File: IMG_7143.jpg (232 KB, 974x1200)

232 KB JPG

I see Muslims throw this argument at Christianity all the time and it’s complete bullshit.

First off, by the time Islam arose in the 7th century, the Bible had already been translated into dozens of languages such as Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ge’ez, etc and was copied thousands of times. Not to mention the fact that Christianity was divided into several squabbling sects that all disagreed with each other. It’s an impossibility for thousands of hostile and geographically separated Christian communities across Africa, Europe, and Asia to secretly meet, agree on exact textual changes, alter every single manuscript in the world identically somehow, and leave no trace of the original.

Second, the Quran itself repeatedly commands Jews and Christians to judge by the scriptures they currently possess (Surah 5:47) and tells Muhammad to consult the People of the Book if he is in doubt (Surah 10:94). If you believe that God commanded people to look at a text, that text must be reliable at the time of the command and thus by Muslims’ own standards it could not have been corrupted prior to the 7th century.

Third, early Muslim commentators al-Qasim al-Rassi initially argued that Christians were guilty of corrupting the interpretation, not the actual physical ink and paper. It was only later medieval Muslim polemicists like Ibn Hazm who shifted the claim to total physical corruption because they realized the actual biblical text explicitly contradicted the Quran.