Resource: www.ShareIslam.com
By Sheik Yusuf Estes - Former Christian Preacher
Introduction and Explanation of Purpose of This Research and Presentation
First of all, let me begin by saying that I am a former Christian, preacher, minister of music and organist for a long number of years in the Disciples of Christ Church, Baptist, Methodist churches and The Church of God. I totally and completely accepted the teachings and concepts of salvation within the Christian church many years ago. My parents were very religious and their parents were also very instrumental in building and supporting the work of the church throughout their entire lives. So, it is not my aim to discredit the efforts of those who came before me whatsoever. This is totally the opposite of my purpose in this presentation.
Second, I am still most active in the spreading of the True Word of God as much as HE will allow me to be. I have found that some of the teachings of the translations of the Bible contain errors and mistakes which must be examined and thought through so as to bring about a better understanding for both the Christians and the non-Christians, especially those of the Muslim (Islam) faith.
Third, I am presently an institutional chaplain and I hold the position of Delegate to the United Nations Peace Conference for the World's Religious Leaders. As such I hold all the leaders of other religions in proper regard and with due respect. Many of my associates and co-workers are from the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Hindu faiths.
Therefore, it is not my intention to cause people to loose their belief in God, His divinely-inspired prophets and messengers, or the holy scriptures that they brought. I humbly request all who read and study these pages to be considerate of those who are committed to believe in the scriptures of the Bible and not use this material as a tool for attacking and harming the faiths of others. The opposite is what I request the reader to do. Please take time to learn the materials and then share in a positive light with those whom you honestly feel can handle a discussion on this topic without being confrontational.
May Almighty God guide all of us the all truth, amen.
An examination of the Bible is necessary today because of the many questions being raised by religious people of all circles, including Jews and Christians, as to its inconsistency with contemporary church teachings as well as its inconsistency within itself.
Today, there are thousands of different versions of the Bible in circulation and the transcript has been freely translated from one language to another numerous times. According to Bible scholars themselves, the original scripture is no longer extant. It is nowhere to be found. We have no idea if what we are reading and implementing into our lives and belief system is, indeed, God's teaching.
Muslims believe in the same Omnipotent, All-powerful, Unseen God that the Jews have believed in since Adam. However, unlike the Jews, Muslims join in with the Christians by also believing in Jesus as the "Christ"; "Messiah"; "Logos"; and "Miraculous Conception"; as well as all the previous Biblical prophets and their original scriptures that they brought. Muslims also believe that God is merciful and just to His creatures. So, they deny the concept of the 'Original Sin' [all children are born into the sins of their parents] and the 'Sacrificial Lamb' concept which requires the blood of Jesus, peace be upon him, to atone for the sins of the sinners. This being the case, how can Muslims say that God is just and that His revelation, the Bible, is corrupted? Where is it in God's great plan that His revelation loses all credibility? These are all very excellent questions.
It is a known fact that Jesus was regarded by his followers as a prophet and that what he preached was written down into physical form by his disciples. However, God placed the responsibility on humans to preserve the integrity of this message over time. When the people failed in their duty, it was made necessary for the Holy Quran to come into existence in order to correct the teachings that were changed. By God's mercy He revealed His will once again to Muhammad over 600 years later, and his companions similarly wrote it down and compiled it into what became known as The Holy Quran. By God's justice He promised that He would preserve it therefore making it the last revelation to humanity. Today an actual seventh century Quran, complete and intact, is on display in a museum in Istanbul, Turkey.
Amazing Revelation
Strange as it may seem I came across astonishing information By Allah's Mercy I have learned the Arabic language sufficient enough to read the Holy Quran in the original language. I have found the answers to problems of understanding meanings of scriptures in the Bible while studying the Holy Quran.
Every Arabic Quran in the world today is, letter for letter, identical to this ancient script. Due to this preservation, the Quran exists today exactly as it did over 1,400 year ago in a language which is still alive today. I have found the Quran's teachings to be quite clear, consistent, and practical for application even in today's so called "modern world."
The whole idea behind this work is to present the clear truth about the Bible, the Quran and the two religions of Islam and Christianity. If you do not have a good Bible, it would be a good idea to acquire at least two. Namely, the King James Version (based on the 1611 AD edition) and the Revised Standard Version (published in 1953). As you go through the many Biblical inconsistencies which I will be referring to in this material, please refer back to your Bible and examine it objectively.
Do not let pride, ego, bias or prejudice affect your judgment as you review the pages. If you do not free your mind and heart from these obstructions, then it will be near to impossible to see the light of truth to which we will be referring so often.
Bear in mind also, that if a book were revealed from Almighty God to the humans, it should not have even a single mistake or error anywhere in it. Otherwise, it would indicate that it is not from a Perfect God, but rather from an imperfect human.
While traveling around the world, I have found that many Jews and Christians are opening their eyes to this fact and are willfully accepting Islam and the Last and Final Testament of Almighty God (the Holy Quran) wholeheartedly.
We have to examine the facts in order to be able to better understand the value of this information on our society today. One statement that is clear and repeated often these days is that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world today and the largest religion in the world today with over 1.5 billion souls claiming to be Muslims. The word of God has been preserved in the Holy Quran and has been changed in the Bible. So, I am merely attempting to produce material which will help to clarify the matter. Due to the many years of traditional religious teachings and upbringing, it may be very difficult for you to accept this. If you are sincere in your heart and pray to the One Who Created you in the first place, then it will be totally up to Him to Guide you to all truth, not me. Islam is a complete Way of Life and it is based on total surrender to Almighty God, submission to Him in complete obedience and sincerity and in peace.
CHAPTER 1 Is 'King James' Version the Actual Bible?
Note: The word "Bible" comes from the Koine Greek word "biblios" and it simply means the same as the word "book" in English. Nowhere in the Bible do we find the word "Bible." However, it is interesting to note the word "kitab" (Bible in Arabic) appears many times in the Quran, referring to the Bible and the People of the Book (Jews and Christians).
Let me begin by saying that the King James "version" of the Bible is in English. There was no English language until the year 1066 AD when the Normans invaded the Saxxons. Therefore the English Bible cannot be anything like what any of the prophets spoke or understood, as it did not exist in their times.
Next, my grandfather, who was a devout and wonderful Christian man gave a gift of the Holy Bible to my sisters and I almost fifty years ago. It was an authorized version of the Bible, being The Revised Standard Version of the Bible which was a revised version of the American Standard Version, published in 1901, which was a version of the King James Version, published in 1611, which was revised and corrected for the first time in 1612, etc. I was very much impressed with the easier to read text and clarification of some of the wording which was presented in this version and began to read the Bible on a daily basis for hours at a time. The removal of the Elizabethton English terms, phrases and expressions made the Bible a more accessible and understandable and intimate Book for me. But that is not all the RSV did for me and many others, as well.
My love and respect for the Word of God increased the more that I spent time reading and understanding the message. The Bible became my most prized and respected book in my life. I often turned to it throughout the rest of my life in times of joy, happiness, sadness, troubles and pain. It was my compass, my road map, my weather vane and my friend. However, there were still some problems with this IMPROVED VERSION of the Holy Bible. It began to disturb and concern me to the extent that I made consultation with my father, who was also an ordained minister and student of the Bible since childhood. Based on his research and background in the origin and sources for modern day Christianity, I began to go deeper into the problems which had plagued my thinking and faith since childhood.
I prayed to Almighty God and then found the answers to some of the problems were spelled out very clearly in the very beginning of the exact same book. I have that book lying in front of me on my desk as I write this article and would like to quote to you from some of the PREFACE page iii and iv: "The King James Version has with good reason been termed 'the noblest monument of English prose.' Its revisers in 1881 expressed admiration of 'its simplicity, its dignity, its power, its happy turns of express... the music of its cadences, and the felicities of its rhythm.' It entered, as no other book has, into the making of the personal character and the public institutions of the English-speaking peoples. We owe to it an incalculable debt."
"Yet the King James Version has grave defects. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the development of Biblical studies and the discovery of many manuscripts more ancient than those upon which the King James Version was based, made it manifest that these defects are so many and so serious as to call for a revision of the English translation. The task was undertaken, by authority of the Church of England, in 1870. The English Revised Version of the Bibles was published in 1881-1885; and the American Standard Version, its variant embodying the preferences of the American scholars associated in the work, was published in 1901."
"Because of the unhappy experience with unauthorized publications in the two decades between 1881 and 1901, which tampered with the text of the English Revised Version in the supposed interest of the American public, the American Standard Version was copyrighted, to protect the text from unauthorized changes. In 1928 this copyright was acquired by the International Council of Religious Education, and thus passed into the ownership of the churches of the United States and Canada which were associated in this Council through their boards of education and publication."
".... decision was reached that there is need for a thorough revision of the version of 1901..""In 1937 the revision was authorized by vote of the Council."
"Thirty-two scholars have served as members of the Committee charged with making the revision, and they have secured the review and counsel of an Advisory Board of fifty representatives of the co-operating denominations."
"Each section has submitted its work to the scrutiny of the members of the charter of the Committee requires that all changes be agreed upon by a two-thirds vote of the total membership of the Committee."
"The problem of establishing the correct Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Old testament is very different from the corresponding problem in the New Testament."
"For the New Testament we have a large number of Greek manuscripts, preserving many variant forms of the text. Some of them were made only two or three centuries later than the original composition of the books."
"For the Old Testament only late manuscripts survive, all (with the exception of the Dead Sea Texts of Isaiah and Habakkuk and some fragments of other books) based on a standardized form of the text established many centuries after the books were written."
"The present revision is based on the consonantal Hebrew and Aramaic text as fixed early in the Christian era and revised by Jewish scholars (the 'Masoretes') of the sixth to ninth centuries. The vowel signs, which were added by the Masoretes, are accepted also in the main, but where a more probable and convincing reading can be obtained by assuming different vowels, this has been done." "
... vowel points are less ancient and [less] reliable than the consonants."
"Departures from the consonantal text of the best manuscripts have been made only where it seems clear that errors in copying had been made before the text was standardized."
"Most of the corrections adopted are based on the ancient versions [translations into Greek Aramaic, Syriac, and Latin], which were made before the time of the Masoretic revision and therefore reflect earlier forms of the text."
"Sometimes it is evident that the text has suffered in transmission, but none of the versions provides a satisfactory restoration. Here we can only follow the best judgment of competent scholars as to the most probable reconstruction of the original text."
"Many difficulties and obscurities, of course, remain."
"Where the choice between two meanings is particularly difficult or doubtful, we have given an alternative rendering in a footnote."
"If in the judgment of the Committee the meaning of a passage is quite uncertain or obscure, either because of corruption in the text or because of the inadequacy of our present knowledge of the language, that fact is indicated by a note."
"It should not be assumed, however, that the Committee was entirely sure or unanimous concerning every rendering not so indicated."
"To record all minority views was obviously out of the question."
"The King James Version of the New Testament was based upon a Greek text that was marred by mistakes, containing the accumulated errors of fourteen centuries of manuscript copying."
"It was essentially the Greek text of the New Testament as edited by Beza, 1589, who closely followed that published by Erasmus, 1516-1535, which was based upon a few medieval manuscripts."
"The earliest and best of the eight manuscripts which Erasmus consulted was from the tenth century, and [yet] he made the least use of it because it differed most from the commonly received text; Beza had access to two manuscripts of great value, dating from the fifth and sixth centuries, but he made very little use of them because they differed from the text published by Erasmus."
"We now possess many more ancient manuscripts of the new Testament, and are far better equipped to seek to recover the original wording of the Greek text. The evidence for the text of the books of the New Testament is better that for any other ancient book, both in the number of extant manuscripts and in the nearness of the date of some of these manuscripts to the date when the book was originally written."
The words are in plain English. The second paragraph says it all, "Yet, the King James Version has grave defects.
Therefore, we must conclude the "King James Version" is NOT the Actual Bible sent by God to mankind.
CHAPTER 2 Contradictions in the Bible?
First and foremost, let me be perfectly clear on the position of Muslims regarding the authenticity of the Holy Bible. It is a condition of faith for believers to believe in all of God's Books and scripture as stipulated by the Quran, the Last and Final Testament from Almighty God to mankind, that the previous scriptures, including of course the Old Testament (Arabic = Torah), the Psalms (Arabic = Zabur) and the New Testament (Arabic = Injeel) were all from Almighty God (Arabic = Allah) in their original form. The beginning verses of the Quran clearly spell out the position of the 'Believer' with regard to these scriptures. As the translation from Arabic may be rendered regarding the conditions of believers:
"And they (believers) believe in what is being sent down to you (Muhammad, peace be upon him) and they believe in what has been sent down before (previous Holy scriptures to Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, and of course Jesus, peace be upon them all)." [Quran 2:2,3]
Therefore, it must be established that Muslims do accept that Almighty Allah did send down many Holy Books and he did allow the people to alter, change, delete and make additions to these Books, and as such, they can not longer be considered as the "Word of God" in their present condition. This is something immediately agreed upon by all qualified Biblical scholars.
Incidentally, there is sufficient evidence in the Quran to prove the remainder of the Bible still contains many of the original teachings and sayings of the prophets to whom the various scriptures were revealed.
From the previous chapter we can easily determine that the original source of the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments have been lost and are no longer extant in any language. What has remained and been referred to for translations, is in fact nothing more than old copies that do not necessarily agree with each other and there does exist in them obvious corruption in additions and deletions. Additionally, they are not complete and do not have full agreement of the scholars of the Bible as to their meanings.
Just to offer a few of the many contradictions and errors of that which is being presented as the "Word of God" in the Bible I would like to quote the research of scholars of the Bible: