From: samir@sphinx.rtp.dg.com (M. Yasser Samir)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Myths Concerning Christianity #3
Date: 7 Apr 92 15:07:19 GMT
Organization: Data General Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC


        In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful


> If you look at a fragment contianing three verses from Matthew and another >fragment containing half a chapter from Revelation, of course you can say that >they aren't identical.  They aren't supposed to be.  There's no use running >around yelling that apples and oranges aren't identical.

I agree on this.  They aren't suppose to be in the case you've givin, but that
was not still the point I'm trying to make.  My point is, there are so many
differences in the "originals" not as I said before about spelling or the strcture
of the statement.  Still most of them don't go back to the time of Jesus (PBUH),
also we don't know who wrote them.  I have a couple of books about that subject that were written by Christian scholars, but were sent overseas by mistake.  If
it's OK with you, I'm asking a rain check on that subject till I get them, or till
I find my notes.  At that time, I think I can give you more serious variations
than the one you gave me, which I believe as you believe, it should not matter.

>The scrolls referred to come from caves 1, 2, and 3, which have been
>available to the general public for some time.  There is a series of
>monographs which has for forty years published Dead Sea Scrolls, with
>the full blessing of the scholars in charge and of the Israeli
>government.  If you can't get a copy of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls,
>it is perhaps because you have not looked.

When I looked, I only found a traslation of part of it, not all of it.  For sure,
I won't understand the one they found in caves you spoke about, because it's to
my knowledge written in a dead language.  That probably will bring me to an important point, which is, the Bible was written in a form of a translation in
languages that are dead now, despit the fact that were a translation in the first
place.  So whatever we translate from is going to be a translation from a translation, and sometimes it can be the third or fourth generation of translation
I believe no need for me to give the same example of John 3:16 again.   But Hay,
it worth it to me to go back and check again for such serious matter.

>|P.S.   PBUH means : peace be upon him
>Oh, I always thought it meant "praise be unto him."  I guess we both
>learned something.

Do you think that anybody deserves to be praised but God Himself, alone?          Not with somebody, not through somebody, anybody.  He (God) is the only
one we praise.  We don't praise humans.

I'm glde you've mentioned that point because along with other things I've
learned from your article, the most important point I've learned is, some
Christian friends still believe that we can praise anybody other than God, or
(Allah), His Personal Name, which in Arabic a name that doesn't mean anything
other than God Himself.  For example : You have in English language, God, Godess, 
and Gods.  The word Allah is not singular, plural, masculine, or feminine, or
even dual, because we have a dual case in Arabic.  And you can't make the word 
Allah to be any one of the cases above.  If you try, it won't mean anything in
the language itself.

Sorry it took me a few lines to discribe why we don't praise anybody but God
himself in a direct way only.  I hope you and the other readers won't think
that I'm trying to change our original subject.


Mohamed Yasser Samir
Tel : (919) 248-6266
Fax : (919) 248-6352
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc