interpreters, The House of Imran [State University of New York Press, Albany 1992], Volume II, p. 150; bold and capital emphasis ours)

Thus, if the Torah contains prophecies of the Lord Jesus, then this means that the prophets like Moses knew of the Gospel which Jesus would preach and pass on!

Finally, it is irrelevant whether the New Testament uses the term Gospel to refer to the writings found within its corpus. What is relevant is that the Quran and early Muslim traditions speak of the Torah and the Gospel as something known and available during Muhammad’s time:

And We sent, following in their footsteps, Jesus son of Mary, confirming the Torah before him and We gave to him the Gospel, wherein IS guidance and light, and confirming the Torah before it, as a guidance and an admonition unto the godfearing. So let the People of the Gospel judge according to what God has sent down THEREIN. Whosoever judges not according to what God has sent down--they are the ungodly. S. 5:46-47

those who follow the Messenger, the Prophet of the common folk, whom they find WRITTEN down (maktooban) with them in the Torah and the Gospel, bidding them to honour, and forbidding them dishonour, making lawful for them the good things and making unlawful for them the corrupt things, and relieving them of their loads, and the fetters that were upon them." S. 7:157

Narrated Khaythamah ibn AbuSabrah: "I came to Medina and asked Allah to grant me a good companion to sit with and He granted me AbuHurayrah. I sat with him and told him I had asked Allah to grant me a good companion to sit with and that he suited me. He asked where I came from and I replied that I belonged to al-Kufah and had come desiring and seeking good. He then said, 'Do you not have among you Sa'd ibn Malik whose prayers are answered, Ibn Mas'ud who looked after the water of Allah's Messenger (peace be upon him) for ablution, and his sandals, Hudhayfah who was the confident of Allah's Messenger (peace be upon him) confidant, Ammar to whom Allah gave protection from the Devil at the tongue of His Prophet (peace be upon him), and Salman who was a believer in the TWO BOOKS?' meaning THE INJIL and the Qur'an. Tirmidhi transmitted it. (Tirmidhi Hadith, Number 1651– ALIM CD-ROM Version)

Narrated Jabir ibn Abdullah: Umar ibn al-Khattab brought to Allah's Messenger (peace be upon him) A COPY OF THE TORAH and said: "Allah's Messenger, THIS IS A COPY OF THE TORAH." He (Allah's Messenger) kept quiet and he (Umar) began to read it. The (colour) of the face of Allah's Messenger (peace be upon him) underwent a change, whereupon AbuBakr said: "Would that your mother mourn you, don't you see the face of Allah's Messenger?" Umar saw the face of Allah's Messenger (peace be upon him) and said: "I seek refuge with Allah from the wrath of Allah and the wrath of His Messenger. We are well pleased with Allah as Lord, with Islam as religion, and with Muhammad as Prophet." Whereupon Allah's Messenger (peace be upon him) said: "By Him in Whose hand is the life of Muhammad, even if Moses were to appear before you and you were to follow him, leaving me aside, you would certainly stray into error; for if (Moses) were alive (now), and he found my prophetical ministry, he would have definitely followed me."
Transmitted by Darimi. (Tirmidhi Hadith, Number 69– ALIM CD-ROM Version)

Notice that even though Muhammad was upset at Umar for reading the Torah, he never says that what Umar had in his possession was corrupted. He only states that his revelation has superseded Moses’ revelation. Here was a golden opportunity for Muhammad to have called into question the textual integrity of the Torah, but doesn’t, showing that Muhammad did not believe in the textual corruption of the Holy Bible.

Narrated Salman al-Farsi: "I READ IN THE TORAH that the blessing of food consists in ablution before it. So I mentioned it to the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him). He said: 'The blessing of food consists in ablution before it and ablution after it.'" (Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 27, Number 3752)

Now the questions that our Muslim author must answer are, What Torah and Gospel are these passages referring to? What were the contents of the Torah and Gospel which Muhammad knew and which his contemporaries had in their possession? Can he provide documentary evidence that these books were different from what we hold in our possession today, or differed from what was written before Muhammad’s time? The obvious answer to all of the above is that the Torah and the Gospel, which both Jews and Christians had during the time of Muhammad, are no different from what we hold in our possession today, i.e. the Holy Bible. In fact, the traditions also mention individuals who were reading the book of Psalms:

... Abu 'Abdullah said: The word Saba'a means "The one who has deserted his old religion and embraced a new religion." Abul 'Ailya said, "The Sabis are a sect of people of the Scripture who recite the Book of Psalms." (Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 7, Number 340)

Again, the only Psalms which have always been in the possession of the Jews and Christians are those found in the Holy Bible!

5. Christians today do not refer to the New Testament as "the Gospel", and as far as I know, they never have in all of history.

RESPONSE: As we stated above, if the New Testament is the inscripturation of the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ given to his Church, the inspired record of the Gospel God gave to the true believers, then the New Testament can be rightly called the Gospel. It seems that the author is operating under the erroneous assumption that the Quran confirms ONLY the books which it explicitly mentions such as the pages of Abraham, the Torah, the Psalms of David, and the Gospel, nothing else. This is wrong for several reasons. In the first place, the Quran specifically claims that there are many messengers which it does not mention:

"And messengers We have mentioned unto thee before and messengers We have not mentioned unto thee; and Allah spake directly unto Moses;" S. 4:164 Pickthall

Verily We sent messengers before thee, among them those of whom We have told thee, and some of whom We have not told thee; and it was not given to any messenger that he should bring a portent save by Allah's leave, but when Allah's commandment cometh (the cause) is judged aright, and the followers of vanity will then be lost. S. 40:78 Pickthall

According to Islamic theology, messengers are given inspired books to pass on to others. Renowned Muslim exegete Al-Zamakhshari, considered to be one of Islam’s premiere commentators, while commenting on surah 22:52, wrote:

We have never sent any messenger or prophet: (This) is a clear proof that a distinction exists between a messenger (rasul) and a prophet (nabi). (It is related) from the Prophet that he was asked about the prophets, whereupon he said: ‘(There are) one hundred and twenty-four thousand.’ When he was then asked how many messengers there were among them, he answered: ‘The great host of three hundred and thirteen.’ The distinction between the two is that a messenger is one of the prophets to whom, together with the verification miracle (mu‘jiza), the Book is sent down. A prophet, on the other hand, who is not a messenger, is one to whom no book is sent down, but who was commanded only to restrain the people on the basis of the earlier revealed law (shari‘a). (Helmet Gätje, The Qur'an and its Exegesis [Oneworld Publications, Oxford 1996], p. 54; bold emphasis ours)

(Interestingly, the title Apostle corresponds to the Arabic word for Messenger, meaning that Paul and the other followers of Christ are actually Messengers of God. They are not merely followers of Jesus, but inspired spokespersons of God Almighty, and it is little wonder that some of these men wrote inspired books!)

If this is the case, then this means that there are many more revealed books than those mentioned within the Quran, which opens the door for Muslims to accept the possibility that the NT books are authoritative Scripture. The Quran even warns those who reject what God sent his Messengers with:

Hast thou not regarded those who dispute concerning the signs of God, how they are turned about? Those who cry lies to the Book and that wherewith We sent Our Messengers--soon they will know! When the fetters and chains are on their necks, and they are dragged into the boiling water, then into the Fire they are poured; then it is said to them, 'Where are those you associated, apart from God?' They shall say, 'They have gone astray from us; nay, but it was nothing at all that we called upon aforetime.' Even so God leads astray the unbelievers. S. 40:70-74

Hence, Muslims need to fear that by attacking the NT documents they may be attacking the revelation that God sent Jesus’ Messengers/Apostles with The only real reason why any Muslim will even object to this fact is because the NT books conflict with the theology of the Quran and Islam. But, as we noted above, all this proves is that the author of the Quran mistakenly assumed that the previous Scriptures agreed with his theology, and thought that by confirming them he would be providing some support or even proof for his own claims. Furthermore, the following passages exhort Jews and Christians to uphold the Torah and the Gospel and all the revelation given by God:

Had they performed the Torah and the Gospel, and what was sent down TO THEM from their Lord, they would have eaten both what was above them, and what was beneath their feet. Some of them are a just nation; but many of them--evil are the things they do...Say: 'People of the Book, you do not stand on anything, until you perform the Torah and the Gospel, and what was sent down to you from your Lord.' And what has been sent down to thee from thy Lord will surely increase many of them in insolence and unbelief; so grieve not for the people of the unbelievers. S. 5:66, 68

The expression, what was sent down to them, obviously refers to all the inspired Scriptures which the Jews and Christians had received from the Prophets and Apostles. The author will obviously say that this most definitely includes the Psalms and the Quran, even though they are not explicitly mentioned here. Likewise, the expression implies that whatever books the Jews and Christians received as inspired revelation must be accepted, irrespective of whether the Quran mentions them by name or not. Related to this point is the fact that the Quran often appeals to the BOOKS (not just Book) which were in the possession of the Jews and Christians during Muhammad’s time:

The Jews say, 'The Christians stand not on anything'; the Christians say, 'The Jews stand not on anything'; yet they recite the Book. So too the ignorant say the like of them. God shall decide between them on the Day of Resurrection touching their differences. S. 2:113

Those to whom We have given the Book and who recite it with true recitation, they believe in it; and whoso disbelieves in it, they shall be the losers. S. 2:121

The Messenger believes in what was sent down to him from his Lord, and the believers; each one believes in God and His angels, and in His Books and His Messengers; we make no division between any one of His Messengers. They say, 'We hear, and obey. S. 2:285

And if thou (Muhammad) art in doubt concerning that which We reveal unto thee, then question those who read the Scripture (that was) before thee. Verily the Truth from thy Lord hath come unto thee. So be not thou of the waverers. S. 10:94 Pickthall

And they say: If only he would bring us a miracle from his Lord! Hath there not come unto them the proof of what IS IN the former scriptures? S. 20:133 Pickthall

"in a clear, Arabic tongue. Truly it IS in the Scriptures of the ancients." S. 26:195

Finally:

Narrated Ziyad ibn Labid: "Allah's Messenger (peace be upon him) spoke of something and said: 'It will happen when knowledge will be no more.' I said: 'Allah's Messenger, how will knowledge vanish despite the fact that we will be reciting the Qur'an and teaching its recitation to our children and our children will teach its recitation to their children up to the Day of Resurrection?' Thereupon he said: 'Ziyad, may your mother weep over you. I was of the opinion that you were one of those who have greatest understanding of religion in Medina. Do these Jews and Christians not RECITE THE TORAH AND THE BIBLE but not act according to WHAT IS CONTAINED IN THEM?'" Transmitted by Ahmad, Ibn Majah, Tirmidhi. (Tirmidhi Hadith, Number 105- ALIM CD-ROM Version)

These citations mention Books (plural), not just Book (singular), which were with the Jews and Christians at that time. Now the only Book these two groups had was the Holy Bible, which contained a list of Books. And yet these Books included more than just the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel! As was already noted, the Books that the Jews and the Christians had during Muhammad’s time were those found within the Old and New Testaments respectively. It is purely wishful thinking to assume that these quotes refer to some other Scripture besides the Holy Bible. In fact, the onus is on the author to prove that all these citations are not referring to the Holy Bible, both Old and New Testaments, but to something different. Yet, the author has actually conceded this fact by candidly admitting that the Quran does confirm the Holy Bible. He writes:

...And “the Book” in question IS DEFINITELY THE BIBLE, although the Koran sometime uses that phrase to refer to itself too. You can tell that from this verse: "The Jews say, 'The Christians stand not on anything'; the Christians say, 'The Jews stand not on anything'; yet they recite the [same] Book. (Surah 2, Verse 113) What book do the Christians and Jews share? THE BIBLE. The Bible has been corrupted, as has God’s revelations outside it, as the above verses say...

Apart from his erroneous assumption that the Bible has been corrupted, by making this candid admission the author doesn’t seem to realize that he has now indirectly conceded that the Quran DOES CONFIRM ALL THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE. This also includes the epistles of Paul as well! The Quran doesn’t simply confirm only the books of Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus, but all the books found within the Bible which was in the hands of the Jews and Christians of Muhammad’s time.

6. While the phrase "the Gospel" has a single, definite meaning, the phrase "the Law" is a little more ambiguous, when you take into account the information in #4 and the fact that in both Hebrew and Arabic the terms for "Torah" are the same terms used for the word "law".

RESPONSE: It seems that the author is indirectly retracting his statements, or trying to qualify them, since he now admits that "the Law" can be somewhat ambiguous. Well, if it "is a little more ambiguous", then on what grounds does he wish to argue that the Law cannot refer to the entire Old Testament Scriptures? Since we have already addressed his claims regarding the precise meaning of Gospel and the manner in which it is used, there is no need for us to address these points again. The author concludes:

It would be too easy for a Christian to be able to refute the Koran simply by citing their own scripture, wouldn’t it? But as I have shown, such is not the case. The Koran does not claim to confirm the Bible at all, but only certain parts of it, and "the Gospel" isn't necessarily one of the canonical Gospels (see http://understanding-islam.com/relat...tion&qid=2419). It might be nice if life would always give us definite answers and have everything drawn in black and white, but such is not the case, here or elsewhere. The Koran does not confirm the Bible as a whole.

RESPONSE: It is actually quite easy for Christians to refute the Quran simply by citing our own holy Scriptures, since Muhammad fails every test for prophethood that is presented within the Bible:

http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/true_seal.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/false_prophecies.htm

Furthermore, as we demonstrated throughout this article, the Quran does claim to confirm the Holy Bible, and not just certain parts of it. The Quran also provides the data to conclude that it is actually referring to the canonical Gospels since this is the only Gospel that the true followers of Christ have ever known. And the Holy Bible gives us the definite answers, in black and white, to life’s most important questions, i.e. God, salvation, eternal happiness etc. Even the author’s own sources provide indirect attestation to our claims. For instance, the author provides a link to the Understanding Islam website, run by Mr. Moiz Amjad. When we go to the website to see what Mr. Amjad believes is perhaps the Gospel referred to in the Quran, we find him making the following rather amusing admission:

The Qur'an, by the names 'Torah' and 'Injeel' refers to what was called 'Torah' and 'Injeel' in the environment in which the Qur'an was revealed. It is obvious that had the Qur'an implied something else by these words, it was then necessary to clarify that the words were being used to imply something different from what they were commonly used in the environment. It should be kept in mind that the implication of words in a good piece of literature cannot be against the common usage of such words. If such is the case, it can only be considered a flaw of that piece of literature...

...Furthermore, it should be interesting to note that the Qur'an has referred to the Christians in its environment, by the name of "Nasaara", while, it is known that the general (mainstream) Christians had come to be known as "Christians" or "Maseehee" from a very early period of Christianity (as is mentioned in the Biblical book "Acts of the Prophets"). In view of this fact, it seems quite plausible that the Christians living in the Arabian Peninsula at the time of the revelation of the Qur'an were generally those who ascribed to the Nazarene creed. The Nazarenes were a Syrian Judeo-Christian sect that came to be recognized in the fourth century AD. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:

"Although they [the Nazarenes] ACCEPTED THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST and his supernatural birth, the Nazarenes also maintained strict observance of Jewish laws and customs, a practice that had been dropped by the majority of Jewish Christians. They used a version of the Gospel in Aramaic called the Gospel According to the Hebrews, or the Gospel of the Nazarenes."

However, it is extremely unfortunate that the Injeel according to the Hebrews or the Gospel of the Nazarenes (which was probably the book referred to as 'Injeel' in the environment in which the Qur'an was revealed) is nowhere to be found anymore, as has been mentioned in the quote of the Encyclopedia. (Source; bold and capital emphasis ours)

Regarding the Nazerene's belief in Jesus' Deity, Mr. Amjad writes:

I generally agree with the idea expressed by your Muslim friends that the Qur'an has primarily referred to the particular Christian school, which existed in the Arabian Peninsula during the time of the revelation of the Qur'an - the Nazarene creed. It is also clear that some of the beliefs and many of the practices of the Nazarene creed were different from those of the Pauline Christians. Nevertheless, it is clear from the Qur'an that the Nazarenes, like the Pauline Christians, ascribed to the belief that Jesus (pbuh) was a son of God, rather than His prophet (Al-Maaidah 5: 17) and to the concept of Trinity (Al-Nisaa 4: 171). (Source; underline emphasis ours)

Mr. Amjad’s position that the Gospel which the Quran refers to is that possessed by the Nazarenes discredits the Quran. As Mr. Amjad’s own source states, the Nazarenes held to the Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, which strongly suggests that their Gospel did also, and yet this is the Gospel that Mr. Amjad feels the Quran confirms. Therefore, the Quran references a Gospel which confirms the Deity of the Lord Jesus, a teaching which the Quran vehemently denies!

Elsewhere, Mr. Amjad has translated the Arabic word for Gospel, Injil, not in the singular sense, but in the plural:

God is the one besides whom there is no other deity; He is the Living,[3] the Maintainer [of all that exists].[4] [He not only provides for the maintenance of your physical existence, but also for your moral existence. Thus, O Prophet] He has revealed upon you this book with the Truth, confirming the prophesies that preceded it - and [for the same purpose] He had revealed the Torah and the Gospels before it,[5] a guidance to humankind - and He [it is, Who] has [now] revealed this Criterion [to decide between the right and the wrong in the name of His guidance]. (Source)

In note 5, he writes:

[5] i.e. this is not the first time that God has revealed His guidance to man. Torah and the Gospels were also revealed for the same purpose.

Mr. Amjad doesn’t speak of the Gospel (singular), but of the Gospels and affirms that they are God’s revelation (i.e. "were also revealed..."). Thus, Mr. Amjad’s own translation, along with his earlier comments that the Gospel had a specific meaning to the first addressees of the Quran, supports our claim that the Quran is actually referring to the canonical Gospels. We therefore conclude that, contrary to what the author would want to believe, the Quran DOES CONFIRM the Holy Bible as a whole, and because it does, this is all the proof one needs that the Quran cannot be from the true God. It contradicts the essential teachings of the very Book which it confirms to be from the one true God of all. For more on this subject, we recommend the following links:

http://answering-islam.org/Quran/Bible/index.html
http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/badawi_lies3.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses/Menj/inspired.htm

[Yahya Sulaiman]

A Rebuttal to Answering Islam on a previous Article, and Even More Solid Evidence of the Law and Gospel Not Being the Old and New Testaments

by Yahya Sulaiman, a.k.a. Ziggy Zag

The other day I received the most hateful, disrespectful and dripping with vitriol e-mail that anyone has ever sent me. It was from Sam Shamoun of the Answering Islam site behaving in his typically Christ-like manner, and it mentioned that he had “shattered” (this seems to be his favorite word, based on my experience in reading his articles) my article Six Reasons Why the Law and the Gospel Are Not The Old and New Testaments, found here. As you can see for yourself, the article is extremely long, as is customary for Shamoun. I think that somehow, something is drastically wrong about someone writing what could be a lengthy booklet in response to an article that consisted of three, short paragraphs. A large reason for Shamoun’s article being so unnecessarily long-winded is the number of long and extremely irrelevant tangents which he goes on almost constantly--this apparently being his idea of “shattering” an article. But enough with the criticism of his attitude and the quality of his scholarship; on with the show.

The article starts off with the heading Responding to some More Muslim Polemics Against God’s Word, a very unfair way or referring to my article. The “polemics” on my website are not meant to attack the Bible as a whole, but only to show that Islam is true and that it contains the best of the previous scriptures connected to it (and perhaps in a certain sense, the Bible as a whole, if you choose to look at it that way) while leaving out everything bad. These bad parts, we Muslims believe, are due to textual corruption, but Shamoun claims at the beginning of his article (the first of a great many points which have nothing whatsoever to do with whether the Law and the Gospel means the Old and New Testaments), that this belief appears to be a modern invention, not believed in by the earliest Muslims. The only way that this could be true is if the earliest Muslims did not believe in the Koran, which does indeed speak of the corruption of the Bible very unequivocally. I’ve already proven this is my FAQ, but I will be glad to repeat myself here and save people the trouble of having to locate it:

Are you so eager that they should believe you, seeing there is a party of them that heard God’s word, and then tampered with it, wittingly?….And some there are of them that are common folk not knowing the Book, but only fancies and mere conjectures. So wo to those who write the Book with their hands, then say, ‘This is from God,’ that they may sell it for a little price…. (The Koran Interpreted 2:75-79, from a context talking about the Jewish religion and thus about the Jewish scriptures)

Shamoun then goes on to say that, "Since the Quran confirms the Holy Bible, while at the same time contradicting its core essential teachings, the Muslim must therefore reject the Quran." Once again, he does not understand that the Koran itself never says that it confirms the entire Bible, and doesn’t seem to mention the Bible as a whole except to refer to Christians and Jews collectively as “People of the Bible”. Once again, all Shamoun would have to do is read this site’s homepage to see this claim of his disproven as the Koran specifically claims to correct as well as confirm the previous scriptures:

This Koran could not have been forged apart from God; but it is a confirmation of what is before it, and a distinguishing of the Book, wherein is no doubt, from the Lord of all Being. (The Koran Interpreted 10:37)

People of the Book, now there has come to you Our Messenger, making clear to you many things you have been concealing of the Book, and effacing many things. There has come to you from God a light, and a Book Manifest whereby God guides whosoever follows His good pleasure in the ways of peace, and brings them forth from the shadows into a light by His leave; and He guides them to a straight path. (The Koran Interpreted 5:15)

After going off on tangents (containing a huge pile of links) about St. Paul and what some Christians regard as evidence of the Resurrection (neither one of these tangents being the subject at hand), he finally addresses the issue of the Torah meaning the Old Testament as a whole, referring us to a link which contains nothing but appeals to authority, support for the claim that Christians, not Muslims, referred to the Old Testament as “the Law”, and only once citation from Islamic scripture in which the notion of the earliest Muslims using the term “Torah” or “Law” to mean the Old Testament, a hadith which merely refers to “ the people of the two scriptures”, easily be the Torah and the unknown true Gospel, both of which the Koran endorses. The article quotes a hadith in which Muhammad (on whom be peace) speaks of a verse from the Torah which is nowhere to be found in the Torah, which should not even raise an eyebrow with us Muslims, because as I just established, the Koran does speak of the corruption of the previous scriptures.

Next, Shamoun unwittingly admits that the term “the Gospel” does not mean the New Testament in the New Testament itself (which never even refers to itself as a whole anyway, since like the Old Testament it was a volume by different authors), but only the “Good News” that Christianity preaches.

After that, Shamoun quotes a much larger section of my encyclopedic reference which speaks of errors being in the Koran. Encyclopedias are supposed to contain facts, and the quotation I offered was a fact, but unfortunately many encyclopedias also present opinions or interpretations as if they were facts, this being what the encyclopedic reference did at several points in the entry in question. I am interested only in facts, and not the author’s exegesis, which proves how poor it is anyway when it refers to only one or two passages from the Psalms being paralleled in the Koran, when as I established in my article on the Psalms on this site’s Bible and Koran page, there are many, many more, adding up to a perfect distillation of the Psalms.

Shamoun goes on to say that just because there is no evidence for the Bible having been translated into Arabic at the time doesn’t mean that it wasn’t, and speaks of it being a possibility--which I never denied or contradicted, but the rational and universal practice is to disbelieve in something for which there’s no substantial evidence until substantial evidence emerges. Shamoun adds that there was no need for the Bible to have been translated into Arabic for Muhammad (on whom be peace) to have been learned in it, which is true, but all traditions of him speak of him being illiterate and none speak of him being bilingual. This leaves only the possibility of someone translating it to him--which was unlikely due to the extremely low literacy rate and which there is no substantial evidence for anyway. So as you can see, even though my point is not absolute proof and never said it was, it remains intact, regardless of Shamoun’s confidence that he had “shattered” it.

After some allegations about the Koran which Shamoun admits is off topic (and would have to be responded to in an article of its own), Shamoun refers to a hadith speaking of Waraqa translating the Gospel in Arabic before the advent of Islam. Ahadith are fallible, and as I have shown and will establish even further in this paper, the Gospel is a single, separate book and not any part of the Bible. As such, there is no mess for me to sort out, regardless of what Shamoun erroneously thinks.

Finally, Shamoun’s long-winded article gets to the second of my six points, and after making a few unsupported claims which are circular from a Christian viewpoint, he points out the slander of Jesus (on whom be peace) in the apocryphal Gospel I mentioned and how late it was written--as if pointing out one parallel in that book is tantamount to endorsing the whole thing! Fact and legend were dispersed throughout the apocryphal Gospels (some statements or stories in them paralleling the four Gospels, for example, and some not, in the same Gospel).

Since the apocryphal Gospel in question (The Infancy of Thomas) was written 100-200 years after the time of Jesus (on whom be peace), it would only stand to reason that the book would be soaked with legend and only a couple of actual facts would remain in it. And what do you know! The Koran, written in a time of oral tradition when people had a very historically ignorant standpoint, has only a couple of parallels with the book! Would that not be expected in a book that tells the truth about everything? And how would Muhammad (on whom be peace) from this historically ignorant standpoint have known if he were not a true prophet? It is only a minor piece of evidence for the Koran’s authenticity and there are much more substantial reasons for believing in the Koran, but evidence it is all the same.

Shamoun asks me if I am implying that The Infancy of Thomas was the Gospel that the Koran speaks of. The answer is, “Obviously not.” And it is very irrational (especially in light of the things I pointed out above) to think that a book which confirms one Gospel cannot have two parallels in another Gospel.

As for my next points, Shamoun tries to prove that the Law and the Gospel spoken of in one passage in Romans (the only place in the entire Bible where the two are mentioned together) does indeed refer to a tangible scripture in the case of the law. First, he cites a passage from Romans which is not of that part where the Law and the Gospel are mentioned together, the bottom line of the passage being;

Then those who are physically uncircumcised but keep the law will condemn you WHO HAVE THE WRITTEN CODE and circumcision but break the law. (Romans 2:13-27)

Does that look to you, dear reader, like it’s automatically using the terms “law” and “written code” synonymously because they’re in the same sentence? Could it not be that the written code (which the passage does not actually call “the Law”) is separate from the abstract Law that is written on people’s hearts, and this is why two, different terms are used? Even if this is not the case, the passage says “the written code”, not “the Old Testament”, and the translation “the Law” is, of course, the Torah. Next, Shamoun quotes another Pauline passage outside of that critical passage in Romans which speaks of the Old Testament and doesn’t call it the Law or even contain the word “Law”.

Then Shamoun contradicts himself about “the Gospel” meaning “the Good News” by claiming that it is indeed a tangible scripture. Very strangely, he follows this with more quotes from the Bible in which the term blatantly means “Good News”. (Just read them and replace “Gospel” with “Good News” and see for yourself.) After making some appeals to Islamic authority (as if I had to agree with anything any of my brothers or sisters say), Shamoun tries to establish by appealing to the Bible that the Gospel was a part of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. I plan to start a new page on this site about that, especially if I can relocate the site (there are still a couple of things to work through before/if I can do it), and in any case the word “Gospel” nowhere is more clearly meant to mean “Good News” than in this case.

After more on the alleged Old Testament prophecies of the Resurrection and Atonement (both off topic and soon enough to be written about by me in separate articles), Shamoun quotes the Koran in saying that Jesus (on whom be peace) was spoken of in “the Law”, and this fits very well with what we Muslims tend to believe about Deuteronomy 18, as such Jesus (on whom be peace) being spoken of in The Torah, the Hebrew word for “Law”.

After another hadith reference about the “two Books”, a subject I’ve already addressed, Shamoun quotes another hadith and makes an argument from silence about it (I am with those who think that the Argument from Silence should be considered and official logical fallacy), which is irrelevant even if it’s true since the Koran, the scripture that we do believe is infallible whereas the ahadith are not, specifically speaks of the textual corruption of the Jewish scriptures, as I have proven above. In light of this, the next hadith Shamoun quotes is also futile.

He asks if there is documentary evidence of the corruption of the Bible. While there is not, the Bible itself proves that about itself, as I showed in my FAQ, which apparently Shamoun has not read. Besides, even if this were not the case, is there anything wrong with our believing something just because the Koran says it’s true, since we believe that it’s infallible? Aren’t there many things in the Bible which Shamoun believes even though there is no documentary evidence for them?

Regarding the fifth of my sixth points, Shamoun makes an irrational logical connection based on dogma alone, proving nothing whatsoever: “As we stated above, if the New Testament is the inscripturation of the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ given to his Church, the inspired record of the Gospel God gave to the true believers, then the New Testament can be rightly called the Gospel.” Then after some more appeals to authority outside the Muslim scriptures, Shamoun speaks of the Koran’s endorsement of the Torah, the Gospel, and all of the inspired scriptures aside, but there is no reason why the other two scriptures that the Koran mentioned (the scroll of the blessed Abraham and the Davidic Psalms) should not be, along with the Torah and the true Gospel, the entirety of the inspired scriptures, especially since the Koran does not identify any other previous scriptures as being inspired. The same goes for Shamoun’s following comments about “the Books” and “the scriptures”.

Finally, Shamoun refers to a hadith which says, “Do these Jews and Christians not RECITE THE TORAH AND THE BIBLE but not act according to WHAT IS CONTAINED IN THEM?” What is the point here? How does this prove or even indicate that the Law is the Old Testament and the Gospel the New Testament? It is referring to what Christians believe, not what Muslims are told to believe. Next Shamoun quotes words of mine about the Bible being corrupted, but it does not logically follow that the Koran confirms the whole Bible just because the whole Bible has been corrupted. The four scriptures it identifies are evidently what it confirms and corrects, as I have shown--not that such an apparent fact needs to be shown.

Finally, when discussing the sixth and final point of my article that he’s responding to, Shamoun makes a plausible point. It does indeed look like I contradicted myself about “the Law” being a somewhat ambiguous phrase, because I carelessly did not mention (my fault!) that I was referring to the Bible’s usage of the term and not the Koran’s. The Bible speaks of God’s law being written on our hearts, and then there are specific laws which are set down in the Law of Moses (on whom be peace). But you can drop this sixth point if you wish, since it offers only a possibility and not a likelihood or certainty the way that the others do.

Shamoun goes on to say that a Christian can prove that Muhammad (on whom be peace) was not a genuine prophet, since according to Shamoun, he failed the Bible’s tests for prophethood. This statement essentially boils down to, “The Bible says it’s true, and that is proof that it’s true.” Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Shamoun, but it doesn’t work that way. The reasoning is circular and we Muslims could, after all, say similar things about the Koran, but we wouldn’t be proving anything either.

At long last, the article ends, and on another irrelevant tangent, this time a rebuttal to the mere possibility I mentioned that the Gospel which the Koran refers to is the long lost Gospel of the Nazarenes. The Nazarenes, as he said, believed that Jesus (on whom be peace) was the one and only son of God. So what? As I establish in article after article on this site’s Trinity page, Christians nowadays believe in this doctrine despite a true lack of basis for it in their Gospels. Why could the Nazarenes not have done the same? But more importantly, so what if the Gospel of the Nazarenes isn’t the Koran’s Gospel? It was just a possibility I mentioned, an idea I threw out, food for thought.

The final point Shamoun makes (the last part of this particular irrelevant tangent) is that the source I cited while tossing out this idea translates “al-Injeel” into “Gospels” rather than “the Gospel”, a translation of the term which almost no other translator of the Koran (a very small minority indeed) makes. Even if the translation is correct, all that is being referred to is multiple, unidentified Gospels. Even if this means “the Four Gospels” (which can only be inferred, as there is no proof), that means that the term “al-Injeel” does not mean “the New Testament” and as such Shamoun is still wrong.

Finally, I am going to conclude with some more facts which I neglected to mention in my original article (my fault again). While Shamoun, as we have seen, does not have a molecule of actual evidence to offer for “the Law” and “the Gospel” being the Old and New Tesaments, I can prove that this is not the case. First, there is the point in my original article which Shamoun just skipped around, that there are miracles of Jesus (on whom be peace) being spoken of in the Koran which were not in the New Testament but instead in a book outside of it which was never part of the Bible, so if the Koran considers the New Testament infallible, the miracles it mentions should stand on their own and it would be downright bizarre to have other miracles from an apocryphal Gospel.

But that is merely evidence; the proof comes when you add it to the points I’m about to make (which, in fact, can stand on their own as well). First, the Koran quotes al-Injeel (the Gospel) at one point, and this quote is nowhere to be found in the New Testament, so obviously neither the New Testament as a whole nor any of its Gospels, together or apart, are the Gospel which the Koran claims to confirm. Second, the Koran repeatedly speaks of al-Taurat (the Law, the Torah) as being revealed to the blessed Moses and never to anyone else, indicating that it could only be the Pentateuch. This is further confirmed by the enormous amount of parallels between the Koran and the Pentateuch.

I‘ll leave it to you, dear reader, to decide just who has shattered whose arguments, and I have total confidence that anyone reading with an open mind and even a modicum of intelligence will see that it is me.

[Yahya Sulaiman]

The first three of the seven articles (one of which is double-length) are now posted; later I will finish the job and maybe for fun I'll even make a tally of how many times Shamoun committed each logical fallacy, how many irrelevant tangents he went off on, and how many irrelevant links he gave.

[Hamza Ibrahim]

I think it's a good idea that you're reposting this debate. I didn't really notice the debate until you guys were in your 5th reiteration of responses so I can catch up now I suppose.

Anyway, you weren't lying when you said he was "long-winded". I started reading his rebuttal at 8:10 and didn't finish until 10:42. He definitely lacks any ability to be concise. I had to slap myself a couple times because I kept dozing off. And believe me, it's not because it's "night time". I'm a night owl. I don't sleep until 3 a.m. now that it's summer. I read all of it and I even noticed when he inserted "[sic]" in one of your quotes as a tongue-in-cheek way of responding to your comments on Jesus being "supposedly" crucified. College certainly helped Sam become quite elaborate and professional while debating, I'll admit that.

His strongest point was the first one he made (after posting about 40 links before he actually talks about the topic like Osama does,lol). But even that was weak, because if the Prophet was really trying to "convince his contemporaries that he was a prophet by citing the legends and myths which they were believing", wouldn't he have written what they had believed verbatim? He could have received instant converts from places like Mecca, etc and he wouldn't have had to go through all the turmoil and uncertainity of Islam's formative period. Instead, we have many instances in which the Prophet deliberately refuses to compromise on religious matters that contradict monotheism.

I've read his responses to other topics as well. For example, the time when I told you (on your websites shoutbox) that I read his response to Jesus saying that God was only good. I swear to God, I read all of it, and he didn't prove a thing. I think he writes a lot so you can forget what his original premise is and then that gives him ample time to formulate an erroneous conclusion that's not as easy to catch (because you simply forgot what the hell he was debating in the first place).

Anyway, looking forward to the rest of the debate. I think I'll read them as you post them instead of going to each of your websites. I don't think I could read two of Sam's responses on the same day without getting a headache.

[Yahya Sulaiman]

Some Muslims Never Learn: A Follow Up Response to a Muslim's Denial
Regarding the Quran's Confirmation of the Holy Bible

by Sam Shamoun

Part 1 of 3

In our paper, Six Points Establishing that the Quran Does Confirm the Holy Bible, we responded to a certain Muslim writer who tried to present six reasons why he believed that the Quran does not confirm the Holy Bible as a whole. Not satisfied with the evidence which we presented to establish our position, the author, publishing anonymously on his website but posting under the name or pseudonym of Yahya Sulaiman on other forums, decided to respond to us. The author begins his response by trying to appeal to the emotions of his readers:

The other day I received the most hateful, disrespectful and dripping with vitriol e-mail that anyone has ever sent me. It was from Sam Shamoun of the Answering Islam site behaving in his typically Christ-like manner, and it mentioned that he had shattered (this seems to be his favorite word, based on my experience in reading his articles) my article Six Reasons Why the Law and the Gospel Are Not The Old and New Testaments. The link is http://answering-islam.org.uk/Quran/...sixpoints.html . As you can see for yourself, the article is extremely long, as is customary for Shamoun. I think that somehow, something is drastically wrong about someone writing what could be a lengthy booklet in response to an article that consisted of three, short paragraphs. A large reason for Shamoun's article being so unnecessarily long-winded is the number of long and extremely irrelevant tangents which he goes on almost constantly--this apparently being his idea of shattering an article. But enough with the criticism of his attitude and the quality of his scholarship; on with the show.

RESPONSE: Since emotionalizing the discussion is completely beside the point, we relegate our response to his first paragraph to an addendum. We focus our attention, instead, to the author's ‘rebuttal’. The author complains about my writing a "booklet" to refute his errors concerning what the Quran and early Muslim traditions actually taught about the authenticity of the Holy Bible. The author may not realize this, but writing a paper filled with errors and distortions may not require much time or necessitate producing a booklet, but correcting those gross mistakes may require one to do so. After all, it requires less time, space and effort to produce errors than it does to correct them.

Besides, if the author is truly interested in God's truth and learning facts, then he shouldn't care about the length of our response. His concern should be whether what we said is true, and if it was based on sound logic and exegesis of the respective texts in question (i.e., the Bible, Quran, Islamic traditions etc.). This paper will be an examination to see if whether the author was able to refute our "booklet" size rebuttal to his Six Points, and if he in fact learned anything new in the process of trying to refute our points. And we truly hope that he won't mind the fact that we ended up producing another booklet response to his rebuttal. :-)

The article starts off with the heading Responding to some More Muslim Polemics Against God's Word, a very unfair way or referring to my article. The "polemics" on my website are not meant to attack the Bible as a whole, but only to show that Islam is true and that it contains the best of the previous scriptures connected to it (and perhaps in a certain sense, the Bible as a whole, if you choose to look at it that way) while leaving out everything bad. These bad parts, we Muslims believe, are due to textual corruption, but Shamoun claims at the beginning of his article (the first of a great many points which have nothing whatsoever to do with whether the Law and the Gospel means the Old and New Testaments), that this belief appears to be a modern invention, not believed in by the earliest Muslims. The only way that this could be true is if the earliest Muslims did not believe in the Koran, which does indeed speak of the corruption of the Bible very unequivocally. I've already proven this is my FAQ, but I will be glad to repeat myself here and save people the trouble of having to locate it:

Are you so eager that they should believe you, seeing there is a party of them that heard God’s word, and then tampered with it, wittingly?.And some there are of them that are common folk not knowing the Book, but only fancies and mere conjectures. So wo to those who write the Book with their hands, then say, This is from God, that they may sell it for a little price. (The Koran Interpreted 2:75-79, from a context talking about the Jewish religion and thus about the Jewish scriptures)

He says a little later:

Next Shamoun quotes words of mine about the Bible being corrupted, but it does not logically follow that the Koran confirms the whole Bible just because the whole Bible has been corrupted. The four scriptures it identifies are evidently what it confirms and corrects, as I have shown--not that such an apparent fact needs to be shown.

And:

Shamoun then goes on to say that, Since the Quran confirms the Holy Bible, while at the same time contradicting its core essential teachings, the Muslim must therefore reject the Quran. Once again, he does not understand that the Koran itself never says that it confirms the entire Bible, and doesn't seem to mention the Bible as a whole except to refer to Christians and Jews collectively as People of the Bible. Once again, all Shamoun would have to do is read this site's homepage to see this claim of his disproven as the Koran specifically claims to correct as well as confirm the previous scriptures:

This Koran could not have been forged apart from God; but it is a confirmation of what is before it, and a distinguishing of the Book, wherein is no doubt, from the Lord of all Being. (The Koran Interpreted 10:37)

People of the Book, now there has come to you Our Messenger, making clear to you many things you have been concealing of the Book, and effacing many things. There has come to you from God a light, and a Book Manifest whereby God guides whosoever follows His good pleasure in the ways of peace, and brings them forth from the shadows into a light by His leave; and He guides them to a straight path. (The Koran Interpreted 5:15)

RESPONSE: To begin with, the Quran in no way contains the best of the previous Scriptures, but since this is not the focus of our rebuttal we will have to leave it at that for the moment. In fact, the Quran contains gross immoral statements and practices that are condemned in the Holy Bible. Again, since this is not the topic we will simply have to leave it at that. Furthermore, the author again repeats his claim that the Quran does not confirm the entire Bible. He even thinks that surahs 2:75-79 and 5:15 prove his contention that the Quran confirms only parts of the Bible. We are sorry to have to burst his bubble, but neither of these passages prove that the Bible was tampered with. Instead of repeating our response to the Muslim misuse of these surahs, we recommend that our readers consult our discussion of these passages:

http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/bible_authentic1.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/bible_authentic2.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/aboutbible.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...lly/bible2.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...us_yahweh1.htm

Let us see now what happens when we try to interpret the following Quranic verses in the same way that the author has done with the previous citations:

So We sent it down to the partitioners, who have broken the Koran into fragments. (Surah 15, Ayat 90-91)

Compare Arberry's rendition with the following translations, keeping in mind that the parenthetical comments are not part of the original text:

Such as We send down for those who make division, Those who break the Qur'an into parts. (Pickthall)

(Of just such wrath) as We sent down on those who divided (Scripture into arbitrary parts)--(so also on such) as have made Qur'an into shreds (as they please). (Y. Ali)

Like as We sent down on the dividers Those who made the Quran into shreds. Shakir

As We have sent down on the dividers, (Quraish pagans or Jews and Christians). Who have made the Qur'an into parts. (i.e. believed in a part and disbelieved in the other). (Hilali-Khan)

(such as We have sent down for the quibblers. who have torn the Qur'an apart. (T.B. Irving)

This is the same kind of warning as WE had sent down towards the creators of heated discussion, Who have segregated their Qur'ân into parts? (Source)

As We have sent down to those who have divided, those who have broken the Qur'an into segments. (Muhammad Ayub Khan) (Source)

Like as We sent down on them who took oaths, Those who divided the Qur’an into parts. (M. Muhammad Ali)

We will punish those who foster divisions, Who break up the Koran into parts: (Rodwell)

As we sent down (punishment) on the separatists who dismember the Qur'an. (Palmer)

As We have sent down on the dividers. The ones who have made the Quran obsolete. (The Message) (Source)

The preceding reference explicitly says that individuals were shredding/dividing/tearing the Quran apart. Some scholars have viewed this text as an indication that the Quran underwent textual corruption and revision, especially at the hands of Uthman ibn Affan, Islam's third Caliph.

Finally, if we understand correctly the following verse of Suratul-Hijr (xv. 90-91): "As we sent down upon (punished) the dividers (of the Scripture?) who broke up the Koran into parts," we are tempted to state that even when the Prophet was alive, some changes were noticed in the recital of certain verses of his sacred book. There is nothing very surprising in this fact, since Muhammad could not read or write, and was at the mercy of friends for the writing of his revelations, or, more frequently, of some mercenary amanuenses. (Alphonse Mingana, Three Ancient Korans: The Origins of the Koran--Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book, ed. by Ibn Warraq [Prometheus Books, Amherst NY, 1998], p. 84; bold emphasis ours)

Mingana refers to Uthman's burning and wholesale destruction of primary Quranic codices made by eye and ear witnesses of Muhammad, and the Muslim reactions to it:

The book, drawn up by this method, continued to be authoritative and the standard text till 29-30 A.H. under the caliphate of 'Uthman. At this time the wonderful faithfulness of Arab memory was defective, and according to a general weakness of human nature, the Believers have been heard reciting the verses of the Koran in a different way. This fact was due specially, it is said, to the hundreds of dialects used in Arabia. Zaid was again asked to put an end to these variations which had begun to scandalize the votaries of the Prophet. That indefatigable compiler, assisted by three men from the tribe of Quraish, started to do what he had already done more than fifteen years before. The previous copies made from the first one written under Abu Bakr were all destroyed by special order of the caliph: the revelation sent down from heaven was one, and the book containing this revelation must be one.

The critic remarks that the only guarantee of the authenticity of the Koran is the testimony of Zaid; and for this reason, a scholar who doubts whether a given word has been really used by Muhammad, or whether it has been only employed by Zaid on his own authority, or on the meagre testimony of some Arab reciters, does not transgress the strict laws of high criticism. If the memory of the followers of the Prophet has been found defective from the year 15 to 30 A.H. when Islam was proclaimed over all Arabia, why may it not have been defective from 612 to 632 C.E. when the Prophet was often obliged to defend his own life against terrible aggressors? And if the first recension of Zaid contained always the actual words of Muhammad, why was this compiler not content with re-establishing it in its entirety, and why was the want of a new recension felt by 'Uthman? How can it be that in the short space of fifteen years such wonderful variants could have crept into the few copies preceding the reign of the third caliph that he found himself bound to destroy all those he could find? If 'Uthman was certainly inspired only by religious purposes, why did his enemies call him ‘THE TEARER OF THE BOOKS’ and why did they fasten on him the following stigma: ‘He found the Korans many and left one; HE TORE UP THE BOOK’? ..." (Ibn Warraq, p. 85; bold and capital emphasis ours)

In another of his articles, The Transmission of the Koran, Mingana cites Muslim historian al-Tabari:

"... ‘Ali b. Abi Talib, and ‘Uthman b. Affan wrote the Revelation to the Prophet; but in their absence it was Ubai b. Ka’b and Zaid b. Thabit who wrote it.’ He informs us, too, that the people said to ‘Uthman: ‘The Koran was in many books, and thou discreditedst them all but one’; and after the Prophet's death, ‘People gave him as successor Abu Bakr, who in turn was succeeded by ‘Umar; and both of them acted according to the Book and the Sunnah of the Apostle of God- and praise be to God the Lord of the worlds; then people elected ‘Uthman b. ‘Affan WHO ... TORE UP THE BOOK.’" (Ibn Warraq, p. 102; bold and capital emphasis ours)

Had this been said of the previous Scriptures, the Muslim author would no doubt have used this to prove that the Quran doesn't confirm the entire Bible. Since this is said of the Muslim scripture, we wonder if the author will be consistent and argue that the Quran has been corrupted as well. We won't be holding our breath to find out.

Thirdly, the author amazingly quotes surah 10:37 to support his view that the Quran doesn't affirm the entire Bible when this actually establishes our position!

And this Quran is not such as could be forged by those besides Allah, but it is a verification of that which IS before it and a clear explanation of the book, there is no doubt in it, from the Lord of the worlds. (Shakir)

There are other verses which essentially say the same thing:

Children of Israel, remember My blessing wherewith I blessed you, and fulfil My covenant and I shall fulfil your covenant; and have awe of Me. And believe in that I have sent down, confirming that which IS with you, and be not the first to disbelieve in it. And sell not My signs for a little price; and fear you Me. And do not confound the truth with vanity, and do not conceal the truth wittingly. And perform the prayer, and pay the alms, and bow with those that bow. Will you bid others to piety, and forget yourselves while you recite the Book? Do you not understand? (S. 2:40-44)

Not only does this citation say that the Quran confirms the Bible but that the Israelites were also reciting the Book, which presumes that they had a genuine Bible in their possession during that time.

You who have been given the Book, believe in what We have sent down, confirming what IS with you, before We obliterate faces, and turn them upon their backs, or curse them as We cursed the Sabbath-men, and God's command is done. (S. 4:47)

They measured not God with His true measure when they said, "God has not sent down aught on any mortal." Say: "Who sent down the Book that Moses brought as a light and a guidance to men? You put it into parchments, revealing them, and hiding much; and you were taught that you knew not, you and your fathers." Say: "God." Then leave them alone, playing their game of plunging. This is a Book We have sent down, blessed and confirming that which was before it, and for thee to warn the Mother of Cities and those about her; and those who believe in the world to come believe in it, and watch over their prayers. (S. 6:91-92)

In their stories is surely a lesson to men possessed of minds; it is not a tale forged, but a confirmation of what IS before it, and a distinguishing of every thing, and a guidance, and a mercy to a people who believe. (S. 12:111)

The Quran, therefore, is intended to be a confirmation of the previous Scripture which was available to Muhammad (note the present tense verb). The Quran does not claim to be a corrector of the previous texts. The problem is that the Quran does anything but confirm the Holy Scripture which preceded it, and this is precisely the dilemma that the author and other Muslims try to avoid or resolve (albeit unsuccessfully). They are aware that if the Quran is confirming the Bible as it has been transmitted throughout the centuries, and as we know it today, then the former must be false since it fails to confirm the very writings it testifies are the very words of God.

In other places, the Muslims are made to say that they believe in the Books of Allah, in that which was revealed to the Jews and Christians:

who believe in what has been sent down to thee and what has been sent down before thee, and have faith in the Hereafter; (S. 2:4)

The following Muslim commentary says of this passage:

(In this verse three more stipulations are set out for us for the consummation of our faith : (i) Believing in the Qur’aan (ii) believing in the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel revealed before it, including other Revelations inspired in His messengers by Allah, whether or not they were referred to; and (iii) being firmly convinced of the Hereafter, which implies an unconditional acceptance of the Day of Resurrection when the whole of mankind would be gathered before Allah for the Rendition of their accounts, leading us either into the Garden or into the Fire, both everlasting and both depending upon what we had sent ahead of us and what we have brought along with us). (Source; bold emphasis ours)

Say you: "We believe in God, and in that which has been sent down on us and sent down on Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob, and the Tribes, and that which was given to Moses and Jesus and the Prophets, of their Lord; we make no division between any of them, and to Him we surrender." (S. 2:136)

Say: "People of the Book, do you blame us for any other cause than that we believe in God, and what has been sent down to us, and what was sent down before, and that most of you are ungodly?" (S. 5:59)

Dispute not with the People of the Book save in the fairer manner, except for those of them that do wrong; and say, "We believe in what has been sent down to us, and what has been sent down to you; our God and your God is One, and to Him we have surrendered.' (S. 29:46)

[i]Therefore call thou, and go straight as thou hast been commanded; do not follow their caprices. And say: "I believe in whatever Book God has sent down; I have been commanded to be just between you. God is our Lord and your Lord. We have our deeds, and you have your deeds; there is no argument between us and you; God shall bring us together, and unto Him is the homecoming." (S. 42:15)

The revelation that was sent down to the People of the Book is that found in the Old and New Testaments. Thus, when the Quran makes Muhammad and his followers say to their contemporaries that they believe in what was revealed to the Scripture folk, this would have been understood by the Jews and Christians that the Muslims were affirming faith in the Holy Bible which was in their hands. There is no way around this.

After going off on tangents (containing a huge pile of links) about St. Paul and what some Christians regard as evidence of the Resurrection (neither one of these tangents being the subject at hand), he finally addresses the issue of the Torah meaning the Old Testament as a whole, referring us to a link which contains nothing but appeals to authority, support for the claim that Christians, not Muslims, referred to the Old Testament as the Law, and only once citation from Islamic scripture in which the notion of the earliest Muslims using the term Torah or Law to mean the Old Testament, a hadith which merely refers to the people of the two scriptures, easily be the Torah and the unknown true Gospel, both of which the Koran endorses. The article quotes a hadith in which Muhammad (on whom be peace) speaks of a verse from the Torah which is nowhere to be found in the Torah, which should not even raise an eyebrow with us Muslims, because as I just established, the Koran does speak of the corruption of the previous scriptures.

RESPONSE: The purpose of those "huge pile of links" was to present our readers with the historical data supporting both the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus and the legitimacy of Paul, issues which the author had called into question. Secondly, the link (http://answering-islam.org/Responses...lly/taurat.htm) I posted does more than simply appeal to authority, they provide both the biblical and historical evidence, as well as the views of Muhammad's followers and Muslim scholars, that the word Torah or Law can refer to the entire Old Testament canon. It is quite evident that the author didn't bother even reading it, since if he did then he has no excuse for claiming that we only presented one Islamic citation to support our case. Besides, even if we did appeal to a single Muslim citation, how would that make the point any less valid? The author claims that Muhammad quoted a verse not found in the Torah. We wonder what verse is the author talking about? He must mean the following citation:

Narrated Ata bin Yasar: "I met Abdullah bin 'Amr bin Al-'As and asked him, 'Tell me about the description of Allah's Apostle which is mentioned IN THE TORAH (i.e. OLD TESTAMENT).' He replied, 'Yes. By Allah, he is described IN TORAH with some of the qualities attributed to him in the Quran as follows: O Prophet! We have sent you as a witness (for Allah's True religion) And a giver of glad tidings (to the faithful believers), And a warner (to the unbelievers) And guardian of the illiterates. You are My slave and My messenger (i.e. Apostle). I have named you "Al-Mutawakkil" (who depends upon Allah). You are neither discourteous, harsh nor a noise-maker in the markets. And you do not do evil to those who do evil to you, but you deal with them with forgiveness and kindness. Allah will not let him (the Prophet) die till he makes straight the crooked people by making them say, none has the right to be worshipped but Allah, with which will be opened blind eyes and deaf ears and enveloped hearts.'" (Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 3, Book 34, Number 335)

If so, then this again shows that the author didn't bother reading the links which we had provided since Muslims, not Christians, identify this as a quote from Isaiah 42:1-7:

Anyone familiar with the Old Testament should recognize this immediately. A chapter of uncanny resemblance to this exists in the Book of Isaiah. However, the mystery rests in the fact that there is no evidence that the Book of Isaiah was accessible to the Arabs in the late 7th century A.D. How then was this kind of detail known?...This prophecy recorded by al-Bukhari is in 42:1-7 and scattered elsewhere in Isaiah. I will break down 1-7 verse by verse in order to lucidate who this is quite clearly speaking about.

(Source)

Besides, even if this passage from Bukhari wasn't found in the Torah this wouldn't necessarily mean that the Torah had been corrupted. All this would mean is that either the Muslims made up a prophecy about Muhammad, or they weren't quoting the Torah per se but from some Jewish rabbinic source. This isn't the only time that Muslims, specifically Muhammad, confused the Torah with rabbinical writings. One of the author's favorite websites, Understanding Islam, quotes a reader who says:

[quote]I noticed on one of your pages, responding to some claims about the Bible from the hadiths, a hadith in which the Prophet (sAas) quoted the Torah to say that daughters should be married off soon after age twelve. Obviously, this statement does not appear in the Torah of today or even the Old Testament. However, it is interesting to note the following:

From Everyman's Talmud by Abraham Cohen, page 162: "With regard to a girl, it was urged that the father's duty was to secure a husband for her at an early age. The verse 'Profane not thy daughter to make her a harlot' (Leviticus 19:29) was applied to a man 'who delays in arranging a marriage while she is of suitable age' (Sanhedrin 76a). She was considered to have arrived at this stage when she passed her twelfth birthday."

The statement of the Prophet (sAas) seems clearly to be based on the above. Therefore, it appears that the Prophet (sAas) was not quoting the Torah directly, but was quoting an interpretation of a verse that DOES appear in the Torah, as given by Jewish scholars. It is also possible that it was presented to the Prophet (sAas) as a statement in the Torah rather than as the interpretation of the Torah[2]. Allah SWT knows best...

[1] It is also possible that:

This part of the Talmud had somehow become incorporated in the Torah, which was read and followed by the Jews in Arabian Peninsula during the times of the Prophet; the word Torah, in the narrative ascribed to the Prophet (pbuh) was used rather liberally, also applying to the laws generally followed by the Jews. (Moiz Amjad) (Source; bold emphasis ours)

(Interestingly, Mr. Amjad agrees that the word Torah can be used in a broader sense to refer to the laws believed in by the Jews.) Thus, citing a text that doesn't exactly correspond to what we find in the Scriptures would only mean that the Muslims misquoted, concocted or confused their sources. The author somehow thinks that he can avoid my statement that the Salafis applied the word Torah for both Scriptures by arguing that they could have been referring to the Torah and the Gospel. The author failed to note that the reason why I mentioned this was to establish the fact that the word Torah can refer to more than the Law given to Moses, which means that even if the Salafis were referring to the Torah and the Gospel this still proves my point! It is rather unfortunate that the author didn't see how his response only proved the point I was seeking to make. Furthermore, the Salaf's statements could not be limited to just these two Books since the Jews and Christians had more than the Torah and the Gospels in their possession. The Quran itself says that Allah sent down more than these two Books to them, such as the Psalms, and even quotes Psalm 37:29 to boot:

For We have written in the Psalms, after the Remembrance, 'The earth shall be the inheritance of My righteous servants.' (S. 21:105)

Therefore, the expression "the Books of the People of the Two Scriptures" must include ALL the Books which were in the possession of the Jews and Christians. Finally, we are glad that the author again has to admit that the Quran endorses the Torah and the Gospel, since the data which we presented conclusively shows that Muhammad's Jewish and Christian contemporaries used these terms to refer to the Hebrew Scriptures and the four Gospels, not to some unidentified Gospel.

He continues:

Next, Shamoun unwittingly admits that the term the Gospel does not mean the New Testament in the New Testament itself (which never even refers to itself as a whole anyway, since like the Old Testament it was a volume by different authors), but only the Good News that Christianity preaches.

And:

The final point Shamoun makes (the last part of this particular irrelevant tangent) is that the source I cited while tossing out this idea translates al-Injeel into Gospels rather than the Gospel, a translation of the term which almost no other translator of the Koran (a very small minority indeed) makes. Even if the translation is correct, all that is being referred to is multiple, unidentified Gospels. Even if this means the Four Gospels (which can only be inferred, as there is no proof), that means that the term al-Injeel does not mean the New Testament and as such Shamoun is still wrong.

RESPONSE: The author's inconsistency at this point is truly glaring. I appealed to his own sources to prove that the word Injil (Gospel) must have had a specific application during the time of Muhammad. Muhammad's contemporaries would have taken the word Gospel as a reference to the four Gospels contained within the pages of the New Testament. I cited the author's own sources to prove this point. Now what does the author do? Call into question his very own sources! In other words, no matter what source is cited, no matter what facts are presented, the author will simply brush them aside in order to stubbornly cling to his mistaken views and unwarranted assumptions about the Bible.

Furthermore, the author is again misrepresenting me since I didn't say that the word Gospel NECESSARILY refers to the entire New Testament. Why would I therefore need to unwittingly admit that the Gospel doesn't mean New Testament when I never said otherwise? What I said in my rebuttal is that the Gospel referred to something specific to Muhammad's contemporaries, namely, the fourfold Gospel collection found in the New Testament. I then went on to say that the Quran also confirms the Books which were in the possession of the Jews and Christians, which even the author admitted is the Holy Bible. What this basically means is that the Quran confirms the 27 Books of the NT, contrary to what the author has been asserting.

In saying that, this doesn't mean that the word Gospel cannot be used as a synonym for the entire New Testament. As I had written in my initial rebuttal:

Finally, Gospel refers to the Good News of God’s Son, that God sent forth his Son to save the world through his life, death and resurrection. What we find in the New Testament is the inscripturation of that Good News which was first made known in the OT scriptures, manifested in the advent of the Lord Jesus, and initially preached orally by Christ and his followers. More on this below.

And:

As we stated above, if the New Testament is the inscripturation of the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ given to his Church, the inspired record of the Gospel God gave to the true believers, then the New Testament can be rightly called the Gospel.

The New Testament is the written record of the manifestation of God's Son, along with the entire revelation that the advent of the Son brought to light:

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. (Hebrews 1:1-2)

The coming of the Son inaugurated a new way which God spoke to the people. Christ is the Father's agent through whom all revelation comes. The Good News which Christ brought wasn't limited solely to his life and teachings, but included all the revelation which he gave to his servants to pass on. Note, for instance, how the Apocalypse of John begins:

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw--that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near. (Revelation 1:1-3)

I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. On the Lord's Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said: “Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.' ...Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later.” (Revelation 1:9-11, 19)

"I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star." (Revelation 22:16)

And:

"how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will." (Hebrews 2:3-4)

Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles. (2 Peter 3:1-2)

I am not alone in making these assumptions. There are Muslim translators who agree with me, since some of them render Injil as Gospels or New Testament:

The followers of the Gospels (the New Testament) must judge according to what God has revealed in it. Those who do not judge by the laws of God are evil doers. (S. 5:47 Sarwar)

Had they followed the Laws of the Old and New Testaments and what was revealed to them from their Lord, they would have received Our bounties from above and below in abundance. Some of them are modest people, but many of them commit the worst sins. (S. 5:66 Sarwar)

(Muhammad), tell the People of the Book, "You have nothing unless you follow the Old and New Testaments and that which (the Quran) God has revealed to you." Whatever has been revealed to you (Muhammad) from your Lord will only increase their disbelief and rebellion (against you). Do not grieve for the unbelieving people. (S. 5:68 Sarwar) (Source)

Rashad Khalifa, while commenting on surah 2:101, wrote:

*2:101 God's Messenger of the Covenant is prophesied in the Old Testament (Malachi 3:1-3), the New Testament (Luke 17:22-37), and this Final Testament (3:81). (Source)

It is obvious why these Muslims rendered Injil in the way that they did, since they realized that it had a specific meaning to Muhammad's contemporaries. The author basically ignored our quote from Ibn Ishaq who identified the Gospel of John as the very Gospel that God had given to Jesus. Christian writer and apologist, John Gilchrist, mentions a few additional Muslim writers and scholars who did not hesitate to identify the Torah and Gospel as the Old and New Testaments:

It is very significant that, in the early centuries of Islam, the authenticity of the Old and New Testaments was freely acknowledged and their identity as the Tawraat and Injil of the Qur’an was never disputed. Even though the Bible did not take the form of the Qur’an Muslim scholars accepted it, partly because they knew the Jews and Christians had known no other scripture and partly because the book is an awesome record of God’s dealings with his people from Adam to Jesus Christ. After all, if the Bible does not contain the original books, where did it come from? Why would the Jews and the Christians over so many centuries forge a book of such holy teachings in defiance of the very books of God if they had them in their hands?

The attitudes of some of the great Muslim scholars of the earlier centuries of Islam can be contrasted with the prejudicial arguments set forth in modern Muslim publications.

1. Ali Tabari

He was a well-known physician at the court of the Abbasid Caliph Mutawakkil about two hundred and fifty years after Muhammad’s death and wrote a defence of the Prophet of Islam including a study of numerous Biblical prophecies which he believed all referred to him. He freely taught that the first book which came into existence was the Tawraat of the Jews and that it was in their possession. He taught the same about the Injil which he likewise conceded was in the hands of the Christians. When speaking of their contents, however, he outlined the contents of the Old and New Testaments respectively.

2. Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali

He is one of the most original thinkers the Muslim world has ever known and is generally regarded as its greatest theologian. He wrote a long exposition on the Trinity and, although he lived some five centuries after Muhammad when other radical scholars such as Ibn Hazm were attacking the integrity of the Bible text, he also freely accepted its authenticity. He argued only that the Christians had misinterpreted their scriptures. He died in the year 1111 AD.

3. Fakhruddin Razi

Another great and famous theologian, he lived a hundred years after al-Ghazzali and died in 1209 AD. He was quite emphatic about the Biblical text--that it had not been changed and that the teaching and narratives of the Qur’an were perfectly consistent with those of the Bible.

These great scholars only perpetuated the position the Qur’an itself takes on the former scriptures--that they are the authentic Word of God and have not been changed. It is important for Christians to know these facts in response to the relentless challenge one experiences these days from Muslim writers who do all they can to undermine the genuineness of the Bible. (Gilchrist, Facing the Muslim Challenge, chapter 1, section 15 [1.15], online edition; underline emphasis ours)

In agreement, notice what the next Muslim source says:

Remarks about the GOSPEL of the Christians, the Names of Their Books, Their Scholars, and Their Authors

I asked Yunus the priest, who was an excellent man, about the books translated into the Arabic language which they expound and according to which they act. He replied, "Among them is the book Al-Surah (The Form) which is divided into two parts, the ‘Old Form’ and the ‘New Form.’" He also said that the "Old [Form]" was the ancient basis for the Jewish sect and the "New [Form]" for the sect of the Christians. He also said that the "Old [Form]" depends upon a number of books, the first of which is the Torah, WHICH IS FIVE SACRED WRITINGS. [Then follows] a compilation comprising a number of books, among which are:

Joshua, the Son of Nun; The Tribes, which is the book of Judges; Samuel and the Judgment of David; Traditions of the Children of Israel; Ecclesiastes [Qoheleth]; The Song of Songs; The Wisdom of Jesus, the Son of Sirach [Ecclesiasticus]. The Prophets, composed of four books; Isaiah the prophet, for whom be peace; Jeremiah the prophet, for whom be peace; The Twelve Prophets, for whom be peace; Ezekiel. The New Form which is comprised of four Gospels: The Gospel of Matthew; The Gospel of Mark; The Gospel of Luke; The Gospel of John, The Disciples, known as Fraksis [Acts]; PAUL THE APOSTLE, twenty four epistles. (Abu'l-Faraj Muhammad ibn Ishaq al-Nadim, The Fihrist--A 10th Century AD Survey of Islamic Culture, edited and translated by Bayard Dodge [Great Books of the Islamic World, Inc., Columbia University Press, 1970], p. 45; bold and capital emphasis ours)

Notice how this source speaks of the GOSPEL (singular) of the Christians and then proceeds to list the 27 Books of the NT canon! The above source supports the point we have been making, that the term Gospel had a specific meaning to the Christians and this is why the Quran nowhere defines the word. The author of the Quran presupposed that this word was already well known to his audience. Sadly, the author wants to deny what is obvious even to his own Muslim scholars and claim that the Quranic Gospel is some unidentified Gospel(s), as opposed to simply accepting the facts. The author mentions that the Gospel doesn't mean New Testament within the New Testament itself. This again exposes the author's shallow reading of the New Testament. The expression, New Testament, refers to the New Covenant that God promised to make:

“The time is coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

Part of the reason why Christ came to the earth and die was to inaugurate this New Covenant:

In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you." (Luke 22:20)

But the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, and it is founded on better promises. For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said: The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord. This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. By calling this covenant “new,' he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear." (Hebrews 8:6-13)

"When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not manmade, that is to say, not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance–now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood. When Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. He said, “This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep.” In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a manmade sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. (Hebrews 9:11-28)

And since Christ's coming, death and resurrection is the Gospel, the Good News, this means that the New Covenant/Testament is included within (or is a part of) the very Gospel itself. The author says that the New Testament doesn't refer to itself as a whole, as if this somehow proves anything. The problem with the author's argument is that this can be used against him with even greater force since the Quran doesn't refer to itself as a whole either. The author will not find a single statement telling him what the exact length of the Quran is, or that the Quran consists of only 114 surahs. The author is dependent on Islamic history, such as the hadiths, to know the exact contents of the Quran. Similarly, the Hebrew Scripture doesn't refer to its entire contents as the Old Testament, or tell us the exact number of Books making up its canon. Yet this didn't stop the Lord Jesus or his followers from knowing or referring to the canon of the OT. They even presupposed that their audience knew the extent of the OT canon as well (cf. Matthew 5:17-18; 22:29; Luke 16:29, 31; 24:25-27, 44-45). The NT doesn't have to mention all the Books which God gave to the Church, since the people of God would be guided to know and discover what Books make up the canon. For more on these issues, please read the following articles:

http://answering-islam.org/Responses...lah/bravo6.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...lah/bravo7.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses.../bravo_app.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...lah/bravo8.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...lah/bravo9.htm

But this is all irrelevant to the point at hand, which has to do with the Quran classifying as the Word of God those Books in the possession of the Jews and Christians during Muhammad's time. And as we have been constantly saying, these Books are the writings of the Holy Bible, both Old and New Testaments. What the author needs to do is spend less time criticizing the Holy Bible, and more time learning what the Quran really says about the Bible.

[Yahya Sulaiman]

Some Muslims Never Learn Part 2 of 3, continued from above


Lastly, his assertion that some of our points are irrelevant is not the case at all. Everything we wrote had relevance to the point, or points, raised by the author. It seems obvious (at least to us) that the author is just trying to avoid having to deal with the great bulk of our paper, since he seems to have realized that he can't refute the facts.

After that, Shamoun quotes a much larger section of my encyclopedic reference which speaks of errors being in the Koran. Encyclopedias are supposed to contain facts, and the quotation I offered was a fact, but unfortunately many encyclopedias also present opinions or interpretations as if they were facts, this being what the encyclopedic reference did at several points in the entry in question. I am interested only in facts, and not the author exegesis, which proves how poor it is anyway when it refers to only one or two passages from the Psalms being paralleled in the Koran, when as I established in my article on the Psalms on this site's Bible and Koran page, there are many, many more, adding up to a perfect distillation of the Psalms.

RESPONSE: The author doesn't realize that his critique of the very encyclopedia he himself used proves our point again. We cited the entire context of that encyclopedia precisely because we knew that the author would call it into question. Yet by admitting that the encyclopedia is wrong on several points, he has basically affirmed our argument that the encyclopedia's statement that there were no Arabic versions of the Gospels or NT Books can be wrong as well. Furthermore, unlike the claim that there were no Arabic versions of the NT Books, the encyclopedia's statements that Muhammad borrowed from apocryphal fables and talmudic stories, or that there are errors in the Quran, are based on facts, not on mere opinion, just as the following links prove:

http://answering-islam.org/Quran/Sources/index.html
http://answering-islam.org/Quran/Contra/index.html

The author continues:

Shamoun goes on to say that just because there is no evidence for the Bible having been translated into Arabic at the time doesn't mean that it wasn't, and speaks of it being a possibility--which I never denied or contradicted, but the rational and universal practice is to disbelieve in something for which there's no substantial evidence until substantial evidence emerges. Shamoun adds that there was no need for the Bible to have been translated into Arabic for Muhammad (on whom be peace) to have been learned in it, which is true, but all traditions of him speak of him being illiterate and none speak of him being bilingual. This leaves only the possibility of someone translating it to him--which was unlikely due to the extremely low literacy rate and which there is no substantial evidence for anyway. So as you can see, even though my point is not absolute proof and never said it was, it remains intact, regardless of Shamoun's confidence that he had shattered it.

RESPONSE: The author has completely ignored the very hadith citations which mention Zaid ibn Thabit learning Syriac in order to know what were in the Books of the Jews. He also ignores the scores of passages that mention Muslims who were reading the previous Scriptures, i.e. Umar reading the Torah, and fails to mention the fact that there were converts to Islam, such as Salman the Persian, who knew the biblical Books and could have conveyed their knowledge to Muhammad. Basically, the author is showing that he hasn't even carefully read the rebuttal which he claims to be responding to, and decided to simply piece together a short paper in order to give his readers the impression that he is actually addressing the issues.

After some allegations about the Koran which Shamoun admits is off topic (and would have to be responded to in an article of its own), Shamoun refers to a hadith speaking of Waraqa translating the Gospel in Arabic before the advent of Islam. Ahadith are fallible, and as I have shown and will establish even further in this paper, the Gospel is a single, separate book and not any part of the Bible. As such, there is no mess for me to sort out, regardless of what Shamoun erroneously thinks.

RESPONSE: Notice the inconsistency here. In the previous paragraph, the author appealed to these same fallible hadiths to show that Muhammad was illiterate, and yet he now calls into question the reliability of these same narrations when they don't serve his purpose or when they throw a monkey wrench in his agenda. First off, how does he know that the narrations which speak of Waraqa are any less reliable, when they are well-attested throughout the hadith and sira literature, than those traditions which speak of Muhammad's illiteracy? What criteria is he using to determine what is or is not authentic material? The Quran? Not possible, since there are no explicit references to Muhammad's illiteracy within the Quran, whereas the Quran does uphold the authenticity and availability of the previous Scriptures. (For a response to the passages of the Quran which Muslims often use to prove Muhammad was illiterate, we recommend the following papers: www.quran.org/ap28.htm; www.quran.org/gatut.html; www.mostmerciful.com/ummi.htm.)

More importantly, the hadith's (in)fallibility is irrelevant to the issue, since these traditions may in fact be forgeries (which would then call into question the entire corpus, thereby robbing the Quran of any historical background information). This still doesn't undermine the point that the Muslims who wrote them believed that they had access to the genuine Gospel(s), and even knew of Arabic versions of the Gospel. Their familiarity with the Gospel material may have led them to forge hadiths stating that Muhammad and his contemporaries also had access to these Christian sources. And yet the only Gospel sources these Muslims would have access to are those found in the possession of the Christians, specifically the NT Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Finally, Shamoun's long-winded article gets to the second of my six points, and after making a few unsupported claims which are circular from a Christian viewpoint, he points out the slander of Jesus (on whom be peace) in the apocryphal Gospel I mentioned and how late it was written--as if pointing out one parallel in that book is tantamount to endorsing the whole thing! Fact and legend were dispersed throughout the apocryphal Gospels (some statements or stories in them paralleling the four Gospels, for example, and some not, in the same Gospel). Since the apocryphal Gospel in question (The Infancy of Thomas) was written 100-200 years after the time of Jesus (on whom be peace), it would only stand to reason that the book would be soaked with legend and only a couple of actual facts would remain in it. And what do you know! The Koran, written in a time of oral tradition when people had a very historically ignorant standpoint, has only a couple of parallels with the book! Would that not be expected in a book that tells the truth about everything? And how would Muhammad (on whom be peace) from this historically ignorant standpoint have known if he were not a true prophet? It is only a minor piece of evidence for the Koran's authenticity and there are much more substantial reasons for believing in the Koran, but evidence it is all the same.

Shamoun asks me if I am implying that The Infancy of Thomas was the Gospel that the Koran speaks of. The answer is, Obviously not. And it is very irrational (especially in light of the things I pointed out above) to think that a book which confirms one Gospel cannot have two parallels in another Gospel.

RESPONSE: Talk about circular argumentation! The author assumes that those portions of the Apocrypha which the Quran quotes are historically authentic. And how does he know this? Well, because the Quran quotes them, that's how! The truth is that this is just one more reason why the Quran cannot be divinely inspired truth. The Quran, by quoting these ahistorical anecdotes, disqualifies itself from being God's word. The author of the Quran reported fables and myths as facts, not realizing how this would serve to discredit the Muslim scripture. The reason why Christians reject these miracle stories is not solely because they were written so late. These stories contradict the earliest Gospel narrations, accounts written in the first century even by liberal dating. For instance, John's Gospel, which even liberal-critical scholarship places within the last decade of the first century (90-100 AD.), mentions when Jesus performed his first miracle:

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus' mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” “Dear woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied, “My time has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.” They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.' This, THE FIRST OF HIS MIRACULOUS SIGNS, Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him." (John 2:1-11)

Since a first-century document containing eyewitness information emphatically says that Jesus' first miracle occurred during the time he began his public ministry, then those apocryphal stories suggesting that he did miracles when he was a child are wrong. They are nothing more than legendary embellishments written by some overzealous Christians trying to fill Jesus' childhood and adolescent years with the miraculous.

As for my next points, Shamoun tries to prove that the Law and the Gospel spoken of in one passage in Romans (the only place in the entire Bible where the two are mentioned together) does indeed refer to a tangible scripture in the case of the law. First, he cites a passage from Romans which is not of that part where the Law and the Gospel are mentioned together, the bottom line of the passage being, “Then those who are physically uncircumcised but keep the law will condemn you WHO HAVE THE WRITTEN CODE and circumcision but break the law.” (Romans 2:13-27) Does that look to you, dear reader, like it's automatically using the terms law and written code synonymously because they're in the same sentence? Could it not be that the written code (which the passage does not actually call the Law is separate from the abstract Law that is written on people's hearts, and this is why two, different terms are used? Even if this is not the case, the passage says the written code, not the Old Testament, and the translation the Law is, of course, the Torah. Next, Shamoun quotes another Pauline passage outside of that critical passage in Romans which speaks of the Old Testament and doesn't call it the Law or even contain the word Law.

Then Shamoun contradicts himself about the Gospel meaning the Good News by claiming that it is indeed a tangible scripture. Very strangely, he follows this with more quotes from the Bible in which the term blatantly means Good News. (Just read them and replace “Gospel” with “Good News” and see for yourself.) After making some appeals to Islamic authority (as if I had to agree with anything any of my brothers or sisters say), Shamoun tries to establish by appealing to the Bible that the Gospel was a part of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. I plan to start a new page on this site about that, especially if I can relocate the site (there are still a couple of things to work through before/if I can do it), and in any case the word Gospel nowhere is more clearly meant to mean Good News than in this case.

RESPONSE: Anyone reading the context of Romans will see that the Law and written code are used synonymously to refer to the Hebrew Scriptures, or more specifically to God's moral code revealed in the OT text, i.e. the Law of Moses. We even presented the very next chapter, which continues the same theme of chapter 2, to show that Paul was using Law to refer to the Hebrews Scriptures in general, and to the Law of Moses specifically. Out of sheer desperation, the author claims that I contradicted myself since I said that Good News refers to tangible Scriptures. We are going to make it very easy for the author to prove that I contradicted myself by posting the two contradictory statements side by side. The only way I could have contradicted myself is if I denied that Good News could refer to the written transmission of the Gospel, something I never said. What I said was that the Gospel/Good News refers to BOTH the oral and written transmission of the revelation of the Lord Jesus. We will now do as the author suggests and replace the word Gospel with Good News to see if this somehow supports the author's claims:

After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the GOOD NEWS of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:14-15)

I am not ashamed of the GOOD NEWS, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the GOOD NEWS a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” (Romans 1:16-17)

But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our GOOD NEWS, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter. (2 Thessalonians 2:13-15)

In what way does translating Gospel as Good News (its literal meaning) support the author's position is simply beyond us! We’ll be awaiting the author’s newest article. We are always ready to learn something new, and acknowledge where we find truth, but if he is going to merely repeat the old Muslim propaganda rearranged in a new way, a rebuttal will follow suit.

Regarding the fifth of my sixth points, Shamoun makes an irrational logical connection based on dogma alone, proving nothing whatsoever: 'As we stated above, if the New Testament is the inscripturation of the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ given to his Church, the inspired record of the Gospel God gave to the true believers, then the New Testament can be rightly called the Gospel.' Then after some more appeals to authority outside the Muslim scriptures, Shamoun speaks of the Koran's endorsement of the Torah, the Gospel, and all of the inspired scriptures aside, but there is no reason why the other two scriptures that the Koran mentioned (the scroll of the blessed Abraham and the Davidic Psalms) should not be, along with the Torah and the true Gospel, the entirety of the inspired scriptures, especially since the Koran does not identify any other previous scriptures as being inspired. The same goes for Shamoun's following comments about the Books and the scriptures. Finally, Shamoun refers to a hadith which says, Do these Jews and Christians not RECITE THE TORAH AND THE BIBLE but not act according to WHAT IS CONTAINED IN THEM? What is the point here? How does this prove or even indicate that the Law is the Old Testament and the Gospel the New Testament? It is referring to what Christians believe, not what Muslims are told to believe.

RESPONSE: The author totally ignored the fact that the Quran specifically says that there were many messengers which it does not mention, and (b) that Islamic sources claim that messengers are given Books to pass on to their communities. We, therefore, have every good reason to believe that the Quran acknowledges the existence of many other inspired Books which are not explicitly mentioned within it. The author, for some strange reason, assumes that the Quran confirms only the Davidic Psalms, whereas the Quran nowhere says that only those Psalms given to David are genuine. The Quran agrees that God revealed many Psalms to different messengers besides David. Keep in mind that in Arabic Psalm is Zabur and Psalms is Zubur:

But if they cry lies to thee, lies were cried to Messengers before thee, who came bearing clear signs, and the Psalms (wa al-Zuburi), and the Book Illuminating. (S. 3:184)

We sent not any before thee, except men to whom We revealed: “Question the people of the Remembrance, if it should be that you do not know--with the clear signs, and the Psalms (wa al-Zuburi); and We have sent down to thee the Remembrance that thou mayest make clear to mankind what was sent down to them; and so haply they will reflect. (S. 16:43-44)

Without doubt it is (announced) IN the revealed Psalms of former peoples (Zubu-ril-'awwaliin). (S. 26:196) [our rendering]

If they cry thee lies, those before them also cried lies; their Messengers came to them with the clear signs, the Psalms (al-Zuburi), the Illuminating Book; (S. 35:25)

Are your Unbelievers, (O Quraish), better than they? Or have ye an immunity IN the Sacred Psalms (al-Zuburi)? (S. 54:43) [our rendering]

These passages refer to Messengers coming with Psalms, presupposing that David wasn't the only person whom God gave Psalms. Again, these verses add further evidence to our position that the Quran confirms many more Books than those which it mentions specifically by name. To answer the author's question, the hadith which mentions the recitation of the Torah and the Bible demonstrates that Muhammad had no qualms affirming those Books which his contemporaries had within their possession as true. The citation, therefore, provides additional evidence that the Torah and the Bible which the Jews and Christians were reciting at that time must be the writings of the Old and New Testaments respectively, demonstrating once again that author is grossly in error. The author next mentions:

[quote=Yahya Sulaiman]After more on the alleged Old Testament prophecies of the Resurrection and Atonement (both off topic and soon enough to be written about by me in separate articles), Shamoun quotes the Koran in saying that Jesus (on whom be peace) was spoken of in the Law, and this fits very well with what we Muslims tend to believe about Deuteronomy 18, as such Jesus (on whom be peace) being spoken of in The Torah, the Hebrew word for Law. After another hadith reference about the two Books, a subject I've already addressed, Shamoun quotes another hadith and makes an argument from silence about it (I am with those who think that the Argument from Silence should be considered and official logical fallacy), which is irrelevant even if it's true since the Koran, the scripture that we do believe is infallible whereas the ahadith are not, specifically speaks of the textual corruption of the Jewish scriptures, as I have proven above. In light of this, the next hadith Shamoun quotes is also futile. He asks if there is documentary evidence of the corruption of the Bible. While there is not, the Bible itself proves that about itself, as I showed in my FAQ, which apparently Shamoun has not read. Besides, even if this were not the case, is there anything wrong with our believing something just because the Koran says i'ts true, since we believe that it's infallible? Aren't there many things in the Bible which Shamoun believes even though there is no documentary evidence for them?

And:

Finally, when discussing the sixth and final point of my article that he's responding to, Shamoun makes a plausible point. It does indeed look like I contradicted myself about the Law being a somewhat ambiguous phrase, because I carelessly did not mention (my fault!) that I was referring to the Bible's usage of the term and not the Koran's. The Bible speaks of God's law being written on our hearts, and then there are specific laws which are set down in the Law of Moses (on whom be peace). But you can drop this sixth point if you wish, since it offers only a possibility and not a likelihood or certainty the way that the others do. Shamoun goes on to say that a Christian can prove that Muhammad (on whom be peace) was not a genuine prophet, since according to Shamoun, he failed the Bible's tests for prophethood. This statement essentially boils down to, The Bible says it's true, and that is proof that it's true. Well, I'm sorry, Mr. Shamoun, but it doesn't work that way. The reasoning is circular and we Muslims could, after all, say similar things about the Koran, but we wouldn't be proving anything either.

RESPONSE: We realize why the author needs to constantly misrepresent the points made in our response, and is reduced to simply attacking straw men. His rebuttal has shown that he can't refute the facts marshaled against him. Here, he badly distorts my argument by accusing me of circular reasoning. I do not simply reject Muhammad on the basis that I assume the Bible is true, and since Muhammad contradicts the Bible he is therefore a false prophet. Rather, I take Muhammad's own words at face value and judge him according to the very revelation which he himself pointed to:

We have revealed to thee as We revealed to Noah, and the Prophets after him, and We revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, Jesus and Job, Jonah and Aaron and Solomon, and We gave to David Psalms, (S. 4:163)

[i]Those are they to whom We gave the Book, the Judgment, the Prophethood; so if these disbelieve in it, We have already entrusted it to a people who do not disbelieve in it. Those are they whom God has guided; so follow their guidance. Say: “I ask of you no wage for it; it is but a reminder unto all beings.” (S. 6:89-90)

Narrated Mujahid: “That he asked Ibn 'Abbas, ‘Is there a prostration in Surat-al-Sad?’ (38.24) Ibn 'Abbas said, ‘Yes,’ and then recited: ‘We gave...So follow their guidance.’ (6.85, 90) Then he said, ‘He (David) is one them (i.e. those prophets).’” Mujahid narrated: “I asked Ibn 'Abbas (regarding the above Verse). He said, ‘Your Prophet (Muhammad) was one of those who were ordered to follow them.’” (Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 6, Book 60, Number 156), from http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamen...ml#006.060.156

And if thou (Muhammad) art in doubt concerning that which We reveal unto thee, then question those who read the Scripture (that was) before thee. Verily the Truth from thy Lord hath come unto thee. So be not thou of the waverers. And be not thou of those who deny the revelations of Allah, for then wert thou of the losers. (S. 10:94-95) Pickthall

Muhammad claimed to be inspired like the true prophets of the Bible, and clearly said to consult the Bible if a person were in doubt about his message. Muhammad further claimed that he was predicted in the previous Scriptures (cf. surah 7:157). This again presumes that the Bible is the standard to judge whether Muhammad is true or not. Therefore, since Muhammad himself told others to use the Bible as the criterion and since he contradicts the Bible, Muhammad is a false prophet. And to answer the author's question, yes, it is a problem for Muslims to believe that the Quran is infallible since it contradicts those Scriptures which it testifies are infallible! Furthermore, we need to remind the author the reason why we mentioned the OT prophecies of the Lord Jesus since he seemingly didn't understand our purpose. We were trying to prove that the Gospel wasn't simply transmitted orally, but was already inscripturated in the OT Scriptures even before the coming of the Lord Jesus.

And we do appreciate the author acknowledging his error regarding the meaning of the word Law, but even here he is not completely forthcoming. It isn't just the Bible which uses the word Law in a broader sense, Islamic sources also use it in a similar way. See our paper for the details.

At long last, the article ends, and on another irrelevant tangent, this time a rebuttal to the mere possibility I mentioned that the Gospel which the Koran refers to is the long lost Gospel of the Nazarenes. The Nazarenes, as he said, believed that Jesus (on whom be peace) was the one and only son of God. So what? As I establish in article after article on this site's Trinity page, Christians nowadays believe in this doctrine despite a true lack of basis for it in their Gospels. Why could the Nazarenes not have done the same? But more importantly, so what if the Gospel of the Nazarenes isn't the Koran's Gospel? It was just a possibility I mentioned, an idea I threw out, food for thought.

RESPONSE: Here are some relevant quotes from the Gospel of the Nazerenes, as found in the writings of the Church Fathers:

To these (citations in which Matthew follows not the Septuagint but the Hebrew original text) belong the two: "Out of Egypt have I called my son" and "For he shall be called a Nazaraean." (Jerome, De viris inlustribus 3)

Behold, the mother of the Lord and his brethren said to him: “John the Baptist baptizes unto the remission of sins, let us go and be baptized by him.” But he said to them: “Wherein have I sinned that I should go and be baptized by him? Unless what I have said is ignorance (a sin of ignorance).” (Jerome, Adversus Pelagianos 3.2)

The Jewish Gospel has not "into the holy city" but "to Jerusalem." (Variant to Matthew 4:5 in the "Zion Gospel" Edition)

The phrase "without a cause" is lacking in some witnesses and in the Jewish Gospel. (Variant to Matthew 5:22, ibid.)

In the so-called Gospel according to the Hebrews instead of "essential to existence" I found "mahar," which means "of tomorrow”, so that the sense is: "Our bread of tomorrow”--that is, of the future--"give us this day." (Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 1 [on Matthew 6:11])

[i]The Jewish Gospel reads here as follows: "If ye be in my bosom and do not the will of my Father in heaven, I will cast you out of my bosom." (Variant to Matthew 7:5--or better to Matthew 7:21-23--in the "Zion Gospel" Edition)

The Jewish Gospel: (wise) more than serpents. (Variant to Matthew 10:16, ibid.)

The Jewish Gospel has: (the kingdom of heaven) is plundered. (Variant to Matthew 11:12, ibid.)

The Jewish Gospel has: I thank thee. (Variant to Matthew 11:25, ibid.)

In the Gospel which the Nazarenes and the Ebionites use, which we have recently translated out of Hebrew into Greek, and which is called by most people the authentic (Gospel) of Matthew, the man who had the withered hand is described as a mason who pleaded for help in the following words: "I was a mason and earned (my) livelihood with (my) hands; I beseech thee, Jesus, to restore me to my health that I may not with ignominy have to beg for my bread." (Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 2 [on Matthew 12:13])

The Jewish Gospel does not have: three d(ays and nights). (Variant to Matthew 12:40 in the "Zion Gospel" Edition)

The Jewish Gospel: corban is what you should obtain from us. (Variant to Matthew 15:5, ibid.)

What is marked with an asterisk (i.e., Matthew 16:2-3) is not found in other manuscripts, also it is not found in the Jewish Gospel. (Variant to Matthew 16:2-3, ibid.)

The Jewish Gospel: son of John. (Variant to Matthew 16:17, ibid.)

He (Jesus) said: “If thy brother has sinned with a word and has made three reparations, receive him seven times in a day.” Simon his disciple said to him: “Seven times in a day?” The Lord answered and said to him: “Yea, I say unto thee, until seventy times seven times. For in the prophets also after they were anointed with the Holy Spirit, the word of sin (sinful discourse?) was found.” (Jerome, Adversus Pelagianos 3.2)

The Jewish Gospel has after "seventy times seven times": For in the prophets also, after they were anointed with the Holy Spirit, the word of sin (sinful discourse?) was found. (Variant to Matthew 18:22 in the "Zion Gospel" Edition)

The other of the two rich men said to him: “Master, what good thing must I do that I may live?” He said to him: “Man, fulfil the law and the prophets.” He answered him: “That have I done.” He said to him: “Go and sell all that thou possessest and distribute it among the poor, and then come and follow me.” But the rich man then began to scratch his head and it (the saying) pleased him not. And the Lord said to him: “How canst though say, I have fulfilled the law and the prophets? For it stands written in the law: ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself; and behold, many of the brethren, sons of Abraham, are begrimed with dirt and die of hunger--and thy house is full of many good things and nothing at all comes forth from it to them!’” And he turned and said to Simon, his disciple, who was sitting by him: “Simon, son of Jona, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Origen, Commentary on Matthew 15.14 [on Matthew 19:16-30])

In the Gospel which the Nazarenes use, instead of "son of Barachias" we have found written "son of Joiada." (Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 4 [on Matthew 23:35])

But since the Gospel (written) in Hebrew characters which has come into our hands enters the threat not against the man who had hid (the talent), but against him who had lived dissolutely--for he (the master) had three servants: one who squandered his master's substance with harlots and flute-girls, one who multiplied the gain, and one who hid the talent; and accordingly one was accepted (with joy), another merely rebuked, and another cast into prison--I wonder whether in Matthew the threat which is uttered after the word against the man who did nothing may not refer to him, but by epanalepsis to the first who had feasted and drunk with the drunken. (Eusebius, Theophania 22 [on Matthew 25:14-15])

The Jewish Gospel: And he denied and swore and damned himself. (Variant to Matthew 26:74 in the "Zion Gospel" Edition)

Barabbas…is interpreted in the so-called Gospel according to the Hebrews as "son of their teacher." (Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 4 [on Matthew 27:16])

But in the Gospel which is written in Hebrew characters we read not that the veil of the temple was rent, but that the lintel of the temple of wondrous size collapsed. (Jerome, Epistula ad Hedybiam 120.8)

The Jewish Gospel: “And he delivered to them armed men that they might sit over against the cave and guard it day and night.” (Variant to Matthew 27:65 in the "Zion Gospel" Edition)

He (Christ) himself taught the reason for the separations of souls that take place in houses, as we have found somewhere in the Gospel that is spread abroad among the Jews in the Hebrew tongue, in which it is said: "I choose for myself the most worthy: the most worthy are those whom my Father in heaven has given me." (Eusebius, Theophania 4.12 [on Matthew 10:34-36]) (Source)

And:

To Matt. 3:16-17 cf. Gospel according to the Hebrews, (in Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 11:2)--When the Lord ascended from the water, the whole fount of the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon him, and said to him, "My son, in all the prophets I was waiting for you, that you might come, and that I might rest in you. For you are my rest; and you are my [b]firstborn son[b], who reigns forever."… (Origen, Commentary on John 2.12.87 [on John 1:3]):

And if any accept the Gospel of the Hebrews--here the Savior says: “Even so did my mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and carry me away on to the great mountain Tabor...

[i]Luke 24:50-53 cf. Gospel according to the Hebrews (in Jerome, On Illustrious Men, 2)--Also [b]the gospel called according to the Hebrews, recently translated by me into Greek and Latin, which Origen often uses[b], says, after the resurrection of the Savior: "Now the Lord, when he had given the linen cloth to the servant of the priest, went to James and appeared to him (for James had sworn that he would not eat bread from that hour in which he had drunk the Lord's cup until he should see him risen from among them that sleep)." And a little further on the Lord says, "Bring a table and bread." And immediately it is added, "He took bread and blessed and broke and gave it to James the Just and said to him, "My brother, eat your bread, for the Son of man is risen from among them that sleep.'"... (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book III, Chapter XXV) in compiling the "canon":

But there are also some who number among these [genuine books], the gospel according to the Hebrews, with which those of the Hebrews that have received Christ are particularly delighted. These may be said to be all concerning which there is any dispute... (Cyril of Jerusalem, Discourse on Mary Theotokos 12a):

It is written in the Gospel of the Hebrews: “When Christ wished to come upon the earth to men, the good Father summoned a mighty power in Heaven, which was called Michael, and entrusted Christ to the care thereof. And the power came into the world and it was called Mary, and Christ was in her womb seven months.” (Source)

These quotations present a very strong case for the Gospel of the Nazarenes being a Hebrew version of Matthew. Thus, if this is what the Quran confirms as the Gospel, then this again establishes our point that the Quran does confirm the canonical Gospels, or at least Matthew's Gospel. But this leaves the author in the very predicament which we had mentioned in our first response, and which he has tried so desperately to avoid. The Gospel of the Nazerenes is anything but Islamic, and their Gospel's portrait of Jesus is contrary to the Muslim one, which means that the Quran is wrong. For more on this subject, please consult the following excellent articles:

http://christian-thinktank.com/qnazonly.html

[Yahya Sulaiman]

Some Muslims Never Learn, Part 3 of 3, continued from above

And, as we have established in paper after paper, and rebuttal after rebuttal, the Holy Bible, especially the Gospels, establish the basis for the doctrine of the Trinity beyond any reasonable doubt:

http://answering-islam.org/Who/index.html
http://answering-islam.org/Trinity/index.html
http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/biblicaljesus.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/worship.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/jesus_is_yahweh.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/john10_34-36.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/1...rinitarian.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...omnipotent.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...l_on_jesus.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...-Ally/acts.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...separable1.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...urthgospel.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...dlyrespond.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...susonjesus.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...understood.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses/Menj/tam1.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses/Menj/divinity1.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...rgivenness.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses/Osama/mantras.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...jeremiah23.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...us_yahweh1.htm

Here are some more of our responses found on other sites:

http://www.abrahamic-faith.com/Jehovah-Witness.html
http://abrahamic-faith.com/shamoun/R...the%20JWs.html
http://abrahamic-faith.com/shamoun/J...ighty-God.html
http://abrahamic-faith.com/shamoun/J...ing%20JWs.html
http://abrahamic-faith.com/Jesus_sup...to_angels.html
http://abrahamic-faith.com/shamoun/R...20creator.html
http://abrahamic-faith.com/shamoun/R...0Part%201.html
http://abrahamic-faith.com/shamoun/R...0part%202.html
http://abrahamic-faith.com/shamoun/heinz-rebuttal.html

We have also proven that the dry, monadic deity created by Muslim theologians not only doesn't exist, but is not even found within the pages of the Quran itself:

http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/gabriel.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...llah/t5_73.htm

The author concludes:

Finally, I am going to conclude with some more facts which I neglected to mention in my original article (my fault again). While Shamoun, as we have seen, does not have a molecule of actual evidence to offer for the Law and the Gospel being the Old and New Tesaments, I can prove that this is not the case. First, there is the point in my original article which Shamoun just skipped around, that there are miracles of Jesus (on whom be peace) being spoken of in the Koran which were not in the New Testament but instead in a book outside of it which was never part of the Bible, so if the Koran considers the New Testament infallible, the miracles it mentions should stand on their own and it would be downright bizarre to have other miracles from an apocryphal Gospel.

But that is merely evidence; the proof comes when you add it to the points I'm about to make (which, in fact, can stand on their own as well). First, the Koran quotes al-Injeel (the Gospel) at one point, and this quote is nowhere to be found in the New Testament, so obviously neither the New Testament as a whole nor any of its Gospels, together or apart, are the Gospel which the Koran claims to confirm. Second, the Koran repeatedly speaks of al-Taurat (the Law, the Torah) as being revealed to the blessed Moses and never to anyone else, indicating that it could only be the Pentateuch. This is further confirmed by the enormous amount of parallels between the Koran and the Pentateuch. I'll leave it to you, dear reader, to decide just who has shattered whose arguments, and I have total confidence that anyone reading with an open mind and even a modicum of intelligence will see that it is me.

RESPONSE: The readers can see for themselves that we did address all of the author's points, and it is he who has chosen to skip around the great bulk of our arguments. We explained why the apocryphal stories of Jesus' miracles being reported in the Quran actually backfire against the author and against Muhammad's prophetic claims. The Muslim author is operating under the assumption that the Quran is authored by God, and because of this erroneous assumption, further presumes that these miracle stories are genuine historical events. What these stories actually demonstrate is that the author of the Quran didn't realize that he was quoting myths and fables, and simply lumped all these events together thinking that they were actual events in the life of Jesus. And yet by including such fairytales, the compiler ended up providing strong evidence that God could not have authored such a book.

The Muslim author again shows that he is confused and is clearly contradicting himself since he seems to again be saying that the Gospel is not something which Jesus simply preached, but also includes his biography, i.e. includes material regarding his childhood, adolescence, adult life etc. As we showed in our first response, the author said that the Gospel is something which Jesus preached and said in another place that it is a Book which Christ received. So which is it? Is the Gospel the Book and message that Jesus passed on, or does it refer to the life, deeds and teachings of the Lord Jesus which was compiled by authors after Christ's ascension? If the latter, then this again supports that the canonical Gospels are THE Gospel of Jesus Christ since they were written by eyewitnesses, unlike the apocryphal Gospels. Or is the author assuming that Jesus, from his birth, was given a Gospel which detailed in advance his entire life story and mission? For instance, the Quran states:

”Lord,” said Mary, “how shall I have a son seeing no mortal has touched me?” “‘Even so,’ God said, ‘God creates what He will.’ When He decrees a thing He does but say to it ‘Be,’ and it is. And He will teach him the Book, the Wisdom, the Torah, the Gospel, to be a Messenger to the Children of Israel saying, ‘I have come to you with a sign from your Lord. I will create for you out of clay as the likeness of a bird; then I will breathe into it, and it will be a bird, by the leave of God. I will also heal the blind and the leper, and bring to life the dead, by the leave of God.’” (S. 3:47-48)

and when I taught thee the Book, the Wisdom, the Torah, the Gospel; and when thou createst out of clay, by My leave, as the likeness of a bird, and thou breathest into it, and it is a bird, by My leave; and thou healest the blind and the leper by My leave, and thou bringest the dead forth by My leave; and when restrained from thee the Children of Israel when thou camest unto them with the clear signs, and the unbelievers among them said, "This is nothing but sorcery manifest." (S. 5:110)

Allah is announcing to Mary even before Jesus is born, and also to Jesus himself, that he will teach Christ the Gospel, which presupposes that the Gospel is a set of teachings that Jesus will pass on. Now if the Gospel also includes anecdotal material on Jesus' life then this means that Allah already taught Christ everything that would happen to him in advance which Jesus then passed on to his followers! If the author does not believe that the Gospel of Jesus includes such anecdotes, then how does an apocryphal story found within the Quran refute the assertion that the Muslim scripture confirms the Canonical Gospels? If anything, this serves as another example that the Quran is mistaken. The Quranic compiler assumed that the Gospel, much like the Torah and Quran, was a set of teachings given to Jesus when in reality the Gospel centers on the entire Christ event, i.e. that the Good News is the entire life, teachings, deeds, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, as well as the revelation he gave to his followers after his ascension into heaven. And yet by referring to the Gospel that was in the possession of the Christians during Muhammad's day, the Quran's author ends up affirming the validity and authenticity of the Canonical Gospels! The author of the Quran was clearly confused.

Furthermore, the author again assumes that since the Quran quotes a passage not found in the New Testament, this therefore proves that it cannot be confirming the NT Books. On the contrary, all this proves is that the author of the Quran was confused since he confirmed the authority and inspiration of the NT Books but then quoted a passage not found in the New Testament. Thirdly, the author claims that the Quran says that the Torah was given to Moses. The fact is that there is not a single verse which says that the Torah was given to Moses. The author, whether he realizes it or not, gets this information from the Holy Bible. In fact, there are quite a few Muslims who actually believe that the Torah mentioned in the Quran refers to the entire OT revelation:

*5:44 The Torah is a collection of all the scriptures revealed through all the prophets of Israel prior to Jesus Christ, i.e., today's Old Testament. Nowhere in the Quran do we find that the Torah was given to Moses. (Source)

The only way the author would have even known that Torah refers to the revelation given to Moses is by consulting the Holy Bible, which again shows that the Quran is presupposing the audience's familiarity with the Holy Bible. As we said, the word Torah in a strict sense refers to the Pentateuch (as the author himself noted), but is also used in a much broader sense for the entire Hebrew Scriptures. Fourthly, it may be the case that the Quran contains an enormous amount of material from the Torah, yet much of that material is garbled up and contradictory to what is found in the Hebrew Scriptures. In fact, the Quran contains major contradictions with the laws given through Moses, i.e. dietary laws, sacrificial system of atonement, marital relations etc. (cf. [1], [2]). This, too, is an argument against the Quran. To conclude, we too will leave it to the readers to see how the author failed to refute anything we had written. After this rebuttal, we are pretty certain that "anyone reading with an open mind and even a modicum of intelligence" can see for themselves that the author's confidence is totally misplaced, since he did anything BUT refute the facts marshalled against him. When the dust settles and it is all over, this truth remains; the Quran does confirm the entire Holy Bible as God's Word, and in so doing proves that it is not an inspired book and that Muhammad was a false prophet.


Addendum

In the first paragraph, the author mentioned my alleged hateful attitude. What the author calls a "hateful, disrespectful email dripping with vitriolic" was anything but. My emails were a response to his nasty, arrogance-filled attitude towards Christians in general, and to our website specifically. Notice the following peaceful, Islamic attitude of the author towards Christians and our site:

ANTI-ISLAMIC LINKS:

http://answering-islam.org/

The most famous Christian site for making (pathetic, in my opinion) attempts at debunking Islam. (Source)

My brothers and sisters need to stop taking Answering Islam so seriously, in my opinion. They're a joke. Their arguments are hackneyed and pathetic. Their deceptions are appalling--worst of all being their cowardice to admit defeat with the issue of their laughable "100+ errors in the Koran". Rather than be brave and honest and admit that their list is thoroughly wanting and disproven six ways from Sunday, they suddenly pretend (only after having their blatant mistakes pointed out irrefutably by knowledgeable Muslims) that they weren't trying to show that the Koran necessarily has errors but that Christians and Muslims are in the same boat with the Koran and the Bible, and having the new articles be labeled "Qur'an Difficulty" while the old ones were labled "Qur'an Contradiction" and made it crystal clear what their motives were. Their conversion stories are ridiculous, even more uninteresting than they are uninspiring. I have exposed their nonsense over a number of issues on my website, chief among them being my articles refuting their articles on the Trinity and whether Islam promotes peace.

They're nothing. They're not a threat and they're not liable to convince any Muslim to become a Christian (although I suppose there may always be a couple who flock, no matter how bad the reasoning behind it). I shouldn't waste any more time on them on my website (and wouldn't have wasted any in the past had those articles of theirs not been so perfectly representative of the usual, similar articles made against Islam for the same reasons). And my brothers and sisters would do well not to waste even their thoughts on the site. There's really no point in complaining about something so harmless. After all, Christian evangelists and apologists are already known for their unethical and dishonest methods. The really sad thing, however, is that Answering Islam, for all its faults, is one of the least bad pro-Christian and anti-Muslim sites I've seen (which just goes to show how good a case Christians can ever possibly make against our religion), and so I had to include it in the Anti-Islamic part of the "Links" section on my site's homepage. Sigh. That's just my two cents; you go ahead and complain all you want. But I would advise you to remember what the Prophet (P) thought of indignation. (Source)

Answering-Islam is just a place on the net where all the laughable arguments against Islam and in favor of Christianity are gathered together--all of which I have disproven on my website, including their entire article on the Trinity, which is without question the least convincing and most easily refuted defense of the doctrine I have ever seen. If you have any doubt whatsoever that their site is a joke, all you have to do is consider that their list of "over a hundred errors in the Qur'an" started off clearly and openly trying to establish that there genuinely and provably were errors in the book, and then after Understanding Islam, Answering Christianity, Randy Desmond and others deeply humiliated them time and again with debunking after debunking of these "errors" which any child can see are false claims, the Answering Islam team of course did not do the brave thing and admit that they were wrong and cannot find errors in the Book. Instead they added the intro called "The Purpose of This Page" which claimed that they were only pointing out possible errors so as to get Muslims to realize the triviliaty of their lists of biblical errors--all this ignoring that the original articles were unmistakably meant to establish irrefutable errors.

And as if out of a desire to prove their two-faced backpedaling, they stopped calling the articles "Qur'an Contradictions" (which often ended with the Koran's challenge to find a contradiction in it, obviously meant for ironic purposes and as an indication that they were seriously trying to show real errors) and started calling the new ones "Qur'an Difficulties". I cannot respect anyone who shifts their ground like that in the face of defeat. (Source)

I am shaking my head right now in sadness at what Christian dogma can do to a mind that is regularly capable of such rationality (as I'm sure yours is). If someone prays to God (especially the way he did--Gethsemane, for instance), that means that they are inferior to God and only mortals. God praying to God? Come on, man! This is just common sense. But then again, I guess I shouldn't blame you. Your dogma blinds you to what would otherwise obviously be so easy to understand and inarguable in your own mind. I've been trying for a year to get Christians to listen to common sense and it just never works.

If I were you, Ansar, I would just give up. Generally, getting a Christian to listen to reason about the Trinity is about as easy as defying gravity, and Joe has already made it clear how stubborn he is about maintaining this doctrine which would not even destroy his Christianity were to to stop believing in it. The way he kept singling out irrelevant details in my arguments, like my usage of a certain word, at the behest of paying any attention whatsoever to the actual points I was making, is a good example of this. I've seen Christians do it before in this settings: it's one of the more common defense mechanisms they'll use to avoid letting themselves understand the many lines of very elementary logic which destroy the Trinity doctrine. I may not even write any more articles on the Trinity, it's so obviously no use trying. In fact, if my experience in the matter has taught me the truth, it might actually be easier to get the average Trinitarian to give up their entire religion than the Trinity doctrine specifically. (Source)

I'll say this as often as I have to, if only out of a forlorn hope that if I point out common sense to someone enough times, eventually it might--juuuuuust might--sink in. The only foolish belief in these matters is the belief in the Trinity, because the doctrine is of one being in three persons, and "being" and "person", as I have proven in this thread, mean the same thing, so what the doctrine really means is the nonsensical statement "one being in three beings" or the equally nonsensical statement "one person in three persons". The distinction made with semantics here, as such, is just a false one, an illusion or deception. Christians usually defend the Trinity with analogies, but it's all in vain, because while there are any number of things in the world which are one unit which comes in three parts, there are not and by the definition of the words in question cannot be a being which comes in three beings or a person which comes in three persons (see above if you need your memory refreshed as to why this is irrefutably what the Trinity doctrine secretly claims).

To be who you are means not to be multiple people, and different entities are never one entity at the same time, because otherwise it would just be a matter of semantic confusion, or to be more specific, self-contradictory descriptive terms. Of course, God's omnipotence could allow Him to break the Law of Identity and make the impossible possible and as such become three entities in one, but the Trinity doctrine is supposed to be describing what God always was from the beginning, not something He's used his endless power to transform Himself into when He was originally something else. So no matter how you figure it, you're stuck. The Trinity doctrine just doesn't work and that's that. But of course, try to explain it to Christians and they will fail to understand the basic logic which refutes their doctrine (and not allow themselves to understand, for obvious reasons), or else do what JoeChristian did and zero in on irrelevant details like my use of a particular word while totally ignoring the actual point being made, or they'll throw textbook examples of logical fallacies at you, or on and on it goes...why do I even try? Why bother? What could I ever accomplish trying to reason with Christians about this doctrine that pretty much no one outside of Trinitarian Christianity has any trouble understanding the fatal flaws of? I guess I should just give up, here and now. I've tried, oh how I've tried, and go through the thread and just look at the results! Sorry for the angry, personal tone, but every now and then you just have to rant. My frustrated rant is over now...

