Bart Ehrman and the Trinity Pt. 2
I resume my discussion of Ehrman’s statements concerning the text of 1 John 5:7.
The other point that I want to make is that Ehrman’s argument actually ends up proving that John’s Gospel has the Lord Jesus confirming that there are at least two coeternal and coequal Persons within the Godhead, namely the Father and the Son!
Keep in mind that Ehrman assumes that 1 John 5:7 is affirming the essential unity of the three divine Persons due to its use of the Greek word for one (hen). Note, once again, what the text says:
“There are three that testify in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are ONE (hen).” 1 John 5:7
In light of this assertion, pay careful attention to what our Lord says concerning the salvation and preservation of believers:
“‘MY sheep hear MY voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are ONE (ego kai ho Pater HEN esmen).’ The Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus replied, ‘I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?’ The Jews answered, ‘It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God.’” John 10:27-33
Jesus claims to be one with the Father in the context of promising to grant everlasting life to all his sheep and assuring them that they will remain eternally secure, since there is no power that is capable of ever plucking them out of his sovereign hand of care and protection.
What makes these words so remarkable is that our Lord has ascribed to himself the very language, which the Hebrew Scriptures apply to Jehovah God alone.
For instance, we are told that Jehovah gives life and that no one is able to take anything out of his sovereign hand:
“See now that I, even I, am he; there is no god besides me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand.” Deuteronomy 32:39
“although you know that I am not guilty, and there is no one to deliver out of your hand?” Job 10:7
“There is no Holy One like the Lord, no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God… The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up.” 1 Samuel 2:2, 6
“You are my witnesses, says the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior. I declared and saved and proclaimed, when there was no strange god among you; and you are my witnesses, says the LORD. I am God, and also henceforth I am He; there is no one who can deliver from my hand; I work and who can hinder it?” Isaiah 43:10-13
The OT further describes believers as the sheep of Jehovah’s hand, i.e. the flock under his care, whose glorious voice they are supposed to obey:
“O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice! Do not harden your hearts,” Psalm 95:6-8
The foregoing explains why the Jews reacted the way they did since they correctly understood that Jesus, though he was a man, was making himself out to be God. Where they were incorrect is in their assumption that he was blaspheming for doing so.
Hence, Ehrman’s understanding of 1 John 5:7 leads to the inescapable conclusion that the Lord Jesus proclaimed that there are at least two divine Persons within the Godhead, since he claimed to be one with the Father, and therefore made himself essentially coequal with God.
What makes this all the more interesting is that Ehrman himself agrees with this point. Unlike the Muslim polemicists who parrot his arguments, Ehrman believes that John’s Gospel identifies Jesus as an eternal Being who is equal with God the Father. He even appeals to John 10:30 to establish his case:
“Jesus does not preach about the future kingdom of God in John. The emphasis is on his own identity, as seen in the ‘I am’ sayings. He is the one who can bring life-giving sustenance (‘I am the bread of life’ 6:35); he is the one who brings enlightenment (‘I am the light of the world’ 9:5); he is the only way to God (‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me’ 14:6). Belief in Jesus is the way to have eternal salvation: ‘whoever believes in him may have eternal life’ (3:36). He in fact IS EQUAL WITH GOD: ‘I and the Father are one’ (10:30). His Jewish listeners appear to have known full well what he was saying: they immediately pick up stones to execute him for blasphemy.
“In one place in John, Jesus claims the name of God for himself, saying to his Jewish interlocutors, ‘Before Abraham was, I am’ (John 8:58). Abraham, who lived 1,800 years earlier, was the father of the Jews, and Jesus is claiming to have existed before him. But he is claiming more than that. He is referring to a passage in the Hebrew Scriptures where God appears to Moses at the burning bush and commissions him to go to Pharaoh and seek the release of his people. Moses asks God what God’s name is, so that he can inform his fellow Israelites which divinity has sent him. God replies, ‘I Am Who I Am … say to the Israelites, “I Am has sent me to you”’ (Exodus 3:14). So when Jesus says ‘I AM,’ in John 8:58, he is claiming the divine name for himself. Here again his Jewish hearers had no trouble understanding his meaning. Once more, out come the stones.” (Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We don’t Know About Them) [HarperOne, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers, 2009], Three. A Mass Of Variant Views, p. 80; bold and underline emphasis ours)
And here is what Ehrman wrote in relation to John’s prologue:
“… John starts with a prologue that mysteriously describes the Word of God that was in the very beginning with God, that was itself God, and through which God created the universe. This Word, we are told, became a human being, and that’s who Jesus Christ is: the Word of God made flesh. There is nothing like that in the Synoptics… Jesus also preaches in this Gospel, not about the coming kingdom of God but about himself: who he is, where he has come from, where he is going, and how he can bring eternal life. Unique to John are the various ‘I am’ sayings, in which Jesus identifies himself and what he can provide for people. These ‘I am’ sayings are usually backed up by a sign, to show that what Jesus says about himself is true. And so he says, ‘I am the bread of life’ and proves it by multiplying the loaves to feed the multitudes; he says ‘I am the light of the world’ and proves it by healing the man born blind; he says ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ and proves it by raising Lazarus from the dead.” (Ibid, pp. 72-73)
And:
“John does not make any reference to Jesus’ mother being a virgin, instead explaining his coming into the world as an incarnation of a preexistent divine being. The prologue to John’s Gospel (1:1-18) is one of the most elevated and POWERFUL passages of the entire Bible. It is also one of the most discussed, controverted, and differently interpreted. John begins (1:1-3) with an elevated view of the ‘Word of God,’ a being that is independent of God (he was ‘with God’) but that is in some sense equal with God (he ‘was God’). This being existed in the beginning with God and is the one through whom the entire universe was created (‘all things came into being through him, and apart from him not one thing came into being’).
“Scholars have wrangled over details of this passage for centuries. My personal view is that the author is harking back to the story of creation in Genesis 1, where God spoke and creation resulted: ‘And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.’ It was by speaking a word that God created all that there was. The author of the Fourth Gospel, LIKE SOME OTHERS IN JEWISH TRADITION, imagined that the word that God spoke was some kind of independent entity in and of itself. It was ‘with’ God, because once spoken, it was apart from God, and it ‘was’ God in the sense that what God spoke WAS A PART OF HIS BEING. His speaking only made external what was already internal, within his mind. The word of God, then, was the outward manifestation of the internal divine reality. It both was with God, and was God, and was the means by which all things came into being.
“In John’s Gospel, this preexistent divine Word of God became a human being: ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory’ (1:14). It comes as no surprise who this human being was: Jesus Christ. Jesus, here, is not simply a Jewish prophet who suddenly bursts onto the scene, as in Mark; and he is not a divine-human who has come into existence at the point of his conception (or birth) by a woman who was impregnated by God. He is God’s very word, who was with God in the beginning, who has temporarily come to dwell on earth, bringing the possibility of eternal life.
“John does not say how this Word came into the world. He does not have a birth narrative and says nothing about Joseph and Mary, about Bethlehem, or about a virginal conception. And he varies from Luke on this very key point: whereas Luke portrays Jesus as having come into being at some historical point (conception or birth), John portrays him as the human manifestation of a divine being who transcends human history.” (Ibid, pp. 75-76; bold and capital emphasis ours)
Finally:
“The last of our Gospels to be written, John, pushes the Son-of-God-ship of Jesus back even further, INTO ETERNITY PAST. John is our only Gospel that actually speaks of Jesus as divine. For John, Christ is not the Son of God because God raised him from the dead, adopted him at the baptism, or impregnated his mother: he is the Son of God because he existed with God in the very beginning, before the creation of the world, as the Word of God, before coming into this world as a human being (becoming ‘incarnate’)… This is the view that became the standard Christian doctrine, that Christ was the preexistent Word of God who became flesh. He both was with God in the beginning and was God, and it was through him that the universe was created. But this was not the original view held by the followers of Jesus. The idea that Jesus was divine was a later Christian invention, one found, among our gospels, only in John… What led Christians to develop this view? The Gospel of John does not represent the view of one person, the unknown author [sic] of the Gospel, but rather a view that the author inherited through his oral tradition, just as the other Gospel writers record the traditions that they had heard, traditions in circulation in Christian circles for decades before they were written down. John’s tradition is obviously unique, however, since in none of the other Gospels do we have such an exalted view of Christ. Where did this tradition come from?” (Ibid, Seven. Who Invented Christianity?, pp. 248-249; bold emphasis ours)
Ehrman has more to say about John’s Gospel in his book on how Jesus came to be viewed as God in the flesh:
“… Among other things, in this Gospel there are not simply allusions to Jesus’ divine power and authority. There are bald statements that equate Jesus with God and say that he was a preexistent divine being who came into the world. This view is not simply like Paul’s, in which Jesus was some kind of angel who then came to be exalted to a higher position of deity. For John, Jesus WAS EQUAL WITH GOD and even shared HIS NAME and HIS GLORY in HIS PREINCARNATE STATE. To use the older terminology (which I favored back then), this was an extremely high Christology.” (How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee [HarperOne, 2014], 7. Jesus as God on Earth: Early Incarnation Christologies, p. 270; bold and capital emphasis ours)
And:
“One of the most striking features of John’s Gospel is its elevated claims about Jesus. Here, Jesus is decidedly God and is in fact EQUAL WITH God the Father–before coming into the world, while in the world, and after he leaves the world. Consider the following passages, which are found only in John among the four Gospels:
- In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have beheld his glory, glory as of the unique one before the Father, full of grace and truth. (1:1, 14; later this Word made flesh is named as ‘Jesus Christ,’ v. 17)
- But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is working still, and I also am working.’ This was why the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God. (5:17-18)
- [Jesus said:] ‘Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.’ (8:58)
- [Jesus said:] ‘I and the Father are one.’ (10:30)
- Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.’ (14:8-9)
- [Jesus prayed to God:] ‘I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.’
