Topic: Islam
Short answer: Christians and Muslims are talking about the same historical Jesus, but they believe fundamentally different things about who He is and what happened to Him. And while the Bible has been copied and translated for centuries, the manuscript evidence does not support the claim that its message has been corrupted beyond recognition.
Christians and Muslims are talking about the same historical Jesus, but they believe fundamentally different things about who He is and what happened to Him. And while the Bible has been copied and translated for centuries, the manuscript evidence does not support the claim that its message has been corrupted beyond recognition.
The Bible teaches something very different. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Then John 1:14 says, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” A few verses later John identifies the person he is speaking about as Jesus Christ. John is not describing Jesus as merely a prophet sent by God. He is saying that the eternal Word who was God became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.
There is also the cross. Christianity teaches that Jesus was crucified, died for our sins, and rose again. Qur’an 4:157 says, “they neither killed nor crucified him.” So Christianity and Islam are not simply using different language to describe the same beliefs. They make contradictory claims about the identity, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
That raises the historical question: Which account should we trust? The New Testament takes us back to the first century. Some of its testimony comes from people who knew Jesus personally, while writers such as Luke tell us that they investigated eyewitness testimony. Paul was writing within the first century and records even earlier Christian testimony that Jesus died, was buried, rose again, and appeared to His followers. The Qur’anic account appears roughly six centuries later. If we are going to reject the earlier testimony in favor of the later account, there should be a historical reason for doing so.
The claim that the Bible has been “mistranslated” also needs to be defined. Translation, copying, and corruption are not the same thing. Modern translators do not have to work through a long chain of translations. They can compare ancient Hebrew and Greek manuscripts directly. The Dead Sea Scrolls allow us to compare Old Testament manuscripts separated by centuries, and the New Testament survives in thousands of Greek manuscripts along with ancient translations and quotations from early Christians.
Those manuscripts do contain textual differences, but that is not the same as saying the Bible’s message was lost or rewritten. In fact, having many manuscripts allows scholars to compare them and identify where copying differences occurred. A useful question to ask is: Which passage was corrupted? When was it changed? What did it originally say? And what manuscript evidence proves the change?
There is also a difficulty with saying that the Bible was already corrupted before Muhammad. Qur’an 5:47 tells the people of the Gospel to judge by what Allah revealed in it, Qur’an 5:68 tells the People of the Book to uphold the Torah and the Gospel, and Qur’an 10:94 refers to people who were reading the earlier Scriptures. If the Gospel Christians possessed at that time had already been hopelessly corrupted, why does the Qur’an direct them back to it?
Ultimately, the most important question is not simply whether Christianity or Islam has the stronger argument. The conversation should come back to Jesus Christ Himself. Was He crucified? Did He rise again? Is He merely a prophet, or is He God the Son? And which historical sources give us the best reason to believe our answer?
Christianity stands on the person and work of Jesus Christ. That is where the conversation should end, and where each of us must decide what we believe about Him.
Key passages: John 1:1, 14, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8
Asked by a church member talking with their coworker
Recent Comments