Aslam

Praise be to Allah.

We may be repeating ourselves here if we point out that the

Gospels, or the Bible, of which we are speaking, that is extant among the

people nowadays, is something other than that which was revealed from

Allaah to His slave and Messenger ‘Eesa ibn Maryam (Jesus son of Mary –

peace be upon him). With regard to what was revealed from Allaah, no one's

faith is valid if he disbelieves in it or in any part of it. We have

warned against that in question no.

47516.

But for reasons of divine wisdom, that book continued to be

distorted and misinterpreted from ancient times until its divine origin was

lost and disappeared. All that the people have in their hands now is no more

than a mixture of the darkness of shirk and trinity with the glimmer of the

light of Tawheed, an accumulation of lies and distortions mixed with the

remnants of the truth and knowledge of the Prophets.

Now, after so many centuries of tampering, it is impossible

for anyone to be certain whether any part of the Bible is true or false,

unless it is checked in the light of the truth that confirms that which went

before, the divine light of which has not been extinguished by the darkness

of ignorance and whims and desires, and whose pure truthfulness has not been

contaminated with even a single lie or mistake. That can be nothing other

than the Holy Qur’aan which Allaah has guaranteed to preserve, as He says

(interpretation of the meaning):

“Verily, We, it is We Who

have sent down the Dhikr (i.e. the Qur’aan) and surely, We will guard it

(from corruption)”

[al-Hijr 15:9]

Even though one of the greatest Christian scholars and

defenders of the Bible, namely Norton, tried to defend the Bible against the

criticism of Ackharn the German, he was forced to admit that distinguishing

truth from lies nowadays is very difficult.

From this we reach the matter asked about in the question. We

say that whoever does not believe in the Qur’aan will never have any valid

book in which to believe, and whoever casts aspersions upon the truthfulness

of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and the

validity of the Islamic religion, will not be able to offer any proof that

the religion which he follows is valid.

The point is that whoever casts aspersions upon the Prophet

(peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and the things that he said

about his Prophethood and the Revelation that he received from heaven, even

though miracles happened at his hands that confirmed the veracity of what he

said, and all his life he continued to challenge his enemies to produce the

like of the Book which he attributed to the revelation of his Lord, and even

challenged mankind and the jinn together to cooperate and produce something

like this Qur’aan, as Allaah said:

“Say: “If the mankind and the jinn were together to

produce the like of this Qur’aan, they could not produce the like thereof,

even if they helped one another”

[al-Isra’ 17:88]

But they were not able

to do that and produce anything like it, throughout history and until now,

in spite of the numerous enemies who opposed him and wished that they could

prove that he was lying. But there is no way they can do that!

Moreover, the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be

upon him) continued to prevail over his enemies and they were unable to

prove him wrong. They were never able to prove that he was lying in anything

he said, even in the regular kind of talk that people engage in amongst

themselves, let alone telling lies about his Lord Who had sent him.

I wonder, if they reject all that evidence, how they could

have any evidence of the soundness of the idea of “divine inspiration” which

forms the foundation of their belief in their books, in spite of the fact

that they do not claim that the Gospel was revealed to Jesus, or that he

wrote it or dictated it, or even that the Gospels were written during his

lifetime!

Moreover, there is no sound evidence concerning the

personalities of the four men who wrote the Gospels: who they were, how they

lived their lives, and whether what they wrote came from divine revelation

or divine inspiration, as they claim, or it was only their own ideas or what

was inspired to them by their devils. Horn, one of the greatest exegetes of

the Bible, says: “If it is said that the Bible was revealed from God, that

does not mean that every single word or phrase of it is inspired by God.

Rather we know from the statements of those who wrote the Bible, from the

differences in their styles, that they were permitted to write according to

their own natures, customs and understanding. It is unimaginable that they

could have been inspired in everything they described or in every ruling

they stated.”

The Encyclopaedia Britannica refers to the different

opinions among Christian scholars and researchers concerning the matter of

divine inspiration and whether every phrase of the Bible is divinely

inspired or not. Then it comments on that in one article (19/20) where it

says: “Those who say that every phrase is divinely inspired cannot prove

their claims with any ease.”

We say: and they cannot do so even with difficulty!

There are dozens of places where the Gospels contradict one

another, and dozens of historical errors and false prophecies that never

materialized. Frederick Grant stated that “The New Testament is not

homogeneous because it is a compilation of scattered elements. It does not

represent a single point of view or style from beginning to end, rather it

represents different points of view.

The American Encyclopaedia states that there is a

serious problem that results from the contradictions that appear in

different places throughout the fourth Gospel and the three synoptic

Gospels. The differences between them are so great that if you accept the

synoptic Gospels as sound and correct, this will lead to the conclusion that

the Gospel of John is not sound.

It is worth noting that the Gospel of John is the one which

focuses the most on their doctrine of trinity; indeed they admit that it was

written to establish this doctrine, which the other three Gospels failed to

do, and to put an end to the dispute concerning this matter.

The Catholic Church, which strongly adheres to the idea of

divine inspiration as the origin of the Bible, confirmed that in a meeting

of the Vatican in 1869-1870. But a century later it revised its opinion and

admitted, in Vatican II (1962-1965) that these books contain a great deal of

defects and some falsehoods, according to what was reported by the French

Catholic researcher Dr Maurice Bucaille, who later became a Muslim.

Moreover, if a person disbelieves in any of the miracles of

the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) or any aspects

of his life story that point to his truthfulness, how can he prove the

miracles of these so-called apostles who wrote the Gospels, or prove that

their claim to divine inspiration is correct?

For them, the idea of divine inspiration is correct on the

basis of what is written in the Bible, and the miracles mentioned therein,

and the Bible is sound and correct because it is divinely inspired!

Thus their evidence ends in a vicious circle, as was

mentioned in the Encyclopaedia by some researchers: “So the Bible is

sound because it is divinely inspired and their inspiration is proven

because the Bible testifies to that!”

If a person disbelieves in the Qur’aan, which was transmitted

by means of tawaatur (a process in which something is narrated from so many

by so many that it is inconceivable that they could all agree upon a lie),

throughout the Muslim world, east and west, generation after generation, by

memory and in writing, with no variant copies and no contradictions, how can

he prove the Gospels to be sound or rely on them, when there is no shred of

evidence, not even a hint, that they existed any earlier than two hundred

years after the death of Christ, according to what Norton quoted from

Ackharn the German? Then there were the calamities that befell the

Christians in the fourth century CE, when their churches were destroyed and

their books were burned, which makes one lose confidence in any of their

books that appeared after that. When did they appear and in whose possession

were they during that period of persecution and hiding? How did they reach

us?… There are many questions about this problem as was expressed in the

Encyclopaedia Britannica where it says:

“We have no certain knowledge of the way in which the

canonical soundness of these four Gospels was established, nor where or when

this decision was made.”

With regard to not knowing who translated it from the

language in which it was originally written, how reliable his knowledge was

and how qualified he was for this task, and how we can be certain that he

translated it in the proper manner, that is a whole other issue!

For more details on what we have mentioned in summary in this

answer, please see: Izhaar al-Haq by Shaykh Rahmat-Allaah al-Hindi.

And Munaazarah bayna al-Islam wa’l-Nasraaniyyah by Shaykh Muhammad

Jameel Ghaazi et al.

May Allaah guide us and you to the Straight Path.