JESUS

[Cristian]

Giving a promise of Paradise or forgiveness on behalf of God does not automatically prove one is God. You have already admitted earlier that verses have been altered in the Bible, so just because this point may not have been altered doesn't prove absence of corruption.

Who can promise eternal life? Isn’t the decision of salvation ultimately in the hands of Allah? I’m not just talking about forgiveness of sins in this case.

And I want to make one point clear, because you keep repeating this idea, which does not reflect the truth. It is a historical fact (and many Christians are aware of it) that isolated verses were added to the Bible, but they do not affect the central message of the text. I am not agreeing that the Bible was massively corrupted, as you believe. For everything to have been altered to the point of Islam being correct, it would have been necessary to eliminate or change more than 80% of all the theological content of the Bible — which would have been impossible, since the earliest manuscripts already present all the central points of the Christian faith. That is a deceiving idea, which I dont support.

 

[Cristian]

There is no instruction to read the Torah or Gospel in the references you quoted. Listing baseless allegations like this is meaningless and not even worth entertaining.

Qur’an 5:46 (Sura Al-Ma’ida) – “And We sent after them Jesus, the son of Mary, confirming the Torah that came before him; and We gave him the Gospel, in which was guidance and light, confirming the previous Torah...”

Qur’an 3:3–4 (Sura Al-Imran) – “He has revealed to you the Book in truth, confirming what came before it. He had previously revealed the Torah and the Gospel, as guidance for the people; and He revealed the Qur’an...”

But the "Bible is corrupted" is also a idea, I get the idea. But "baselesse allegation" they are not, even more because im showing that those books werent actually corruptd.

 

[Cristian]

This doesn't make sense. Why would 'God' hide the truth from mankind if they needed it for their salvation? Why would the truth be so unbearable?

Great point. From the verses, we can see that Jesus acted according to a planned order; He fulfilled His mission perfectly and at the right time. Jesus was not hiding the message arbitrarily, but revealed it gradually according to human capacity to understand (even His own disciples did not understand everything and only fully grasped it after the resurrection), historical context (there were serious opposition and authorities watching His every move), and the plan of salvation (crucifixion, resurrection, and Pentecost). Imagine something complex that a person has no basis to understand—if you present it all at once, the person will not understand or may even reject it. Study the divine pedagogy in the Bible and see how it is present from the very beginning.

 

[Cristian]

This is why even those who postulated the borrowing theory like Phillip Hitti were forced to concede that '...the resemblances do not warrant the conclusion of borrowing or quoting or that he was not a slavish imitator.' [Philip K. Hitti, Islam and the West: A Historical Cultural Survey, 1979 (Reprinted), Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company, New York, pp. 17-18.]

Richard Bell, who was at pains to prove the direct dependence of Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم on the Bible also insists that he was not working on any real acquaintance with the Bible itself. [Richard Bell, The Origin of Islam in its Christian Environment: The Gunning Lectures Edinburgh University, 1925, London: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1968 (Reprinted), p. 112.]

Well, the thesis that Islam is a “continuation” is purely theological and fits Muhammad’s teleological proposal, but it is not necessarily the truth. In fact, this “justification” is very extremely convenient, as it perfectly explains why there are similarities and also differences with other sacred books. I find it very suspicious when someone says, “Everything that is similar is true, everything that is different was corrupted, but I received the true message, so everything I say is the final truth and you must believe it.”

I find this even more suspicious when the books Muhammad draws parallels to (like the Torah and the Gospel) contain ideas that are so distinct—as you yourself pointed out in the Torah—and they came millenniums before him, and for many of these, there is no historical basis at all to suggest corruption, whether minor or major. So logically, for what Muhammad says to be true, Moses himself would have had to invent things or record them incorrectly, and then Muhammad, millenniums later, would have “corrected” them. I’m sorry, but from a historical and logical perspective, this is highly questionable and simply unreliable, in my opinion. Of course, everyone has their own worldview.

Regarding how the Prophet could have known everything he knows, it is not impossible that he, or someone around him, had some contact (even minimal) with external religious traditions. Religions have borrowed concepts and figures from other religions throughout entire human history, and this does not imply deep or comprehensive knowledge of the other religion. One example: if someone reads our conversation here, they will get a very good sense of both faiths—their disagreements and agreements, arguments, and various theological concepts of each. Even without prior knowledge. Now, do you really think it’s 100% impossible that Muhammad had some contact, even minimal, with other cultures? That would simply be incorrect, especially considering what I mentioned about this same topic in messages above.

Another point I want to raise, again with all due respect and reverence for your faith, is that it is also possible Muhammad could have encountered a deceptive angel, one that was not truly an angel, especially considering the very peculiar nature of the angelic encounter he reported. Remember that Jesus himself says in Matthew 24:24:

“For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”

Notice the term “false Christs”—this does not necessarily refer to a person impersonating Jesus (that would make even sense), but to a message that contradicts what He actually said and could deceive even the faithful. 1 John 4:1–3 also warns us:

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.”

