Do Christians have the real Bible? Christian Vs Muslim Perspectives

Let me address the arguments of Ijaz one by one. He called 2 Tim 3:16 as mere dogma which according to him is not empirical evidence. But I quoted those refs to show the doctrine of revelation according to the Bible; so that Muslims may not attack strawman by judging the Bible by some false criteria for revelation. Such verses did not considered the OT alone to be “scripture” rather apostle knew each other's letters as they were in circulation among their Churches. For example Peter referred to Paul’s letters as “scripture” 2 Peter 3:15-18. Please see the early tradition and Canonization of the New Testament.[1] He says “NT does have more contradictions between the texts, than their are words” citing John Mill’s Novum Testamentum of 1707 as source. He is badly mistaken; confusing the textual variations with some sort of textual and doctrinal “contradictions”. Mill proved nothing new, he only showed the textual variances in some mss at that time, which was uncomfortable to Catholic Church. Other scholars proved that not a single doctrine is affected by Mill’s work [2]. So Mill’s work was to some orthodox believers in 1707; what Ehrman’s work is today to some unaware naïve believers when they get threatened by those arguments. The argument that we don’t have original autographed compilation and independent mss of the NT is a poor objection. It doesn’t prove that we don’t have the original text of the NT; moreover this is not historian's criteria for any ancient document. The oldest codex we have actually strengthens the textual integrity. Codex Sinaiticus is available online, you can read and study it. That objection is out of desperate skepticism, for how would we even unanimously agree on a mss that it’s really the autographed document in the first place? Such expectation of Muslims goes against their own Quran’s textual integrity, for neither they have the original mss. The oldest surviving Quran's mss drastically differs with today’s Uthman's copy. See what Dr Puin says about the oldest Quran, Sana mss of Yemen [3]. The Sira (biographies) and Sunna which survive in the historical works by writers of third and fourth century of the Muslim era (900−1000 AD) So if the most important sources of Islam dates 3 and 4 centuries after Muhammad, how can they expect such radical skepticism on Biblical text? Moreover the NT has independent mss of the books that dates way older than the full codex. I showed earlier, as on this year 2012 we have discovered the mss dating from the very first century and in total we have 33% of the NT dating from first to second half century, this discovery has astonished the skeptical world. So P52 is not the oldest papyri now as he claims. Aland’s short quotation that he quoted says very small about the lectionaries; don't get swayed away by such quotes. Ijaz quoted Ehrman saying the Patristic texts are only secondary evidence for the original text itself. Of course, no one argued that, it only proves that we have ample external sources that attest the original text of NT overwhelmingly. There are 86,000 quotations from the early church. These are found in several thousand Lectionaries that are church-service books contain Scripture quotations used in the early centuries of Christianity. None of the New Testament canon we have today is lost or missing, not one verse. You could destroy all the manuscripts of the New Testament, and destroy all the New Testaments in existence in the world, and you could reproduce all but 11-17 verses of the whole New Testament from early church writings. Sir David Dalrymple once asked himself the question, “Suppose that the New Testament had been destroyed, and every copy of it lost by the end of the 3rd century, could it have been collected together again from the writing of the Fathers of the second and third centuries?” His answer was “...as I possessed all the existing works of the Fathers of the second and third centuries, I commenced to search, and up to this time I have found the entire New Testament, except eleven verses.” (Evidence that demands a verdict, J. McDowell, Vol. I, pp. 50-51) The currency analogy against historiography methods was an absurd and false analogy. That is not similar with the method textual critics use to obtain the original texts and message of ancient documents. Not only that analogy falls on the head of muslim scripture it again left them to think where are the original holy books of Allah that he sent to Christians, along with the original Quran to early Muslims? So where are all the “real” revelations of Allah? Now let’s come to my second contention that Ijaz did not defend. He did not defend the Islamic Dilemma which proves his God to be the author of confusion and religion a paradox; he said Allah confirmed previous revelation but never mentioned the Bible as one of them. But you can see the Quranic ref I gave. What should we conclude from Muhammad’s words when he repeatedly refers to the books of Jews and Christians, the books they possessed between their hands, even naming them Torah Jabur Injil? Obviously he talked about the scripture of Christians when he explicitly claimed so. He said the God’s words are lost. As I argued in my opening case, this only disproves Islam. For how can a muslim argue that 1% corruption in NT entails that Christianity is false; when actually his own God claimed to send those books as eternal and the same time muslims admitting their God completely lost his revelations? Notice from the verse he gave S 5:13 says that “..you will still observe deceit among them, except a few of them.” Again it proves that it talks about a particular group of particular time, not all of them. Quran claimed some kept their scripture preserved. As I argued we have to interpret 2:79 the same way; with respect to the fact that whole Quran confirms and appeals to the same scripture of Christians all along. Assuming the author of 2:79 knew the rest of Quran, he could not have meant that the people of the books have corrupted them ultimately, and Allah God has lost his holy revelation. Allah claimed that all previous scripture he sent to Christians and Jews. Early Muslims never got to see the previous revelation of their Islamic expectations hence always speculated as to what the books are that Quran speaks. See the variety of beliefs[4] You can judge by the evidences yourselves, I have demonstrated the astonishing textual reliability of the NT and proved that when Muslims attack the reliability of Bible, eventually they should realize they are cutting the very branch on which Muhammad is sitting. Sources: [1] Books of NT Canon http://www.letusreason.org... [2] John Mill - Novum Testamentum http://www.csntm.org... [3] Querying the Koran, Guardian, 2000. http://www.guardian.co.uk... [4] http://www.injil.org...