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hasantas
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Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three persons!
Evidence of Islam's claim that Jewish and Christian Scripture is deliberately corrupted?
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JimmyDFG
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Since when is a Spirit a person?
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Hatikvah
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The Holy Spirit has been considered a Person by Christians, and that plays an essential part in our understanding of the Trinity. However, “words like ‘essence’, ‘substance’, ‘nature’, [and] ‘person’ bore a variety of meanings drawn from pre-Christian philosophers…” That was controversial in the pre-Nicene era.
The Trinity “holds that God is three consubstantial persons or hypostases—the Father, the Son…, and the Holy Spirit—as ‘one God in three Divine Persons’. The three persons are distinct, yet are one substance, essence or nature.” The word “Person” is now defined, as it has been defined by pre-Nicene theologians like Origen and Tertullian, as meaning “Being,” but the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of the same substance or essence, meaning one overall nature, one God.
(Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, Armenian Liturgical English Translation)
(Athanasian Creed)
See, a “force” or “power” cannot speak, nor preach, nor is it referred to as a “He.” If He were not a person, He would not be referred to as Lord.
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MartinJordan
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Yes.
So not Gods.
Now tell me what did Jesus mean when he said to Baptize in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit? It’s in your Bible is it not?
Peace be with you.
MJ
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Michael_Mayo
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On another forum I am in a discussion with someone who has read the Gnostic writings of the Dead Sea scrolls. This person is convinced that Judas was the only disciple to fully understand Jesus and he did not betray Jesus. Rather, he followed the instruction of Jesus. The others saw Judas as a threat and did not understand the deeper teachings and stoned him ( but changed his name to Stephen in Acts), So Paul and others went on to form what came to be orthodoxy, something very different from Gnosticism. I may have gotten some of that wrong. I mean it is a pretty wild theory. But the Dead Sea Scrolls are also pretty wild. But if one prefers them the logical next step is that what became our canon of scripture is incomplete, corrupt and misleading. Gnosis.org has those writings but they are kind of wacky.The question is. Why would Christians and Jews “deliberately” corrupt Scripture"?
What is there to gain?
Seems rather childish ranting to me.
MJ
The early Christians were quite diverse and we can see the tensions in the epistles as well as the non canonical gospels, letters, and apocalyptic writings.
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ThundersnowIV
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Hasantas…you are confused about the Holy Trinity. There is only ONE God. Just as there is only one of you. You may be a son/daughter…a husband or a father. But there is only ONE Hasantas.
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MartinJordan
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Hastantas, where are you?
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Hatikvah
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I remember this thread like it was yesterday. 
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Dave_Noonan
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There aren’t any gnostic writings among the Dead Sea Scrolls, so I think there’s some big confusion there. Perhaps your dialogue partner is thinking of the Nag Hammadi texts?
Getting back to the OP, one of the things the Dead Sea Scrolls do show is how corruptions of various types have indeed entered into the Biblical texts. But how would you ever demonstrate that those corruptions are intentional? I’m not sure how you would prove that.
One could perhaps argue that the process of translation is corrupting and maybe there it’s easier to prove intent. For example, one could compare the text of the Septuagint and the Vulgate to the Hebrew text and see clearly how the translators have “dressed up” the text at various points for theological reasons. (A simple hortus magically becomes a paradisus in Genesis, for example.) In other cases, the translators simply don’t understand the underlying Hebrew very well, but that seems to me like just the opposite of a intentional corruption—it’s a corruption out of ignorance.
But most Christians don’t rely on the Septuagint or Vulgate as their source texts for the Old Testament, so that’s a fairly moot point. One could argue that the English translations are corrupt or corrupting I suppose.
In fairness to Muslims, I’ve certainly heard Muslims say that the texts of the Bible are corrupted, but I’ve never ever heard a Muslim say that the corruption is intentional. I’m no expert on Islam, but I’ve never heard that. The simple assertion that the text of the Bible is corrupt is accurate, but one would then have to ask about and discuss the seriousness of the corruption and how much it matters.
