What did Jesus really say?

by Misha'al Abdullah Al-Kadhi

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2.2 A small sampling of these contradictions (Part 5)

 

The list goes on and on, however, hopefully this sampling shall prove sufficient so that the reader might see what has driven countless Christian scholars to recognize the evidence of tampering. God does not inspire contradictions. Some among mankind have been tampering with the words of the Bible and then passing them off to mankind as part of the "faultless words of God." Centuries of "correction" to the Bible in order to promote chosen doctrines has led to side-effects (Remember: some Christian scholars acknowledge that the "errors" actually number over 48,000-50,000 errors).

Any reputable scholar of the Bible will never attempt to claim to be able to convince the majority of the scholars of the Bible that all of these 50,000 errors are all only "apparent" and that he is able to provide logical explanations for them all, one by one, from the Biblical text itself. Reputable Biblical scholars who have even the most rudimentary knowledge of Church history and Biblical manuscript preservation know better than that. The most they shall try to do is to claim that all 48,000 errors are all "insignificant" and "undeserving of attention" or that they "do not affect basic faith." We have already seen examples of this in the last section. We are asked to understand that the Bible is an ancient book and "obviously" errors will eventually creep in sooner or later. This however overlooks three crucial issues:

Firstly: We are not talking about a regular book here, rather we are searching for the authentic original word of God, and the Bible says:

"The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever."

Isaiah 40:8.

So if 48,000 errors have crept into the Bible then where is the unerring word of God which we have been promised? The answer is that God has sent it to us in His last Scripture, the Noble Qur'an.

Secondly: We are told in Luke 16:10 that Jesus (pbuh) said:

"He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much."

So, according to Jesus (pbuh) himself, there is no such thing as an "insignificant" error or an "insignificant" "slip of the pen." This is especially the case when remembered in light of Isaiah 40:8, or

"How can you say we (the Jews) are wise and the law of the Lord is with us, when in fact the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie?"

Jeremiah 8:8 (RSV).

Thirdly: If one of us were to be charged with the task of preserving our chosen and cherished ancient scripture by transcribing a fresh copy of it for future generations, could we imagine, even in our wildest fantasies that we would be so lax and totally careless in our duties that we would allow ourselves to introduce not one or two, but many thousands upon thousands of errors into the new copy? Is it possible that no one felt the need to review these scribe's work? Did they have no superiors to double and triple check their work? Did the scribes not review it themselves? To believe such claims is to assign to these scribes and their churches accusations of ineptitude and indifference of monumental proportions. There is no two ways about it. If we are not able to explain each and every one of the over 50,000 errors, one at a time and within the context of the Biblical text alone, then either the errors were introduced intentionally, or else they were introduced through ineptitude and indifference towards their most holy scripture that truly defies imagination.

For more, you may read the following books:

The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, by Bart D. Ehrman.

And The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, by David Friedrich Strauss, edited by Peter C. Hodgston, and translated by George Eliot.

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