So even if there were miracles (which I haven’t seen much), this was already predicted in the Bible, which warns us not to trust everything blindly.

It is also worth noting that the Qur’an does not only draw parallels with the canonical Old and New Testaments. As I mentioned before, it also makes very clear parallels with ideas that exist only in apocryphal gospels and nowhere else. These gospels, as I said, were often not written with theological aims, but rather as attempts to explain certain concepts of faith. You mention a “lack of historical credibility” of the Gospels (which is a fallacy), but some of these apocryphal gospels—among other books that Muhammad parallels—appeared centuries after Christ and the apostles and were never attributed to the apostles by the early Church, unlike the canonical Gospels.

I can provide explicit examples of clear parallels and explain why the respective books are not reliable, if you want.

 

[Cristian]

It seems you are trying to squeeze in as many orientalist claims that you can against the Qur'an, presumably to save face in a discussion which is supposed to be about Jesus in the Bible, which is invariably what Christians tend to do in these discussions. All such allegations have been addressed adequately by Dr Muhammad Ali in his book, 'the Qur'an and the Orientalists', so you can read the refutations at length there. Of note regarding Wansborough, Dr Ali points out that his conclusions and assumptions elicited sharp criticisms even by most of the orientalists themselves, some of whom describe his work as "drastically wrongheaded", "ferociously opaque" and a "colossal self-deception". Unequally unflattering is the exposed inconsistent and erroneous scholarship of Noldeke.

My friend, I have absolutely nothing against the Qur’an. Notice that I haven’t made any value judgments in any of my messages; I only cite historical and theological facts. And I can honestly tell you that I do this only to share the message that Jesus instructed us, nothing more. I do this because I love my neighbor and feel it is my duty to instruct them according to the truth, and I see that many Muslims have a mistaken view of Christianity. If it were out of hatred or prejudice, I wouldn’t spend hours of my day replying to you, and I would actually offend your faith in my messages—which I have never done.

 

[Cristian]

The earliest attested form of the belief in Jesus’ resurrection occurs in 1 Corinthians 15, a document written by Paul. In his letters, he indicates that the crucifixion/resurrection of Jesus was something only known to himself and not common knowledge to the general public. It is Paul who claims that there were 'over five hundred witnesses' that saw Jesus during his resurrection. But we have no testimony fell on his face, and prayed,from any of these five hundred people. None of them ever wrote anything regarding their experiences of what they witnessed. The alleged resurrection took place over 800 kilometers away from Corinthia. Do you think that the Corinthians are going to travel all that distance to go and investigate the matter that easily? Plus, Paul did not indicate where those 500 hundred witnesses were in order for the people to go and ask them.

First of all, Paul wrote very close to the time of Christ, and I ask you to consider him as a historical account, not a theological figure, every time I mention him. Also, can you show me where Paul says that only he knew about the crucifixion? In fact, he states that he is sharing what he received.

And how do you think Jesus became so famous? Oral transmission was very common in the first century, while letters and written documents were rare, research and you will se, because you frequently ignore this fact. So it was indeed relevant (despite the distance) that Paul put himself forward, because more than 500 witnesses is not just one or two people, but a large community. Moreover, he was not writing an investigative manual—this act merely provides strong historical evidence.

Also note that not everyone was literate, writing materials were expensive, and even if some had written something, private texts on papyrus were very unlikely to survive, especially since they would not have been widely copied like the Gospels. Only texts that were highly circulated and copied tend to be preserved.

There are also several other external sources about the resurrection, which I can go into in detail if you want.

 

[Cristian]

The earliest surviving complete manuscript of the Old Testament dates to about 17 centuries after it was written and not even among the Dead Sea scrolls does one find complete manuscripts of the entire Bible. But the bigger problem is that there is no certain way of knowing how well the manuscripts were copied in the hundreds of years before the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This means that we cannot know with complete certainty just what the original words of the ancient Israelite authors were.

You frequently assume that the lack of 100% certainty about something implies that it is unreliable, even though this is the case for many other historical works. Note also that textual criticism compares hundreds of manuscripts and reconstructs the text with a very high degree of reliability; it is estimated that 99.5% of the modern Hebrew Old Testament matches the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is extraordinarily close to the original. So this still would not explain all the hundreds of differences between the Old Testament and the Qur’an.

Hebrew manuscripts were copied with extreme care, especially by scribes, which greatly reduces the chance of significant errors.

 

[Cristian]

Matthew 26:36-39 tells us that Jesus 'fell on his face, and prayed' to the Father, just like Moses prayed in Exodus 34:8 and Abraham in 17:3. All Prophets praying to God in the same way. The concept of trinity was not established until over 300 years later, certainly not something that Jesus taught.

