Adi ibn Hatim al-Tai'i was a Christian who embraced
Islam during the time of Muhammad (pbuh). One day, the verse of
the Qur'an, Al-Tawba(9):30-31 was recited before him: "And
the Jews said: Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians said:
The Messiah is the son of Allah. That is their saying with their
[own] mouths. They imitate the saying of those who disbelieved
of old. Allah's curse be upon them. How deluded are they! They
took their rabbis and their monks as lords besides Allah, and
the Messiah son of Mary, but they were not commanded but to worship
One God. There is no God but Him. Be He Glorified from all that
they associate with Him!" When Adi heard this verse,
he commented: "O messenger of Allah, we did not worship them."
The prophet Muhammad (pbuh) replied: "Did they not make
matters lawful and unlawful for you?" (He was referring
to the power the monks and Rabbis gave themselves because of their
claimed divine inspiration to change laws and regulations). Adi
replied "Yes, they did!". Muhammad (pbuh) said: "That,
then, is the worshipping of them in association with Allah."
If we were to ask a Christian layman: "Where
did the Bible in your hands come from?," they would more
than likely tell us "from God!"
If you were now to ask him: "How do you know
it is from God? He will reply, "He inspired it to many people
who then wrote it down and preserved it for us."
If we now ask: "Are all of these inspired people
prophets?" He will answer: "No, they include both prophets
and other faultless 'saints', etc.."
"So these prophets and 'saints' signed their
names to these documents?" we would ask. They would respond
"No. But the Church knows who wrote them, and when they were
written, and has irrefutable proof regarding this matter."
If we were to now ask: "would it be possible
for any unscrupulous person who had access to the Bible in the
past to modify it's books?" They would reply: "Of course
not! The church has told us that even the much older Old Testament
was preserved with such diligent guardianship that they even counted
and recorded every single word and every single letter in it.
Thus, the church has justly reassured us that these words never
have, and never could be, changed by mankind, even by scribal
error or by accident."
"Let us now ask a different question" we
would continue. "Are the 'New and Old Testaments' in your
hands today the same "New and Old Testaments" available
to the apostles of Jesus (pbuh) till the present day?" They
would answer "Of course! There has always been only one Bible!"
This is the general gist of any such conversation
that is held between a Muslim and a Christian layman regarding
their Bible, it's composition and preservation. However, if we
were to ask their SCHOLARS the same set of questions we
would be amazed to find a tremendous chasm in the responses supplied
by the Christian laypeople as compared to their own Christian
scholars. If we were to go to a Western library and look up the
history of the Bible as recorded by their own eminent Christian
scholars throughout the ages, we would find that they tell us
that the books of the "New Testament" in our possession
today were not officially approved into the New Testament "canon"
of "inspired" books until many centuries after
the departure of Jesus. Tens of generations of Christians
literally lived and died after the departure of Jesus (pbuh) never
having known nor seen such a "New Testament" or "Bible"
as the one in our possession today.
After the departure of Jesus (pbuh), the apostles
and many other people began to write "gospels." Each
one of these authors would travel to other lands and be followed
by a number of people who would adopt this man's gospel as his
"Bible." Now, even the unscrupulous began to write "gospels"
and to claim they were from a given apostle or that they themselves
were receiving divine inspiration. Many new and innovative teachings
began now to be introduced into the religion of Jesus (pbuh).
Enmity, hatred and war began to break out between these groups.
Each person claimed that they alone held the "true"
Gospel of Jesus (pbuh) and no one else. Their beliefs now ran
the gamut, from those who believed Jesus (pbuh) to be a mortal
messenger of God and nothing more, to those who claimed partial
divinity for Jesus (pbuh), to those who claimed Jesus (pbuh) to
be a true god, but independent of God himself, to those who called
for a "Trinity," to those who claimed that Mary (pbuh)
too was a god, to those who believed in two gods, one good and
the other evil. This is when the war of the gospels began.
Everyone now cursed and damned everyone else. Christian
sects butchered one-another right and left. There were more great
debates and councils than you could shake a stick at. However,
none of these groups had sufficient might to totally dominate
and silence the others for good. They needed an undefeatable ally,
so they began to look to the Roman empire for support. The Roman
empire was a pagan empire, however, it was the dominant "superpower"
of the time. Anyone who could enlist it's aid would have an unconquerable
ally at their side and would themselves be undefeatable. On the
Roman side, Emperor Constantine was greatly
troubled by the swelling ranks of his Christian subjects and the
great division among their ranks which did not bode well for the
continued stability of his empire.
Most of these fringe sects now began to fade into
insignificance and the matter was now left between those who believed
in the Unity of God and those who believed in a "Trinity."
The Roman empire's support fluctuated between these two groups
for a long time until the Trinitarian's finally gained the upper
hand and all but wiped the Unitarians off the face of the earth.
They selected and collected the "truly inspired" gospels
into one volume which later became the "New Testament."
They burned all other gospels. Many sweeping campaigns if "Inquisition"
were launched. Everyone found possessing any of these "false"
Gospels was put to death and his Gospel burned.
This state of affairs continued for many centuries
and many people were convicted of heresy and burned to death at
the stake for a great variety of reasons. Yet others had their
land and property confiscated and were imprisoned. Physical torture
was casually used in order to extract a confession of guilt which
would then be used to justify a verdict of death by burning. Some
of the methods used to extract a confession of guilt were the
stretching of limbs on the rack, burning with live coals, and
the strappado (a vertical rack). Denial of the charges without
counterproof or refusal to confess resulted in the most severe
punishments such as life imprisonment or execution and total confiscation
of property. The number of those who fell victim to these inquisitions
are far to numerous to list here. Examples of these people include
the philosopher Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Joan of Arc, and the
religious order of knights called the Templars among countless
hundreds of thousands of others. If the Trinitarians did not have
the power to burn these people at the stake during their lifetime,
then they would exhume their bodies after their death and burn
them after their death (e.g. John Wycliffe). In the end, over
twelve million people were put to death by the Church inquisitions
(Apology for Muhammad and the Qur'an, John Davenport).
The inquisitions reached their height around the
middle of the fifteenth century in a massive and vicious persecution
campaign the major targets of which were the Marranos (converts
from Judaism) and Moriscos (converts from Islam), many of whom
were suspected of secretly adhering to their original faiths.
When things began to quiet down a little, the victor's historians
and philosophers wrote their history books explaining how they
managed to overcome the wicked, to defeat the blasphemers, and
to burn the devils, sorcerers, and witches at the stake. These
are the books which have had the greatest influence on the Western
history books we have in our hands today.
Whenever a scholar of Christianity would stumble
upon the truth and begin to write about it his works would invariably
be destroyed (e.g. Sir Isaac Newton,
the 16th century Spaniard Michael Servetus, etc.). In all cases,
it was recognized that there was no need to disprove the author's
evidence or refute it, rather, it was sufficient to muzzle the
opposition, burn their books, extract a confession from them under
duress, and expel them from society or kill them.
Even the Popes themselves would sometimes recognize
the falsehood of the "Trinity" and the fact that it
was a later fabrication of mankind. One of these popes, Honorius,
was officially cursed forty eight years after his death by the
Synod which was held in Istanbul in 680 C.E.
Sometimes it is an individual's own silence which
proves to be the most deafening proclamation. As we saw in the
previous chapters, for the period of a century and more the only
"Scriptures" used by the first Jewish followers of Jesus
were the Greek Septuagint translations (commonly
designated LXX) of the Hebrew Old Testament, "the Law and
the Prophets", supplemented by various Jewish apocrypha and
the Sibylline Oracles (150 BC to AD 180);
these were the only "authorities" appealed to by the
early "Church Fathers" when preaching their new faith.
Nowhere do they quote the books which we know today as the "New
Testament."
Naturally, if the "history" of the Trinitarian
Church regarding their chosen Gospels and what are claimed to
be the inspired writings of Jesus' first Apostles were true, and
these writings had indeed been accepted as authoritative at that
time, then they would have been the most precious and potent documents
of preaching for their doctrine. Undoubtedly, they would have
spoken of nothing else, but would have quoted them and appealed
to their authority at every turn as they have been doing through
the centuries since. But, for some 150 years, little or nothing
besides the Old Testament and these Oracles were known or quoted.
As said by the great critic, Solomon Reinach,
"With the exception of Papias, who speaks of a narrative by Mark, and a collection of sayings of Jesus, no Christian writer of the first half of the second century (i.e., up to 150 C.E.) quotes the Gospels or their reputed authors."
Orpheus, Reinach, p. 218
But let us back up a little and study how and when
the "inspired" books of the Bible were incorporated
into the Christian "canon" of the Bible. We have already
given a brief introduction in section 1.2.5 onwards of how the
current Gospels of the Bible were introduced as "authentic."
Let us now have a very brief look at some of the details. The
following was obtained from the book "Izhar ul Haqq"
among other references:
In the city of Nicea (modern:
Iznik, Turkey), in the year 325 AD, a great conference of Christian
theologians and religious scholars was convened under the order
of the Emperor Constantine to examine and define
the status of these countless Christian Gospels. After a thorough
investigation it was decided that the Epistle of Jude was genuine
and believable. The rest of our current books of the Bible were
declared doubtful. This was explicitly mentioned by Saint Jerome
in the introduction to his book. St. Jerome, of course, was a
Christian scholar and a great philosopher. He was born in 340
AD He translated the Bible into Latin. He was a famous bibliographer
and wrote many books on the Bible. Before the year 325 C.E., it
is known that the Gospel of Barnabas
was accepted as canonical in the churches of Alexandria. It is
known to have been circulated in the first two centuries after
Christ (pbuh) from the writings of Irenaeus
(130-200AD). After this council, four Gospels were selected out
of a minimum of three hundred available and the rest, including
the Gospel of Barnabas, were ordered utterly destroyed. All Gospels
written in Hebrew were also ordered destroyed.
In the year 364 AD, another council was held in Laodicea
for the same purpose. This conference of Christian scholars and
theologians not only confirmed the decision of the council of
Nicea regarding the authenticity of
the Epistle of Jude but also declared that the following six books
must also be added to the list of genuine and believable books:
The Book of Esther, The Epistle Of James, The Second Epistle of
Peter, The Second and Third Epistles of John, The Epistle of Paul
to the Hebrews. This conference pronounced their decision to the
public. The book of Revelations, however, remained out of the
list of the acknowledged books in both the councils.
In 397 another great conference was held called the
Council of Carthage. Augustine,
the celebrated Christian scholar, was among the one hundred and
twenty six learned participants. The members of this council confirmed
the decisions of the two previous Councils and also added the
following books to the list of the divine books: The Book of the
Songs of Solomon, The Book of Tobit, The Book of
Baruch, Ecclesiasticus, and The First and Second Books of Maccabees.
At the same time the members of this council decided
that the book of Baruch was a part of the book of Jeremiah because
Baruch was the deputy of Jeremiah. Therefore they did not include
the name of this book separately in the list.
Three more conferences were held after this in Trullo,
Florence and Trent (1545-63). The members
of these meetings confirmed the decision of the Council of Carthage.
The last two councils, however, wrote the name of the book of
Baruch separately.
After these councils nearly all the books which had
previously been doubtful among Christians were now included in
the list of acknowledged books.
The status of these books remained unchanged until
the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. The
Protestants repudiated the decisions of the councils and declared
that there are only 66 truly "inspired" books of God,
and not 73 as claimed by the Catholics. The following books were
to be rejected: The Book of Baruch, The Book of Tobit, The Letter
of Jude, The Songs of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, and
The First and Second Books of Maccabees. They excluded these books
from the list of acknowledged books.
The Protestants also rejected the decision of their
forbears regarding some chapters of the book of Esther. This book
consists of 16 chapters. They decided that the first nine chapters
and three verses from chapter ten were to be rejected. They based
their decision on the following six reasons:
1 These works were considered to be false even in
the original Hebrew and Chaldaean languages which were no longer
available.
2 The Jews did not acknowledge them as revealed books.
3 All the Christians have not acknowledged them as
believable.
4 Jerome said that these books were not reliable
and were insufficient to prove and support the doctrines of the
faith.
5 Klaus has openly said that these books were recited
but not in every place.
6 Eusebius specifically said in section 22 of his
fourth book that these books have been tampered with, and changed.
In particular the Second Book of Maccabees.
It now becomes apparent that books which had been
lost in the original and which only existed in translation were
erroneously acknowledged by thousands of theologians as divine
revelation. This state of affairs leads a non-Christian reader
to distrust the unanimous decisions of Christian scholars of both
the Catholic and the Protestant persuasions. The followers of
Catholic faith still believe in these books in blind pursuance
of their forebears.
It is a prerequisite of believing in a certain book
as divinely revealed that it is proved through infallible arguments
that the book in question was revealed through a prophet and that
it has been conveyed to us precisely in the same order without
any change through an uninterrupted chain of narrators. It is
not at all sufficient to attribute a book to a certain prophet
on the basis of suppositions and conjectures. Unsupported assertions
made by one or a few sects of people should not be, and cannot
be, accepted in this connection.
We have already seen how Catholic and Protestant
scholars differ on the question of the authenticity of some of
these books. There are yet more books of the Bible which have
been rejected by Christians. They include the Book of Revelation,
the Book of Genesis, the Book of Ascension, the Book of Mysteries,
the Book of Testament and the Book of Confession which are all
ascribed to the Prophet Moses. Similarly a fourth
Book of Ezra is claimed to be from the Prophet Ezra and a book
concerning Isaiah's ascension and revelation are ascribed to him.
In addition to the known book of Jeremiah, there is another book
attributed to him. There are numerous sayings which are claimed
to be from the Prophet Habakkuk. There are many songs which are
said to be from the Prophet Solomon. There are more
than 70 books, other than the present ones, of the new Testament,
which are ascribed to Jesus, Mary, the apostles, and their disciples.
In this day and age, some Christian scholars are even making the
case for the authenticity of the Gospel of Thomas as the "fifth"
Gospel (see "The Five Gospels,"
written over six years by 24 Christian scholars from some of the
USA and Canada's most prestigious universities)
The Christians of this age have claimed that these
books are false and forgeries. The Greek Church, Catholic church
and the Protestant Church are unanimous on this point. Similarly
the Greek Church claims that the third book of Ezra is a part
of the Old Testament and believes it to have been written by the
Prophet Ezra while the Protestant and Catholic Churches have declared
it false and fabricated.
Groliers encyclopedia says under the heading "New Testament, canon":
"The process by which the canon of the New
Testament was formed began in the 2d century, probably with a
collection of ten letters of Paul. Toward the end of that century,
Irenaeus argued for the unique authority of the portion of the
Canon called the Gospels. Acceptance of the other books came gradually.
The church in Egypt used more than the present 27 books,
and the Syriac-speaking churches fewer. The question of
an official canon became urgent during the 4th century. It was
mainly through the influence of Athanasius, bishop
of Alexandria, and because Jerome included the 27 books in his
Latin version of the Bible called the Vulgate, that the present
canon came to be accepted.."
Notice, as mentioned in the previous chapters, how
the writings of Paul were the first to be accepted by the Trinitarian
church. All other gospels were then either accepted or destroyed
based upon their conformance to the teachings of Paul.
As mentioned previously, Lobegott Friedrich Konstantin Von Tischendorf was one of the most eminent conservative Biblical scholars of the nineteenth century. One of his greatest lifelong achievements was his discovery of one of the oldest known Biblical manuscripts know to mankind, the "Codex Sinaiticus," with the monks of Saint Catherine's Monastery in Mount Sinai. In this oldest known copy of the Bible known to humanity we find contained two gospels which would later be discarded by a more enlightened generation. They are "The Epistle of Barnabas" (not to be confused with the Gospel of Barnabas), and "The Shepherd of Hermas." Today, of course, neither of these two books is to be found in our modern Bibles. As also seen in section 1.2, many later "insertions" of the church were exposed through the study of this manuscript. However, following in the tradition of true conservative Christian scholars before him, Tischendorf managed to apply 12,000 "corrections" to this manuscript's 110,000 lines before he was through "transcribing" it (see "secrets of Mount Sinai", James Bentley, Doubleday, NY, 1986, p. 95)
We have already seen in chapter one how "St.
