The BIBLE – The Facts (Part 1)

As Salaam Alaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu,

The following was taken from a booklet entitled ‘The BIBLE – The Facts’.

Read the second part of: The BIBLE – The Facts

May Allah be pleased with those who follow guidance.

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The Bible – The Facts

“…it ought to be pointed out that there was no single, monolithic Christian church, which evolved immediately following the time of Jesus. Rather, there were a multitude of independent Churches, each having its own set of recognized scriptures, each under its own independent bishop or leader, and each having its own viewpoint on such issues as: whether or not it was Jesus Christ who was crucified; the nature of Jesus Christ…; the nature of God… It was not until several centuries later that these issues began to be sorted out, and the traditional consensus of Christian belief began to emerge.” – Jerald F. Dirks

Al-Namal Publications
P.O. Box 96185
Brixton 2019
South Africa
+27 11 837-5736
ISBN 978-0-620-39018-7

THE BIBLE: THE FACTS

Christianity is one of the major religions of the world. Christians base their religion on the Bible. Seeing that countless millions of people in the whole world are dependent on the Bible for their religious well-being, it is important to know some facts concerning this important scripture.

Fact One
The Christian Bible refers to two sets of scriptures, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament refers to the scriptures that the Jews had with them, and the New Testament was compiled by the early Christian churches and includes the Gospels.

Fact Two
The Old Testament is composed of the Torah and two other sets of Jewish scripture, the Nevi’im (prophets) and the Ketuvim (writings). However, the Torah that the Jews have is not the Torah that Moses (Pbuh) had. The original Torah went missing completely and a different Torah was compiled some five centuries after the time of Moses (Pbuh). This Torah was developed from largely unknown sources in a cut-and-paste manner. Seeing that the original scriptures were non-existent it was not possible to compile a standardised Torah, so that, at the time of Jesus (Pbuh), there were four differing versions of this Torah in circulation.

Fact Three
The original scriptures that were given to Jesus (Pbuh) are also non-existent. The compilation of the Gospels came at a much later date. Christian scholars maintain that the earliest the gospels came into being as a literary art form was during the last quarter of the first century. It was not until about 130 CE that Papias, the bishop of Hierapolis actually referred to the gospel by name.

In the initial period of Christianity, the Christians in different areas had their own independent bishops, their own doctrines and their own gospels. The process of unification commenced only in the year 325 CE by the Council of Nicacea. Of the available gospels, letters and acts only a meagre 9% was utilised to compile the New Testament. The material which initially formed part and parcel of early Christianity, and which was left out, is referred to as “New Testament Apocrypha”. There are over 41 such New Testament apocryphal gospels documented. (Refer to the Appendix for a list of some of these.)

Fact Four
It must be remember that the original scriptures revealed to Moses (Pbuh) and to Jesus (Pbuh) were revealed in the languages that were spoken b the people in those times. These were Aramaic and Hebrew. Aramaic is still spoken, but only by a small group of people in some villages in Syria. Hebrew is also still spoken, but there was a period when it was only a written language. Seeing that languages also evolve, it is unlikely that the Aramaic and the Hebrew spoken in the present times are exactly the same as spoken in those ancient times.

There is another factor to consider as well: Anybody doing translations from one language to another knows that there are many other considerations to take not of besides the word-for-word translations of works. Idiom, context, prejudices, local customs and cultures and a host of other factors have to be taken into account. Without an accurate and detailed account of these factors being available, there is no guarantee that any translations of ancient works will be 100% accurate.

Fact Five
From the above, it is common sense that if anybody did claim to have some scrolls that they claim are the original scriptures, no ordinary person would be able to read them. The services of experts who have specialised in the study of these ancient languages, would be required. (Obviously, any “expert” deciphering them would do so according to his own prejudices, with hardly anybody else being in a position to correct him!) Also, these scrolls would reflect the beliefs of those who wrote the scrolls originally. Who they were and when they were written would involve a lot of guesswork from the scholars, as can be seen with the deciphering of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Fact Six
Although Christians maintain that the Bible is the Word of God, it is well-recognised by all serious researchers that the 4 Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were compiled by people who had no direct contact with Jesus (Pbuh). As noted above, in the first place, there was no agreement as to which were “authentic” gospels and which were not. Secondly, the four gospels that finally came to be part of the Bible were written by people many years afterwards, and these people had no direct contact with Jesus (Pbuh)! Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, under whose names the gospels appear, were not disciples of Jesus (Pbuh).

Also, thirdly, scholars agree that several people were involved in compiling these gospels, even though each gospel is attributed to one person only as the author. Scholars have analysed these gospels and have concluded that they were “layered” compilations. That is, some person wrote the initial document and somebody else edited it as time went on, and yet others added to or subtracted from the document.

Fact Seven (a)
It follows that, seeing no original scriptures are in existence, there is just no way to verify that those parts that are attributed to Moses (Pbuh) or Jesus (Pbuh) are really so. Common sense tells us that, in order to verify the authenticity of any document, one must compare it with the original. If there is no original, with what does one do a verification check? The practice of looking at the “oldest” manuscripts and stating that these are more authentic than others is fraught with many problems. This has been shown to be the case when the gospel of Thomas and the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered.