[b]"Back when there was no time" is a nonsensical phrase. Do you see now how ludicrous is what you're saying? (Source)

Athanasian Creed, I am always willing to be open-minded about the contradictions I see in the Bible--for instance, I used to find it inarguable that the bloodlines of Matthew 1 and Luke 3 are contradictory, and laughed outright at the ridiculous rationalization that one bloodline was Mary's when both of them explicitly identify themselves as Joseph's, but then I saw a Christian evangelist point out how, if you compare the bloodlines to those of the Old Testament (I think maybe of 2 Chronicles), you find that (if the Bible is correct in the first place) Heli was Joseph's father-in-law whereas Jacob was Joseph's father by birth. (Even so, I find it a little strange that a bloodline should be traced through a father-in-law, but that something is strange does not make it contradictory.) (Source)

That's funny--you didn't seem to find it pointless a couple of your posts ago. In fact, it looks suspiciously to me like the conversation became pointless to you only after we destroyed your arguments. Does your own signature not say that every moment has the opportunity to be a perfect moment? Does not not apply to the future of this discussion?

EDIT: Forgive me if this is too provocative. I b> just like to express myself when I'm vexed, and I sometimes get too direct when doing so, but I think my points in this post must be made, so I'm not editing anything in the preceding paragraph. (Source)

In light of the foregoing, the author is in no moral position to be complaining about my very direct attitude towards his degrading, boastful insults against Christianity and Christians.

[Yahya Sulaiman]

Article #3 on the Law and the Gospel: More of the Same, And Yet MORE Proof

I wrote an article listing six reasons why “the Law” (al-Taurat) and “the Gospel” (al-Injeel) are not the Old and New Testaments in the Koran. Sam Shamoun of Answering Islam responded to it, I responded in turn, and he has responded again. The title of the most recent article by Shamoun betrays the open-mindedness and civility you’ll find in the paper. That title is Some Muslims Never Learn: A Follow Up Response to a Muslim’s Denial Regarding the Quran’s Confirmation of the Holy Bible, and this article can be found [here]. In this article, after openly refusing to comment on my accounts of how he’s been behaving (take note of that—especially for later), he talks about how if I am “truly interested in God’s truth and learning facts” then I “shouldn’t care about the length of our response.” Apparently Shamoun has not learned the value of being concise. Take note, dear reader, that I’m doing my best to show you that value in this debate as well as on this site in general.

I pointed out in my last article how the Koran’s stated purpose is to confirm as well as correct the scriptures that came before it. The references I gave were Koran 10:37 and Koran 5:15. Rather than actually respond to this point, Shamoun simply left us five links. I am not here to respond to six articles; I am here to respond to one article. I offer links to support my arguments sometimes, but I never replace arguments with links to other entire articles. I suggest that Shamoun do the same. After all, it is arguments that make a debate. Instead, I will simply refer you to the verses in question again, and look at them with you, dear reader:

This Koran could not have been forged apart from God; but it is a confirmation of what is before it, and a distinguishing of the Book, wherein is no doubt, from the Lord of all Being. (Surah 5, Ayuh 15)

People of the Book, now there has come to you Our Messenger, making clear to you many things you have been concealing of the Book, and effacing many things. There has come to you from God a light, and a Book Manifest whereby God guides whosoever follows His good pleasure in the ways of peace, and brings them forth from the shadows into a light by His leave; and He guides them to a straight path. (Surah 10, Ayuh 37)

As for the first verse, as you can see, it speaks of “the Book”. We’ve been over how that phrase, in the Koran, can variously mean itself or the Bible. Quite obviously the Koran does not distinguish itself! So of course it’s the Bible being referred to. (Some translations of the Koran replace the phrase “the Book” with the phrase “the scripture”, but in that case the same principle applies anyway.) Shamoun goes on at this point to talk about the circumstances of the Koranic text being officialized by Uthman to the corruption of the Bible, and then say:

Had this been said of the previous Scriptures, the Muslim author would no doubt have used this to prove that the Quran doesn’t confirm the entire Bible. Since this is said of the Muslim scripture, we wonder if the author will be consistent and argue that the Quran has been corrupted as well. We won’t be holding our breath to find out.

The two things can’t compare, since the Koran is a single book, a single writing, whereas the Bible is a volume of different writings bound together in the form of one book. Uthman’s purpose was to have the Koran gathered and deviant variants removed, and so the different parts were put together into one book, all of the parts having been from the same man. (Think of it as something vaguely like a serial.) The differing manuscripts of the Bible have been differing all along (as far as we know), ranging throughout centuries and centuries and centuries, and kept on even after the Bible was compiled (c.f. the medieval 1 John 5:7 interpolation).

Shamoun next points out references to make the case that since the Koran speaks of “the Book” being corrupted, that somehow means that the Koran is corrupted as well as the Bible just because they are referred to sometimes by the same title of “the Book”. As I’ve already said, the context of 2:75-79, where the corruption of the Bible is spoken of, occurs right after verses talking about the Jews, and so the “they” in 2:75 (the passage going on to speak of “them” corrupting their scriptures), if any grammatical sense is to be read into the verse, could be no one else but the Jews. Ergo, the Bible (or at least the Tanakh, but the phrase “the Book” can also be translated “the Bible”) is the Book that has been corrupted. As for 5:15 and 10:37, they are addressed to the “People of the Bible” (or “People of the Book”—i.e. Christians and/or Jews) and speaking of what is before the Koran, and so obviously the Koran isn’t claiming to be a revision of itself. After all, the term “the Book” can’t mean two things at once. Then Shamoun offers reference after reference after reference talking about the Koran confirming the previous scriptures, and simply making some bold declarations on the subject, Shamoun goes into the “belief in the previous scriptures” issue, quoting passages like this one:

Say you: “We believe in God, and in that which has been sent down on us and sent down on Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob, and the Tribes, and that which was given to Moses and Jesus and the Prophets, of their Lord; we make no division between any of them, and to Him we surrender.” (The Koran, Surah 2, Ayuh 136)

Yes, this is part of the basic parts of our faith, found in the closest thing to a creed we have (and taken straight from the Sunnah)—and this creed of sorts is a great way of explaining the meaning of the above passage. It is that we believe in Allah, His prophets, His angels, His books and Judgment Day. Now think about this: believing in the other four things means having faith in their existence, so evidently it means the same thing to believe in the books in question. Similarly, the “believing in” of 2:136 begins with “believing in God”, which of course means believing in His existence. Remember that the phrase is “believing in” and not just “believing”. The next paragraph is so flawed I have to go through it pretty much sentence by sentence.

The purpose of those “huge pile of links” was to present our readers with the historical data supporting both the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus and the legitimacy of Paul, issues which the author had called into question.

While I have called these things into question in the past, it was elsewhere on this site, except for that brief reference I made to “St. Paul the Innovator”, which was an expression of personal opinion as part of an offhand comment (probably a pointless offhand comment too, now that I think of it). And these articles here are about whether “the Law” and “the Gospel” mean “the Old Testament” and “the New Testament” in the Koran.

Secondly, the link I posted does more than simply appeal to authority, they provide both the biblical and historical evidence, as well as the views of Muhammad's followers and Muslim scholars, that the word Torah or Law can refer to the entire Old Testament canon.

There can be no biblical evidence for something in the Koran, and an appeal to a historical authority is still an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy. And the issue here (why must I keep reminding Shamoun of the issue??) is not whether the Torah or Law can refer to the entire Old Testament canon in the speech of non-Koranic sources, but whether it does in the Koran.

It is quite evident that the author didn’t bother even reading it, since if he did then he has no excuse for claiming that we only presented one Islamic citation to support our case.

As if things weren’t bad enough, now he’s putting words in my mouth. I never said that he “presented only one Islamic citation”. I spoke only of scriptural citations (meaning Islamic, scriptural citations).

Besides, even if we did appeal to a single Muslim citation, how would that make the point any less valid?

It doesn’t, and I never said it did. The point is invalid for the reasons I stated. In the midst of more appeals to authority about “what Muslims say”, and after responding to a point I never made about the Torah being corrupted because of a passage from Sahih Bukhari not being found in it, Shamoun says:

The author somehow thinks that he can avoid my statement that the Salafis applied the word Torah for both Scriptures by arguing that they could have been referring to the Torah and the Gospel. The author failed to note that the reason why I mentioned this was to establish the fact that the word Torah can refer to more than the Law given to Moses, which means that even if the Salafis were referring to the Torah and the Gospel this still proves my point! It is rather unfortunate that the author didn’t see how his response only proved the point I was seeking to make.

I’m sorry, Shamoun, but pointing out a reference to “the people of the two scriptures” in no way establishes that the word “Torah” can refer to more than the Law given to Moses (on whom be peace). Next Shamoun follows his non-sequitur with:

Furthermore, the Salaf’s statements could not be limited to just these two Books since the Jews and Christians had more than the Torah and the Gospels in their possession. The Quran itself says that Allah sent down more than these two Books to them, such as the Psalms, and even quotes Psalm 37:29 to boot: “For We have written in the Psalms, after the Remembrance, ‘The earth shall be the inheritance of My righteous servants.’( S. 21:105). Therefore, the expression “the Books of the People of the Two Scriptures” must include ALL the Books which were in the possession of the Jews and Christians.

It must? Could it just be that the books of these people of the two scriptures (in Arabic there are no capital letters) are the two scriptures? After all, it doesn’t say “the only books”. Doesn’t this just make sense? The Koran refers to Christians as “People of the Injeel/Gospel” (5:47) and to Jews as those “charged with the Taurat/Law” (62:5).

Shamoun responds to my “inconsistent” pointing out of his own inconsistent claims of what the term “Gospel” means with the argument that the term “Gospel” itself has an inconsistent meaning, variably being “good news”, “the four Gospels of the Bible collectively” or “the New Testament”. The subject at hand, right from my original “Six Reasons” article, is whether it means “the New Testament” in the Koran, not whether it does mean that here but not there. If Shamoun is taking the side that the title of al-Injeel/The Gospel doesn’t necessarily refer to the New Testament as a whole, he may as well not be disputing my original argument in the first place, which was against Christians who claim that “the New Testament” was the meaning of the term “al-Injeel”.

But there is no way that the Koranic use of the term “the Gospel” can possibly mean anything except a single writing by Jesus (on whom be peace) himself, and this is yet another piece of proof for my position which I neglected in both preceding articles. (I guess there are just so many reasons for it being impossible for al-Injeel to be the New Testament that I just can’t keep track of them all! Maybe I should have spent more time and made my “Six Reasons” article into something more like a “Twelve Reasons” article in the first place.) The Koran tells us in 5:46 and 57:27 that al-Injeel was revealed or given to Jesus (on whom be peace), and al-Injeel is referred to unequivocally as a written scripture in many Koran passages such as 48:29 and 7:157—all of these passages talking about al-Injeel and al-Taurat in the same place, which is always in refererence to them as scriptures throughout the entire Koran. (As for the Koran referring to itself as a whole, which it does, by name, it cannot compare to the New Testament doing so or not doing so, since it is a fact that the New Testament is a volume of separate writings by separate articles whereas it is only a speculation, held by a minority of scholars of all manner of opinions of the Koran and its authenticity, that it is a “work of multiple hands”—a subject I’ve tackled elsewhere on the site anyway.)

If you’ll remember, dear reader, one of my six points used a quotation from an encyclopedia of religion, and rather than discuss the main point except in a could-have-might-have way, Shamoun simply showed other parts of the same entry of the encyclopedia which disagree with my Islamic views exegetically, as if leaving out something like that when verifying a specific point about when the Bible was translated into Arabic is somehow tantamount to taking a statement out of context. Now he claims that it is a fact that the Koran contains errors, simply because he and his comerades at Answering Islam says they do [here] and [here], and that the fact that there are parallels between Islamic scripture and older traditions automatically means that the former “borrowed” from the latter—an allegation which means nothing to Muslims, who believe that the Koran contains the truth from all traditions, which one would hardly expect would just happen to be in the same arbitrarily put together canon or heading entirely. (See this site’s article How the Koran’s Parallels in Various Traditions Actually Validates It for more on this).

It is sadly in the nature of debates, especially religious ones, that when someone is losing they gradually let their debating lapse into accusations, insults and personal abuse. This is what Shamoun starts doing at this point; the readers must judge for themselves why the coincidence. He starts by responding to my leaving alone passages which do not have any bearing on my points or are at least of the same could-have-might-have-who-knows? variety by saying, “Basically, the author is showing that he hasn’t even carefully read the rebuttal which he claims to be responding to, and decided to simply piece together a short paper in order to give his readers the impression that he is actually addressing the issues.”

From this he more or less immediately moves on to: “In the previous paragraph, the author appealed to these same fallible hadiths to show that Muhammad was illiterate, and yet he now calls into question the reliability of these same narrations when they don’t serve his purpose or when they throw a monkey wrench in his agenda.” Guess what, Shamoun: you can’t read my mind, and (b) I did not make any attempt to show that the Prophet (on whom be peace) was illiterate but only said that we have no traditions from the time which disagreed with this. Is it not fair to consider a general tradition that’s considered common knowledge and spoken of in many ahadith more likely to be accurate than one, single hadith pointed out (a specific one about Waraqa) which I have dismissed for a stated reason, regardless of Shamoun’s cynical mudslinging?

More could-have’s about the fallibility of the Sunnah and the general traditions about Muhammad (on whom be peace). A claim that the only Gospels that the compilers of ahadith and sunnah would have access to were the four ones of the Bible. We already know from the previous articles in this debate that there were at least two others, The Infancy of Thomas and The Gospel of the Nazarenes, and those are just the two we’ve pointed out. Next Shamoun lapses immediately back into insults and accusations in place of argument, this time adding blatant misrepresentation of my argument. I mentioned the eyebrow-raising fluke of how it is only to be expected that in a book written after 100-200 years after the events it chronicles through word-of-mouth oral tradition, only a couple of facts left would be true, and what do you know! The Koran has only a couple of parallels with the book. Shamoun replies with a stunningly, embarrassingly flawed response of:

Talk about circular argumentation! The author assumes that those portions of the Apocrypha which the Quran quotes are historically authentic. And how does he know this? Well, because the Quran quotes them, that’s how!

After irrelevant remarks of why Christians accept certain miracle stories over others, Shamoun does something I have never seen any Christian do in all my life, and this includes when I was steeped in Christians and Christianity of countless denominations at school almost all through high school: he claims that the term “the gospel” means anything other than “the good news of Christianity” in the Bible. I find it odd how he finds it odd that Romans 1:16-17 and 2 Thessalonians 2:13-15 would carry this meaning. I don’t see why it puzzles him. As for Mark 1:14-15, it doesn’t look strange at all in the translation I always use, the RSV. Does anyone reading this who is Christian think that “the gospel” as a biblical term ever refers to the New Testament, especially since each book of it existed before the New Testament itself existed? The same goes for the Four Gospels collectively (the capital “G” changing the meaning for reasons unnecessary to explain).

As for the Koranic passages referring to prophets being sent and being given “the Psalms” and “the Book Illuminating” and what not, it is as simple as, “I sent mail carriers out to my friends’ houses with letters and boxed items.” This statement does not necessarily mean that each neighbor got both a letter and a boxed item, now does it? In the same way, the Psalms, for example, being listed as something that existed among the prophets does not mean that more than one of them had the psalms of God revealed to him. Then Shamoun goes into “the Torah and the Bible” issue and his continuing misunderstanding of the concept of confirmation of scriptures in the Koran, and once again I have to refer you back to the earlier parts of the article and Koran 2:75-79 and its clearly Jewish-based context, and around we go again.

Shamoun had argued that “Muhammad (on whom be peace) was not a genuine prophet, since according to Shamoun, he failed the Bible’s tests for prophethood,” as I put it before, and all the reader has to do is go back and check to see how accurate an assessment of one of his arguments this was. He accuses me of attacking straw men because he does not “simply reject Muhammad on the basis that I assume the Bible is true, and since Muhammad contradicts the Bible he is therefore a false prophet.” Well, whatever. Muhammad (on whom be peace) did indeed claim to be inspired like some of—some of, mind you—the prophets in the Bible, as well as some not in the Bible. But whether these prophets were represented accurately in the Bible is a different matter, which would require at least one article all its own (and has been discussed in various aspects of the issue in many articles already on this site, especially in the Bible and Koran section), and then there is the matter of the corruption of the Bible, which I have already proven both above, in the previous articles, and pretty much all over this entire website.

After making the claim that some scattered alleged prophecies of piecemeal events in the four Gospels means that “the Gospel”, in Shamoun’s sense, did not come entirely from oral tradition (which I didn’t say that it did), Shamoun once again lapses into offensive accusatory talk, this time saying that “I have not been entirely forthcoming”, a phrase which in terms of meaning is a softer way of saying that I am being deliberately dishonest. Then, somehow managing once again to overlook that my brief reference to the Gospel of the Nazarenes as a possible candidate for al-Injeel, which as I’ve said could very well not be the case, he goes off into a very long argument to show that “the Gospel of the Nazerenes is anything but Islamic, and their Gospel’s portrait of Jesus is contrary to the Muslim one, which means that the Quran is wrong.” Once again, if I were Shamoun, I would be very embarrassed.

And what on earth does the Trinity or Shamoun’s allegations of our depiction of God being “dry” and “monadic” have to do with anything here?? It is as if Shamoun were psychologically incapable of arguing about anything for long enough before going off into other topics coming out of nowhere, in the form of a mountain of links and/or a pages-long tangent. The same goes for accusing me of contradicting myself in the most absurd ways, now taking the form of the Gospel being something that was preached (as I said it was in the biblical, Christian sense of the term) and also something written (as I said it was in the Koranic sense of the term, also the capitalizated biblical sense, the upper or lower cased G being all it takes to make the difference). And since the Koran undeniably refers to the Gospel (upper-cased G, “al-Injeel”) as being from the blessed Jesus’s own point of view, there’s nothing “anecdotal” about it either. As for God teaching it to him, we believe that God taught the Koran to the blessed Muhammad, but it also contains biographical material about him. So what of it? Shamoun then says:

Furthermore, the author again assumes that since the Quran quotes a passage not found in the New Testament, this therefore proves that it cannot be confirming the NT Books. On the contrary, all this proves is that the author of the Quran was confused since he confirmed the authority and inspiration of the NT Books but then quoted a passage not found in the New Testament.

So because Shamoun’s position in this debate is right and the Koran considers the New Testament to the al-Injeel and also infallible, which is what Shamoun is supposed to be establishing in this debate, therefore he is right? He even recognizes that the Koran quotes a verse from al-Injeel which is not in the New Testament, and the import of this doesn’t seem to reach him at all. Next, Shamoun is correct about the blessed Moses not being spoken of in the Koran as being given “The Torah/al-Taurat” by name, but what else would the “scripture of Moses” (Koran 11:17, 87:19) be, especially when its material is consistently spoken of in the Koran as being from or paralleled in the Torah?? Next, Shamoun can offer no actual direct response to my pointing out of the overwhelming amount of parallels between the Koran and the Torah except to point out that there are differences between them—which I myself have pointed out repeatedly in the Bible and Koran section of this site, in arguments that are not against, but in favor of, the Koran, given the Book’s partial purpose of revision, which I have established many times now.

As for Shamoun’s addendum, his e-mails to me were indeed very, very, very much of a hateful attitude. In fact, just a couple of days ago he sent me one (even though I’ve made it clear to him that because of the hateful and extremely redundant nature of his e-mails to me, I am now deleting them on sight without opening them) with the title, “Looking forward to refuting your stupid trash!” Yes, Shamoun, very Christlike. Shamoun makes it obvious how tipped the hate scale is against him in these articles by having to list various quotes that I’ve made on the Understanding Islam message board instead—and why he was prying around there in the first place I don’t know. But for the moment I’ll just pretend that this is relevant, not contradictory to Shamoun’s stated attitude against making “emotional appeal” to the readers when I point out how hateful were his e-mails to me, or that the quotes from me that he offers do not tend to be more disdainful rather than venomous, accusatory and spiteful like Shamoun’s e-mails (or even the title of the article under discussion).

I try to make it a habit to apologize on that board (and elsewhere—c.f. this site’s response to Denis Giron’s Qur’an: A Work of Multiple Hands?) when I make deeply personal comments. Shamoun also leaves out the more recent posts I made even in the same thread he quotes in his list, in which I stopped trying to match his venom with disdain and equally confrontational talk, speaking of trying to establish respect, trying to talk Shamoun into being peaceful, even by showing him (in vain) passages from his own scripture on the subject, and reminding everyone how the Koran tells us to argue with disbelievers in the fairer manner ([here] and the following page). And hey! It’s not like I ever claimed to be perfect myself in the first place anyway. Finally, although I suppose that since showing him how badly his attitude (which, unlike me, he extremely stubbornly persisted in) reflects his religion with the teachings of his own prophet didn’t work the first time, it probably won’t work again, but I’m sure that other Christians reading this will be more reasonable and willing to understand when I respond to his claim that his attitude was only in retaliation with my own with the words of his own prophet in his own scripture:

Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” (Matthew 18:21-22)

May God bless us all and guide us on the right path.

--the very non-anonymous Yahya Sulaiman, a.k.a. Ziggy Zag

[Yahya Sulaiman]

Now all I have left to transfer to post format and post is Shamoun's twice-the-excruciating-length-of-the-previous-articles Yet Another Follow Up Response to a Muslim’s Continuing Denial Regarding the Quran’s Confirmation of the Holy Bible and my final (and most utter) smashing of his arguments, Article #4 on The Law And The Gospel: The Proof Cannot Be Denied, Whatever Answering Islam May Try. If I don't get around to putting those up tomorrow, I'll do it Monday.

[Yahya Sulaiman]

Yet Another Follow Up Response to a Muslim's Continuing Denial
Regarding the Quran's Confirmation of the Holy Bible

by Sam Shamoun

Part 1 of 4

Mr. Yahya Sulaiman has again decided to try his hand at refuting our response to his claim that the Quran does not confirm the entirety of the Holy Bible. His response can be accessed [here]. The author begins with an introduction:

I wrote an article listing six reasons why "the Law" (al-Taurat) and "the Gospel" (al-Injeel) are not the Old and New Testaments in the Koran. Sam Shamoun of Answering Islam responded to it, I responded in turn, and he has responded again. The title of the most recent article by Shamoun betrays the open-mindedness and civility you’ll find in the paper. That title is "Some Muslims Never Learn: A Follow Up Response to a Muslim’s Denial Regarding the Quran’s Confirmation of the Holy Bible", and this article can be found [here].

In this article, after openly refusing to comment on my accounts of how he’s been behaving (take note of that—especially for later), he talks about how if I am "truly interested in God’s truth and learning facts" then I "shouldn’t care about the length of our response." Apparently Shamoun has not learned the value of being concise. Take note, dear reader, that I’m doing my best to show you that value in this debate as well as on this site in general.

RESPONSE: Much like his earlier response, the Muslim author seeks to appeal to the sympathy of his readers, trying to play on their emotions, in an obvious attempt of trying to sidetrack them from focusing on the real issues. His focus on my behaviour is nothing more than a smokescreen, and an implicit form of ad hominem. Instead of dealing with the issues, he chooses to spend time on my personality. I will have more to say about this issue near the end of this present rebuttal. His comments make it rather obvious that he again didn’t bother reading my response carefully since I addressed his comments on my personality and behavior in the addendum. This means that either the author ignored that particular section, or wrote the introduction section of his response even before having read my rebuttal all the way through. Since the author has indirectly accused me of an ad hominem, let me briefly comment on what an ad hominem is and what it isn’t. Better yet, let me quote from an online source which explains when an ad hominem has been committed:

[i]Argumentum ad hominem Argumentum ad hominem literally means "argument directed at the man"; there are two varieties.

The first is the abusive form. If you refuse to accept a statement, and justify your refusal by criticizing the person who made the statement, then you are guilty of abusive argumentum ad hominem. For example:

"You claim that atheists can be moral--yet I happen to know that you abandoned your wife and children."

This is a fallacy because the truth of an assertion doesn't depend on the virtues of the person asserting it. A less blatant argumentum ad hominem is to reject a proposition based on the fact that it was also asserted by some other easily criticized person. For example:

"Therefore we should close down the church? Hitler and Stalin would have agreed with you."

A second form of argumentum ad hominem is to try and persuade someone to accept a statement you make, by referring to that person's particular circumstances. For example:

"Therefore it is perfectly acceptable to kill animals for food. I hope you won't argue otherwise, given that you're quite happy to wear leather shoes."

This is known as circumstantial argumentum ad hominem. The fallacy can also be used as an excuse to reject a particular conclusion. For example:

"Of course you'd argue that positive discrimination is a bad thing. You're white."

This particular form of Argumentum ad Hominem, when you allege that someone is rationalizing a conclusion for selfish reasons, is also known as "poisoning the well".

IT'S NOT ALWAYS INVALID TO REFER TO THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF AN INDIVIDUAL WHO IS MAKING A CLAIM. IF SOMEONE IS A KNOWN PERJURER OR LIAR, THAT FACT WILL REDUCE THEIR CREDIBILITY AS A WITNESS. It won't, however, prove that their testimony is false in this case. It also won't alter the soundness of any logical arguments they may make. (Source; capital emphasis ours)

One Muslim writer put it this way:

It may prove helpful at this point if I further explain what is an ad hominem fallacy and what is not. One commits the ad hominem fallacy when one attacks the person instead of refuting his ideas. It is not ad hominem if in addition to pointing out the errors in the ideas one also shows how the person arrived at those incorrect ideas in the first place. If this means exposing the deceptive tactics such as the use of misquotes, then this reflects not on the expositor, but on the deceiver. It is also useful and legitimate for a debater to show that whereas his opponent poses as a scholar on a given subject, he has in fact proved inadequate or incompetent in dealing with the subject; or, worse yet, that he has proved dishonest in dealing with the subject. This of course does not prove that everything he says is wrong, since even the devil speaks the truth sometimes. But it does establish the need for caution before accepting everything he says--hook line and sinker. (Source; bold emphasis ours)

Hence, it is not at all an ad hominem or a personal attack to highlight when a person has failed to address the arguments, or is evading the issues, or stubbornly refusing to admit mistakes. If these assertions are true then they can’t be considered an attack. Thus far, the author hasn’t shown that our charges against him are wrong. If anything, it is the author who has committed this fallacy since he seeks to poison the well by addressing my personality so as to cause his readers to react emotionally in order to prevent them from even seriously considering the arguments I set forth. The author again complains about the length of my rebuttal, and managed to introduce an ad hominem in the process. As if it hasn’t become obvious by now, we are constantly in the need of repeating ourselves. It doesn’t take much to write a paper full of errors, logical fallacies, textual distortions, misinterpretation etc. Yet, responding to these gross distortions and exposing the errors may require a lengthy rebuttal. Thus, the author can afford to be concise since, as we shall see again, he hasn’t managed to set forth a valid refutation of my points. Sadly, because the author essentially ignored or misrepresented my points, we have been forced to once again provide another lengthy response. Take note, dear reader, that we’re doing our best to show you the value in this debate by exposing the red herrings, straw men and the other logical fallacies committed by Muslims such as Mr. Sulaiman. He continues:

I pointed out in my last article how the Koran’s stated purpose is to confirm as well as correct the scriptures that came before it. The references I gave were Koran 10:37 and Koran 5:15. Rather than actually respond to this point, Shamoun simply left us five links. I am not here to respond to six articles; I am here to respond to one article. I offer links to support my arguments sometimes, but I never replace arguments with links to other entire articles. I suggest that Shamoun do the same. After all, it is arguments that make a debate. Instead, I will simply refer you to the verses in question again, and look at them with you, dear reader:

RESPONSE: To begin with, we do agree that he was able to show that the Quran confirms the Holy Bible, but where he failed was proving that the Quran corrects the previous revelation. In fact, even his formulation is contradictory:

1. The Quran confirms the Scriptures.
2. The Quran corrects the Scriptures.

These two claims are mutually contradictory. How can the Quran correct the very Scriptures it has come to confirm? Either you confirm a statement, a theory, or a book, or you correct it, but it cannot be both at the same time. Now, it is possible that the Quran comes to confirm the Scriptures while also superseding or consummating some of the Bible’s specific teachings. But, as the author’s argument stands, he is clearly contradicting himself in the space of one sentence!

