Hey everyone. Islam teaches that the Bible has become corrupted and changed. This really worries me. I know that we do not have any of the original manuscripts of the Bible and that is one thing that worries me. Plus, don’t theologians and such admit that there are some errors in the Bible? From what I understand, a word or phrase is changed here and there but it’s mostly grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors.
This is a common claim that is actually a logical fallacy in and of itself.
In Islam, as it does in the minds of many sola scripturian Christians, the ultimate and purest form of revelation is holy writ–which for Muslims is the Quran. Religion must therefore be based upon what is written, and therefore what is written must be beyond error to the highest degree.
This is not the same with Catholicism and Judaism. While both religious groups hold the Bible as inspired of God and authoritative, the Scriptures are not viewed as the basis of religion. Instead, holy writ is the
product of both religions.
Judaism is based on a series of theophanies of God. These theophanies were experienced by Abraham and the other patriarchs. Some of the greatest of all theophanies and the longest lasting series of them were those experienced by Moses. Even the nation of Israel as a whole experienced a theophany in fire and smoke when they camped at the foot of Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments.
The religion of the Jews was built from here, and eventually texts they held as sacred or used in public worship (like the Psalms) became part of the Hebrew Scriptures. Their religion is not based on the Scriptures. On the contrary, the Scriptures are based on Judaism.
The same is true with the Church. The texts of the New Testament did not come first, appearing out of nowhere. People didn’t stumble upon these books or find them hidden in the ground and decided to base a religion upon what they read.
Instead the religion of the Church is based on a person, Jesus Christ. In Jesus the first Christians experienced an epiphany. Unlike the theophanies of the Old Testament period in which miraculous manifestations signaled God’s presence among mortals, God came to us in the person of Jesus, and those who came to see this revelation of God in Jesus (which is what an epiphany is) became what we today call “Christians.”
They didn’t do this because they read about Jesus in a book. In fact this happened before any of the books of the New Testament were written. Like Judaism before it, the religion of Christianity came first and faithful members therein wrote the texts that Church leaders eventually declared as canon.
What does this have to do with changes to the Bible? Only that in both cases, both Jews and Christians believe that the entire process of producing these books–which includes some editing down through the centuries–was part of the inspiration process. It is the condition they were in when they became officially canonized that contains the fullness of the Word of God.
Over the years some of the Bible books were made up of several being combined. In other cases some explanation may have been added within the text (the Dead Sea Scrolls shows that small portions of Isaiah came to us this way, placing explanatory information somewhat similar to our modern footnotes into the final form we have today).
So has there been change? Not since the books were finalized and accepted as canon, no. Did the process of producing them up to this stage include change? Of course. For example the last book of Moses, Deuteronomy, ends with a description of his death and events that immediately followed. These were clearly additions–but they were inspired additions and necessary since God inspired them all the same.
Have they been corrupted? No. The Dead Sea Scrolls would have proven that. They are 1000 years older than any text we had on hand before the 1950s. Except for a few of these editorial refinements, we have essentially what the original authors and editors developed and wrote down.
The reason they raise this point is that they think we view written texts the way they do, as the ultimate revelation from God. As Christians we do not hold the Bible as God’s ultimate revelation–Jesus Christ is that ultimate revelation, a Person and not a Book.
So even if minor errors or mistakes have crept in (and we have discovered such over the years which is why we make revised translations from time to time) it doesn’t change that upon which our religion is based–or should I say upon Whom our religion is based: Jesus.
Our religion is not based on what is written in Scripture. It is Scripture that is based on what is written by God onto our hearts.
). You can imagine going through all that interpretation is enough, but the act of translation is so subjective too in expressing intent. Just pick up any English copy of the Illiad, each translator has his own ideas of what a word should be translated as and with what intent.