- [Jesus prayed:] ‘Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.’ (17:24)
- Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ (20:28)
“I need to be clear: Jesus is not God the Father in this Gospel. He spends all of chapter 17 praying to his Father, and, as I pointed out earlier, he is not talking to himself. But he has been given glory EQUAL TO THAT OF God the Father. AND HE HAD THAT GLORY BEFORE HE CAME INTO THE WORLD. When he leaves this world, he returns to the glory that was his before. To be sure, Jesus comes to be ‘exalted’ here–he several times talks about his crucifixion as being ‘lifted up’–a play on words in reference to being ‘lifted onto the cross’ and being ‘exalted’ up to heaven as a result. But the exaltation is not to a higher state than the one he previously possessed, as in Paul. For John, he was already both ‘God’ and ‘with God’ in his preincarnate state as a divine being. Nowhere can this view be seen more clearly than in the first eighteen verses of the Gospel, frequently called the Prologue of John.” (Ibid., pp. 271-272; bold and capital emphasis ours)
Finally:
“… As we saw, the Prologue of John stressed that Jesus was the incarnation of the preexistent Word of God who was both with God and was himself God. This incarnation Christology is one of the ‘highest’ views of Christ to be found in the New Testament…” (Ibid., pp. 297-298; bold emphasis ours)
And this is what Ehrman has to say regarding Jesus’ “I Am” statements:
“Even though this view of Christ as the Logos made flesh is not found anywhere in the Gospel of John, its views are obviously closely aligned with the Christology of the Gospel otherwise. That is why Christ can make himself ‘equal with God’ (John 5:18); can say that he and the Father ‘are one’ (10:30); can talk about the ‘glory’ he had with the Father before coming into the world (17:4); can say that anyone who has seen him has ‘seen the Father’ (14:9); and can indicate that ‘before Abraham was, I am’ (8:58). This last verse is especially intriguing. As we have seen, in the Hebrew Bible when Moses encounters God at the burning bush in Exodus 3, he asks God what his name is. God tells him that his name is ‘I am.’ In John, Jesus appears to take the name upon himself. Here he does not receive ‘the name that is above every name’ at his exaltation after his resurrection, as in the Philippians poem (Phil. 2:9). He already has ‘the name’ while on earth. Throughout the Gospel of John, the unbelieving Jews understand full well what Jesus is saying about himself when he makes such claims. They regularly take up stones to execute him for committing blasphemy, for claiming in fact to be God.” (Ibid., pp. 278-279; bold and underline emphasis ours)
This is primarily the reason why Islamic apologists are quick to attack John’s Gospel, claiming that its author is anonymous and/or unreliable due to its being composed at a much later date than the Synoptic Gospels, and because it is supposedly more theologically developed. And yet this happens to be the very Gospel that Muslims typically quote when trying to prove that Jesus prophesied the coming of Muhammad. Case in point:
“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. (The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, with introduction and notes by Alfred Guillaume [Oxford University Press, Karachi, Tenth impression 1995], pp. 103-104; capital emphasis ours)
Here we have the oldest extant Muslim biography on Muhammad’s life citing John 15:23-16:1, and claiming that this comes from the Gospel that God gave Jesus for his followers, which John the Apostle wrote down!
Pay close attention to the fact that this Muslim chronicler never once states that John’s Gospel is unreliable due to it being written anonymously or because it supposedly has a much higher and exalted view of Christ.
The foregoing clearly illustrates that the Gospel of John is reliable when it comes to proving that Muhammad has been prophesied in the previous Scriptures. And yet this very same Gospel all of a sudden becomes an untrustworthy source of information on the life and teachings of the historical Jesus whenever it so happens to contradict the Muslim view of Christ and/or exposes Muhammad as a false prophet.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Islamic apologetics, a world in which inconsistency and dishonesty are (sadly) the norm rather than the exception!
I’m not through just yet since I have more to say in the next installment where I delve into the Holy Bible’s teaching concerning the Holy Spirit of God.
Categories: Bible, Christianity, Christology, Dr Bart Ehrman, Guest article, Muhammad, Sam Shamoun
excellent content.
Great quotes by Bart Ehrman.
Boom!
Just for everyone to know so that they can look up the verse for themselves; this reference was left out – it is John 17:5
[Jesus prayed to God:] ‘I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.’
John 17:5
Proves Jesus is eternal and with the Father and shares the same glory with the Father.
Awesome!
Excellent quote from Ehrman’s book, “How Jesus Became God”. page 270
Years ago when my children were in high school, I noticed that the teachers and academia came up with new methods of forms of bibliographic reference. (Different than what I was taught) They called it “works cited” rather than “Bibliography” and also had lots of other changes. I noticed Reza Aslan’s book Zealot had a lot of those new forms of recording the bibliographic information.
The “7” below is “chapter 7” – the chapter is entitled “Jesus as God on Earth . . . ”
Is that form part of the new way they do footnotes now?
(How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee [HarperOne, 2014], 7. Jesus as God on Earth: Early Incarnation Christologies, p. 270; bold and capital emphasis ours)
Just so people can find it easier, if wondering, “7” is “chapter 7”.
Yes it’s chapter 7. It appears as 7. in the table of contents.
« He [ i.e. Jesus] is defiantly not Yahweh for any author of the NT. Yahweh and Jesus are different beings in the NT». Bart Ehrman.
definitely*
It’s Muslims like you that prove that there are some that are completely a waste of time. I have already responded to Ehrman’s inconsistency at this point showing how he contradicts himself. For instance, if you actually read the quotes I provided, which you obviously didn’t, Ehrman admits that John depicts Jesus as an eternal Being who has always possessed God’s name and has always been equal to God the Father. Just in case you missed it:
“In one place in John, JESUS CLAIMS THE NAME OF GOD FOR HIMSELF, saying to his Jewish interlocutors, ‘Before Abraham was, I am’ (John 8:58). Abraham, who lived 1,800 years earlier, was the father of the Jews, and Jesus is claiming to have existed before him. But he is claiming more than that. He is referring to a passage in the Hebrew Scriptures where God appears to Moses at the burning bush and commissions him to go to Pharaoh and seek the release of his people. Moses asks God what God’s name is, so that he can inform his fellow Israelites which divinity has sent him. God replies, ‘I Am Who I Am … say to the Israelites, “I Am has sent me to you”’ (Exodus 3:14). So when Jesus says ‘I Am,’ in John 8:58, HE IS CLAIMING THE DIVINE NAME FOR HIMSELF. Here again his Jewish hearers had no trouble understanding his meaning. Once more, out come the stones.” (Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We don’t Know About Them) [HarperOne, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers, 2009], Three. A Mass Of Variant Views, pp. 79-80; capital emphasis ours)
Now since Jesus has always possessed God’s name, and since God’s name is Yahweh, ipso facto not only is Jesus equal to Yahweh HE IS YAHWEH!
More in my next post.
This is taken from my rebuttal to Ehrman on his inconsistent. So enjoy!
Ehrman believes that certain verses in the NT identify the Lord Jesus as the human manifestation of the Angel of the LORD, a divine figure that appears quite often in the Hebrew Bible. Ehrman believes that this is the view of the poem that the Apostle Paul incorporated in his letter to the Philippians, specifically in chapter 2, verses 5-11. Scholars commonly refer to this section of Philippians as the Carmen Christi (“Hymn to Christ”). Here is what it says:
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Ehrman believes that this poem was composed in the early forties, meaning within ten years of Jesus’ resurrection:
“Some scholars have had a real difficulty imagining that a poem existing before Paul’s letter to the Philippians – a poem whose composition must therefore date AS EARLY AS THE 40s CE – could already celebrate AN INCARNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS…” (How Jesus Became God, p. 259; capital emphasis ours)
In explaining the reason why he rejects the position of some scholars who argue that the Carmen Christi does not speak of the prehuman existence of Christ, but rather focuses on his humanity in order to contrast him with Adam, Ehrman brings up Paul’s view of the Lord Jesus:
“Third, and possibly most importantly, from other passages in Paul it does indeed appear that he understands Christ to have been a preexistent divine being. One example comes from a very peculiar passage in 1 Corinthians, in which Paul is talking about how the children of Israel, after they escaped from Egypt under Moses, were fed while they spent so many years in the wilderness (as recounted in the books of Exodus and Numbers in the Hebrew Bible). According to Paul, the Israelites had enough to drink because the rock that Moses struck in order miraculously to bring forth water (Num. 20:11) followed them around in the wilderness. Wherever they went, the water-providing rock went. In fact, Paul says, ‘the rock was Christ’ (1 Cor. 10:4). Just as Christ provides life to people today when they believe in him, so too he provided life to the Israelites in the wilderness. That would not have been possible, of course, unless he existed at the time. And so for Paul, Christ was a preexistent being who was occasionally manifest on earth.
“Or take another passage, one in which Paul actually does speak of Christ as a second Adam. In 1 Corinthians, Paul contrasts Christ’s place of origin with that of Adam: ‘The first man was from the earth, and was made of dust; the second man is from heaven’ (15:47). What matters here is precisely the difference between Adam and Christ. Adam came into being in this world; Christ existed before he came into this world. He was from heaven.