I think for Muslims, this statement is more an assertion about the comparative accuracy of the transmission of the Quran, which is a different discussion. They would argue that comparatively speaking, the transmission history of the Quran is perfect, I think, while the transmission history of the Bible is problematic. And they’d certainly be right about the second half of the assertion.
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Dave_Noonan
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Wouldn’t this be the heresy of modalism? Is this what Catholics believe?
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toaslan
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Yes, modalism is incorrect; but I assumed Thundersnow was only pointing out how relationship is the key to to God’s triune-ness. For as Thomas Aquinas said, there is no difference within God except that of relationship, the relationship among Father, Son and Spirit. There is one will, one intellect, one substance all existing as One God, I AM. What distinguishes the Three Persons from one another is the quality of relationship and nothing else or other.
The Father’s Word is so lovely that that Love is the Spirit, from all eternity. These are the three Persons who Is One God.
At some point we admit, this is all a great mystery: it’s true, and it’s mysterious. We’ll get in fullness what we merely taste here on earth, when we are face to Face.
As to the OP: I see on this thread no evidence given that Jews or Christians deliberately corrupted the bible, right?
I see admission that there is some innocent “corruption” of the bible–however, there was a statistic given that the “corruption” is statistically what I would call insignificant; that in fact today’s bible is 98-99% pure, which statistic rises from scholarly and exhaustive comparison across huge amounts of ancient sources, including the DSS. (I would tend to think that this very purity could hardly be expected over two millenia in the normal course of events, and may itself point to the special nature and special care of these writings.)
I take it that the “reason” Islam gives for the supposed corruption is an a priori reason, that is, it must be so, otherwise the Q’uran would be corrupt; and since the Q’uran is assumed to be true, anything which doesn’t agree with it is, by that very fact, false.
Is this the sum and total of the Islamic case against the Bible?
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hasantas
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There are three distinct persons (Father: unique God, Son: a human and a prophet, Holy Spirit: an angel) so how could we reconcile each three persons to coalesce in one? If you say/assume something about three attributes/personalities of God so that could be understood by anyway. But these three persons(Father, Son and holy Spirit) have distinct real presence! God has one unconditional eternal essence but not three. Presence of Son and Holy Spirit could be through space and time which conflict with eternity.
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Dave_Noonan
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This statistic seems highly suspect to me, so I would be very curious as to its source. Perhaps one could say that for the New Testament only? But then the DDS predate the New Testament.
Since there are, for example multiple versions of the same book which vary drastically (some versions of Jeremiah, such as the one found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, are about 15% shorter than the one found in Bibles today) I don’t think there’s any way you could say that 98-99% is correct. Further, it is difficult to even say which is the “pure” version against which one measures “purity”. Issues of textual criticism are so complex, I’m not sure how one would be even able to establish a gage for “purity”. I guess if a critical edition of the Old Testament were ever published, one could begin to try to compute it, but until that day, it would really be impossible to say.
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TheAtheist
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While on another forum, i was actually surprised to see something akin to this thread appear…but in its reverse format… I’m reproducing one of the arguments made against the Jewish Torah, not as an advocate for such a position, but rather to highlight the ideas running through the heads of those who believe this to be true.
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Reuben_J
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The influence of ‘foreign gods’ was already experienced in the time of King Solomon when he became more secular and political. He married foreign wives who brought their religious belief. Solomon it seemed did accommodate them by giving them freedom to practice their belief. In fact, he even allowed it to be part of his court.
Later prophet Elijah challenge to the priests of Baal was a good example of how the religion of Judaism had been so much corrupted.
There were still idolatrous priests and pretty much of the utensils being used in Baal worship were kept in the temple in the vessels.
There was no evidence that the Torah was completely lost. It just that eventually it was not the official religion anymore which was a deviation of what the Hebrew kings should be.