Fact Seven (b)
Just to point out one major problem:
The Jews in Alexandria, Egypt, translated the Hebrew scriptures into the Greek Septuagint before the time of Jesus (Pbuh). Later on, late in the 1st century, the Jewish Council of Jamnia rejected a number of scriptures that were included in the Septuagint. Now, the Roman Catholic Church had used the Septuagint as a basis for their Old Testament. In contrast, the Protestants used the later Jewish canon as a basis for their Old Testament! Those scriptures that were rejected as “unreliable” by the Protestants are known as the “Old Testament Apocrypha”. So, while one group of Christians consider these to be “authentic”, the other has labelled them as “unreliable”!

It should also be noted that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has its own Bible, which differs from that of the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. Also, the Eastern Syrian Church (Nestorians) also have a New Testament that differs from the one that the rest of Christianity has.

Fact Eight
Subsequent to the initial compilation, the Bible has undergone even many more changes and corrections, resulting in many different “versions” as various Christian scholars tried to update the versions they had. This resulted in more versions coming into existence. It is important to understand that the rem “version” refers to a copy of the Bible that is considered to be authentic by the scholars endorsing it and that it differs substantially from what somebody else has compiled. Ever time somebody produced a new “version” it was thought to be 100% correct. Later on, others found errors in it, and they compiled newer “versions” which were supposed to have eliminated all the errors. In this way, from the very beginning, there were already several different versions. What is even more confusing is that there exist different translations of a single version!

Some of the different versions and translations are listed in Appendix I.

Fact Nine
The Bible is a mixture of historical information, peoples’ observations and alleged saying of Jesus (Pbuh). There is no way of proving what are truly sayings of Jesus (Pbuh) and which are fabrications, as the sayings were compiled years later by people who had no direct contact with him. When attempts were made to compile the Bible in the early years, these was no science whereby fables, myths, sayings from previous scriptures and stories made up on the spot could be differentiated from what Jesus (Pbuh) actually said. No attempts were made to sift myths from facts. No rules were laid down for the preserving of the true sayings of Jesus (Pbuh).

Fact Ten
Taking into account the historical background of its evolution, it is obvious that a book like the present Bible will have many errors and contradictions in it. Seeing much of the literature of the early Christians was banned, ignored or destroyed, it would be difficult to point out where exactly deviations occurred. Despite these serious drawbacks, Christian scholars themselves, and others, have discovered many errors and contradictions. The AWAKE magazine, dated 8 September 1957, of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, quotes an extract from the magazine Look entitled “The Truth About The Bible”: “Modern scholars say there are probably 50,000 errors” in the Bible and not an estimated 20,000 guessed at in 1720!

Despite the efforts of scholars over centuries to eliminate the errors – a task which is impossible seeing that there is no original scripture to check with – as expected, there are still numerous contradictions to be found. Just a few are reproduced in the Appendix II.

Fact Eleven
Both the scriptures revealed to Moses (Pbuh) and to Jesus (Pbuh) were revealed for the guidance of the Jews and not for the Gentiles. Nowhere can it be found that Jesus (Pbuh) had said that he had come to guide others than the Jews – “the lost sheep of the house of Israel”.

In Summary:
None of the many authors of the Bible had direct contact with Jesus (Pbuh). During the first three centuries there was no concept of an authorised Bible. It took three to five centuries before the Christians formulated the final 27 books which comprise the New Testament. Thereafter changes were made frequently as new information came to light as people discovered additional gospels or brought forth gospels which had been kept in another country. As recently as 1945, the gospel of Thomas, written in Coptic, was discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 in some caves in Jordan, also with scriptural material. Yet, some of this newer material has been side-lined as being “apocryphal”. The best way of describing the Bible is that it is a “cut-and-paste” literary work, as stated by Jerald F. Dirks in “The Cross and the Crescent.”

The question arises: Why are there so many versions?
The answers have already been given above. There was no instant and meticulous preservation of the statements and life of Jesus (Pbuh) . In fact, in the early phase of Christianity not much importance was placed on the actual statements of Jesus (Pbuh). Many years later, some unidentified individuals wrote down what they could from hearsay. Some added statements from other sources and attributed them to Jesus (Pbuh). Others made changes where they thought necessary. This resulted in a plethora of gospels in different languages – Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, Greek (Koine), Coptic, Syriac, etc.

The final version was compiled leaving out many gospels, referred to as “apocryphal”. Some of the early material was also destroyed because it did not conform to what the compilers had in mind. Given the fact that no original scriptures were preserved and that no set of rules were in place to differentiate truth from all the accretions, it comes as no surprise that there are all these variations noted by the scholars.

IN CONCLUSION

It is quite obvious that the Christian Bible is not the Word of God. It does not mean that the Bible does not contain the sayings of Jesus (Pbuh). The problem is to discover which were truly his sayings and which were not. The only statements that can be authenticated as his are those that are confirmed in Islamic Literature, i.e. the Qur’an and Hadeeth. (See Appendix III). This being so, it is only a foolhardy person who will stake his future in the hereafter on such a scripture, especially when there is an authenticated scripture like the Qur’an.

Many people who had come to realise the above, have had the courage to study the Qur’an and, in a very objective way, have compared it to the Bible, and have come to the inevitable conclusion that the Qur’an is a Divinely revealed book. One such person was ex-Methodist Minister, Jerald F. Dirks, who carefully studied the Qur’an and compared it to the Bible which he had studied thoroughly when he studied theology at university. His findings appear in the book he wrote, “The Cross and the Crescent” from which most of the material in this booklet has been extracted.

It would be appropriate to let readers know of his experiences in his own words. The article hereunder has been written by him.

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The conversion story of Jerald Dirks will be posted in the second part, God-willing.