“The gospels are all priestly forgeries over a century after their pretended dates.” Joseph Wheless, Historian and Lawyer (1868-1950)
The Christian fathers “deemed it a pious act to employ deception and fraud in support of piety” Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, Church Historian (1693-1755)
“Christianity and Paganism, when rightly understood, differed in nonessential points, but had a common origin, and really were one and the same religion” Ammonius Saccas , Celebrated philosopher, (160AD-242AD)
“Several of the most important doctrinal parts of corrupt modern Christianity are nothing more than scraps of the Heathen mythologies of various kinds taught by different nations, long previous to the Christian era” Godfrey Higgins, Historian and English magistrate (1972 – 1833)
“The Christian religion contains nothing but what Christians hold in common with heathen; nothing new” Celsus, Greek Philosopher (2nd century)
“We Christians neither want nor worship crosses as the Pagans do” Minucius Felix (Latin apologist author, 2nd Century and early 3rd century)
“that it was not so much the empire that was brought over to the faith, as the faith that was brought over to the empire; not the Pagans who were converted to Christianity, but Christianity that was converted to Paganism” M . Turretin , Christian advocate, 400AD
“It mightily affects me to see how many there were in the earliest times of the Church, who considered it as a capital exploit to lend to heavenly truth the help of their own inventions, in order that the new doctrine might be more readily received by the wise among the Gentiles. These officious lies, they were wont to say, were devised for a good end” Isaac De Casaubon, Classical scholar and philologist (1559 – 1614)
“The early Christians were charged with being a sect of sun-worshippers” Emperor Hadrian, Roman Emperor (76AD-138AD)
For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
Matthew 5:18
The Prophet Jesus peace be upon him,
came to complete the law of the ancient prophets
Without decrease or increase
So the Old Testament cannot be repealed
Why such variance in viewpoints? To begin with, different theological camps disagree on which books should be included in the Bible. One camp’s apocrypha is another’s scripture. Secondly, even among those books that have been canonized, the many variant source texts lack uniformity. This lack of uniformity is so ubiquitous that The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible states, “It is safe to say that there is not one sentence in the NT in which the MS [manuscript] tradition is wholly uniform.”[2]
Not one sentence? We can’t trust a single sentence of the Bible? Hard to believe.
Maybe
The fact is that there are over 5700 Greek manuscripts of all or part of the New Testament.[3] Furthermore, “no two of these manuscripts are exactly alike in all their particulars…. And some of these differences are significant.”[4] Factor in roughly ten thousand manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate, add the many other ancient variants (i.e., Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Nubian, Gothic, Slavonic), and what do we have?
A lot of manuscripts
A lot of manuscripts that fail to correspond in places and not infrequently contradict one another. Scholars estimate the number of manuscript variants in the hundreds of thousands, some estimating as high as 400,000.[5] In Bart D. Ehrman’s now famous words, “Possibly it is easiest to put the matter in comparative terms: there are more differences in our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.”[6]
How did this happen?
Poor record keeping. Dishonesty. Incompetence. Doctrinal prejudice. Take your pick.
None of the original manuscripts have survived from the early Christian period.[7]/[8] The most ancient complete manuscripts (Vatican MS. No. 1209 and the Sinaitic Syriac Codex) date from the fourth century, three hundred years after Jesus’ ministry. But the originals? Lost. And the copies of the originals? Also lost. Our most ancient manuscripts, in other words, are copies of the copies of the copies of nobody-knows-just-how-many copies of the originals.
No wonder they differ
In the best of hands, copying errors would be no surprise. However, New Testament manuscripts were not in the best of hands. During the period of Christian origins, scribes were untrained, unreliable, incompetent, and in some cases illiterate.[9] Those who were visually impaired could have made errors with look-alike letters and words, while those who were hearing-impaired may have erred in recording scripture as it was read aloud. Frequently scribes were overworked, and hence inclined to the errors that accompany fatigue.
In the words of Metzger and Ehrman, “Since most, if not all, of them [the scribes] would have been amateurs in the art of copying, a relatively large number of mistakes no doubt crept into their texts as they reproduced them.”[10] Worse yet, some scribes allowed doctrinal prejudice to influence their transmission of scripture.[11] As Ehrman states, “The scribes who copied the texts changed them.”[12] More specifically, “The number of deliberate alterations made in the interest of doctrine is difficult to assess.”[13] And even more specifically, “In the technical parlance of textual criticism—which I retain for its significant ironies—these scribes ‘corrupted’ their texts for theological reasons.”[14]
Errors were introduced in the form of additions, deletions, substitutions and modifications, most commonly of words or lines, but occasionally of entire verses.[15] [16] In fact, “numerous changes and accretions came into the text,”[17] with the result that “all known witnesses of the New Testament are to a greater or lesser extent mixed texts, and even several of the earliest manuscripts are not free from egregious errors.”[18]
In Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman presents persuasive evidence that the story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:12) and the last twelve verses of Mark were not in the original gospels, but added by later scribes.[19] Furthermore, these examples “represent just two out of thousands of places in which the manuscripts of the New Testament came to be changed by scribes.”[20]
In fact, entire books of the Bible were forged.[21] This doesn’t mean their content is necessarily wrong, but it certainly doesn’t mean it’s right. So which books were forged? Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, 1 and 2 Peter, and Jude—a whopping nine of the twenty-seven New Testament books and epistles—are to one degree or another suspect.[22]
Forged books? In the Bible?
Why are we not surprised? After all, even the gospel authors are unknown. In fact, they’re anonymous.[23] Biblical scholars rarely, if ever, ascribe gospel authorship to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. As Ehrman tells us, “Most scholars today have abandoned these identifications, and recognize that the books were written by otherwise unknown but relatively well-educated Greek-speaking (and writing) Christians during the second half of the first century.”[24] Graham Stanton affirms, “The gospels, unlike most Graeco-Roman writings, are anonymous. The familiar headings which give the name of an author (‘The Gospel according to …’) were not part of the original manuscripts, for they were added only early in the second century.”[25]
So what, if anything, did Jesus’ disciples have to do with authoring the gospels? Little or nothing, so far as we know. But we have no reason to believe they authored any of the books of the Bible. To begin with, let us remember Mark was a secretary to Peter, and Luke a companion to Paul. The verses of Luke 6:14-16 and Matthew 10:2-4 catalogue the twelve disciples, and although these lists differ over two names, Mark and Luke don’t make either list. So only Matthew and John were true disciples. But all the same, modern scholars pretty much disqualify them as authors anyway.
Why?
Good question. John being the more famous of the two, why should we disqualify him from having authored the Gospel of “John”?
Umm … because he was dead?
Multiple sources acknowledge there is no evidence, other than questionable testimonies of second century authors, to suggest that the disciple John was the author of the Gospel of “John.”[26] [27] Perhaps the most convincing refutation is that the disciple John is believed to have died in or around 98 CE.[28] However, the Gospel of John was written circa 110 CE.[29] So whoever Luke (Paul’s companion), Mark (Peter’s secretary), and John (the unknown, but certainly not the long-dead one) were, we have no reason to believe any of the gospels were authored by Jesus’ disciples
New Testament of the Bible regarding Jesus by Yusha ...
The Inquisition was devised to combat heresy within Christianity. If anyone’s views opposed or stood against the Catholic Church, they would be deemed as heretics and executed by fire without pity. Neither age or sex made a difference, women and children and old men were tortured. Jews and Muslims were also punished. The Inquisitions commenced on 1231 A.D. and lasted roughly 500 years.
“The Inquisition was the most Infamous and devilish thing in human history. It was devised by Popes, and used by them for 500 years to maintain their power.”
“Think of Monks and Priests, in holy garments, directing, with heartless cruelty and inhuman brutality, the work of Torturing and burning alive Innocent men and women, and doing it in the name of Christ by the direct order of the ‘Vicar of Christ’” Henry H. Halley”, Halley’s bible handbook.
H Ellerbe writes that “Victims were rubbed with lard or grease and slowly roasted alive. Ovens built to kill people, made infamous in twentieth century Nazi Germany were first used by the Christian Inquisition in Eastern Europe. Victims were thrown into a pit full of snakes and buried alive.”
One particularly gruesome torture involved turning a large dish full of mice upside down on the victim’s naked stomach. A fire was then lit on top of the dish causing the mice to panic and burrow into the stomach.”
Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) was not only a Prophet sent with a special message to be delivered to the whole mankind, but he was, still is, and will continue illuminating the minds of people, unlocking their hearts to the truth through the pearls of wisdom with which he guided the baffled humanity to the right path along the course of centuries.
The Prophet SAWS never engaged in aggression and he always preferred peace, but when it was necessary, he would engage in self-defense. He also placed strict rules in combat for all Muslims to follow:
Do not cut down trees
Do not damage buildings
Do not target civilians
Do not terrorize the population
Target only soldiers of the enemy
Be merciful if the enemy gives up
Do not continue battling if the enemy surrenders
These are only some of the rules.
Mohammad Hijab said in an interview with Jordan B Peterson: "While Islam has the ability of making wars, it also has the ability of creating peace treaties"
-- Some people would argue that peace cannot exist alongside war, but this is a fallacy, because in order to protect peace and order, you would have to defend it, whether by diplomacy or militarily, if necessary.
Imagine a country that’s being attacked. They get killed, oppressed and they don’t do anything to defend themselves. Where’s the logic?
If not, imagine someone trying to break in your house and steal everything, rape all people inside. What would you do? Let them? Or fight them?
He only went to war after being:
Exiled from his hometown
Surviving multiple assassination attempts
Having his daughter mortally wounded
Having several of his early followed tortured and martyred.
Having their properties seized
Millions of people who studied his true biography from the original Arabic sources or even through Islamic centers specialized in the Quran and his biography in different languages embraced Islam immediately
And as I said, the biography of the Prophet is very flawed and many of the hadiths about the Prophet are not true
Therefore, I always search for the original source of the event before talking about it
The Prophet never lied in his life, but rather he commanded all good qualities.
Prophet Muhammad forbade usury, adultery, alcohol, gambling and incest,
This cannot be undone and I am sure it will be greatly appreciated.
We apologise but you have been denied access to report posts in this thread. This could be due to excessively reporting posts and not understanding our forum rules. For assistance or information, please use the forum help thread to request more information. Jazakallah