It was not impossible for individual Hebrews and faithful priests in the whole nation to keep their own copies of the Torah that when a good king came into power like King Josiah, he could start the reformation of the adulterated religion.
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TheAtheist
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I have a feeling that the denizens of the website i took that from would probably nod in approval to your statements, as they would take it as a sign of the necessity of the revelation given to their Mohammed in order to fix the transmission of knowledge from Yahweh/Allah/However you wish to name It.
And herein lies the problem, at least for me.
There comes a particular point in time when textual, historical, and archaeological evidence ends and at best we are left with several alternative conjectures.
And depending on one’s faith commitments, the conjecture chosen just so happens to fit in line with a specific communities’ internal narrative.
Because all of you - Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, hell even New Atheist, whatever - have a specific a priori belief that colors the way one looks at pieces of evidence and or gaps in the historical record.
For yourself and those of the Jewish faith, i’m sure this isn’t much of the an issue. To the Muslims, who put such a powerful emphasis on the supposed homogeneity of their holy text - this is apparently a piece of evidence that bears out the truth of their faith.
What i personally find fascinating is that these explanations, whether we speak about the Historicity of Jesus of Nazareth (a thing most Christians like to bring up), the textual uniformity of the Quran (which Muslims like to bring up), etc. etc. are usually taken by members within a specific faith community as being strong pieces of evidence for the veracity of their faith…
…except that for those existing outside of that community, those pieces of evidence aren’t taken as such.
So whenever I see any sort of Intra-religious debate, I can’t help but note that people end up foisting up talking points that…well… really on work on an opponent if they happen to share your worldview.
If the don’t, then whatever is “admissible evidence” for one religious tradition is invalidated in another.
It makes it all look like a fool’s errand, because the criteria for what is and is not valid is different for both sides.
That’s the equivalent of say, deciding you want to play a sport with both teams using different sets of rules…
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Dave_Noonan
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I guess I’m less pessimistic that people can’t be both religious and at least somewhat objective about the evidence. Certainly pointing out that the text of the Old Testament isn’t exactly nailed down would seem threatening to a fundamentalist, but I think most Christians would take this in stride, no?
Incidentally, a fantastic source for all the differences between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Masoretic Text is Shoulson’s The Torah: Jewish and Samaritan versions compared.
As I tried to explain in my earlier post, there are indeed lots and lots of differences in the Old Testament witnesses (probably tens of thousands) and Christians should be honest and above-board about them. I understand that Muslims are very committed to the accuracy of the transmission of the Quran, but it’s important that they not assume that all Christians make the same types of claims about the Bible. Certainly fundamentalists do, but that’s not all Christians.
The first step to evaluating these differences would be to publish a critical edition of the Old Testament, which has never been done. Erasmus did this for the New Testament already in the 16th century, so it’s well past time.
Thinking people (beginning with Ibn Ezra in the twelfth century) haven’t attributed the Torah to Moses for a very long time, and most scholars would say that the present form of the Torah is post-exilic at best. But that’s still a gap of probably 300-ish years or so.
This is more or less accurate, but I would part ways that this makes for a huge theological difference. In some cases, it’s easier to determine whether someone has altered/distorted/goofed with the text and in some places it’s very difficult. Most of the differences between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Masoretic Text seem to involve glorifying northerners at the expense of southerners, but this one is indeed curious and accurately stated. I think the best we can say is that there is a difference. I do think the Muslim author thinks this would be a bigger deal to the average Christian that it actually is. But I can understand why it would be a big deal to Muslims and many Jews.
Incidentally, a fantastic source for all the differences between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Masoretic Text is Shoulson’s The Torah: Jewish and Samaritan versions compared.
Most scholars think this is actually the book of Deuteronomy that is “discovered” by Josiah. While the chain of Tawatur is indeed a big deal behind claims for the accuracy of the Quran, I don’t really think it’s really such a big deal for reasonable Christians, or I guess it’s isn’t for me at least. And I’m not sure who the Jews are that have made these claims, but I suppose it’s possible that some Jews have said this.
As I tried to explain in my earlier post, there are indeed lots and lots of differences in the Old Testament witnesses (probably tens of thousands) and Christians should be honest and above-board about them. I understand that Muslims are very committed to the accuracy of the transmission of the Quran, but it’s important that they not assume that all Christians make the same types of claims about the Bible. Certainly fundamentalists do, but that’s not all Christians.
The first step to evaluating these differences would be to publish a critical edition of the Old Testament, which has never been done. Erasmus did this for the New Testament already in the 16th century, so it’s well past time.
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TheAtheist
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But that is kind of the point David.
For you guys and the Jews, the variations found within the Torah/Old Testament aren’t that big of a deal due to a variety of other factors - tradition being a huge variable.
But to the Muslims, the historical transmission of the text is a key point as to what comprises a “proper” religion or not. It is a point of criteria that the rest of you don’t share.
This is what I mean by saying you and they are playing by different sets of rules.
For them - a true religion must have an inerrant book.
You guys don’t have that point of criteria. And the things you value as signposts to Truth are just as meaningless to them.
Thanks for the book tip!
The thing of it is - i’ve also heard from the Orthodox when they are in a rather uncharitable mood toward the Jews that the Masoretes actually “changed” the Old Testament - or specifically choose “less Christological” terms to apparently undercut Christianity.
Hence the quote i made on this thread a while back taken from an Orthodox thread:
And btw - the Western Converts to Islam actually know about this particular controversey as well… which further validates in their minds that truth of their religious beliefs.
Really? I’m surprised neither a Jewish, nor Christian, nor Secular scholar has tried to do as such.
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Dave_Noonan
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Yes, one thing that fundamentalist Christians and Muslims have in common! For sure; different values, different rules, different ideas about “what counts.” So it’s apples and oranges. But huge swaths of Christianity don’t require an inerrant book.
You will also get the same type argument from a few Catholics here and there who try to argue that the Vulgate is more reliable than the Masoretic Text and that the Masoretes changed the text to make it less Christological. But the Dead Sea Scrolls largely (maybe 70% of the time) support readings from the Masoretic Text instead of the Septuagint— which is turn is what usually is behind the Vulgate—and thus these claims are almost always made by people who just don’t understand the nature or content of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Vulgate for that matter.
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Reuben_J
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Obviously so, as this is the main theme of Islam. The Quran is non-negotiable and all of their argument based on whether it is or not in it.
Fair enough, which is exactly the point in religions, Islam being the exception, where much of the belief is based on faith, not on empirical evidence.
And that’s what I observe about Muslims’ argument; that it based solely on the inerrancy of the Quran. It is true if it in in the Quran, and false if it is not. Of course, it does not matter whether the content is true or not.
They would have to deal with newer religion, like Bahaism, which scripture is still fresh from the oven, the ink in the original manuscript probably have not dried yet.
How would copies of the Quran measured up when compared with them? So that argument is not always foolproof.
Probably it is not that simple. For Christianity, there are many factors as to its veracity. The Bible is composed of writings throughout the millennia and it is an acceptable notion that they are not hundred percent exact duplicate copies of the original. The passage of time where there were no fax machines and printers to make sure of that.
This is unlike the Quran which is supposed to be verbatim words of Allah. It is more of a problem for them. Thus some of the earlier manuscripts of the Quran available are not up for scrutiny.
Again, it is not an expectation, except for Islam, that people outside of the believers’ community should equally accept the evidence, for whatever it takes, to be as the same level with them.
That’s why there is no value in inter-religious debate. It has become more about the person talking skill, an oratory performance, which eventually ends in ‘my religion is right, your religion is wrong’. It perhaps seldom attracts people of genuine religious / theological standing because of that reason.
Of course there is the benefit of at least it presents a forum for making clarification of one’s belief.
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