Paul" all but totally obliterated the religion of Jesus (pbuh)
based upon the authority of his alleged "visions". We
then saw how his teachings were based more upon his personal philosophy
and beliefs than any attempt to cite words or actions of Jesus
(pbuh) himself (e.g. Galatians 2). We further saw how his followers
slaughtered all Christians who would not forsake the teachings
of the apostles for his teachings and how he was later made the
"majority author" of the Bible and countless authentic
gospels were burned and labeled apocrypha by his followers. Remember,
"St. Paul" is claimed to be the author of Romans, 1
and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Phillippians, Colossians,
1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews.
"All the evidence indicates that the words of Jesus were authoritative in the Church from the first, and this makes it the more remarkable that such scanty attention is paid to the words or works of Jesus in the earliest Christian writings, Paul's letters, the later Epistles, Hebrews, Revelation, and even Acts have little to report about them... Papias (ca. AD 130), the first person to actually name a written gospel, illustrates the point. Even though he defends Mark's gospel (Euseb. Hist. III.xxxix.15-16), and had himself appended a collection of Jesus tradition to his 'Interpretation of the Oracles of the Lord' (Euseb. Hist. III.xxxix.2-3), his own clear preference was for the oral tradition concerning Jesus, and the glimpses that Eusebius provides of Papias' Jesus tradition give no hint of his dependence on Mark. Neither do the more frequent citations of Jesus in the APOSTOLIC FATHERS, largely 'synoptic' in character show much dependence on our written gospels"
The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary
Volume, p. 137
The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible contains
much more revealing information in this regard, far too much to
reproduce here. The reader is strongly encouraged to locate a
copy in their local library and read the details.
The popularly accepted dates for the authorship of
the current books of the Bible are approximately as follows:
Approx. AD Event / Document
----------------------------------------------------------------
30 Crucifixion (Ascension) of Jesus
50 First Epistle of Paul
62 Last Epistle of Paul
65-70 Mark's Gospel
70 Epistle to Hebrews
80 Luke's Gospel
85-90 Matthew's Gospel
90 Acts
90-100 John's Gospel and First Epistle
95-100 Revelation
100 I & II Timothy and Titus
Uncertainty about James I & II, Peter, John and
Jude does not allow historians to estimate their origin dates.
(See "The Early Church And The New Testament," Irene
Allen, 1953). We begin to see the degree to which our current
religion of "Christianity" is based more on the teachings
and writings of Paul than anything else. The Gospels which are
popularly believed to have been written first were in actuality
written long after the writings of Paul. Now Christian scholars
are even beginning to uncover extensive evidence that these Gospels
were not even written by their claimed authors. The more Christian
scholars study the Bible, the more it becomes painfully apparent
that what is popularly referred to today as "Christianity"
should more appropriately be named "Paulanity."
As mentioned in section 2.1, even when a book is
claimed to be truly "inspired" we still find that the
Church cannot say with 100% assuredness who wrote this "inspired"
book. As mentioned there, the authors
of the RSV Bible by Collins say that the author of "Kings"
is "Unknown," the book of Isaiah is "Mainly credited
to Isaiah. Parts may have been written by others." Ecclesiastics:
"Author. Doubtful, but commonly assigned to Solomon."
Ruth: "Author. Not definitely known, perhaps Samuel."
and on and on. Is this how a truly unbiased mind defines "inspired
by God"? You be the judge.
"Verily, those who conceal that which Allah has sent down of the Book and purchase a small gain therewith, they eat into their bellies nothing but fire. Allah will not speak to them on the Day of Resurrection, nor will He purify them, and theirs will be a painful torment. Those are they who purchase error at the price of guidance, and torment at the price of pardon. What boldness (they show) for the Fire!"
The noble Qur'an, Al-Baqarah(2):174-175