The author again proves that he hasn’t read my response carefully. He claims that I didn’t actually respond to his point, and then asserts that I listed five links. It should have dawned on the author that the whole purpose in giving those links was to draw his attention to my responses to the passages he claims that I didn’t address in order to make my rebuttal shorter. After all, the author has been complaining about the length of my rebuttal, and yet when I try to provide links that thoroughly address the issues he raises he then complains that I am not dealing with his points! Since he wants me to explicitly answer his references in my response to him--instead of referring to earlier articles in which I had already answered the very same questions--I will be only too glad to oblige his request. But the author shouldn’t complain that I have written another lengthy rebuttal, that my responses are too long. See the next section.

The author says:

This Koran could not have been forged apart from God; but it is a confirmation of what is before it, and a distinguishing of the Book, wherein is no doubt, from the Lord of all Being. (Koran 5:15)

{Note: This is a side issue and not related to the topic at hand. Notice how Arberry has rendered the Arabic. He has the text saying that God forged the Quran! In other words, the passage is not denying that the Quran has been forged, but it is only denying that someone other than God forged it!}

[quote]People of the Book, now there has come to you Our Messenger, making clear to you many things you have been concealing of the Book, and effacing many things. There has come to you from God a light, and a Book Manifest whereby God guides whosoever follows His good pleasure in the ways of peace, and brings them forth from the shadows into a light by His leave; and He guides them to a straight path. (Koran 10:37)

As for the first verse, as you can see, it speaks of "the Book". We’ve been over how that phrase, in the Koran, can variously mean itself or the Bible. Quite obviously the Koran does not distinguish itself! So of course it’s the Bible being referred to. (Some translations of the Koran replace the phrase "the Book" with the phrase "the scripture", but in that case the same principle applies anyway.) Shamoun goes on at this point to talk about the circumstances of the Koranic text being officialized by Uthman to the corruption of the Bible, and then say:

Had this been said of the previous Scriptures, the Muslim author would no doubt have used this to prove that the Quran doesn’t confirm the entire Bible. Since this is said of the Muslim scripture, we wonder if the author will be consistent and argue that the Quran has been corrupted as well. We won’t be holding our breath to find out.

RESPONSE: A really quick note at this point. The author has given the wrong surah numbers here. The first quote is actually surah 10:37, while the second one is 5:15. The author in haste reversed the surah numbers.

We are so thankful for the author admitting that surah 10:37 is referring to the Holy Bible, since he again proves our point. As far as the debate is concerned, that the Quran confirms the Holy Bible, the author has basically given it to me. The author was trying so hard to deny that the Quran confirms the Holy Bible, since he kept saying that the Quran confirms only the Torah, the Psalms of David and the Gospel. So the author is only managing to constantly contradict himself from one rebuttal to the next. Notice his two contradictory positions:

The Quran confirms the Holy Bible, which means that it confirms all the Books
contained within it.

The Quran only confirms Abraham’s writings, the Torah, the Psalms of David, and the Gospel of Jesus, which means that it doesn’t confirm the entire Bible. It only confirms
specific parts of it.

But even here the author is inconsistent since to him, neither the Torah of the Bible nor the Gospels are the original Torah and Gospel spoken of by the Quran. And now, here is our answer to the author’s misuse of surah 5:15 taken from one of those very links which we had supplied:

1. The Quran presumes that the Previous Revelation was available during Muhammad’s time

Before providing the Islamic evidence supporting the authority, authenticity and preservation of the Holy Bible, we need to first address the following passage that Muslims often bring up:

"Allah made a covenant of old with the Children of Israel and We raised among them twelve chieftains, and Allah said: Lo! I am with you. If ye establish worship and pay the poor-due, and believe in My messengers and support them, and lend unto Allah a kindly loan, surely I shall remit your sins, and surely I shall bring you into Gardens underneath which rivers flow. Whoso among you disbelieveth after this will go astray from a plain road. And because of their breaking their covenant, We have cursed them and made hard their hearts. They change words from their context and forget a part of that whereof they were admonished. Thou wilt not cease to discover treachery from all save a few of them. But bear with them and pardon them. Lo! Allah loveth the kindly. And with those who say: ‘Lo! we are Christians,’ We made a covenant, but they forgot a part of that whereof they were admonished. Therefore We have stirred up enmity and hatred among them till the Day of Resurrection, when Allah will inform them of their handiwork. O People of the Scripture! Now hath Our messenger come unto you, expounding unto you much of that which ye used to hide in the Scripture, and forgiving much. Now hath come unto you light from Allah and plain Scripture (S. 5:12-15 Pickthall)

It is assumed that "changing words from their context" implies that the previous scriptures have been tampered with. Several responses are in order. First, even if this were the case this would only be referring to the Jews, and even then, not all of the Jews. The Quran testifies that there were many from the People of the Book who wouldn’t deal falsely with God’s Word:

“Not all of them are alike. Some of the People of the Book are an upright people. They recite the signs (or verses) of God in the night season and they bow down worshipping. They believe in God and the last day. They command what is just, and forbid what is wrong and they hasten in good works, and they are of the righteous.” (S. 3:113-114)

"Of the people of Moses there is a section who guide and do justice in the light of truth ... After them succeeded an (evil) generation: They inherited the Book, but they chose (for themselves) the vanities of this world, saying (for excuse): ‘(Everything) will be forgiven us.’ (Even so), if similar vanities came their way, they would (again) seize them. Was not the covenant of the Book taken from them, that they would not ascribe to Allah anything but the truth? AND THEY STUDY WHAT IS IN THE BOOK. But best for the righteous is the home in the Hereafter. Will ye not understand? As to those WHO HOLD FAST BY THE BOOK and establish regular prayer--never shall We suffer the reward of the righteous to perish.” (S. 7:159, 169-170 A. Yusuf Ali)

Secondly, the passage says nothing about changing words from the text of Scripture. In fact, when we consult the earliest Muslim views we soon discover that the Jews were accused of changing words by misinterpreting the text. In the words of early Muslim exegete Ibn Kathir, taken from his comments on S. 5:13,15:

Then Allah informs us of the punishment He inflicted upon them when they violated His Covenant. Allah says, <because of their breach of their covenant, We have cursed them>, that is, because they broke their pact, Allah expelled them from His Guidance. And <made their hearts grow hard> so they will not accept their guilt. The verse, they change the words from their context> means THAT THEY MISINTERPRETED THE VERSES OF ALLAH, according to their own desires, and fabricated lies against Him. We ask Allah to save us from that...

Allah informs us that He has sent His messenger Muhammad with the guidance and the religion of truth for all the people of the earth; Arabs and non-Arabs, illiterate and literate ...the Prophet has come to explain that which they have altered, misinterpreted and distorted and to ignore most of their unnecessary alterations. Al-Hakim reported in his Mustadrak, on the authority of Ibn Abbas, "Whoever disbelieves in stoning to death (Rajm) in Islam has indeed disbelieved the Qur’an and has no appreciation of Allah’s verse, <O people of the Scripture! Now has our Messenger come to you, expounding to you much of that which you used to hide in the Scripture>; therefore, stoning to death is that which the People of the Scripture concealed." Al-Hakim said that the Isnad of this Hadith is Good. (Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Part 6 Surat An-Nisa’, ayat 148 to 176 Surah Al-Ma’idah, ayat 1 to 181, abridged by Sheikh Muhammad Nasib Ar-Rafa'i [Al-Firdous Ltd., London, 2000 first edition], p. 128, 130-131; capital and underline emphasis ours)

Commenting on the same expression in 5:41, Ibn Kathir repeats:

<They change the words from their places> that is, THEY MISINTERPRET THE WORDS AND ALTER THEM KNOWINGLY… (Ibid., p. 167; capital emphasis ours)

Ibn Kathir’s comments on S. 3:78 are also pertinent to this very issue:

Mujahid. Ash-Sha'bi, Al-Hassan, Qatadah and Ar-Rabi' bin Anas said that,

<who distort the Book with their tongues.>

means, "They alter (Allah's Words)."

Al-Bukhari reported that Ibn 'Abbas said that the Ayah means they alter and add although none among Allah's creation CAN REMOVE THE WORDS OF ALLAH FROM HIS BOOKS, THEY ALTER AND DISTORT THEIR APPARENT MEANINGS. Wahb bin Munabbih said, "The Tawrah and Injil REMAIN AS ALLAH REVEALED THEM, AND NO LETTER IN THEM WAS REMOVED. However, the people misguide others by addition and false interpretation, relying on books that they wrote themselves." Then, <they say: "This is from Allah," but it is not from Allah;> As for Allah's books, THEY ARE STILL PRESERVED AND CANNOT BE CHANGED." Ibn Abi Hatim recorded this statement...(Tafsir Ibn Kathir—Abridged, Volume 2, Parts 3, 4 & 5, Surat Al-Baqarah, Verse 253, to Surat An-Nisa, verse 147, abridged by a group of scholars under the supervision of Shaykh Safiur-Rahman Al-Mubarakpuri [Darussalam Publishers & Distributors, Riyadh, Houston, New York, Lahore; First Edition: March 2000], p. 196; bold and capital emphasis ours)

This is confirmed by Imam Al-Bukhari. In Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitaab Al-Tawheed, Baab Qawlu Allah Ta'ala, "Bal Huwa Qur'aanun Majeed, fi lawhin Mahfooth" (i.e. in Sahih al-Bukhari, Book "The Oneness of God", the Chapter on Surat Al-Borooj (no. 85), Verses 21, 22 saying, "Nay this is a Glorious Qur'an, (Inscribed) in a Tablet Preserved.") We find in a footnote between 9.642 and 643: "They corrupt the word" means "they alter or change its meaning." Yet no one is able to change even a single word from any Book of God. The meaning is that they interpret the word wrongly. [... and he continues to speak about how the Qur'an is preserved ...] (Source: http://answering-islam.org/Quran/Bible/ibnabbas.html) SOURCE: http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/bible_authentic1.htm The author tries to defend Uthman’s wholesale destruction of the Quran:

The two things can’t compare, since the Koran is a single book, a single writing, whereas the Bible is a volume of different writings bound together in the form of one book. Uthman’s purpose was to have the Koran gathered and deviant variants removed, and so the different parts were put together into one book, all of the parts having been from the same man. (Think of it as something vaguely like a serial.) The differing manuscripts of the Bible have been differing all along (as far as we know), ranging throughout centuries and centuries and centuries, and kept on even after the Bible was compiled (c.f. the medieval 1 John 5:7 interpolation).

RESPONSE: Let me highlight the author’s own words since he essentially admits that the Quran was corrupted:

Uthman’s purpose WAS TO HAVE THE KORAN GATHERED AND DEVIANT VARIANTS REMOVED, and so the different parts were put together into one book, all of the parts having been from the same man.

Notice the implications of the author’s candid admission: Uthman gathered the Quran, which means that until that time the Quran hadn’t been gathered into one volume. Uthman destroyed variant Quranic readings, which presupposes that there was more than one version of the Quran in circulation, that there were several conflicting recensions of the Quran. The author calls these variant readings deviant, meaning that there were Muslims who were corrupting and mutilating the text of the Quran. Thus, the author has essentially admitted that the Quran was standardized not by Muhammad, but by another fallible human source. This fallible human agent decided to destroy what he considered to be inauthentic readings of the Quran. Obviously, the other Muslims didn’t think that the other Qurans contained deviant readings, since what Muslim would knowingly read a corrupted version of his so-called holy book?

As far as the textual history of the Holy Bible is concerned, its transmission is vastly superior to any other book of its time, and even superior to the Quran’s transmission. Indeed, it is true that the Bible contains variant readings, but this is true of all ancient documents and is especially true of the Quran with all of its thousands of variant readings. Here is a list of links to articles documenting the preservation and transmission of the Holy Bible, and the textual corruption of the Quran:

http://answering-islam.org/Bible/index.html
http://answering-islam.org/Bible/Text/index.html
http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/pastorals.html
http://www.tektonics.org/ntdocdef/gospdefhub.html
http://christian-thinktank.com/stilltoc.html
http://answering-islam.org/Quran/Text/index.html
http://answering-islam.org/Campbell/s3c3a.html
http://answering-islam.org/Campbell/s3c3b.html
http://answering-islam.org/Campbell/s3c3c.html
http://answering-islam.org/Campbell/s3c3ef.html
http://answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/texthistory.html
http://answering-islam.org/Gilchrist...nge/chap1.html
http://answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/Vol2/7a.html
http://answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/Vol2/7b.html
http://answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/Vol2/7c.html
http://answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/Vol1/5a.html
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...lah/bravo1.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...lah/bravo4.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...lah/bravo5.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...bravo_r4bc.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses...o_r4bc_add.htm
http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/...r/contents.htm
http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/qur_hist.htm

Indeed, the two things cannot be compared. The Holy Bible is a collection of writings written over a 1500-year period, whereas the Quran is supposedly the work of one man. And yet, despite it being the result of one man, the Quran’s compilation and textual transmission is one big mass of confusion, with even the Muslim sources admitting that its arrangement and codification was all garbled up. The author resumes the discussion:

Shamoun next points out references to make the case that since the Koran speaks of "the Book" being corrupted, that somehow means that the Koran is corrupted as well as the Bible just because they are referred to sometimes by the same title of "the Book". As I’ve already said, the context of 2:75-79, where the corruption of the Bible is spoken of, occurs right after verses talking about the Jews, and so the "they" in 2:75 (the passage going on to speak of "them" corrupting their scriptures), if any grammatical sense is to be read into the verse, could be no one else but the Jews. Ergo, the Bible (or at least the Tanakh, but the phrase "the Book" can also be translated "the Bible") is the Book that has been corrupted. As for 5:15 and 10:37, they are addressed to the "People of the Bible" (or "People of the Book"—i.e. Christians and/or Jews) and speaking of what is before the Koran, and so obviously the Koran isn’t claiming to be a revision of itself. After all, the term "the Book" can’t mean two things at once.

RESPONSE: The author is badly misrepresenting me. Where did I say that since the Quran speaks of the Book being corrupted this therefore means that the Quran must have been corrupted as well? I have actually denied that the Quran teaches that God’s Book, his true Word, The Holy Bible, has been corrupted. I used surah 15:90-91 to show that the Quran says that if any book has been corrupted, it isn’t the Holy Bible, but rather the Quran. Furthermore, the author erroneously assumes that surah 2:75 refers to the Jews corrupting the Holy Bible. This is wrong for several reasons. First, the text doesn’t speak of corruption to a book, but the changing of words by distorting their meanings:

Can ye (o ye men of Faith) entertain the hope that they will believe in you?—seeing that A PARTY OF THEM HEARD the Word of God, and perverted it knowingly after they understood it. (Y. Ali)

Notice that they perverted the Word after hearing it, implying that this was a verbal distortion to the meaning of the text. It says nothing about perverting the actual text itself. This verse is similar to the following passage:

And lo! there is A PARTY of them who distort the Scripture WITH THEIR TONGUES, that ye may think that what they say is from the Scripture, when it is not from the Scripture. And they say: It is from Allah, when it is not from Allah; and they speak a lie concerning Allah knowingly. (S. 3:78 Pickthall)

Second, the verse quite expressly says that only a party of the Jews did this, not all the Jews; nor does it say anything about Christians perverting God’s Word. Thus, the most this passage proves is that some (many?) Jews perverted the meaning of God’s Word after hearing it, which presupposes that there was another party that didn’t do so. Third, there is actually a parallel passage which helps shed light on the meaning of Word in this context:

[i]Hast thou not regarded those who were given a share of the Book purchasing error, and desiring that you should also err from the way? God knows well your enemies; God suffices as a protector, God suffices as a helper. Some of the Jews pervert words from their meanings saying, “We have heard and we disobey” and “Hear,” and be thou not given to hear” and “Observe us,” twisting with their tongues and traducing religion. If they had said, “We have heard and obey” and “Hear” and “Regard us,” it would have been better for them, and more upright; but God has cursed them for their unbelief so they believe not except a few. (S. 4:44-46)

Quite clearly the words that the Jews were perverting weren’t those found in the Holy Bible, but Muhammad’s words, i.e. the Quran. Here is another passage which speaks of the Jews perverting the teachings of Muhammad:

O Messenger, let them not grieve thee that vie with one another in unbelief, such men as say with their mouths 'We believe' but their hearts believe not; and the Jews who listen to falsehood, listen to other folk, who have not come to thee, PERVERTING WORDS FROM THEIR MEANINGS, saying, 'If you are given this, then take it; if you are not given it, beware!' Whomsoever God desires to try, thou canst not avail him anything with God. Those are they whose hearts God desired not to purify; for them is degradation in this world; and in the world to come awaits them a mighty chastisement; (S. 5:41 Arberry)

Thus, it is quite plausible that surah 2:75, much like the above citations, is referring to the Jews perverting the words which they heard from Muhammad. In fact, when we add the verses right after it, it then becomes evident that surah 2:75 is referring to the Quran, not to the Holy Bible. CAN YOU, then, hope that they will believe in what you are preaching--seeing that a good many of them were wont to listen to the word of God and then, after having understood it, to pervert it knowingly? For, when they meet those who have attained to faith, they say, "We believe [as you believe]"--but when they find themselves alone with one another, they say: "Do you inform them of what God has disclosed to you, so that they might use it in argument against you, quoting the words of your Sustainer? Will you not, then, use your reason?" Do they not know, then, that God is aware of all that they would conceal as well as of all that they bring into the open? S. 2:75-77 Muhammad Asad (Source)

Hence, if the logic of the author is to be applied consistently then we must conclude that the Jews also corrupted the text of the Quran. For more on this passage, we recommend that our readers consult the following article: http://answering-islam.org/Quran/Bible/question.html We will have more to say about the meaning of surah 2:75-79 a little later. The Muslim author comments on my appeal to surah 2:136:

Yes, this is part of the basic parts of our faith, found in the closest thing to a creed we have (and taken straight from the Sunnah)—and this creed of sorts is a great way of explaining the meaning of the above passage. It is that we believe in Allah, His prophets, His angels, His books and Judgment Day. Now think about this: believing in the other four things means having faith in their existence, so evidently it means the same thing to believe in the books in question. Similarly, the "believing in" of 2:136 begins with "believing in God", which of course means believing in His existence. Remember that the phrase is "believing in" and not just "believing".

RESPONSE: The author claims that this passage establishes a part of his faith as a Muslim, but failed to note why I cited this. This is one of the many passages which I presented to establish my point that the Quran commands its followers to believe in all of the Books, not just some. I used these passages to further show that the Quran presupposes that there are many other Books besides Abraham’s scrolls, the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel which Muslims are required to believe in. Case in point, after quoting surah 2:4, I quoted the following Muslim source:

The following Muslim commentary says of this passage: (In this verse three more stipulations are set out for us for the consummation of our faith: [b(i)[/b] Believing in the Qur’aan (ii) believing in the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel revealed before it, including other Revelations inspired in His messengers by Allah, whether or not they were referred to; and (iii) being firmly convinced of the Hereafter, which implies an unconditional acceptance of the Day of Resurrection when the whole of mankind would be gathered before Allah for the Rendition of their accounts, leading us either into the Garden or into the Fire, both everlasting and both depending upon what we had sent ahead of us and what we have brought along with us). (Source; bold emphasis ours)

Let me repeat a part of the above Muslim quote, this time with even more emphasis:

(i) Believing in the Qur’aan (ii) believing in the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel revealed before it, INCLUDING OTHER REVELATIONS INSPIRED IN HIS MESSENGERS BY ALLAH, WHETHER OR NOT THEY WERE REFERRED TO;

The above Muslim realizes, unlike Mr. Sulaiman, that the Quran binds Muslims to believe in all the divinely inspired Books even if those Books are not explicitly mentioned by name. Here is further evidence that the author of the Quran truly believed that God had revealed more Books than just the writings of Abraham, the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel:

(All) people are a single nation; so Allah raised PROPHETS as bearers of good news and as warners, and He revealed WITH THEM THE BOOK WITH TRUTH, that it might judge between people in that in which they differed; and none but the very people who were given it differed about it after clear arguments had come to them, revolting among themselves; so Allah has guided by His will those who believe to the truth about which they differed and Allah guides whom He pleases to the right path. (S. 2:213 Shakir)

It is not (possible) that a man, to whom is given THE BOOK, and Wisdom, AND THE PROPHETIC OFFICE, should say to people: "Be ye my worshippers rather than God's": on the contrary (He would say) "Be ye worshippers of Him Who is truly the Cherisher of all: For ye have taught the Book and ye have studied it earnestly." (S. 3:79 Y. Ali)

Behold! God took the covenant of the prophets, saying: "I give you A BOOK and Wisdom; then comes to you an apostle, confirming what is with you; do ye believe in him and render him help." God said: "Do ye agree, and take this my Covenant as binding on you?" They said: "We agree." He said: "Then bear witness, and I am with you among the witnesses." (S. 3:81 Y. Ali)

The preceding passages unambiguously say that all the prophets received Scriptures. The Quran mentions a whole slew of prophets:

So We were showing Abraham the kingdom of the heavens and earth, that he might be of those having sure faith…And We gave to him Isaac and Jacob--each one We guided, And Noah We guided before; and of his seed David and Solomon, Job and Joseph, Moses and Aaron--even so We recompense the good-doers--Zachariah and John, Jesus and Elias; each was of the righteous; Ishmael and Elisha, Jonah and Lot-each one We preferred above all beings; and of their fathers, and of their seed, and of their brethren; and We elected them, and We guided them to a straight path. That is God's guidance; He guides by it whom He will of His servants; had they been idolaters, it would have failed them, the things they did. THOSE ARE THEY TO WHOM WE GAVE THE BOOK, the Judgment, THE PROPHETHOOD; so if these disbelieve in it, We have already entrusted it to a people who do not disbelieve in it. Those are they whom God has guided; so follow their guidance. Say: 'I ask of you no wage for it; it is but a reminder unto all beings. (S. 6:73, 84-90 Arberry)

He said, 'Lo, I am God's servant; God has given me the Book, and made me a Prophet…That is Jesus, son of Mary, in word of truth, concerning which they are doubting…And mention in the Book Abraham; surely he was a true man, a Prophet…So, when he went apart from them and that they were serving, apart from God, We gave him Isaac and Jacob, and each We made a Prophet; and We gave them of Our mercy, and We appointed unto them a tongue of truthfulness, sublime. And mention in the Book Moses; he was devoted, and he was a Messenger, a Prophet. We called to him from the right side Of the Mount, and We brought him near in communion. And We gave him his brother Aaron, of Our mercy, a Prophet. And mention in the Book Ishmael; he was true to his promise, and he was a Messenger, a Prophet. He bade his people to pray and to give the alms, and he was pleasing to his Lord. And mention in the Book Idris; he was a true man, a Prophet. We raised him up to a high place. These are they whom God has blessed among the Prophets of the seed of Adam, and of those We bore with Noah, and of the seed of Abraham and Israel, and of those We guided and chose. When the signs of the All-merciful were recited to them, they fell down prostrate, weeping. (S. 19:30, 34, 41, 49-58)

Here, the Quran lists at least nineteen Prophets by name, which implies that God allegedly sent down at least nineteen Books through them. (We say allegedly since we do not agree that all these men like Ishmael were prophets, or that a prophet must receive a Book). Now when we take into consideration that the Quran refers to many other prophets not listed in the above citations this then raises the number of Books that God sent down to mankind. Hence, if the Quran is right then Mr. Sulaiman is wrong for asserting that the Quran only confirms the scrolls of Abraham, the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel. Mr. Sulaiman says that surah 2:136 commands him, and the other Muslims, to believe in the existence of the Books of Allah. In reality, however, he actually opposes the Quran at this point, since he repeatedly rejects the evidence which demonstrates that the Quran commands belief in all of the Books in the hands of the Jews and Christians, not just those it mentions explicitly by name. Thus, Mr. Sulaiman has essentially become a kafir, a rejecter or disbeliever, for refusing to follow the express orders of his own religious scriptures! He neither believes nor believes in (to use his distinction of terms) the existence of ALL the Books of God. The author tries to dissect my arguments section by section. He writes:

While I have called these things into question in the past, it was elsewhere on this site, except for that brief reference I made to "St. Paul the Innovator", which was an expression of personal opinion as part of an offhand comment (probably a pointless offhand comment too, now that I think of it). And these articles here are about whether "the Law" and "the Gospel" mean "the Old Testament" and "the New Testament" in the Koran. There can be no biblical evidence for something in the Koran, and an appeal to a historical authority is still an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy. And the issue here (why must I keep reminding Shamoun of the issue??) is not whether the Torah or Law can refer to the entire Old Testament canon in the speech of non-Koranic sources, but whether it does in the Koran.

RESPONSE: First, it seems that we are in the need of constantly, repeatedly reminding the author that the Quran doesn’t simply confirm the Torah, but ALL THE OTHER BOOKS that were in the possession of the Jews and Christians. Hence, we weren’t trying to argue that the Quran uses the term Torah to mean the entire Old Testament canon, but that Muslim sources are in agreement with the Holy Bible that it can refer to more than just the five Books of Moses. Second, the author further ignored my challenge to him. I had mentioned in my previous rebuttals that the Quran NOWHERE says that the Torah was given to Moses, a fact which even the author will admit is correct a little later in his rebuttal. The Quran says that Moses received a Book, and was given Tablets from God, but never explicitly states that the Book and the Tablets are the Torah. The only way for the author to know whether the Torah refers to the revelation given to Moses is to either consult the Holy Bible or the very Islamic traditions which he has been constantly calling into question. Yet, to appeal to either source ends up proving my point that the Torah in a broader sense can, and does, refer to the entire OT canon! Third, the author constantly accuses us of committing logical fallacies, all the while showing that he doesn’t know what a genuine logical fallacy is. We will help him understand why I didn’t commit the fallacy of appealing to authority when I appealed to his own Muslim sources:

Argumentum ad verecundiam: The Appeal to Authority uses admiration of a famous person to try and win support for an assertion. For example: “Isaac Newton was a genius and he believed in God.” This line of argument ISN’T ALWAYS completely bogus when used in an inductive argument; for example, it may be relevant to refer to a widely-regarded authority in a particular field, if you're discussing that subject. For example, we can distinguish quite clearly between: “Hawking has concluded that black holes give off radiation,” and, “Penrose has concluded that it is impossible to build an intelligent computer,” Hawking is a physicist, and so we can reasonably expect his opinions on black hole radiation to be informed. Penrose is a mathematician, so it is questionable whether he is well-qualified to speak on the subject of machine intelligence. (Source; bold and capital emphasis ours)

And:

Sometimes, an appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. This is the case when a person presenting a position on a subject mentions some authority who also holds that position, but who is not an authority in that area. For instance, the statement “Arthur C. Clarke recently released a report showing it is necessary to floss three times daily” should not convince many people of anything about flossing, as Arthur C. Clarke is not an expert on dental hygiene. Much advertising relies on this logical fallacy; for example when Michael Winner promotes car insurance, despite having no expertise in the field of car insurance. Citing a person who is an authority in the relevant field should carry more weight, but given the possibility of mistake, should not be compelling.

In the Middle Ages, roughly from the 12th century to the 15th century, the philosophy of Aristotle became firmly established dogma, and using the beliefs of Aristotle was an important part of many debates. Aristotle’s thought became so central to the philosophy of the late Middle Ages that he became known in Latin as Ille Philosophus, "the philosopher," and quotations from Aristotle became known as ipse dixits ("He, himself, has spoken."). In this case, Aristotle is an example of someone who is an authority in philosophy, but philosophy is an area where direct evidence is less readily available, and therefore, Aristotle's ideas carry weight, but are not the final word. On the other hand, arguing that all astronomers believe that the planet Neptune exists—and therefore, that serves as evidence of the planet's existence—is a more compelling argument because astronomers are knowledgable in the relevant field and are in a position to readily prove or disprove the existence of the planet (direct experience). However, it is still better to argue from evidence than from what astronomers believe. Authoritarian ethics is the ethical theory by which one attains ethical knowledge from an authority, for example from a God or from the law. The bandwagon fallacy can be viewed as a special case of an appeal to authority, where the authority is public opinion.

Conditions for a legitimate argument from authority:

1. The authority must have competence in an area, not just glamour, prestige, rank or popularity.

2.

The judgement must be within the authority’s field of competence.
3. The authority must be interpreted correctly.
4. Direct evidence must be available, at least in principle.
5. The expert should be reasonably unbiased (not unduly influenced by other factors, such as money, political considerations, or religious beliefs).
6. The judgement must be representative of expert opinions on the issue (as opposed to an unrepresentative sample).
7. A technique is needed to adjudicate disagreements among equally qualified authorities.
The argument must be valid in its own right i.e. without needing to appeal to authority at all—except of course to its own authority as entirely valid. (This last point ought to dissuade any who might consider an argument legitimate from authority alone—even if that argument is about the legitimacy of itself as an argument from authority. And, has serious implications for the relevancy of the argument from authority portion—even if valid in its own right—of a greater argument in the first place.)
(Source; underline emphasis ours)

Since I didn’t appeal to persons who were not experts in the particular field of study which I was addressing, and since I provided direct evidence as well as arguments which were valid in their own right, I did not commit any fallacy of appealing to authority. What makes this all the more ironic is that I was appealing to persons and sources which the author himself deems authoritative, or at least should view them authoritatively, and yet he calls this a logical fallacy! The author believes that Muhammad was God’s prophet, he believes that the Quran is God’s word, he believes that Muhammad’s companions were rightly guided by God (or so I assume since you can never tell about the author). These are the very persons and sources which I appealed to in order to establish my case against him. Who else should I have appealed to in order to show the author that his own authoritative sources do not support his erroneous assumptions regarding the Holy Bible? Buddhist or Taoist monks and priests?

[Yahya Sulaiman]

PART 2 of 4

To make matters worse, the author also ends up contradicting the Quran once again by his assertion that there is no biblical or historical evidence for something in the Quran. First off, my statement wasn’t made in regards to the Quran, but in relation to the data establishing the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus, as well as the authenticity and legitimacy of Paul’s mission and writings. Second, the Quran itself commands Muslims to consult the Holy Bible for evidence and verification (Cf. surahs 10:94; 16:43; 17:101; 21:7). Hence, contrary to what the author claims one can look to the biblical and historical evidence to see if whether certain things stated within the Quran are true or not. Unfortunately for the author, both the biblical and historical data exposes the Quran as an uninspired, fallible book. The author denies my accusation against him:

As if things weren’t bad enough, now he’s putting words in my mouth. I never said that he "presented only one Islamic citation". I spoke only of scriptural citations (meaning Islamic, scriptural citations).

Again:

It doesn’t, and I never said it did. The point is invalid for the reasons I stated.

RESPONSE: Here is the author’s initial claim, with added emphasis:

After going off on tangents (containing a huge pile of links) about St. Paul and what some Christians regard as evidence of the Resurrection (neither one of these tangents being the subject at hand), he finally addresses the issue of the Torah meaning the Old Testament as a whole, referring us to a link which contains nothing but appeals to authority, support for the claim that Christians, not Muslims, referred to the Old Testament as the Law, AND ONLY ONE CITATION from Islamic scripture in which the notion of the earliest Muslims using the term Torah or Law to mean the Old Testament, A HADITH which merely refers to the people of the two scriptures, easily be the Torah and the unknown true Gospel, both of which the Koran endorses. The article quotes a hadith in which Muhammad (on whom be peace) speaks of a verse from the Torah which is nowhere to be found in the Torah, which should not even raise an eyebrow with us Muslims, because as I just established, the Koran does speak of the corruption of the previous scriptures. (Source)

We post that specific section again, just in case the author decides to ignore it:

...AND ONLY ONE CITATION from Islamic scripture in which the notion of the earliest Muslims using the term Torah or Law to mean the Old Testament, A HADITH which merely refers to the people of the two scriptures, ...

Here is another denial:

In the midst of more appeals to authority about "what Muslims say", and after responding to a point I never made about the Torah being corrupted because of a passage from Sahih Bukhari not being found in it, Shamoun says: …

RESPONSE: Here, again, is what the author said:

“The article quotes a hadith in which Muhammad (on whom be peace) speaks of a verse from the Torah WHICH IS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND IN THE TORAH, which should not even raise an eyebrow with us Muslims, BECAUSE AS I JUST ESTABLISHED, THE KORAN DOES SPEAK OF THE CORRUPTION OF THE PREVIOUS SCRIPTURES. (bold and capital emphasis ours). Now what could the author’s comments possibly mean if not that the hadith provides evidence for his position that the Bible has been corrupted? Furthermore, I didn’t say that the author mentioned a hadith from Bukhari, but asked if whether the author had Bukhari in mind since he didn’t specify which hadith he was referring to. In response to the Salafis using the word Torah to mean more than the Books of Moses, the author states

I’m sorry, Shamoun, but pointing out a reference to "the people of the two scriptures" in no way establishes that the word "Torah" can refer to more than the Law given to Moses (on whom be peace). Next Shamoun follows his non-sequitur with…[/quote]

RESPONSE: The author again ignores my point, so let me present my argument one more time: "... Al-Bukhari recorded it from 'Abdullah bin 'Amr. It was also recorded by Al-Bukhari [up to the word] forgoes. And he mentioned the narration of 'Abdullah bin 'Amr then he said: ‘It was COMMON in the speech of our Salaf that they describe the Books of the People of the Two Scriptures AS THE TAWRAH, as some Hadiths concur. Allah knows best.’" (Tafsir Ibn Kathir (Abridged), Volume 4, (Surat Al-Ar'af to the end of Surah Yunus), abridged by a group of scholars under the supervision of Shaykh Safiur-Rahman Al-Mubarakpuri [Darussalam Publishers & Distributors, Riyadh, Houston, New York, Lahore; First Edition: May 2000], p. 179; online edition- http://tafsir.com/default.asp?sid=7&tid=18871; bold and capital emphasis ours) (http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran...sixpoints.html)

And the author somehow thinks that he can avoid my statement that the Salafis applied the word Torah for both Scriptures by arguing that they could have been referring to the Torah and the Gospel. The author failed to note that the reason why I mentioned this was to establish the fact that the word Torah can refer to more than the Law given to Moses, which means that even if the Salafis were referring to the Torah and the Gospel this still proves my point! It is rather unfortunate that the author didn't see how his response only proved the point I was seeking to make. (http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran...points_r1.html)

The author contradicts himself yet again since here he denies that the Torah refers to more than the Law of Moses. Yet, in his initial response to my citation from the Salafis the author had this to say:

and only once citation from Islamic scripture in which the notion of the earliest Muslims using the term Torah or Law to mean the Old Testament, a hadith which merely refers to the people of the two scriptures, EASILY BE THE TORAH AND THE UNKNOWN TRUE GOSPEL, both of which the Koran endorses… (capital emphasis ours)

Thus, the author argues in one place that Torah can refer to more than the Law, since here he wishes to say that the Salafs used the term to refer to the Torah AND THE GOSPEL, whereas he now says that the Torah doesn’t refer to anything other than Moses’ Law! How can the author claim that my reference doesn’t establish that the term Torah can refer to more than just the Law of Moses when the very citation that I presented explicitly says that it does? Is this not another example of the author’s inability of actually addressing the issues? And should we be accused of ad hominem for bringing this out? After having said that the Salafis’ statements couldn’t be limited to just the Torah and the Gospel, but must include all the Books in the possession of the Jews and Christians, the author retorts with:

It must? Could it just be that the books of these people of the two scriptures (in Arabic there are no capital letters) are the two scriptures? After all, it doesn’t say "the only books". Doesn’t this just make sense? The Koran refers to Christians as "People of the Injeel/Gospel" (5:47) and to Jews as those "charged with the Taurat/Law" (62:5).

RESPONSE: The author is constantly proving my point, even though he thinks he is refuting it. First, the Quran doesn’t say that the Jews were ONLY charged with the Taurat/Law, but also plainly says that they were given the Prophethood and the Book as well:

We have given the Children of Israel the scripture, wisdom, and prophethood, and provided them with good provisions; we bestowed upon them more blessings than any other people. We have given them herein clear commandments. Ironically, they did not dispute this until the knowledge had come to them. This is due to jealousy on their part. Surely, your Lord will judge them on the Day of Resurrection regarding everything they have disputed. S. 45:16-17 Khalifa)

That the Scripture which Israel was given is more than the Torah can be easily seen by remembering that the prophets all received Books according to the Quran. And here we are told that Israel was entrusted with prophethood. Furthermore, oftentimes the Quran links the words Scripture and Wisdom together, distinguishing them both from the Torah and the Gospel respectively.

And He will teach him the Book, the Wisdom, the Torah, the Gospel. S. 3:48 Arberry

[/i]When God said, 'Jesus Son of Mary, remember My blessing upon thee and upon thy mother, when I confirmed thee with the Holy Spirit, to speak to men in the cradle, and of age; and when I taught thee the Book, the Wisdom, the Torah, the Gospel[/i] … (S. 5:110 Arberry)

The difference at this point is that surah 45:16 makes no mention of the Torah and the Gospel, which leads us to assume that the Quran is using the term Scripture in a more comprehensive sense to include all the revelations from God, i.e. the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel etc. This becomes more evident when we read the following passage:

Or are they jealous of the people for the bounty that God has given them? Yet We gave the people of Abraham the Book and the Wisdom, and We gave them a mighty kingdom. (S. 4:54 Arberry)

Speaking of the prophets which descended from Abraham’s line, the Quran states:

These are they to whom We gave the book and the wisdom and the prophecy; therefore if these disbelieve in it We have already entrusted with it a people who are not disbelievers in it. (S. 6:89 Shakir)

The people of Abraham, i.e. his descendants were given more than the Torah and the Gospel, lending further evidence that the Book which surah 45:16 speaks of includes all of the Books revealed by God. Thus, the Israelites weren’t simply entrusted with the Torah but with the entire canonical Scriptures.

Third, the only way for the author to know what were those Books which the Salafis had access to is by taking a look at the historical data to see what exactly did the Jews and Christians have in their possessions. This would further entail analyzing the data in order to assess what were the precise contents of the Torah and the Gospel which the Jews and Christians preserved. Yet, in assessing the historical data the author will have no other choice but to accept that "the Books of these People of the two Scriptures" during the time of Muhammad were the very Books found in both the Old and New Testaments. The historical evidence shows that the Torah which was in the possession of both the Jews and Christians is actually the first five Books of the Hebrew Bible, and the Gospel of the Christians is none other than the fourfold Gospel record of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We also presented evidence to show that the word Gospel could even be applied in a broader sense to the entire New Testament canon.

Finally, the author doesn’t know what he wants to argue. I had said that the Quran itself shows that God had sent down more than just the Torah and the Gospel, since it refers to the Psalms which were given through David and the other messengers. This means that the expression "the Books of the People of the Two Scriptures" must necessarily be referring to more than the Torah and the Gospel. Again, note my line of argumentation:

The Salafis referred to the Books of the People of the Two Scriptures as the Torah.
The Quran refers to several Books that God gave the People of the Book, i.e. the Torah, the Psalms, and the Gospel. Therefore, the Books of the People of the Two Scriptures must be a reference to the Torah, the Psalms, and the Gospel at the very least. Here the author says that since the Quran refers to the Christians as the People of the Gospel with the Jews being those charged with the Torah, this therefore means that the Salafis only had these two Books in view. This argument essentially ignores the fact that (1) during Muhammad’s time the Jews and Christians had many more Books than just the two, and 2) that even the Quran acknowledges that God had revealed more than the Torah and the Gospel. The author is basically refuting his own religious scripture as well as the historical sources, but to no avail.

He continues:

Shamoun responds to my "inconsistent" pointing out of his own inconsistent claims of what the term "Gospel" means with the argument that the term "Gospel" itself has an inconsistent meaning, variably being "good news", "the four Gospels of the Bible collectively" or "the New Testament". The subject at hand, right from my original "Six Reasons" article, is whether it means "the New Testament" in the Koran, not whether it does mean that here but not there. If Shamoun is taking the side that the title of al-Injeel/The Gospel doesn’t necessarily refer to the New Testament as a whole, he may as well not be disputing my original argument in the first place, which was against Christians who claim that "the New Testament" was the meaning of the term "al-Injeel".

RESPONSE: Let me correct the author. I showed that the meaning of Gospel is Good News. The Good News here refers to God sending his beloved Son in order to reveal the true God to humanity, as well as to save the world through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. In other words, the Gospel refers to the entire Christ event, i.e. his life, deeds and teachings. These teachings aren’t simply limited to what Christ himself personally taught while on earth, but also include the revelation that he gave to his disciples after being glorified in heaven. This Gospel has been codified and preserved by God in the written corpus we call the New Testament. This is why I said that the term Gospel in a broader sense encompasses the entire NT corpus since the NT is the revelation of Christ which he gave to his followers to pass on to the Churches. Hopefully, the author gets it this time. He goes on:

But there is no way that the Koranic use of the term "the Gospel" can possibly mean anything except a single writing by Jesus (on whom be peace) himself, and this is yet another piece of proof for my position which I neglected in both preceding articles. (I guess there are just so many reasons for it being impossible for al-Injeel to be the New Testament that I just can’t keep track of them all! Maybe I should have spent more time and made my "Six Reasons" article into something more like a "Twelve Reasons" article in the first place.) The Koran tells us in 5:46 and 57:27 that al-Injeel was revealed or given to Jesus (on whom be peace), and al-Injeel is referred to unequivocally as a written scripture in many Koran passages such as 48:29 and 7:157—all of these passages talking about al-Injeel and al-Taurat in the same place, which is always in refererence[sic] to them as scriptures throughout the entire Koran. (As for the Koran referring to itself as a whole, which it does, by name, it cannot compare to the New Testament doing so or not doing so, since it is a fact that the New Testament is a volume of separate writings by separate articles whereas it is only a speculation, held by a minority of scholars of all manner of opinions of the Koran and its authenticity, that it is a "work of multiple hands"—a subject I’ve tackled elsewhere on the site anyway.)

RESPONSE: It becomes pretty tiresome to constantly address the same points over and over again. Not only does the author contradict his previous statements, but also completely ignores my response to these points. He says that the Quran refers to the Gospel as a written text but doesn’t want to see how this soundly refutes his claim, and establishes my position. For instance, here are some of the passages which the author mentions in order to see how this refutes his case against me: those who follow the Messenger, “the Prophet of the common folk, whom they find written down WITH THEM in the Torah and the Gospel” (S. 7:157 Arberry). We are told in this passage that Muhammad’s contemporaries had the Gospel WITH THEM, which the author clearly states is the very Gospel which Jesus received. Thus, Jesus’ Gospel was available during the seventh century. This is reiterated here:

And We sent, following in their footsteps, Jesus son of Mary, confirming the Torah before him and We gave to him the Gospel, wherein IS guidance and light, and confirming the Torah before it, as a guidance and an admonition unto the godfearing. So let the People of the Gospel judge according to what God has sent down therein. Whosoever judges not according to what God has sent down--they are the ungodly. (S. 5:46-47)

Again, addressing the Christians of Muhammad’s time the Quran’s author exhorts them to uphold the Gospel which Jesus received. This presupposes that the true Gospel was still extant in the seventh century A.D.! Otherwise, how could the Christians of the seventh century judge according to the Gospel if it wasn’t in their possession?

Muhammad is the Messenger of God, and those who are with him are hard against the unbelievers, merciful one to another. Thou seest them bowing, prostrating, seeking bounty from God and good pleasure. Their mark is on their faces, the trace of prostration. That is their likeness in the Torah, and their likeness in the Gospel: as a seed that puts forth its shoot, and strengthens it, and it grows stout and rises straight upon its stalk, pleasing the sowers, that through them He may enrage the unbelievers. God has promised those of them who believe and do deeds of righteousness forgiveness and a mighty wage. (S. 48:29 Arberry)

The above passage speaks of a description within the Gospel which could be found by the Muslims of Muhammad’s time. Like the above two quotes, this verse takes for granted that a true, uncorrupt Gospel was available for examination at the time of Muhammad. Some Muslim commentators even suggest that the source for the above parable is actually Mark 4:27-28! More on this below.

By admitting that these references refer to the original Gospel of Jesus, the author has once again conceded my point. He has basically proven my argument that Jesus’ Gospel was available during Muhammad’s time. And yet we have been constantly asking him to show us what that Gospel was, and to prove to us that it couldn’t be the fourfold Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, or even a reference to the entire NT canon. After all, how would Christians of the seventh century have understood the Quran’s clear statements that they were to uphold the Gospel which was with them? Would they have assumed that this Gospel was something other than the NT corpus, or other than the four canonical Gospels which they had? Of course not. So here is our plain challenge to the author:

Since you have essentially admitted that Jesus’ Gospel was extant and available during the seventh century, please provide the historical documentation showing what that Gospel was. Make sure to provide the historical data proving your point that the Gospel which the Quran claims was available during Muhammad’s time wasn’t the same thing as that found in the NT corpus, that it wasn’t the NT canon.

Since the author brought up surah 7:157, we want to post what he has recently written about it elsewhere:

THE PROPHECY IN DEUTERONOMY 18
Christians and Muslims disagree, and frequently argue, over whether this passage prophecies Muhammad (on whom be peace), being the prophecy of him IN THE PENTATEUCH THAT THE KORAN MENTIONS IN SURAH 7, VERSE 157, or if it prophesies Jesus (on whom be peace)

The author then quotes Deuteronomy 18:15-19, and links it to the Torah mentioned in surah 7:157! Yet, in another article the author denied that the entire Pentateuch was the revelation given to Moses. It is also a commonly held theory in secular biblical scholarship that the Pentateuch is not one text by one author (and certainly not entirely written by the blessed Moses, since it chronicles his death!), but four, alternating texts which the scholars mark E (Elohim), J (Jahweh), P (Priestly) and D (Deuteronomy). (Source)
In other words, the author has further refuted and contradicted himself, as well as further proving my case, by admitting that the Torah which the Quran mentions is none other than the Old Testament Pentateuch!
What is even more amazing is that he ends up contradicting what he just said in the very same article!
2. The Pentateuch of the blessed Moses (called "the Law", but obviously the whole Pentateuch, since the writings as a whole were revealed to him.
Talk about mass confusion!
Finally, the author erroneously states that the Quran does refer to its entire collection as the Quran, but failed to prove it. There isn't a single reference indicating what the exact length of the Quran actually is. The author only knows what the exact number of chapters and verses of the Quran are by consulting sources outside the Quran. Since he essentially ignored this argument as well, we issue some additional challenges:
Please produce a statement from the Quran which says that the number of chapters that Allah supposedly gave Muhammad are only 114.
Please provide further evidence from the Quran indicating what the name of those chapters are.

He writes:

If you’ll remember, dear reader, one of my six points used a quotation from an encyclopedia of religion, and rather than discuss the main point except in a could-have-might-have way, Shamoun simply showed other parts of the same entry of the encyclopedia which disagree with my Islamic views exegetically, as if leaving out something like that when verifying a specific point about when the Bible was translated into Arabic is somehow tantamount to taking a statement out of context. Now he claims that it is a fact that the Koran contains errors, simply because he and his comerades[sic] at Answering Islam says they do here and here, and that the fact that there are parallels between Islamic scripture and older traditions automatically means that the former "borrowed" from the latter—an allegation which means nothing to Muslims, who believe that the Koran contains the truth from all traditions, which one would hardly expect would just happen to be in the same arbitrarily put together canon or heading entirely. (See this site’s article "How the Koran’s Parallels in Various Traditions Actually Validates It" for more on this).

RESPONSE: If you’ll remember, dear reader, we addressed his quote from an encyclopedia of religion and showed that it didn’t prove his point, but actually backfired against him since it proved that Muhammad was mistaken and committed errors. The author denies that the Quran contains gross errors simply because he says that there aren’t any. In other words, circular reasoning. The author also assumes that the Quran contains the truths from all the traditions, when in reality it distorts and perverts them, often citing unhistorical events and mythical stories as facts. (See these papers which soundly refute the author’s claims, demonstrating the rather human origin of the Quran: http://answering-islam.org/Quran/Sources/index.html; http://answering-islam.org/Books/Jef...lary/index.htm) He says:

It is sadly in the nature of debates, especially religious ones, that when someone is losing they gradually let their debating lapse into accusations, insults and personal abuse. This is what Shamoun starts doing at this point; the readers must judge for themselves why the coincidence. He starts by responding to my leaving alone passages which do not have any bearing on my points or are at least of the same could-have-might-have-who-knows? variety by saying, "Basically, the author is showing that he hasn’t even carefully read the rebuttal which he claims to be responding to, and decided to simply piece together a short paper in order to give his readers the impression that he is actually addressing the issues."

From this he more or less immediately moves on to: "In the previous paragraph, the author appealed to these same fallible hadiths to show that Muhammad was illiterate, and yet he now calls into question the reliability of these same narrations when they don’t serve his purpose or when they throw a monkey wrench in his agenda." Guess what, Shamoun: you can’t read my mind, and (b) I did not make any attempt to show that the Prophet (on whom be peace) was illiterate but only said that we have no traditions from the time which disagreed with this. Is it not fair to consider a general tradition that’s considered common knowledge and spoken of in many ahadith more likely to be accurate than one, single hadith pointed out (a specific one about Waraqa) which I have dismissed for a stated reason, regardless of Shamoun’s cynical mudslinging?

RESPONSE: We have already addressed his ad hominem and logical fallacies canard, so we won’t waste time addressing that again. And we will leave it up to the readers to decide who in fact is losing this debate badly. The author denies that he said Muhammad was illiterate.

Shamoun goes on to say that just because there is no evidence for the Bible having been translated into Arabic at the time doesn't mean that it wasn't, and speaks of it being a possibility--which I never denied or contradicted, but the rational and universal practice is to disbelieve in something for which there's no substantial evidence until substantial evidence emerges. Shamoun adds that there was no need for the Bible to have been translated into Arabic for Muhammad (on whom be peace) to have been learned in it, which is true, BUT ALL TRADITIONS OF HIM SPEAK OF HIM BEING ILLITERATE and none speak of him being bilingual. This leaves only the possibility of someone translating it to him--which was unlikely due to the extremely low literacy rate and which there is no substantial evidence for anyway. So as you can see, even though my point is not absolute proof and never said it was, it remains intact, regardless of Shamoun's confidence that he had shattered it.

Here again are the words of the author:

Shamoun goes on to say that just because there is no evidence for the Bible having been translated into Arabic at the time doesn't mean that it wasn't, and speaks of it being a possibility--which I never denied or contradicted, but the rational and universal practice is to disbelieve in something for which there's no substantial evidence until substantial evidence emerges. Shamoun adds that there was no need for the Bible to have been translated into Arabic for Muhammad (on whom be peace) to have been learned in it, which is true, BUT ALL TRADITIONS OF HIM SPEAK OF HIM BEING ILLITERATE and none speak of him being bilingual. This leaves only the possibility of someone translating it to him--which was unlikely due to the extremely low literacy rate and which there is no substantial evidence for anyway. So as you can see, even though my point is not absolute proof and never said it was, it remains intact, regardless of Shamoun's confidence that he had shattered it.

We post the relevant part one more time:

…BUT ALL TRADITIONS OF HIM SPEAK OF HIM BEING ILLITERATE and none speak of him being bilingual….

[Side remark: Please note the author’s non-sequitur since illiterate and bilingual are different concepts. There are people who are monolingual but literate (most Americans only speak English, but they usually are able to read and write English), and others that are bilingual and illiterate. There are plenty of people who can speak several languages but cannot read or write any of them. Particularly in some parts of Asia or Africa where neighboring tribes have different languages people may be able to speak several languages of the region plus the official language of the country even though they have not learned to read and write.]

As the readers can see the author did not simply say that no traditions disagreed with Muhammad being illiterate. He tried to show that the traditions definitely, positively and explicitly say that Muhammad was illiterate. In reality, there is a breadth of evidence from the hadith literature which actually support that Muhammad was quite literate, contrary to what the author wishes to believe: http://answering-islam.org/Index/M/m...tml#unlettered Furthermore, I clearly mentioned that the Waraqa story is not a single, isolated case, but one that is extensively documented throughout the hadith and sira literature. Instead of addressing this, the author simply repeats his position as if this constitutes as proof. The author proceeds to beg the question.