“And so, the interpretation of the Philippians poem that takes it as an indication that Christ was a kind of ‘perfect Adam’ does not work, on one hand, because the passage has features that do not make sense given this interpretation. And on the other hand, this interpretation is completely unnecessary. It does not solve the problem of an Incarnational Christology–because Paul clearly says in other passages that Jesus was indeed a preexistent divine being who came into the world. That’s what this poem teaches as well.” (Ibid., pp. 261-262)
Ehrman thinks that texts such as Galatians 4:14 suggest that Paul believed that the Lord Jesus was God’s chief angel, in fact THE Angel of the Lord mentioned throughout the OT:
“But this means that in Galatians 4:14 Paul is not contrasting Christ with an angel; he is equating him with an angel. Garrett goes a step further and argues that Galatians 4:14 indicates that Paul ‘identifies [Jesus Christ] with God’s chief angel.’
“If this is the case, then virtually everything Paul says about Christ throughout his letters makes perfect sense. As the Angel of the Lord, Christ is a preexistent being who is divine; he can be called God, AND HE IS GOD’S MANIFESTATION ON EARTH IN HUMAN FLESH. Paul says all these things about Christ, and in no passage more strikingly than in Philippians 2:6-11, a passage that scholars often call the ‘Philippians Hymn’ or the ‘Christ Hymn of Philippians,’ since it is widely thought to embody an early hymn or poem devoted to celebrating Christ AND HIS INCARNATION.” (Ibid., p. 253; capital emphasis ours)
Ehrman further argues that this is the position held by some of the other NT writers as well:
“In the most thorough investigation of Christological views that portray Jesus as an angel or an angel-like being, New Testament scholar Charles Gieschen, helpfully defines the Jewish notion of an angel as ‘a spirit or heavenly being who mediates between the human and divine realms.’ Once Jesus was thought to be exalted to heaven, he was quickly seen, by some of his followers, to be this kind of heavenly mediator, one who obediently did God’s will while he was here on earth. From there, it was a very small step to thinking that Jesus was this kind of being by nature, not simply because of his exaltation. Jesus was not only the Son of God, the Lord, the Son of Man, the coming messiah; he was the one who mediates God’s will on earth as a heavenly, angelic being. In fact, it came to be thought that he had always been this kind of being.”
“If Jesus was the one who represented God in human form, he quite likely had always been that one. He was, in other words, the chief angel of God, known in the Bible as the Angel of the Lord. This is the figure who appeared to Hagar, and Abraham, and Moses, who is sometimes actually called ‘God’ in the Hebrew Bible. If Jesus is in fact this one, he is a preexistent divine being who came to earth for a longer period of time, during his life; he fully represented God on earth; he in fact can be called God. Exaltation Christologies became transformed into incarnation Christologies as soon as believers in Jesus came to see him as an angelic being who performed God’s work here on earth.
“To call Jesus the Angel of the Lord is to make a startlingly exalted claim about him. In the Hebrew Bible, this figure appears to God’s people as God’s representative, and he is in fact called God. And is it turns out, as recent research has shown, there are clear indications in the New Testament that the early followers of Jesus understood him in this fashion. Jesus was thought of as an angel, or an angel-like being, or even the Angel of the Lord–in any event, a superhuman divine being who existed before his birth and became human for the salvation of the human race. This, in a nutshell, is the incarnation Christology of several New Testament authors. Later authors went even further and maintained that Jesus was not merely an angel–even the chief angel–but was a superior being: he was God himself come to earth.” (Ibid., pp. 250-251)
This is a rather shocking assertion on Ehrman’s part since he actually believes that the Hebrew Bible identifies this particular Angel as the visible manifestation of Yahweh God Almighty!
Note, for example, the following quotation where Ehrman discusses Genesis 16:7-14, which speaks of the Angel appearing to Hagar:
“… But then, after referring to this heavenly visitor as the Angel of the Lord, the text indicates that it was, in fact, ‘the LORD’ who had spoken with her (16:13). Moreover, Hagar realizes that she has been addressing God himself and expresses her astonishment that she had ‘seen God and remained alive after seeing him’ (16:13). Here there is both ambiguity and confusion; either the Lord appears as an angel in the form of a human, or the Angel of the Lord IS THE LORD HIMSELF, GOD IN HUMAN GUISE.
“A similar ambiguity occurs two chapters later, this time with Abraham. We are told in Genesis 18:1 that ‘the LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre.’ But when the episode is narrated, we learn that ‘three men’ come to him (18:2). Abraham plays the good host and entertains them, preparing for them a very nice meal, which they all three eat. When they talk to him afterward, one of these three ‘men’ is identified explicitly as ‘the LORD’ (18:13). At the end of the story we are informed that the other two were ‘angels’ (19:1). So here we have a case where two angels AND THE LORD GOD HIMSELF have assumed human form–so much so that they appear to Abraham to be three men, and they all eat the food he has prepared.
“The most famous instance of such ambiguity is found in the story of Moses and the burning bush (Exod. 3:1-22). By way of background: Moses, the son of Hebrews, had been raised in Egypt by the daughter of Pharaoh, but he has to escape for murdering an Egyptian and is wanted by the Pharaoh himself. He goes to Midian where he marries and becomes a shepherd for his father-in-law’s flocks. One day, while tending to his sheeply duties, Moses sees an astonishing sight. We are told that he arrives at Mount Horeb (this is Mount Sinai, where later, after the exodus, he is given the law) and there, ‘the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush’ (Exod. 3:2). Moses is amazed because the bush is aflame but is not being consumed by the fire. And despite the fact that it is the Angel of the Lord who is said to have appeared to him, it is ‘the Lord’ who sees that Moses has come to the bush, and it is ‘God’ who then calls to him out of the bush. In fact, the Angel of the Lord tells Moses, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the god of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ (Exod. 3:6). As the story continues, the Lord God continues to speak to Moses and Moses to God. But in what sense was it the Angel of the Lord that appeared to him? A helpful note in the HarperCollins Study Bible puts it: ‘Although it was an angel that appeared in v. 2, there is no substantive difference between the deity and his agents.’ Or as New Testament scholar Charles Gieschen has expressed it, this ‘Angel of the Lord’ is ‘either indistinguishable from God as his visible manifestation’ or he is a distinct figure, separate from God, who is bestowed with God’s own authority.” (Ibid., 2. Divine Humans in Ancient Judaism, pp. 56-57; capital emphasis ours)
Since Ehrman believes that Paul and some of the first Christians taught that Jesus is the incarnation of the Angel of Yahweh, and since this Angel is the human appearance of Yahweh himself, this means that Jesus is none other than the very Incarnation of Yahweh Almighty!
How, then, can Ehrman make the argument that no NT writer ever identifies Jesus as Yahweh, when that is precisely what some of the inspired authors taught according to Ehrman’s own view that believers such as Paul proclaimed that Christ is the Incarnation of the OT Angel of Yahweh? If these Christians believed that Jesus is that very Angel mentioned in the Hebrew Bible then this means that according to Ehrman’s own logic, they must have believed that Christ is the human manifestation of Yahweh God Almighty himself.
See the next post.
Your woes are just beginning.
But it gets a lot worse for Ehrman.
Ehrman argues that the Philippians’ poem not only proclaims that God exalted Jesus to a higher status in order to make the risen Lord equal to himself, but that he even conferred upon Christ the name Yahweh, and commands all creation to worship the risen Lord in the exact same way that Yahweh is supposed to be worshiped according to the prophet Isaiah!
“… For the Philippians poem, Christ started out as divine, but at his exaltation he was made even ‘more divine,’ in fact, HE WAS MADE EQUAL WITH GOD.
“This is a point that is widely agreed upon by interpreters, and it is because of the wording of the final two stanzas of the poem, vv. 10-11. There we are told that God ‘hyperexalted’ Jesus, so that ‘At the name of Jesus / Every knee should bow / Of those in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth. / And every tongue confess / That Jesus Christ is Lord / To the glory of God the Father.’ The causal reader may not realize this, but these lines allude to a passage in the Hebrew Bible. And a striking passage it is. According to the original passage as found in Isaiah 45:22-23, it is to Yahweh alone, the God of Israel, that ‘every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess’…
“The prophet Isaiah is quite explicit. There is only one God, NO OTHER. That God is Yahweh. That God has sworn that to NO OTHER shall every knee bow and every tongue make confession. Yet in the Philippians poem, it is not to God the Father–apart from whom, according to Isaiah, ‘there is no other’–but to the exalted Jesus that all the knees will bow and tongues confess. Jesus has been granted THE STATUS AND HONOR AND GLORY of the One Almighty God himself.
“This interpretation of the Christ poem in Philippians shows that VERY EARLY in the Christian movement the followers of Jesus were making audacious claims about him. He had been exalted TO EQUALITY WITH GOD, even though God himself had said that there was ‘no other’ apart from him. Somehow, Christians were imagining that there was indeed ‘another.’ And this other one was EQUAL WITH GOD. But it was not because he was God ‘by nature’–to use a later philosophical/theological term that came to be applied to discussions of Christ’s deity. He was God because God had made him so. But how could he be God, if God was God, and there was only one God? This became the key question of the Christological debates in later times, as we will see. At this stage, all we can say is that early Christians were not bothered enough by this dilemma, or this paradox, to have written anything about it, so we don’t know exactly how they dealt with it.
