Even in the Muslims own book, in surat al Ankabut, it says that they tell the Christians and the Jews “We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you.” It says that right in the 46 verse, that they say they believe in the New Testament of the Christians and the Old Testament of the Jews. If any Muslim tells you that the Bible is corrupted, ask them why the Muslims in their own book say the believe in it!
And in the tafsir (explanation) for this verse in al Bukhari, it says that a group of Quraish (Mohammad’s tribe) found a Christian man who was the most trustworthy of the reciters from among the Christians to recite the Bible, and they still found some of what he said could be untrue through no fault of his own. So the verse is really saying “We believe in what you believe”, but then the tafsir says that they do not, because in that tafsir “he was narrating from manuscripts which he thought were good, but they contained fabricated material, because they did not have people who were so conscientious in memorizing the Scriptures by heart as the people of this great Ummah.”
This is the danger in talking to Muslims about their book and what it says about the Bible, because they will point to these verses like in al Ankabut to make you think like they confirm what your religion says, but they don’t actually, and when you read their explanation it makes no sense: He was the most trustworthy of the Christians to recite the book, but he didn’t learn it well enough to know it? Then how was he trustworthy? And of course we have older copies of all of the things that they say are fake than any of the copies of their own book. So I think the Muslims might put their doubt on our Holy Bible because they know it is older and more preserved than their own book, which was written not even always on paper but on scraps of animal bone, and other things that were scattered. Usman collected the Qurans in his time and made one edition and this is what the Muslims mostly know today, but they don’t think this is “corruption” of their book like they think it is of our book, except we did not destroy anything! This is why you can still find the variations in the canon between the churches, or the very old books and variations in them. Muslims used to have this in their Quran and you can still see it if you know about some controversies of the text (like the Quran in Yemen that they found that is different, or the verses that used to be in it but are not now according to the ancient Christians who debated with the Muslims in those days in Damacus, like Yuhanna al Dmashqi). But they burned all their old texts and say that we “corrupted” ours instead.
Nonsense. Never listen to this nonsense. Nobody told Mohammad that the monks and priests memorise from the old copies from before Islam all the Psalms and Gospels and everything? It is common in places in the east because no one knew how to read and still some don’t, so they would learn by memory. In the Coptic church especially there is the tradition where the chanter is blind, because it helps him to learn the melodies better. This is very old tradition, and helps with memory.** It is not our fault that Mohammad doesn’t know these things. **Didn’t his own arabs also memorise because most people could not read or write? The Christian man in the tafsir story is probably also an arab. I don’t know…maybe they want to claim that their brains work better beceause they are Muslims. Hahaha.