More could-have’s about the fallibility of the Sunnah and the general traditions about Muhammad (on whom be peace). A claim that the only Gospels that the compilers of ahadith and sunnah would have access to were the four ones of the Bible. We already know from the previous articles in this debate that there were at least two others, The Infancy of Thomas and The Gospel of the Nazarenes, and those are just the two we’ve pointed out. Next Shamoun lapses immediately back into insults and accusations in place of argument, this time adding blatant misrepresentation of my argument. I mentioned the eyebrow-raising fluke of how it is only to be expected that in a book written after 100-200 years after the events it chronicles through word-of-mouth oral tradition, only a couple of facts left would be true, and what do you know! The Koran has only a couple of parallels with the book. Shamoun replies with a stunningly, embarrassingly flawed response of, "Talk about circular argumentation! The author assumes that those portions of the Apocrypha which the Quran quotes are historically authentic. And how does he know this? Well, because the Quran quotes them, that’s how!"

RESPONSE: The author really seems to enjoy contradicting himself. Earlier he said that the Gospel was a text given to the Lord Jesus. He also quoted references that spoke of the Gospel being available at Muhammad’s time and connected that to the Gospel given to Jesus. Now, he wants to say that the Gospel that the Quran mentions may in fact be the Infancy of Thomas or the Gospel of the Nazarenes. But this brings us back to the very point which I had raised in my previous rebuttal. To begin with, if the Infancy of Thomas is the Gospel of Jesus Christ then this means that Jesus passed on a text which included details regarding his adolescent years. In other words, Jesus’ Gospel wasn’t simply a set of commands that he passed on, but also included details about his birth and younger years. This further implies that Jesus’ Gospel only includes material relating to his early life, since the Infancy of Thomas doesn’t record Jesus’ adult life and ministry.

Second, if the Gospel that the Quran has in view is actually that of the Nazarenes, then this essentially refutes the Quran. The Nazarenes were thoroughly orthodox in that they affirmed both the deity of Christ, his divine Sonship, as well as his crucifixion and resurrection, truths which the Quran vehemently denies. This suggests that the Gospel that they had was thoroughly orthodox in content, since it is quite unlikely that they would hold to a Gospel which contradicted their core beliefs. And as I had mentioned in my previous reply, their Gospel was said to be a Hebrew version of Matthew. Thus, if the Quran is indeed confirming the Gospel of the Nazarenes then this essentially proves that the Quran is confirming at least one of the canonical Gospels as divine! The author’s argument basically proves that Matthew’s Gospel is that which God revealed to Jesus, since this is the text which underlies the Nazarene’s Scripture.

Third, the author assumes that certain parts of the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas are correct historically solely because these parts are quoted within the Quran! Talk about a classic textbook example of circular reasoning. These parts are true because the Quran says so!? On the contrary, since the Quran quotes these fables and fictitious anecdotes as fact it cannot be the Word of God. It is a fallible book written by a rather uninformed person who lied and claimed that God revealed it.

The author turns his attention to the meaning of the word “Gospel”:

After irrelevant remarks of why Christians accept certain miracle stories over others, Shamoun does something I have never seen any Christian do in all my life, and this includes when I was steeped in Christians and Christianity of countless denominations at school almost all through high school: he claims that the term "the gospel" means anything other than "the good news of Christianity" in the Bible. I find it odd how he finds it odd that Romans 1:16-17 and 2 Thessalonians 2:13-15 would carry this meaning. I don’t see why it puzzles him. As for Mark 1:14-15, it doesn’t look strange at all in the translation I always use, the RSV. Does anyone reading this who is Christian think that "the gospel" as a biblical term ever refers to the New Testament, especially since each book of it existed before the New Testament itself existed? The same goes for the Four Gospels collectively (the capital "G" changing the meaning for reasons unnecessary to explain).

RESPONSE: I must say that here, Mr. Sulaiman is clearly not telling the truth. I never said that the Gospel means something other than "good news." I actually went out of my way to prove that it does. I said that the Gospel, Good News, refers to the life, deeds, words, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, as well as the revelation that Christ gave to his apostles and prophets for the Church. I further went to show that that specific revelation is preserved in the pages of the New Testament. He addresses the Quran’s statement that God gave Psalms to others besides David:

As for the Koranic passages referring to prophets being sent and being given "the Psalms" and "the Book Illuminating" and what not, it is as simple as, "I sent mail carriers out to my friends’ houses with letters and boxed items." This statement does not necessarily mean that each neighbor got both a letter and a boxed item, now does it? In the same way, the Psalms, for example, being listed as something that existed among the prophets does not mean that more than one of them had the psalms of God revealed to him. Then Shamoun goes into "the Torah and the Bible" issue and his continuing misunderstanding of the concept of confirmation of scriptures in the Koran, and once again I have to refer you back to the earlier parts of the article and Koran 2:75-79 and its clearly Jewish-based context, and around we go again.

RESPONSE: Note the logic being employed here. Despite the Quran clearly saying that God sent messengers (in the plural) with the Psalms, the author still says that this doesn’t mean that other messengers besides David were given Psalms! In other words, no matter what evidence anyone may present, no matter what the Quran may say, the author has made up his mind that the Quran cannot be confirming the entire Bible, especially the entire biblical collection of Psalms. The author’s example is again supportive of our case, not his. One would understand by the author’s statement that either all of his friends received both items, or some received letters while some others received boxed items. No one would conclude from the above formulation that only one person received a boxed item, whereas all the rest received letters. The only way that one would assume that only one of the friends received a boxed item is if the author specified this, by explicitly stating this in some way. As the statement stands, there is nothing to suggest that only one individual received a boxed item. Likewise, one would understand from the Quranic verses that God gave the Psalms to more than one messenger, just as he gave the Book to more than one person.

The Quran never explicitly says that only David received the Psalms. In fact, the Quran even refers to the Psalms which were in the possession of the people before Muhammad:
And it is surely mentioned in the Psalms of the FORMER PEOPLES. S. 26:196. Historically, the people before Muhammad had more than just the Psalms of David. Thus, for the Quran to refer to the Psalms of the former people essentially proves that the Quran is acknowledging the divine inspiration and authority of all of the Psalms in the possession of the Jews and Christians. To show why this point is inescapable just compare how the above passage has been variously rendered:

Truly it is in the [b]Scriptures[b] of the ancients. Arberry

It has been prophesied in the books of previous generations. Khalifa

The author would obviously have no hesitation believing that the Scriptures of the previous people, which the above translations mention, are the Books given to various messengers. The author would not hesitate to say that these former Scriptures were given to more than one messenger. In a similar manner, since the text actually refers to the Psalms in the possession of the former people then by the same token we must conclude that the Quran is acknowledging the existence of other Psalms besides the ones given to David. The only real reason why the author would even object to this point is because he would have to admit he was wrong and would therefore need to correct his position.
The author claims that we have misunderstood what the Quran means, all the while failing to refute our exegesis. The author simply tries to brush aside all those verses which clearly refute his position. Finally, since he basically ignored our link that discussed surah 2:75-79 it seems we have to post our response to his distortion of this passage:

[quote]Muslims say that the following passage also proves Bible corruption:

"So woe to those who write the Book with their hands, and then say, ‘This is from Allah,’ that they may sell it for a little price. So woe to them for what their hands have written, and woe to them for their earnings." S. 2:79

This seems to imply Biblical corruption until we look at its original context: "Can you (O men of faith) still earnestly desire that they (the Jews) will believe in you? And verily a party (fariq) among them hear the Word of God, then they pervert it knowingly after they have understood it. And when they meet the believers they say, ‘We believe,’ but when they meet each other in private they say, ‘Why do you tell them what God has revealed to you (in the Torah), that they may engage you in argument about it before their God? What do you not understand?’ Do they not know that God knows what they conceal and what they make public? Among them are unlettered folk who know the Scripture not except from hearsay. THEY BUT GUESS." S. 2:75-78

Once the passage is read in its proper context, we discover that it is not speaking of Jews and Christians corrupting their Holy Book, but rather unlettered Jews who were ignorant of the content of the scriptures who falsified their own revelation for gain.
Some Muslims claim that S. 2:79 is referring to a different group from those mentioned in 2:78 since the group in 2:78 is said to be unlettered (ummiyuuna), implying that they couldn’t read or write. Based on this assertion it is then claimed that these unlettered folk wouldn’t be able to write anything with their hands, and hence cannot be the same folk mentioned in S. 2:79. This interpretation is based on a gross misunderstanding of what the term unlettered actually means. A careful reading of the Quran shows that this term doesn’t necessarily refer to people who couldn’t read or write. Rather, it refers to people who were unfamiliar with the inspired Books of God. Note for instance the following passage:

:He it is Who hath sent among the unlettered ones (ummiyyeena) a messenger of their own, to recite unto them His revelations and to make them grow, and to teach them the Scripture and wisdom, though heretofore they were indeed in error manifest,” S. 62:2 Pickthall

“Unlettered here cannot literally mean that Muhammad was sent to people who couldn’t read or write, since there were hundreds of Arabs who were reading and writing both before and during Muhammad’s time. In fact, Muslim traditions assert that Muhammad had Arab scribes who would write down the Quran for him.”

The meaning of unlettered becomes clear from the following passages:

If they argue with you, then say, “I have simply submitted myself to GOD; I and those who follow me.” You shall proclaim to those who received the scripture, as well as those who did not (ummiyyeena), “Would you submit?” If they submit, then they have been guided, but if they turn away, your sole mission is to deliver this message. GOD is Seer of all people. (S. 3:20 Khalifa)

And this is a Book which We have revealed as a blessing: so follow it and be righteous, that ye may receive mercy: Lest ye should say: "The Book was sent down to two Peoples before us, and for our part, we remained unacquainted with all that they learned by assiduous study:" Or lest ye should say: "If the Book had only been sent down to us, we should have followed its guidance better than they." Now then hath come unto you a clear (sign) from your Lord--and a guide and a mercy: then who could do more wrong than one who rejecteth Allah's signs, and turneth away therefrom? In good time shall We requite those who turn away from Our signs, with a dreadful penalty, for their turning away. (S. 6:155-157)

Some assert that Muhammad was called unlettered in the sense that he didn’t know how to read or write. Cf. S. 7:157-158. Again, the Quran explains in what sense Muhammad was unlettered:

“And thou (O Muhammad) wast not a reader of any scripture before it, nor didst thou write it with thy right hand, for then might those have doubted, who follow falsehood. But it is clear revelations in the hearts of those who have been given knowledge, and none deny Our revelations save wrong-doers. (S. 28:48-49 Pickthall)

“Muhammad is unlettered not in the sense that he couldn’t read or write, but that he hadn’t read or written down any revealed Scripture prior to his allegedly ‘receiving’ the Quran. This is a view with which many Muslims wholeheartedly agree.” (Cf. http://www.quran.org/ap28.htm, http://www.quran.org/gatut.html) This is precisely what S. 2:78-79 is saying, namely that a group who were unlettered in the sense of not knowing the scriptures personally decided to concoct their own false revelation for gain.
Al-Tabari provides some support for this proposed interpretation by citing Ibn Abbas. Muslim turned atheist Ibn Warraq, while writing about the different definitions proposed by scholars regarding the meaning of ummiyyun, says:

“Bell thinks 'ummiyyun means belonging to the 'ummah or community, while Blachere translates it as ‘Gentiles,’ in the sense of ‘pagan.’ For the French scholar it is clear that the word 'ummi designates pagan Arabs, who, unlike the Jews and Christians, had not received any revelation and were thus living in ignorance of the divine law. Tabari does indeed quote some traditions that give this sense to the word ummi: according to Ibn 'Abbas, ‘'ummiyyun (refers to) some people who did not believe in a prophet sent by God, nor in a scripture revealed by God; and they wrote a scripture with their own hands. Then they said to the ignorant, common people: "This is from God."’ However, Tabari himself does not accept this interpretation, instead gives a totally unconvincing and improbable account of the derivation of the word: ‘I am of the opinion that an illiterate person is called ummi, relating him in his lack of ability to write to his mother (umm), because writing was something which men, and not women, did, so that a man who could not write and form letters was linked to his mother, and not to his father, in his ignorance of writing.’" (Warraq, "Introduction”,What the Koran Really Says, Language, Text & Commentary [Prometheus Books, 2002; ISBN: 157392945X], p. 44; underline emphasis ours)
Others believe that unlettered actually refers to the Gentiles, i.e. that Muhammad was a Gentile prophet who was supposedly sent to the Gentile communities. (Cf. http://www.mostmerciful.com/ummi.htm)
In fact, Ibn Ishaq, in his biography on Muhammad, defined ummiyyun as Arab or Gentile converts to Judaism:
... God said: ‘Do they not know that God knows what they conceal and what they proclaim, and some of them are gentiles who do not know the book but merely recite passages (310). They only think they know,’ i.e. they don't know the book and they do not know what it is in it, yet they oppose thy prophethood on mere opinion. (Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, trans. Alfred Guillaume, p. 252)
Guillaume has a note in which he says: “This word is generally translated ‘illiterate’. In Sura 7.157 and 158 Muhammad calls himself 'the gentile prophet'; but practically all Arab writers claim that he meant that he could not read or write (see, e.g., Pickthall's translation). Geiger, op. cit. 26 f., was, I think, the first to point out the only possible derivation of the word, and he has been followed by every subsequent European Arabist. But this passage brings to light the fact that he was preceded by these early traditionists who identified the ummiyyun as Arab proselytes who did not themselves know the scriptures.” (Ibid.)

[Yahya Sulaiman]

PART 3 OF 4

Furthermore, even if it were speaking of Bible corruption, this still wouldn’t prove the Muslim claim. The text says that only a party of them wrote false revelation and sold it for gain. The Quran says that there were others who would not allow the revelation to be tampered with for the sake of monetary profit: “And there are, certainly, among the People of the Book, those who believe in God, and that which has been revealed to you, in that which has been revealed to them, bowing in humility to God. They will not sell the signs of God for miserable gain. For them is a reward with their Lord, and God is swift in account.” (S. 3:199)[/quote]

SOURCE: http://answering-islam.org/Shamoun/bible_authentic2.htm

And he wonders why our rebuttals have been rather lengthy.

Shamoun had argued that "Muhammad (on whom be peace) was not a genuine prophet, since according to Shamoun, he failed the Bible’s tests for prophethood," as I put it before, and all the reader has to do is go back and check to see how accurate an assessment of one of his arguments this was. He accuses me of attacking straw men because he does not "simply reject Muhammad on the basis that I assume the Bible is true, and since Muhammad contradicts the Bible he is therefore a false prophet." Well, whatever. Muhammad (on whom be peace) did indeed claim to be inspired like some of—some of, mind you—the prophets in the Bible, as well as some not in the Bible. But whether these prophets were represented accurately in the Bible is a different matter, which would require at least one article all its own (and has been discussed in various aspects of the issue in many articles already on this site, especially in the "Bible and Koran" section), and then there is the matter of the corruption of the Bible, which I have already proven both above, in the previous articles, and pretty much all over this entire website.

RESPONSE: First, the author’s formulation implies that not all of the biblical prophets are recognized as genuine in the Quran. His erroneous logic is easily refuted when we realize that the Quran nowhere says that only some of the biblical prophets were genuine. Mr. Sulaiman fallaciously assumes that just because the Quran mentions only a few of the prophets who were inspired, this therefore means that the Quran is denying that the others were genuine spokespersons of God. It seems we need to again remind him of the following citations

We have revealed to thee as We revealed to Noah, and the Prophets after him, and We revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, Jesus and Job, Jonah and Aaron and Solomon, and We gave to David Psalms, and Messengers We have already told thee of before, and Messengers We have not told thee of; and unto Moses God spoke directly (S. 4:163-164 Arberry)

We sent Messengers before thee; of some We have related to thee, [b]and some We have not related to thee[b]. It was not for any Messenger to bring a sign, save by God's leave. When God's command comes, justly the issue shall be decided; then the vain-doers shall be lost. (S. 40:78 Arberry)

The very same passage that speaks of Muhammad receiving revelation like some of the messengers before him, also says that there are many other messengers that are not even mentioned in the Quran!

Second, his questioning whether the Bible accurately represents the prophets isn’t a different matter; it is precisely the issue at hand. We are debating whether the Quran confirms the Bible as we have it today. If it does, then from a Muslim standpoint there can be no debate regarding its authenticity. And since all the evidence shows that Muhammad did believe that the Bible of his day was the preserved Word of God, then the issue is settled as far as the author is concerned. He needs to agree with his prophet and admit his error regarding the textual transmission of the Holy Bible.

Now it is possible, of course, that Muhammad was mistaken and the Bible may in fact be corrupted. But, since this is not a viable option for the author, being a Muslim, he therefore needs to join conservative, evangelical Christians in the efforts they put forth to prove that the Bible has been accurately preserved. After all, his attacks on the Bible is nothing more than an attack on his prophet, indirectly accusing Muhammad of being a liar or mistaken. Yet to agree with his prophet that the Bible is preserved also proves that Muhammad was wrong. Either way, the author is left in a vicious dilemma and that is why he has been trying so desperately to deny the clear teaching of the Quran regarding the preservation and authority of the Holy Bible. Mr. Sulaiman continues his gross distortion of what I said:

After making the claim that some scattered alleged prophecies of piecemeal events in the four Gospels means that "the Gospel", in Shamoun’s sense, did not come entirely from oral tradition (which I didn’t say that it did), Shamoun once again lapses into offensive accusatory talk, this time saying that "I have not been entirely forthcoming", a phrase which in terms of meaning is a softer way of saying that I am being deliberately dishonest. Then, somehow managing once again to overlook that my brief reference to the Gospel of the Nazarenes as a possible candidate for al-Injeel, which as I’ve said could very well not be the case, he goes off into a very long argument to show that "the Gospel of the Nazerenes is anything but Islamic, and their Gospel’s portrait of Jesus is contrary to the Muslim one, which means that the Quran is wrong." Once again, if I were Shamoun, I would be very embarrassed. And what on earth does the Trinity or Shamoun’s allegations of our depiction of God being "dry" and "monadic" have to do with anything here?? It is as if Shamoun were psychologically incapable of arguing about anything for long enough before going off into other topics coming out of nowhere, in the form of a mountain of links and/or a pages-long tangent.

The author keeps retracting his statement from one paper to the next, obviously as the result of being refuted throughout our exchanges. He says that he never denied that the Gospel was also written. Again, here are his own words:

3. NOWHERE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT is the phrase "the Gospel" USED TO REFER TO SCRIPTURE. The only verse you could even make a case for in that respect is Mark 1:1, where the phrase stills seems to go by its literal meaning of "good news".

3.[sic] In the book of Romans, the distinction between "Law" and "Gospel" is about the following of the Old Covenant and the preaching of the supposed salvation through the blessed Jesus's supposed death. Both terms refer to religious abstractions, NOT TANGIBLE SCRIPTURES. For example, Romans 2:15 says, "They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts." And since this is the only place in the Bible where "the Law" and "the Gospel" are made distinct from each other, therefore there is no biblical evidence for these terms being used together to refer collectively to the older and newer scriptures. (Source)

The reader can see why I went out of my way to show that Gospel in the New Testament does refer to something written, since the author clearly denied that it did. He wonders what the Trinity has to do with our discussion. It has everything to do with our discussion since if the Bible confirms the Trinity (and it does), and if the Quran confirms the Bible while denying the Trinity, then this means that the Quran is a lie, a false book which could not have come from the true God. That the author didn’t get the connection is more of an indication of his ability to understand and address the issues, than it is about my going off on tangents and other topics.

The same goes for accusing me of contradicting myself in the most absurd ways, now taking the form of the Gospel being something that was preached (as I said it was in the biblical, Christian sense of the term) and also something written (as I said it was in the Koranic sense of the term, also the capitalizated [sic] biblical sense, the upper or lower cased G being all it takes to make the difference). And since the Koran undeniably refers to the Gospel (upper-cased G, "al-Injeel") as being from the blessed Jesus’s own point of view, there’s nothing "anecdotal" about it either. As for God teaching it to him, we believe that God taught the Koran to the blessed Muhammad, but it also contains biographical material about him. So what of it?

RESPONSE: For some strange reason the author thinks that there is a difference in meaning whether one capitalizes the g in Gospel or not. Maybe to him there is, but since the oldest Greek MSS were written in uncials, or upper case Greek characters, capitalizing the g or not has little bearing on the real meaning of the term. This is nothing more than a ruse, a canard on the author’s part. Furthermore, despite the author denying that he contradicted himself, it is apparent to any one reading these exchanges that he clearly did. In one place, he argued that the Gospel of Jesus was something he preached. In another place, he says Jesus may have written it or dictated by him, i.e. oral. Yet, at another time he says it was a text that was given to Jesus, which Jesus himself wrote.
The author seeks to refute me by saying that the Quran also contains biographical material on Muhammad, so there is nothing wrong with Jesus’ Gospel also containing biographical data. Apparently the author forgot what he wrote elsewhere:

...Note that: the real Gospel was one Jesus (peace be on him) HIMSELF WROTE, NOT ONE OF THE THIRD PERSON ACCOUNTS YOU HAVE IN THE BIBLE

Here he says the real Gospel is that which the Lord Jesus wrote and attacks the canonical Gospels for being third person accounts on the life of Jesus. But he obviously didn’t bother to read the Infancy Gospel of Thomas since this Gospel is also supposed to be a third person account on Jesus’ childhood years! That is why it is called the Infancy Gospel OF THOMAS! Here, again, is the introduction to this apocryphal fable:

The stories of Thomas the Israelite, the Philosopher, concerning the works of the Childhood of the Lord.
I. I, Thomas the Israelite, tell unto you, even all the brethren that are of the Gentiles, to make known unto you the works of the childhood of our Lord Jesus Christ and his mighty deeds, even all that he did when he was born in our land: whereof the beginning is thus: (Gospel of Thomas Greek Text A; Source; bold and underline emphasis ours)
The Writing of the holy Apostle Thomas concerning the conversation of the Lord in his childhood.
I. I, Thomas the Israelite, have thought it needful to make known unto all the brethren that are of the Gentiles the mighty works of childhood which our Lord Jesus Christ wrought when he was conversant in the body, and came unto the city of Nazareth in the fifth year of his age. (Gospel of Thomas Greek Text B; Source; bold and underline emphasis ours)
Here beginneth a treatise of the Boyhood of Jesus according to Thomas

Thus, by the author’s own criteria this apocryphal fable cannot be the genuine Gospel of the Lord Jesus, which means that the Quran is quoting from a fraudulent source!
We realize why the author decided to address a straw man at this point since he has consistently shown that he cannot refute the real issues. Mr. Sulaiman proceeds to again distort my position. After quoting my response to his allegation that the Quran presents a citation not found in the NT, he writes:

So because Shamoun’s position in this debate is right and the Koran considers the New Testament to the al-Injeel and also infallible, which is what Shamoun is supposed to be establishing in this debate, therefore he is right? He even recognizes that the Koran quotes a verse from al-Injeel which is not in the New Testament, and the import of this doesn’t seem to reach him at all. Next, Shamoun is correct about the blessed Moses not being spoken of in the Koran as being given "The Torah/al-Taurat" by name, but what else would the "scripture of Moses" (Koran 11:17, 87:19) be, especially when its material is consistently spoken of in the Koran as being from or paralleled in the Torah?? Next, Shamoun can offer no actual direct response to my pointing out of the overwhelming amount of parallels between the Koran and the Torah except to point out that there are differences between them—which I myself have pointed out repeatedly in the "Bible and Koran" section of this site, in arguments that are not against, but in favor of, the Koran, given the Book’s partial purpose of revision, which I have established many times now.

RESPONSE: In the first place, I nowhere said in my response that the Quran quotes a verse which is not found in the NT/Injil. What I said was that even if the Quran did quote a passage not found in the NT, all this would prove is that the Quran is misquoting sources. Since the Quran acknowledges that the NT is the preserved Word of God it is therefore the Quran that is mistaken for quoting a passage which it erroneously assumed was from the NT corpus. The author maybe referring to the following citation which was already mentioned above:

And their description in the Gospel is like unto a seed-produce that sends forth its sprout, then makes it strong; it then becomes stout, and stands firm on its stem, delighting the sowers—That HE may cause the disbelievers to boil with rage at the sight of them… (S. 48:29 Sher Ali)

We had stated that this parable seems to be a paraphrase of Mark 4:27-28, a position held by the following Muslims: The similitude in the Gospel is about how the good seed is sown and grown gradually, even beyond the expectation of the sower: "the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how; for the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the earth"; MARK, iv 27-28 ... (Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an - Meaning and Translation, p. 1400, n. 4917; bold, underline, and capital emphasis mine) This parable is found in a sermon of the Prophet Jesus that has been reported in the New Testament, thus:

And he said, So is the kingdom of God as if a man should east [sic] seed into the ground: And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come [author- This is taken from Mark 4:26-29]. And he said, Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth: But when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it [author- this comes from Mark 4:30-32]. (The last portion of this sermon is also found in Matthew, 13:31-32. (S. Abul A’la Maududi, Meaning of the Qur’an, Volume V, English rendering by A.A. Kamal, M.A. [Islamic Publications (Pvt.) Limited, 13-E, Shahalam Market, Lahore-8 Pakistan], p. 67, fn. 56; underlined emphasis ours)

Thus, if these men are correct (and there is no reason to doubt that they are) then this is additional proof that the Quran confirms that the NT Gospels are the Gospel of God given to Jesus! Second, the author is forced admit that the Quran nowhere says the Torah was given to Moses, even though in his first rebuttal he made the following claim:

Second, the Koran REPEATEDLY speaks of al-Taurat (the Law, the Torah) AS BEING REVEALED TO THE BLESSED MOSES AND NEVER TO ANYONE ELSE, indicating that it could only be the Pentateuch. This is further confirmed by the enormous amount of parallels between the Koran and the Pentateuch. (Source; capital emphasis ours)

We are glad that he corrected his error. He asks what else could the Torah be if not that of Moses in light of all the parallels between it and the Quran, a question which we wanted him to answer. The problem with his point is that he is begging the question, assuming what he has yet to prove. He has already assumed what the Torah is, otherwise how would have known that it parallels the Quran? But he hasn't told us how he arrived at his conclusion , i.e. how does he know what he knows about the Torah? The answer is that he wouldn't know what the Torah was if he simply consulted the Quran. He only knows that the Torah is the revelation given to Moses by consulting the Holy Bible. But consulting the Holy Bible establishes my case against him, since the Holy Bible provides evidence showing that the word Torah is used in a broader sense to refer to the rest of the inspired Scriptures of the Old Testament!

Third, why would I need to address the alleged "overwhelming amount of parallels" between the Quran and the Torah when their differences are vastly greater, and even contradictory, proving that they cannot be from the same source? All that the similarities prove is that Muhammad plagiarized the Torah, and other Jewish sources, in order to make it as if the same God of Moses was inspiring him. Little did he realize that that claim would backfire against him since his blatant contradictions to the previous revelations show that he was a false prophet. Yet, do notice that the author can offer no substantial, direct response to my pointing out the major differences between the Torah and the Quran except to speak of revisions to the Book, which I assume means the Torah. Thus, the author again must beg the question since he assumes that the Quran is true, and therefore the Torah is only correct when it agrees with the Quran. But as the evidence has shown, the Quran claims to confirm all of the Torah, not just some of it, while contradicting it at the same time. This means that the Quran is in error, and contains gross distortions and lies, not the Holy Bible.