I’ve talked quite a bit about some concepts of the Trinity in the messages, but it’s a really extensive subject, much more than something ‘invented 300 years later.’ So if any point wasn’t clear, or if I didn’t answer something, feel free to ask

The term Trinitas appears in the work of Tertullian, and he used it to describe a biblical concept: the unity of God in three distinct persons. So it’s not a completely ‘new concept’; it’s just the naming of a doctrine that was already implicit in the Gospels. An interesting fact is that Tertullian was a Christian theologian who was born only about 120 years after Christ, so he lived just a few generations after the apostles, having access to the oral tradition of the early Church and to the Gospels already in circulation. And even so, he affirmed these ideas himself (the crucifiction as well).

And It’s merely a technical term, and Christian faith is not based on the word itself, but it is important to understand the reality of this biblical concept in order to grasp situations like Jesus praying to God.

 

[Cristian]

Matthew 26:36-39 tells us that Jesus 'fell on his face, and prayed' to the Father, just like Moses prayed in Exodus 34:8 and Abraham in 17:3. All Prophets praying to God in the same way. The concept of trinity was not established until over 300 ye

I finished all the messages Muhammed, if there is anything I didnt answer or that is still not clear, please tell me and it will be a pleasure to clarify it. May the peace be upon you, God bless.

 

[Cristian]

The 'borrowing' theory is further weakened by the presence in the Qur'ân of narratives or details which are absent in the Judeo-Christian texts. The stories of the people of Ad and Thamud and their Prophets Hud and Saleh are not mentioned in the Bible. Some of the Qur'ânic details which have no parallels in the Bible include the dialogue which Prophet Noah had with his son before the deluge, the dialogue between Abraham and his father and between Abraham and the tyrannical ruler (Nimrod). The miraculous escape of Abraham from the fire and the miracle of resurrection he was shown from God when he brought back to life dead birds. Moses' slaughter of the cow in order to bring back to life a murdered man who revealed his killer, is absent from the Bible and so is the dialogue between Moses and the Israelites on what kind animal should be slaughtered. Also absent in the Bible are Jesus' miraculous speech in the cradle and his fashioning out of clay a similitude of a bird and Mary's miraculous sustenance from God.

Sorry, I forgot to add a idea before about all these historical and religious influence subject. Following is the idea:

John Wansbrough, a British scholar of Arabic and early Islam, specializing in Quranic texts and Islamic history, argued that the traditional narrative about Muhammad and the origins of Islam should be questioned. He suggested that the Quran and Islamic tradition developed gradually within Arab and Judeo-Christian communities, and that Muhammad acted as a catalyst rather than the sole source of these developments. Patricia Crone, a Danish historian specializing in early Islamic history, similarly emphasized very similar ideas. Fred Donner, an American historian of early Islam, views Muhammad as a historical prophet who had access to oral Judeo-Christian traditions but also introduced original ethical and political innovations. Montgomery Watt, a Scottish theologian and scholar of Islam, highlights Muhammad as an exceptional religious and social leader who transformed pre-existing traditions into a unified system, acting as both reformer and innovator. G. R. Hawting, a British scholar of Islamic history and Arabic literature, examines Muhammad as a religious leader who consolidated existing traditions, while noting that many biographical narratives reflect later community concerns rather than literal historical facts. Together, these scholars support the view that Islam emerged from a specific historical context, shaped by interactions with surrounding cultures and religions, which directly influenced its theology and structure. All synthetized by Muhammed.

 

[Cristian]

I wonder what purpose these kind of threads can achieve. An analogy that comes to mind is this;

There is a church where everyone must wear red shoes to attend, down the road the church insists everyone should wear green shoes. After a while the leaders in the red church, notice varying shades of red shoes. The leaders then agree on a rigid standard of red shoes.

Can any greater purpose be achieved now everyone believes in exactly the same red shoes? Do we have to go to the green church and tell them to wear red shoes?

The same God hears all our prayers despite our differences. Beliefs are profound, but will we be judged more by what we believe, or what we do with our beliefs.

I understand the analogy, but in John 3:16–18 Jesus says, ‘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… Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.’ And Paul says in Galatians 1:8–9, ‘But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.’ It is interesting that Paul used this expression so long ago, saying that even if an “angel from heaven” were to proclaim another gospel, it should be considered accursed.

I am not trying to define what others should or should not do, but as a Christian, I believe I must point to what Jesus and the Bible (actually) teach about the true path. I am not offending the Islamic faith; in fact, I love them just as I love my Christian brothers, because Jesus taught us to love our neighbor as ourselves. It is precisely because of that love that I am here, especially since I do not gain a single cent for spending hours writing this. And if I had hate on me, it would´ve be already transmitted in my message, which is not the case.