Sermon Tone Analysis

*Does the Bible or the Qur'an have stronger historical corroboration?

\\ How would you support your argument, using specific examples?*

*By Toby Jepson*

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*Introduction*

Historical corroboration is vital for both the Bible and the Qur'an, as both of them talk about people, places and events - the stuff of history.

If they cannot be trusted on the hard facts of who did what, when and where, there is little reason to trust them on the more important issues of who God is and what he requires of us.

This idea of historical corroboration, however, is more suited to the Western mind than the Muslim one.

The Muslim seems more interested in the majesty of the book and the doctrines contained and is often suspicious of attempts to evaluate the Qur'an from the viewpoint of the historian.

*Preliminary Issues to be Considered*

Before embarking on the question of which book has more historical credibility, we must consider their respective natures, as the Bible and the Qur'an are not identical in literary genre.

The Bible is approximately four times the length of the Qur'an, so it is not surprising that more historical details are contained within its pages.

Furthermore, the whole perspective of the Bible is more historical than that of the Qur'an.

Much of the Bible records with comment those events of history that are relevant to God's working with mankind, so that readers can learn from the examples and mistakes of the protagonists.

The Qur'an in contrast has proportionally far more legal decisions than the Bible.

This intentional difference in content is one reason why the Bible is more easily evaluated historically, as it simply contains more historical facts that can be tested against other sources.

The temporal relationship of the two books has an important bearing on the discussion.

The Bible came first and is therefore independent of the Qur'an.

The Qur'an came later into a situation where there was ample opportunity for Muhammad to learn of biblical history from the Jews and Christians he met.

In addition to this, the Qur'an came claiming to agree completely with the 'former revelations', so it is expected for it to agree on points of history.

Therefore the credibility of the Qur'an is not really enhanced if it accurately records events that are already mentioned in the Bible.

Its historicity can be best evaluated when it records events not mentioned in the Bible, for here it can be considered independently.

*What is History?*

We might like to think that history is something completely objective that we simply go out to recover.

Of course this is the ideal, where our opinion of what happened conforms fully to what really did happen, but in reality we are hampered by several factors.

Sparse information often gives us a partial understanding.

Our sources may be biased, mistaken or misinterpreted.

The depth of our own historical knowledge will help or hinder in interpreting evidence.

Our presuppositions are hard to shake off and it is easy to read into sources that which we want to be there.

Often we have a vested interest in a particular conclusion and this is rarely seen so acutely as in religion - it simply isn't attractive to disprove your own religion.

But unless we look at the two books allowing that either may be correct, we may as well not bother.

Humans have an unbelievable ability to 'prove' in their own minds that which they want to be true.

*Methods of Historical Corroboration*

There are three main categories of historical sources that I wish to use.

The first is manuscript support.

This helps us to see if the present-day works accurately reflect their original texts.

The second is other written sources.

These may take the form of inscriptions or documents that giving insight into the periods concerned.

The third is other archaeological data.

In this category I include things such as data from digs showing that a particular town was in existence at the time claimed, or the approximate date of destruction in battle.

In the rest of the paper I will give specific examples from each category.

There are many more that could be included, but for the sake of space I shall limit myself to a few that are particularly significant.

[1]

*Manuscript Support*

Looking firstly at the Qur'an, I have not accepted the common Muslim assertion that widespread memorisation of the Qur'an proves its authenticity.

This proves little except that virtually all Muslims today read the same text.

It tells us nothing of the situation in the 7th century.

We are told from the hadith that Abu Bakr was the first to collate the texts of the Qur'an into one codex soon after Muhammad's death.

This is said to have been passed on down to Umar, then Hafsa.

At the time of Uthman, we are told, the Muslims of Sha'm and Iraq got together to conquer Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The general in charge became afraid of their differences in recitation, so he appealed to Uthman to help.

Uthman got the codex from Hafsa and directed that perfect copies be made.

Then we are told:

/Uthman// sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur'anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt./

[2]

This tells us that already there were variants in the Qur'an.

We will never know exactly what they were, as the evidence has been burnt.

Muslims may reply that the differences were simply those of vowelling, not the consonantal text.

However, the earliest manuscripts make it clear that vowels were rarely included and there was even a lack of the markings to distinguish between different consonants.

[3] Therefore, these differences must have been large enough to show up even in a primitive consonantal text.

The next question to ask is whether we have any of Uthman's perfect copies.

Muslims often counter that there are two, one in the Topkapi museum in Istanbul and one in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

However, most scholars date them to the 9th century.

[4] Indeed, non-Muslim scholars in general hold the oldest complete Qur'an to be the Ma'il copy in the British Library, dated to 790AD.

Recent work on Qur'anic manuscripts found in Sana'a, Yemen, indicates that there was still considerable textual modification since the time of Uthman.

These manuscripts, possibly from the early 8th century, show significant variation from the text used today.

Whole sections are missing and added in with a much later hand.

Passages that today read 'Say...' (a divine command to Muhammad) are seen to have once been 'he said...' or 'they said...', indicating a possible attributing of the words of humans to Allah.

Over 1,000 variants have been found within the first 83 surahs alone.

[5]

Turning to the Bible, is the situation any different?

The earliest complete New Testament manuscripts are from the 4th century AD, with the Codex Sinaiticus in the British Library and the Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican Library.

The Chester Beatty papyri from around 200AD contain major portions of the NT.

The earliest complete Old Testament manuscript is the Codex Babylonicus Petropolitanus (around 1000AD), although many substantial manuscripts date much earlier, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[6]

There are certainly variant readings in Bible manuscripts.

Indeed, a whole science of textual criticism has grown up in Christian scholarship to determine which reading is the correct one when there is any doubt.

So what can we conclude?

Is the Bible hopelessly corrupt, making determination of its original teachings all but impossible?

We must of course know the reasons for these variants and the lack of early manuscripts.

Can the situation be adequately explained or is it an embarrassment best not talked about?

For the Bible, there are many good reasons.

Papyrus, the medium of writing in the 1st century and before, disintegrated easily.

There are no original manuscripts of any work of this period.

Tacitus, Caesar and Pliny to name three, have gaps of 750-1200 years between date of writing and first surviving manuscript.

[7] There are also many more NT manuscripts than there are of other works, leading to the comment that:

/...to be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament./

[8]

The manuscript variants are in the vast majority the unintentional type that are to be expected with repeated copying of manuscripts by hand.

They increase in number with time so that the earliest manuscripts are the most accurate and valuable.

No important doctrine hangs on a variant and textual criticism has been able to determine the correct reading with confidence in virtually all cases.

In addition to this, Christianity was at first a persecuted religion with no official protection.

In its first 300 years, the Christian community was often at risk of having its scriptures confiscated and destroyed.

However, with the Qur'an things are different.

In the years between Jesus and Muhammad, things changed.

Parchment became the main writing medium, far more durable than papyrus.

The great 4th century NT codices are still in pristine condition today.

Thus it is embarrassing for Islam if no Uthmanic manuscripts can be produced.

Secondly, the Qur'anic variants known are in the earliest manuscripts.

The Yemeni manuscripts mentioned above are perhaps the earliest in existence and the hadith material shows that Uthman had many variants to weed out, although we may never know what they all were.

This is the opposite to the biblical position, where variants crept in with time.

In the Qur'an, we see the text being standardised with time.

Thirdly, Islam from the time of the hijrah had power, at least in certain places.

Muslims cannot use the valid excuse that Christians have, that persecution may have destroyed many important manuscripts.

*Other Documentary Support*

By far the greatest volume of information concerning Arabia in the time of Muhammad comes from Muslim traditions.