“One final point to make about the Philippians poem may have occurred to you already. I have been calling the Christology that it embraces ‘incarnational,’ since it portrays Jesus as a preexistent divine being who becomes human. But there is obviously an ‘exaltation’ element in the poem as well, since at Jesus’s resurrection God exalted him to an even higher state that he had before. In a sense, then, this poem provides us with a transitional Christology that combines an incarnation view with an exaltation view. Later authors will move even further away from an exaltation Christology, such that Christ will come to be portrayed AS BEING EQUAL WITH GOD BEFORE HIS APPEARANCE IN THE WORLD–in fact, AS EQUAL WITH GOD FOR ALL TIME. But this is not the view of the Philippians poem. For this beautiful passage, as quoted by and presumably believed by Paul, Christ was indeed a preexistent divine being. But he was an angel-like being, who only after his act of obedience to the point of death WAS MADE GOD’S EQUAL.” (Ibid., pp. 264-266; capital emphasis ours)
And:
One other point needs to be reemphasized at this stage however. If one uses the term high Christology to talk about this kind of incarnational view, the Prologue of John would be presenting a very high Christology indeed—higher than that even in the Philippians poem. For the author of that poem, as for Paul himself, Christ was some kind of angelic being before becoming a human— probably the “chief angel” or the “Angel of the Lord.” And as a result of his obedience to God unto death, he was given an even more exalted state of being as one who was EQUAL TO GOD IN HONOR AND STATUS as the Lord of all. This in itself is a remarkably exalted view of Jesus, the rural preacher from Galilee who proclaimed the coming kingdom of God and who, having ended up on the wrong side of the law, was crucified. But the Prologue of John has an even more elevated view of Christ. Here, Christ is not an angel of God, who was later “hyperexalted” or given a higher place than he had before he appeared on earth. Quite the contrary, even before he appeared, he was the Logos of God himself, a being who was God, the one through whom the entire universe was created. (Ibid., pp. 277-278; capital emphasis ours)
Finally:
12. The Tetragrammaton in the Hebrew Bible, YHWH (= Yahweh), which serves as the personal name of God, was translated in the Geek version by the term Kurios, which comes into English as “Lord.” And so, when the text indicates that every tongue will confess that “Jesus is Lord,” it appears to mean that everyone will acknowledge THAT JESUS HAS THE VERY NAME OF YAHWEH HIMSELF. It is important to note, however, that Jesus is still differentiated from God the Father, since all this is to happen to the Father’s “glory.” (Ibid., p. 381; capital emphasis ours)
Since Ehrman acknowledges that the Carmen Christi affirms that God the Father has made Jesus equal to himself in honor and status, and has even given him the very name Yahweh, which is why the risen Lord shall eventually receive the exact same worship that Isaiah 45:23 says Yahweh is supposed to receive from all creation, how then could he argue that no NT writer ever taught that Jesus is Yahweh or equal to God?
Not done with you yet Abdul.
This final part should teach Abdul not to be a brainless parrot who simply repeats what his masters and overlords say, but should at least try to actually read the sources for himself in order to save himself from such embarrassment.
The following lengthy citation from Ehrman does a great job of summing up his position concerning the belief of Paul and certain others regarding Christ:
Other Passages in Paul
The incarnational Christology that lies behind the Philippians hymn can be seen in other passages of Paul’s letters as well. I have already said that Paul understood Christ to be the “rock” that provided life-giving water to the Israelites in the wilderness (1 Cor. 10:4) and pointed out that Paul stated that Christ, unlike the first Adam, came from “heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47). When Paul talks about God “sending” his son, he appears not to be speaking only metaphorically (like John the Baptist is said to have been “sent” from God in John 1:6, for example); instead, God actually sent Christ from the heavenly realm. As he put it in the letter to the Romans, “For what the law could not do, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” (8:3). It is interesting that Paul uses this term likeness—just as the Philippians poem did when it spoke of Christ coming in the “appearance” of humans. It is the same Greek word in both places. Did Paul want to avoid saying that Christ actually became human, but that he came only in a human “likeness”? It is hard to say.
But it is clear that Paul does not believe Christ just appeared out of nowhere, the way angels seem to do in the Hebrew Bible. One of the verses in Paul that long puzzled me was Galatians 4:4, in which Paul writes, “When the fullness of time came, God sent his son, born from a woman, born under the law.” I always wondered why Paul would indicate that Christ had been born from a woman. What other option is there, exactly? But the statement makes sense if Paul believed that Christ was a preexistent angelic being. In that case, it is important to point out that Jesus was born in a human way: he did not simply appear as the Angel of the Lord did to Hagar, Abraham, and Moses. Here in the last days he actually was born in the likeness of human flesh, as a child.
Paul says even more exalted things about Christ. In Chapter 2, we saw that some Jewish texts understood God’s Wisdom to be a hypostasis of God—an aspect or characteristic of God that took on its own form of existence. Wisdom was the agent through which God created all things (as in Proverbs 8), and since it was God’s Wisdom in particular, it was both God and a kind of image of God. As the Wisdom of Solomon expressed it, Wisdom is “a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty . . . for she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness” (7:25–26). Moreover, we saw that Wisdom could be seen as the Angel of the Lord.
Jesus, for Paul, WAS THE ANGEL OF THE LORD. And so he too was God’s Wisdom, before coming into this world. Thus Paul can speak of “the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). Even more striking, Christ can be described as the agent of creation:
For us there is one God, the Father,
from whom are all things and for whom we exist,
and one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Cor. 8:6)
This verse may well incorporate another pre-Pauline creed of some kind, as it divides itself neatly, as can be seen, into two parts, with two lines each. The first part is a confession of God the Father, and the second a confession of Jesus Christ. It is “through” Christ that all things come into being and that believers themselves exist. This sounds very much like what non-Christian Jewish texts occasionally say about God’s Wisdom. And God’s Wisdom was itself understood to be God, as we have seen. So too Jesus in Paul. One of the most debated verses in the Pauline letters is Romans 9:5. Scholars dispute how the verse is to be translated. What is clear is that Paul is talking about the advantages given to the Israelites, and he indicates that the “fathers” (that is, the Jewish patriarchs) belong to the Israelites, and “from them is the Christ according to the flesh, the one who is God over all, blessed forever, amen.” Here, Christ is “God over all.” This is a very exalted view.
But some translators prefer not to take the passage as indicating that Christ is God and do so by claiming that it should be translated differently, to say first something about Christ and then, second, to give a blessing to God. They translate the verse like this: “from them is the Christ according to the flesh. May the God who is over all be blessed forever, amen.” The issues of translation are highly complex, and different scholars have different opinions. The matter is crucial. If the first version is correct, then it is the one place in all of Paul’s letters where he explicitly calls Jesus God.
But is it correct? My view for many years was that the second translation was the right one and that the passage does not call Jesus God. My main reason for thinking so, though, was that I did not think that Paul ever called Jesus God anywhere else, so he probably wouldn’t do so here. But that, of course, is circular reasoning, and I think the first translation makes the best sense of the Greek, as other scholars have vigorously argued.13 It is worth stressing that Paul does indeed speak about Jesus as God, as we have seen. This does not mean that Christ is God the Father Almighty. Paul clearly thought Jesus was God in a certain sense—but he does not think that he was the Father. He was an angelic, divine being before coming into the world; HE WAS THE ANGEL OF THE LORD; he was eventually exalted TO BE EQUAL WITH GOD AND WORTHY OF ALL OF GOD’S HONOR AND WORSHIP. And so I now have no trouble recognizing that in fact Paul could indeed flat-out call Jesus God, as he appears to do in Romans 9:5.
If someone AS EARLY in the Christian tradition as Paul can see Christ AS AN INCARNATE DIVINE BEING, it is no surprise that the same view emerges later in the tradition. Nowhere does it emerge more clearly or forcefully than in the Gospel of John. (Ibid., pp. 266-269; capital emphasis ours)
Pay close attention how Ehrman candidly acknowledges that Paul and some of the earliest Christians believed that Jesus is the divine Angel of Yahweh, the Incarnation of God’s own Wisdom, and the Agent whom God used to create all things, who was then highly exalted by God after his resurrection to become equal with the Father and worthy of receiving the exact same honor and worship that God himself receives.
With the foregoing in perspective, could Ehrman be any clearer that certain NT authors do in fact affirm that Jesus is both Yahweh God Incarnate and equal to Yahweh God the Father in power, glory, honor, majesty and worship?
Whether you start losing your mind or not is irrelevant to the fact that Ehrman clearly stated that «Jesus is 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐘𝐚𝐡𝐰𝐞𝐡 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐓».
A quick comment on the following:
“Here we have the oldest extant Muslim biography on Muhammad’s life citing John 15:23-16:1, and claiming that this comes from the Gospel that God gave Jesus for his followers, which John the Apostle wrote down!
Pay close attention to the fact that this Muslim chronicler never once states that John’s Gospel is unreliable due to it being written anonymously or because it supposedly has a much higher and exalted view of Christ.”
First of all, Guillaume clearly indicates in the footnote that this citation did not come from the “ordinary Bible of the Syriac-speaking churches”. Rather, it came from the “Palestinian Syriac Lectionary”, which as I understand it, is merely a collection of scriptural readings, not the entire text of a specific book. So when Ibn Ishaq quoted the passage from John, he didn’t have the “Gospel of John” in front of him. Rather, he most likely selected the quote from a copy of the lectionary.
So Ibn Ishaq’s quote does not prove that he regarded the entire gospel as it is known to be reliable. He was merely quoting a specific passage from the lectionary.
I guess the dogs are out again. Even though the burden of proof is on you, I will let your profit supply the burden for me and use him to silence you. Enjoy!
The Quran is emphatically clear that there isn’t anyone or anything that can change the words of Allah:
[Say (O Muhammad)] “Shall I seek a judge other than Allah while it is He Who has sent down unto you the Book (The Qur’an), explained in detail.” Those unto whom We gave the Scripture [the Taurat (Torah) and the Injeel (Gospel)] know that it is revealed from your Lord in truth. So be not you of those who doubt. And the Word of your Lord has been fulfilled in truth and in justice. None can change His Words. And He is the All-Hearer, the All-Knower. S. 6:114-115 Hilali-Khan
And recite (and teach) what has been revealed to thee of the Book of thy Lord: none can change His Words, and none wilt thou find as a refuge other than Him. S. 18:27 Yusuf Ali
Both the Quran and Islamic tradition classify all of the previous Scriptures, such as the Book of Moses or the Torah and the Gospel given to Jesus, as the Word of Allah:
ALLAH said, `O Moses, I have chosen thee above the people of thy time by MY Messages and by MY Word. So take firm hold of that which I have given thee and be of the grateful.’ S. 7:144 Sher Ali
And:
42 Model Behavior of the Prophet (Kitab Al-Sunnah)
(1698) Chapter: The Qur’an, The Word Of Allah
‘Amir b. Shahr said:
I was with the Negus when his son recited a verse of the Gospel. So I laughed. Thereupon he said: Do you laugh at THE WORD OF ALLAH, the Exalted?
Grade: SAHIH (Al-Albani)
Reference: Sunan Abi Dawud 4736
In-book reference: Book 42, Hadith 141
English translation: Book 41, Hadith 4718 (Sunnah.com; capital emphasis ours)
The following reply is taken from an online Salafi website, which seeks to provide scholarly answers to questions sent in by both Muslims and non-Muslims:
Secondly:
Nothing of the words of Allah is created. He, may He be glorified, spoke the Torah, the Gospel, the Qur’an and the Zaboor in a real sense. Similarly, not a single letter of the Qur’an is created. It is all the words of Allah in a real sense. The same is also true of the Torah, the Gospel and the Zaboor. We do not differentiate between the Messengers of Allah, and we do not differentiate between the revealed Books; all of them are the words of Allah.
Allah, may He be exalted, says (interpretation of the meaning):
“Do you (faithful believers) covet that they will believe in your religion in spite of the fact that a party of them (Jewish rabbis) used to hear the Word of Allah (the Tawraat (Torah)), then they used to change it knowingly after they understood it?”
[al-Baqarah 2:75].
What they used to distort is the Torah, but here Allah, may He be exalted, calls it the “Word of Allah”.
Muslim (2652) narrated that Abu Hurayrah said: The Messenger of Allah said: “Adam and Moosa debated. Moosa said: O Adam, you are our father but you caused our doom and caused us to be expelled from Paradise. Adam said to him: You are Moosa, Allah chose you to speak to and wrote (the Torah) for you with His own hand. Are you blaming me for something that Allah decreed for me forty years before He created me?” The Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) said: “Adam got the better of Moosa, Adam got the better of Moosa.”
Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah said: The view of the early generations and leading scholars of the ummah, the Sahaabah and those who followed them in truth, and all the leading scholars of the Muslims, such as the four imams and others, is that which is indicated by the Qur’an and Sunnah, which is what is in accordance with the clear rational evidence: that the Qur’an is the word of Allah that was revealed and not created; it comes from Him and will return to Him. He is the One Who spoke the Qur’an, the Torah and the Gospel, and other words; they are not created and separate from Him. He, may He be glorified, speaks by His will and power, and His word is within His Essence, and is not a creation separate from Him… The words of Allah have no end, as Allah, may He be exalted, says (interpretation of the meaning): “Say (O Muhammad): ‘If the sea were ink for (writing) the Words of my Lord, surely, the sea would be exhausted before the Words of my Lord would be finished, even if we brought (another sea) like it for its aid’” [al-Kahf 18:109]. Allah, may He be glorified, spoke the Qur’an in Arabic and the Torah in Hebrew.…
Whoever regards His words as created must say: Is that which is created the One Who spoke to Moosa: “Verily! I am Allah! La ilaha illa Ana (none has the right to be worshipped but I), so worship Me, and perform As-Salat (Iqamat-as-Salat) for My Remembrance” [Ta-Ha 20:14]. This is impossible; these cannot be anything other than the words of the Lord of the Worlds. As Allah spoke the Qur’an, the Torah, and other Scriptures, with their meanings and words which consist of letters, none of that is created; rather that is the words of the Lord of the Worlds. End quote.
Majmoo‘ al-Fataawa (12/37-41). See also: Majmoo‘ al-Fataawa (12/355-356) (Islamqa.com, 197537: The Torah, Gospel and Zaboor are truly the words of Allah)
Thus, Islam teaches that the Torah, the Psalms, and the Gospel are the very uncreated Word of Allah! As such, these Scriptures are incorruptible and therefore must still be in the possession of the Jews and Christians which received them. Note how this logically works out:
A. None can change any of the words of Allah.
B. The Torah, the Psalms, and the Gospel are the eternal Word of Allah.
C. Therefore, no one has the power to change these Scriptures.
D. This means that these Scriptures must still be in existence till this very day.
This explains why we find passages in the Quran which speak of the Jews and Christians possessing the Torah, the Gospel and all the other revelations that Allah sent down to them at the time of Muhammad, and why it commands them to live in accord with the teachings of these inspired Scriptures:
“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
But how would they avail decisions from you, while WITH THEM (is available) the Taurat (Torah); in it (is written) the ordainment (verdict) of Allah, yet they will turn away after that. And they are not on the side of the Believers. Verily, We! We sent down the Taurat. In it (is) guidance and light. The Prophets who submitted to Islam, pronounce judgement based on this (Taurat) for those who Haadoo (became Jews). And likewise do those who are attached to the Nourisher-Sustainer; and (also) those who are scholars — because they have been entrusted the protection of Kitab-ullahe (Allah’s Book), and they are, thereto (as) witnesses. So fear not mankind, but fear Me. And do not purchase with My Verses a meagre sum. And whoever did not pronounce judgement in accordance with what Allah has sent down, then those people: they (are the ones who are) Al-kafirun. And We have written for them in this (‘Taurat’): verily, nafs (life) for nafs (life), and an eye for an eye, and a nose for a nose, and an ear for an ear, and a tooth for a tooth, and for (all) the wounds (is) qisas (equal retaliation). And whoso waives the right thereto, it shall be an expiation (of sins) for him. And whoever did not pronounce judgement in accordance with what Allah has sent down, then those people: they (are the ones who are) Az-Zalimun. S. 5:43-45 Dr. Kamal Omar
And We sent as a follow-up, on their tracks, Iesa, son of Maryam, as one who confirms and verifies for what is in his two hands as At-Taurat, and We gave him Al-Injeel; in it (is) guidance and light and (it is the) one which confirms and verifies for what is in his two hands as At-Taurat, and a guidance and an admonition for Al-Muttaqun. And Ahl-ul-Injeel must base judgement in accordance with what Allah has revealed therein. And whoever did not pronounce judgement in accordance with what Allah has sent down, then those people: they (are the ones who are) Al-Fasiqun. S. 5:46-47 Omar
Here is another version of the above citation:
And We sent, following in their footsteps (Prophet) Jesus, the son of Mary, confirming that which was before him in the Torah, and gave him the Gospel, in which there is guidance and light, confirming that which was before him in the Torah, a guide and an admonition to the cautious. Therefore, let the people of Gospel judge in accordance with that which Allah has sent in it. Those who do not judge according to that which Allah has sent down are the evildoers. Hasan Al-Fatih Qaribullah
And:
If they had observed the Torah and the Gospel and that which was revealed unto them from their Lord, they would surely have been nourished from above them and from beneath their feet. Among them there are people who are moderate, but many of them are of evil conduct… Say O People of the Scripture! Ye have naught (of guidance) till ye observe the Torah and the Gospel and that which was revealed unto you from your Lord. That which is revealed unto thee (Muhammad) from thy Lord is certain to increase the contumacy and disbelief of many of them. But grieve not for the disbelieving folk. S. 5:66, 68 Pickthall
More in the next post.
After this post, I advise you to return to doing whatever you were doing since you are a joke when it comes to defending your religion. Therefore, enjoy my final reply to you.
The ahadith concur in that they testify that the Jews and Christians still possessed the genuine, uncorrupt Scriptures from their Lord:
41 Chapters on Knowledge
(5) Chapter: What Has Been Related About Knowledge Leaving
Narrated Jubair bin Nufair:
from Abu Ad-Darda who said: “We were with the Prophet when he raised his sight to the sky, then he said: ‘This is the time when knowledge is to be taken from the people, until what remains of it shall not amount to anything.” So Ziyad bin Labid Al-Ansari said: ‘How will it be taken from us while we recite the Qur’an. By Allah we recite it, and our women and children recite it?’ He said: ‘May you be bereaved of your mother O Ziyad! I used to consider you among the Fuqaha of the people of Al-Madinah. The Tawrah and Injil ARE WITH THE JEWS AND CHRISTIANS, but what do they avail of them?‘” Jubair said: “So I met ‘Ubadah bin As-Samit and said to him: ‘Have you not heard what your brother Abu Ad-Darda said?’ Then I informed him of what Abu Ad-Darda said. He said: ‘Abu Ad-Darda spoke the truth. If you wish, we shall narrated to you about the first knowledge to be removed from the people: It is Khushu’, soon you will enter the congregational Masjid, but not see any man in it with Khushu’.’”
