I'm back! The Quran is still wrong! $5000 contest to prove otherwise
Channel: Reasoned Answers
Date: 2022-01-19

The Quran is supposed to be the literal speech of God, but even a cursory look finds many errors.  After a long break, I'm back with another example and I've got $5000 on the line that says no one can prove me wrong (and thus the Quran right).

Indonesian translation of this video: https://youtu.be/hPe8FCNgZDA

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Sources Quoted:
- Surah 19:7 (Sahih International): O Zechariah, indeed We give you good tidings of a boy whose name will be John. We have not assigned to any before [this] name.
- Luke 1:59-61 (ESV): And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child. And they would have called him Zechariah after his father, but his mother answered, “No; he shall be called John.” And they said to her, “None of your relatives is called by this name.”
- "Shrine of Yahya", Islamic Landmarks, https://www.islamiclandmarks.com/syria/shrine-of-yahya-as 
- Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism By Kurt Rudolph, p. 346: Only painstaking analyses of Mandean literature, which was not exactly composed and collected on logical and consistent lines, make it possible to separate older material from younger
--p. 345: the discourses of John the Baptist contained therein … are without direct historical value.” 
- "And No One Had The Name Yaḥya (= John?) Before: A Linguistic & Exegetical Enquiry Into Qur'an 19:7", Islamic Awareness, https://www.islamic-awareness.org/quran/contrad/external/yahya
--Western scholars have suggested various explanations ranging from the name Yahia being inserted into the scriptures at a later date to Muslims forcing its use upon Mandaeans!  None of these theories are supported by any historical evidence.
--A Mandaic Dictionary throws further light on the names "iahia" and "iuhana" as used in their holy books: "iahia - a man’s malwasa name, used often together with the orig. Aram. form as iahia iuhana"
--Every Mandaean has two names, his malwasha, or Zodaical name, and his laqab or the worldly name. E. S. Drower explains the difference between the malwasha and laqab names.
"The latter is usually a Muhammadan name and is used for all lay purposes, the former [i.e., malwasha] is his real and spiritual name and is used on all religious and magic occasions."
So, in Yahia Yuhana, Yahia is a malwasha name or the real name and Yuhana is a laqab or a lay name as one can see from the entry in the Mandaic dictionary. What is interesting here is that the Qur'an uses only the real and spiritual name, i.e., Yaḥya; but what about Yuḥanna?
- The Great Stem of Souls by Jorunn Buckley, p. 277: GR 7 is a tractate devoted to John’s wisdom teachings, and his name turns up in the formulaic introduction and at the very end.  In both instances, his Arabic name, Yahia, appears… So GR 7 may well mark a younger post-Islamic stratum.
- The Mandaeans Of Iraq And Iran by E.S. Drower, p. 281: Yahya, the Arabic form of Yuhanna, John… 
--p. 82: When an infant is to be named, the priest takes the Zodiacal sign of the month in which its birth occurred, counts from it round the Zodiacal circle, and calculates from it the sign of the hour. The sign of the day does not matter. From the numerical value which results, they subtract the value of the mother's name… For all astrological information the priests consult the astrological codex Sfar Malwasha, the 'Book of the Zodiac'.
- A Manadic Dictionary Iran by E.S. Drower: Iahia [is] used often with the original Aramic form as iahia iuhana
- The Mandaeans: ancient texts and modern people by Joran Buckley, p.13: “Yahia preached in the nights; Yohana in the evenings of the night” retains both the Aramaic and Arabic forms of John’s name.
-"Christian allegations about Prophet Yahya's unprecedented name", IslamWeb.net, https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/298474/ The first interpretation [that no one before was named John], on the other hand, is not reported on the authority of an infallible source entailing using it to challenge what was stated in the Quran. Moreover, one should know that the present-day versions of the (other) divine scriptures have been altered and distorted by means of omission and addition as Allaah stated in several places in the Quran. Please refer to fatwa 90449. How can you be sure that the verses in the present-day Bible referring to other people before Yahya who bore the same name were not falsely added to the original Book (Gospel) revealed by Allaah?

#QuranError #Contest #QuranChallenge
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