Grade: SAHIH (Darussalam)
Reference: Jami` at-Tirmidhi 2653
In-book reference: Book 41, Hadith 9
English translation: Vol. 5, Book 39, Hadith 2653 (Sunnah.com; capital emphasis ours)
Other narrations even speak of a Christian relative of Khadijah, Muhammad’s first wife, reading and rendering the Gospel in Hebrew and Arabic respectively:
Narrated ‘Aisha… Khadija then accompanied him to her cousin Waraqa bin Naufal bin Asad bin ‘Abdul ‘Uzza, who, during the Pre-Islamic Period became a Christian and used to write the writing with Hebrew letters. He would write from the Gospel in Hebrew as much as Allah wished him to write… (Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 1, Number 3)
And:
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)
Finally:
Narrated Aisha… 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)
Waraqa wasn’t the only one said to have access to the previous revelations such as the Gospel:
39 Battles (Kitab Al-Malahim)
(1598) Chapter: Signs of the hour
Abu zur’ah said:
A group of people came to Marwan in Medina, and they heard him say that the first of the signs to appear would be the coming forth of the Dajjal (Antichirst). He said: I then went to Abd Allah b. ‘Amr and mentioned it to him. He did not say anything (reliable). I heard the Messenger of Allah say: The first of the signs to appear will be the rising of the sun in its place of setting and the coming forth of the beast against mankind in the forenoon. Whichever of them comes first will soon be followed by the other. ’Abd Allah who used to read the scriptures (Torah, GOSPEL) said: I think the first of them will be the rising of the sun in its place of setting.
Grade: SAHIH (Al-Albani)
Reference: Sunan Abi Dawud 4310
In-book reference: Book 39, Hadith 20
English translation: Book 38, Hadith 4296 (sunnah.com; capital emphasis ours)
And:
(And We know well that they say: Only a man teacheth him. The speech of him at whom they falsely hint is outlandish…) [16:103]. Abu Nasr Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Muzakki> Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Hamdan al-Zahid> ‘Abd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz> Abu Hisham al-Rifa‘i> Ibn Fudayl> Husayn> ‘Abd Allah ibn Muslim who said: “We owned two Christian youths from the people of ‘Ayn Tamr, one called Yasar and the other Jabr. Their trade was making swords but they also could read the Scriptures in their own tongue. The Messenger of Allah used to pass by them and listen to their reading. As a result, the idolaters used to say: ‘He is being taught by them!’ To give them the lie, Allah, exalted is He, revealed (The speech of him at whom they falsely hint is outlandish, and this is clear Arabic speech)”. (Alī ibn Ahmad al-Wahidi, Asbabal-Nuzul)
The foregoing obviously leaves Muslims in a dilemma since the only Torah, Psalms and Gospel which the Jews and Christians have always possessed, especially at the time of Muhammad, are the inspired writings contained within the Holy Bible. Therefore, if the Quran is correct than these must be the very sacred books which Allah revealed or sent down.
This explains why the oldest extant biography on Muhammad’s life identifies John’s Gospel as the written record of the Gospel which Jesus received from God,
“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. (The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, with introduction and notes by Alfred Guillaume [Oxford University Press, Karachi, Tenth impression 1995], pp. 103-104; capital emphasis ours)
And why Muhammad honored and testified to the authority and inspiration of the copy of the Torah which the Jews of his day handed to him:
Narrated Abdullah Ibn Umar:
A group of Jews came and invited the Messenger of Allah to Quff. So he visited them in their school.
They said: AbulQasim, one of our men has committed fornication with a woman; so pronounce judgment upon them. They placed a cushion for the Messenger of Allah who sat on it and said: Bring the Torah. It was then brought. He then withdrew the cushion from beneath him and placed the Torah on it saying: I believed in thee and in Him Who revealed thee.
He then said: Bring me one who is learned among you. Then a young man was brought. The transmitter then mentioned the rest of the tradition of stoning similar to the one transmitted by Malik from Nafi'(No. 4431).
Grade: Hasan (Al-Albani)
Reference: Sunan Abi Dawud 4449
In-book reference: Book 40, Hadith 99
English translation: Book 39, Hadith 4434 (Sunnah.com)
Yet these are the same Scriptures which proclaim that Jesus Christ is the unique, divine Son of God, as well as the Creator and Sustainer of all things that became flesh for the purpose of dying on the cross as a vicarious sacrifice for the sins of the world, who then rose from the dead and ascended physically, bodily into heaven to sit enthroned alongside the Father as the sovereign Lord of all creation (cf. Luke 24:36-47; John 1:1-5, 9-18; 20:24-31; Acts 2:29-36; 3:12-26; Colossians 1:13-20; 2:2-3, 9-10; Hebrews 1:1-3, 6, 8-13).
Therefore, since the Islamic sources confirm the incorruptibility and textual reliability of the Holy Bible, Muslims have no choice but to reject Muhammad and abandon Islam altogether. This is because Muhammad stands condemned as a false prophet and antichrist by the very inspired writings he praised and bore witness to, since he denied the biblical revelation of who Christ is and what he came to accomplish:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned. But he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God… He who believes in the Son has eternal life. He who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” John 3:16-18, 36
“I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not a gospel. But there are some who trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. Although if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than the one we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so I say now again: If anyone preaches any other gospel to you than the one you have received, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:6-9 Modern English Version (MEV)
“Little children, it is the last hour. As you have heard that the antichrist will come, even now there are many antichrists. By this we know that it is the last hour… Who is a liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? Whoever denies the Father and the Son is the antichrist. No one who denies the Son has the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father.” 1 John 2:18, 22-23 MEV
“After this post, I advise you to return to doing whatever you were doing since you are a joke when it comes to defending your religion. Therefore, enjoy my final reply to you.”
Oooooh, I’m sooo scared! LOL!!
Shamoun, do you really think anyone is impressed by your chest-thumping? You did what you usually do. Go on long rants which no one will read, and completely ignoring the issue, which was Ibn Ishaq’s use of a variant reading of the Gospel of John. I see you got frustrated and decided to rant and rave.
So to repeat, Ibn Ishaq was using a lectionary and not a copy of the Gospel of John. This is widely acknowledged by scholars. You see how easy it is to refute you?
Let me spell this out again by merely quoting Ibn Ishaq:
“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. (The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, with introduction and notes by Alfred Guillaume [Oxford University Press, Karachi, Tenth impression 1995], pp. 103-104; capital emphasis ours)
Which part of Ishaq’s “FROM WHAT JOHN THE APOSTLE SET DOWN FOR THEM WHEN HE WROTE THE GOSPEL FOR THEM FROM THE TESTAMENT OF JESUS SON OF MARY” wasn’t clear? The part where he says John the Apostle set down or the part that says HE WROTE THE GOSPEL FOR THEM?
Moreover, the burden is on you to show where Ibn Ishaq ever claimed that NOT ALL OF JOHN’S GOSPEL was reliable. Stop begging the question, like your profit was fond of doing, AND PROVIDE EXPLICIT STATEMENTS THAT THIS IS WHAT HE BELIEVED.
And your appeal to Guilluame’s assumption that Ishaq may have been citing from a Palestinian Lectionary is nothing more than a red herring and more smoke and mirror tactics from you, which I know you learned from the Quran, since it is irrelevant where he got the quote from. What is relevant is his identifying the citation as coming from THE GOSPEL WHICH JOHN THE APOSTLE WROTEN FROM WHAT GOD GAVE JESUS FOR THE FOLLOWERS OF THE GOSPEL. Live with it and return to doing what you do best, which isn’t polemics or apologetics.
“Moreover, the burden is on you to show where Ibn Ishaq ever claimed that NOT ALL OF JOHN’S GOSPEL was reliable. Stop begging the question, like your profit was fond of doing, AND PROVIDE EXPLICIT STATEMENTS THAT THIS IS WHAT HE BELIEVED.”
Actually, the burden of proof is on you to prove your assertion regarding Ibn Ishaq’s thoughts and feeling about the gospel of John. As Guillaume noted, the citation Ibn Ishaq provided differs from Syriac and Greek versions, as seen in the use of the word “comforter”. This reading is only found in the Palestinian lectionary. This was NOT the reading found in the “ordinary Bible”, as Guillaume put it. It was a variant. All you did was make a leap of faith from Ibn Ishaq’s reference to one particular “extract” of the gospel of John. So take your own advice and stop begging the question.
“And your appeal to Guilluame’s assumption that Ishaq may have been citing from a Palestinian Lectionary is nothing more than a red herring and more smoke and mirror tactics from you, which I know you learned from the Quran, since it is irrelevant where he got the quote from. What is relevant is his identifying the citation as coming from THE GOSPEL WHICH JOHN THE APOSTLE WROTEN FROM WHAT GOD GAVE JESUS FOR THE FOLLOWERS OF THE GOSPEL. Live with it and return to doing what you do best, which isn’t polemics or apologetics.”
Your usual bluster aside, your silly claim has been exposed. Ibn Ishaq was only quoting an “extract” which he received from the Palestinian lectionary. This alone refutes your leap of faith regarding his views on the gospel of John.
Excellent.
Yes indeed.
Thus, Islam teaches that the Torah, the Psalms, and the Gospel are the very uncreated Word of Allah! As such, these Scriptures are incorruptible and therefore must still be in the possession of the Jews and Christians which received them. Note how this logically works out:
A. None can change any of the words of Allah.
B. The Torah, the Psalms, and the Gospel are the eternal Word of Allah.
C. Therefore, no one has the power to change these Scriptures.
D. This means that these Scriptures must still be in existence till this very day.
Ameen!
آمین
There are no textual variants in the Greek texts that affect the Greek word for “comforter” in the John 14 and 16 passages.
So, it cannot mean “praised one”; there is no evidence for that at all.
and Ibn Ishaq could not help but affirm the entire Gospel according to John, because, as Shamoun has demonstrated, “there is none who can change the words of God / Allah” (many times in the Qur’an)
Just as Islam by affirming the willingness of the sacrifice of Abraham and his son, and the meaning of it; could not get rid of the truth of substitutionary / ransom atonement.
https://apologeticsandagape.wordpress.com/2016/10/21/so-why-did-allah-substitute-an-innocent-animal-in-the-place-of-abrahams-son/
“there is none who can change the words of God / Allah”
Such a silly argument. Let’s see what it really means, shall we? As Ibn Kathir states in his commentary on 6:115:
“(None can change His Words.) meaning, none can avert Allah’s judgment whether in this life or the Hereafter,”
See? So easy to refute Christians and their silly arguments!
Talk about absolute garbage, a real lowlife thug. This is why this wicked thug blocked me from his facebook page. Let’s see why I call this guy garbage:
Abu Dawood narrated in his collection that Ibn Umar said:
A group of Jewish people invited the messenger of Allah to a house. When he came, they asked him: O Abu Qassim, one of our men committed adultery with a woman, what is your judgment against him? So they placed a pillow and asked the messenger of Allah to set on it. Then the messenger of Allah proceeded to say: BRING ME THE TORAH. When they brought it, he removed the pillow from underneath him AND PLACED THE TORAH ON IT and said: I BELIEVE IN YOU AND IN THE ONE WHO REVEALED YOU, then said: bring me one of you who have the most knowledge. So they brought him a young man who told him the story of the stoning.
The scholars said: if the Torah was corrupted HE WOULD NOT HAVE PLACED IT ON THE PILLOW AND HE WOULD NOT HAVE SAID: I believe in you and in the one who revealed you.
THIS GROUP OF SCHOLARS ALSO SAID:
Allah said:
“And the word of your Lord has been accomplished truly and justly; there is none who can change His words, and He is the Hearing, the Knowing.” (Q. 6:115)
And the Torah is Allah’s word. (Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, Ighathat Al Lahfan, Volume 2, p. 351)
Did you notice what these scholars cited to prove that the Torah can never be corrupted? Q. 6:115!
You see why I said this guy is totally garbage?
Here is how the commentary attributed to Ibn Abbas interprets Q. 6:115:
(Perfected is the Word of thy Lord) the Qur’an, detailing the commands and prohibitions (in truth) in His speech (and justice) from Him. (There is naught that can change His words) THE QUR’AN; it is also said that this means: the Word of your Lord has prescribed that His friends shall triumph. He is truthful in His speech and just in that which shall come. Nothing can change His words about His giving help to His friend. It is also said that this means: the religion of your Lord is now manifest, people truthfully believe that it is Allah’s religion. Allah’s command is just and nothing will ever change His religion. (He is the Hearer) of their speech, (the Knower) of them and their works. (Tanwîr al-Miqbâs min Tafsîr Ibn ‘Abbâs)
As this exposition shows, THERE IS NOTHING CONTEXTUALLY that excludes or limits the verse to Allah’s decrees, laws etc., but is inclusive of everything considered the Words of God. And although the above identifies the Quran as the words of God which cannot be changed, this would of necessity also apply to all of God’s Scriptures as well.
The Quran agrees that God revealed many Scriptures besides the Quran, e.g., that Allah sent down inspired Books which are just as much his Words as the Quran claims to be. Thus, if the previous Scriptures are also the Words of God then they too cannot be changed. Therefore, the logic of my argument still stands and this thug has done nothing to refute it:
A. None can change God’s Words.
B. The Quran confirms that the Torah, the Gospel, the Psalms and all the Scriptures given to the prophets are God’s Revelations, which is simply another way of saying that these are his Words.
C. Therefore, no one can change the Torah, the Gospel, the Psalms and the other prophetic Scriptures.
You see why I say this guy is garbage pure and simple? It’s a shame that Williams allows a lowlife thug like this guy to even post here since it detracts from the value of this site.
So, in summary, we see that Islam affirmed:
1. that the previous Scriptures were not corrupted.
2. That substitutionary ransom atonement for salvation was taught throughout the OT and NT, fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah.
3. Therefore, Christianity is true and Islam is false.
More on the Islamic sources that affirm substitutionary atonement for sin.
https://apologeticsandagape.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/islam-could-not-get-rid-of-the-concept-of-sacrifice-ransom-or-substitutionary-atonement/
Islam does not believe in, or teach, 1. and 2. Therefore 3. does not follow.
But it could not help but affirm 1 & 2 even though Muhammad was ignorant of the details; which shows God did not inspire his “revelations”. But he wanted to affirm the previous Scriptures and Monotheism, but was ignorant of the details of the OT and NT. He was just hearing oral traditions from the Jews, and got almost nothing from true Christianity in his area. Aside from Jesus as Al Masih, virgin born, did miracles, taught the gospel, Word of God , a Spirit from Allah, coming again) besides those truths, almost nothing else of true revelation.
Even the Qur’an could not help affirming that Jesus is the Word of God کلمه الله and “a Spirit from Allah”. روح من الله
Well, you are not in a church in which you may lie and expect to be believed.
Abdullah1234
What are you talking about?
More details (paraclete issue) on Ibn Ishaq’s affirmation of the Gospel according to John:
https://apologeticsandagape.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/earliest-islamic-biographer-of-muhammads-life-affirms-that-john-the-apostle-of-jesus-and-eyewitness-of-the-crucifixion-and-resurrection-was-the-human-writer-of-the-fourth-gospel/
Ken,
Seeing that quranbibleblog has a pattern of throwing even his own prophet under the bus, seeing that for him it doesn’t matter what even his own prophet says, since the only thing that matters is to assault Christianity by any means necessary, I am going to post my thorough refutation of the Muslim attempt of disproving that the Quran and Muhammad confirmed the textual preservation of our Scriptures. So make sure to use these points in your exchanges.
According to Muhammad, Jesus was sent to confirm the Torah in his possession:
And He will teach him the Book and the wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel… “attesting to WHAT IS BETWEEN MY HANDS (Wamusaddiqan lima bayna yadayya) OF THE TORAH, and to make lawful to you a part of that which is forbidden to you.” S. 3:48, 50
And in their footsteps (of Moses and the Jews) We sent Jesus the son of Mary, attesting to the Torah WHICH WAS BETWEEN HIS HANDS (musaddiqan lima bayna yadayhi); and We gave him the Gospel – therein is guidance and light and attesting to the Torah WHICH WAS BETWEEN HIS HANDS (wamusaddiqan lima bayna yadayhi): a guidance and an admonition to the righteous. S. 5:46
Then will God say, “O Jesus son of Mary! Recount my favor to you and to your mother when I strengthened you with the Holy Spirit, so that you spoke to the people in childhood and in maturity. Behold! I taught you the Book and Wisdom, the Torah and the Gospel…” S. 5:110
And remember, Jesus, the son of Mary, said: ‘Oh Children of Israel! I am the apostle of God to you, CONFIRMING THAT WHICH IS BETWEEN MY HANDS from the Torah (musaddiqan lima bayna yadayya mina al-tawrati)…” S. 61:6
The Sunni Muslim commentator Ibn Kathir comments on Sura 3:50:
. The Tawrah is the Book THAT ALLAH SENT DOWN TO MUSA, son of Imran, while the Injil is what Allah sent down to Isa, son of Maryam, peace be upon them, AND ISA MEMORIZED BOTH BOOKS…
affirming the Tawrah AND UPHOLDING IT,” (Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Abridged, Volume 2, parts 3,4 & 5, Surat Al-Baqarah, Verse 253, to Surat An-Nisa, Verse 147 [March 2000], pp. 163, 165; capital emphasis ours)
Jesus, according to Ibn Kathir, memorized and upheld the Torah that God taught him, even though Muhammadans like you would have us believe that in reality this was a corrupted Torah! And:
meaning, he believed in it AND RULED BY IT…
meaning, HE ADHERED TO THE TAWRAH, except for the few instances that clarified the truth where the Children of Israel differed. Allah states in another Ayah that ‘Isa said to the Children of Israel,…
So the scholars say that the Injil abrogated some of the rulings of the Tawrah… (Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Abridged, Volume 3, Parts 6, 7 & 8, Surat An-Nisa, Verse 148 to the end of Surat Al-An’am, Abridged by a group of scholars under the supervision of Shaykh Safiur-Rahman Al-Mubarakpuri [Darussalam Publishers & Distributors, Riyadh, Houston, New York, Lahore; January 2000, first edition], pp. 193-194; capital emphasis ours)
Finally:
‘Isa said, “The Tawrah conveyed the glad tidings of my coming, and my coming CONFIRMS THE TRUTH OF THE TAWRAH…” (Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Abridged, Volume 9, Surat Al-Jathiyah to the end of Surat Al-Munafiqun [September 2000, first edition], p. 617; capital emphasis ours)
Make sure you don’t allow quranbibleblog do his Islamic tap dance by permitting him to twist or evade what these texts are saying, since all of the passages and citations affirm that Jesus testified and confirmed THE TORAH which the Jews possessed in his day, which Ibn Kathir says was the same that Moses received. Not a word is said about the Torah being corrupted.
And here is what the Islamic sources say regarding Muhammad’s attitude in respect to the Torah in his possession:
36 Tribulations
(26) Chapter: The disappearance of the Quran and Knowledge
It was narrated that Ziyad bin Labid said:
“The Prophet mentioned something and said: ‘That will be at the time when knowledge (of Qur’an) disappears.’ I said: ‘O Messenger of Allah, how will knowledge disappear when we read the Qur’an and teach it to our children, until the Day of Resurrection?’ He said: ‘May your mother be bereft of you, Ziyad! I thought that you were the wisest man in Al- Madinah. Is it not the case that these Jews and Christians READ THE TAWRAH AND THE INJIL, but they do not act upon anything of what is in them?’”
Grade: Da’if (Darussalam)
Reference: Sunan Ibn Majah 4048
In-book reference: Book 36, Hadith 123
English translation: Vol. 5, Book 36, Hadith 4048 (sunnah.com https://sunnah.com/ibnmajah/36/123; capital emphasis ours)
41 Chapters on Knowledge
(5) Chapter: What Has Been Related About Knowledge Leaving
Narrated Jubair bin Nufair:
from Abu Ad-Darda who said: “We were with the Prophet when he raised his sight to the sky, then he said: ‘This is the time when knowledge is to be taken from the people, until what remains of it shall not amount to anything.” So Ziyad bin Labid Al-Ansari said: ‘How will it be taken from us while we recite the Qur’an. By Allah we recite it, and our women and children recite it?’ He said: ‘May you be bereaved of your mother O Ziyad! I used to consider you among the Fuqaha of the people of Al-Madinah. The Tawrah and Injil ARE WITH THE JEWS AND CHRISTIANS, but what do they avail of them?‘” Jubair said: “So I met ‘Ubadah bin As-Samit and said to him: ‘Have you not heard what your brother Abu Ad-Darda said?’ Then I informed him of what Abu Ad-Darda said. He said: ‘Abu Ad-Darda spoke the truth. If you wish, we shall narrated to you about the first knowledge to be removed from the people: It is Khushu’, soon you will enter the congregational Masjid, but not see any man in it with Khushu’.’”
Grade: SAHIH (Darussalam)
Reference: Jami` at-Tirmidhi 2653
In Book Reference: Book 41, Hadith 9
English translation: Vol. 5, Book 39, Hadith 2653 (sunnah.com; capital emphasis ours)
Narrated Abdullah Ibn Umar:A group of Jews came and invited the Apostle of Allah to Quff. So he visited them in their school.
They said: AbulQasim, one of our men has committed fornication with a woman; so pronounce judgment upon them. They placed a cushion for the Apostle of Allah who sat on it and said: Bring the Torah. It was then brought. He then withdrew the cushion from beneath him AND PLACED THE TORAH ON IT saying: I BELIEVED IN THEE and in Him WHO REVEALED THEE.
He then said: Bring me one who is learned among you. Then a young man was brought. The transmitter then mentioned the rest of the tradition of stoning similar to the one transmitted by Malik from Nafi’ (No. 4431).”
Grade: Hasan (Al-Albani) (Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 38. Kitab al Hudud (“The Book of Prescribed Punishments”), Number 4434; capital emphasis ours)
Not only does Muhammad claim that the Jews and Christians of his day possessed the uncorrupt Torah and Gospel, not a corrupted version of these revelations, he even shows love and respect for the very copy of the Torah in the possession of the Jews, which he places on a cushion and bears witness to his absolute faith in it!
In fact, Ibn Tayimiyya’s premiere student stated that Muslim scholars used this very hadith and Quran 6:115 to prove that the Torah is incorruptible:
A group of Muslim scholars even used Q. 6:115 to prove that books such as the Torah could never be corrupted since they are the revealed words of Allah:
On the other side, another party of hadith and fiqh scholars said: these changes took place during its interpretation and not during the process of its revelation. This is the view OF ABI ABDULLAH MUHAMMAD BIN ISHMAEL AL-BUKHARI who said in his hadith collection:
NO ONE CAN CORRUPT THE TEXT BY REMOVING ANY OF ALLAH’S WORDS FROM HIS BOOKS, but they corrupted it by misinterpreting it.
Al-Razi ALSO AGREES WITH THIS OPINION. In his commentary he said:
There is a difference of opinions regarding this matter among some of the respectable scholars. Some of these scholars said: the manuscript copies of the Torah were distributed everywhere and no one knows the exact number of these copies except Allah. It is impossible to have a conspiracy to change or alter the word of God in all of these copies without missing any copy. Such a conspiracy will not be logical or possible. And when Allah told his messenger (Muhammad) to ask the Jews to bring their Torah and read it concerning the stoning command they were not able to change this command from their copies, that is why they covered up the stoning verse while they were reading it to the prophet. It was then when Abdullah Ibn Salam requested that they remove their hand so that the verse became clear. If they have changed or altered the Torah then this verse would have been one of the important verses to be altered by the Jews.
Also, whenever the prophet would ask them (the Jews) concerning the prophecies about him in the Torah they were not able to remove them either, and they would respond by stating that they are not about him and they are still waiting for the prophet in their Torah.
Abu Dawood narrated in his collection that Ibn Umar said:
A group of Jewish people invited the messenger of Allah to a house. When he came, they asked him: O Abu Qassim, one of our men committed adultery with a woman, what is your judgment against him? So they placed a pillow and asked the messenger of Allah to set on it. Then the messenger of Allah proceeded to say: BRING ME THE TORAH. When they brought it, he removed the pillow from underneath him AND PLACED THE TORAH ON IT and said: I BELIEVE IN YOU AND IN THE ONE WHO REVEALED YOU, then said: bring me one of you who have the most knowledge. So they brought him a young man who told him the story of the stoning.
The scholars said: if the Torah was corrupted HE WOULD NOT HAVE PLACED IT ON THE PILLOW AND HE WOULD NOT HAVE SAID: I believe in you and in the one who revealed you.
This group of scholars also said: Allah said:
“And the word of your Lord has been accomplished truly and justly; there is none who can change His words, and He is the Hearing, the Knowing.” (Q. 6:115)
And the Torah is Allah’s word. (Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, Ighathat Al Lahfan, Volume 2, p. 351)
Notice, once again, that Muhammad affirmed the very copy of the Torah which the Jews handed him as the uncorrupt revelation of his god, testifying that he believed in its absolute authority without a single word about it’s being corrupted. And the reasoning which these Muslim scholars employed to affirm the incorruptibility of the Torah is sound, since both their premises and the conclusion they drew from them are logically valid:
1. None can change or corrupt the words of Allah.
2. Books such as the Torah and the Gospel are the words of Allah.
3. Therefore, none can change or corrupt the text of any of Allah’s Books such as the Torah and the Gospel.
Too bad Bassam Zawadi fried you on this on his website. When beaten to unbelief you resort to your pathetic “Qur’an affirms the bible” card which only simpletons fall far.
I actually decimated Zawadi and your profit. Just read all my rebuttals to his shame piece in the rebuttal section named in his honor: https://answeringislam.net/rebuttals/zawadi.html
Like I said, you Muslims have no shame since you even throw your god under the bus in hatred of the truth.
Too bad Bassam Zawadi fried you on this on his website. When beaten to unbelief you resort to your pathetic “Qur’an affirms the bible” card which only simpletons fall far.
I actually decimated Zawadi and your profit. Just read all my rebuttals to his sham piece in the rebuttal section named in his honor: https://answeringislam.net/rebuttals/zawadi.html
Like I said, you Muslims have no shame since you even throw your god under the bus in your hatred assault of the truth of the Lord Jesus, Muhammad’s Master and Judge.
I see my comments to XXXXXXXX are getting deleted.
Yes they are. By me. And I will continue to delete abusive comments.
Which I don’t quite understand. Am I missing something? Why is Shamoun being allowed to abuse Islam, the prophet Muhammad (pbuh), and Muslim commenters, but Atlas’ comments were deleted? Shamoun is referring to people as “brainless parrots”, but that was not deleted. What’s going on? There should be fairness. Now I have been holding back in putting Shamoun in his placed out of respect for your request for a civilized discussion, but Shamoun should not be allowed to be his usual self and then Muslim responses to him get blocked.
I advise by brothers to not waste their time with the stupidity of fundamental christians.
The subject is about Bart Ehrman and his views. Ehrman clearly stated these words
« He [ i.e. Jesus] is definitely not Yahweh for any author of the NT. Yahweh and Jesus are different beings in the NT».
Anything beyond his clear statement can be understood through his view of what god/divine means in the ancient time as he always repeats.It’s definitely not the christian view today.
Regarding muslims, they can argue easily that the John’s gospel doesn’t equate Jesus with God in the sense of what christians say. Yes, Jesus got exalted in that gospel, but not in the sense of what christians today understand.
Did Paul Williams waste time by giving Sam Shamoun opportunity to write a guest article?
If it’s up to me, I would not allow for this filthy man to write a single letter.
LOL, anything involving Shamoun is a waste of time, but I commend brother Paul for at least trying to promote discussion, even if it is virtually impossible without Shamoun thumping his chest.
I think it’s the right moment to end the discussion here.