Historian Debates Muslim On The Authenticity Of The Bible! Muhammed Ali

question. Okay. Are you practicing Christianity or are you practicing? Do you go to the church? Do you believe in the Bible? Stuff like that? Yeah. Do you tell other people about Christianity as well or No, yes, I'm trying to get my friends into. And what what are you do? Are you I'm agnostic. Agnostic. Okay. Okay. All right. That's perfect. So, let me ask you a question since you're you're Orthodox, you know. So, what is the evidence that you have that Christianity is the truth? Since if you want to convince someone who is agnostic, someone who's completely away out of the you know religious point of view, what evidences would you provide as a orthodox person that Christianity is the truth? I was expecting this debate. No, no, it's not a debate. It's just a discussion, you know. No, no. I'm a historian myself, right? I think that's where my passion is. The best historical evidence you can get is the eyewitnesses and writings you have. The documents you have from that time. Is it okay if you come closer? I just can't hear you. Sorry. It's all right. Historical evidence you can get. uh is just having the eyewitness testimonials especially from that time all the other evidence for you know other kings being existent is scrapers on the walls but eyewitness for what eyewitness from seeing God from seeing Jesus but if you see saw a human being walking how do you know that was God like if we if we accept that that there is an eyewitness testimony that people seen a human being called Jesus allegedly I'll even accept that which is not the case that he claimed to be God which can we can discuss anyways I don't even accept that. But let's say he did. There was a human being walking. He claimed to be God. People saw him. He was called Jesus. What does that prove? I mean, if you read the testimonials, they don't just say he was walking around, was he? He was healing people. He was doing miracles. He sure So, you're using miracles as the evidence is what you say. Okay. So, let's No problem. Which is, by the way, is not evidence you're God. Which if you believe in prophets as you do, they also did miracles. So, someone performing miracles does not mean he's God, right? Uh but my question is where are these eyewitness testimonies that you talk about from the miracles that were done? What do you mean? Where do where can we find these uh find them in the Bible? But the Bible is not an eyewitness account. You said you're a historian, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Some of them are eyewitness accounts. Okay. Okay. Okay. If you're getting into that m I'm going to get into that. Yes. Exactly. It's exactly what I'm going to get into. No, since you're a historian. Okay. Your passion is history. Okay. Let's be clear. I'm not I'm not I'm not getting paid because I heard maybe you said histori my passion is there. Yeah. So of course it's like the some for example Peter is like they write about the person who saw it right there's like there's a lot of layers between the eyewitness and who wrote about it right if you're getting let me ask you this question okay you have the old testament and new testament obviously we're not talking about the old testament because it's not about Jesus right now you're representing Christianity right so talking about the new testament do you know the earliest manuscript to the new testament you know carbonation is I'm assuming right obviously you know what carbonation is radiocarbonation because I'm Russian arth I might not know all the terms you use. No, radiocarbonation is a method that you use on parments and things like that to date them back to see how far they go back. So, if you're studying history, it's something very important for you to look at cuz this is one of the main methods that you can know how far back a text goes. Okay? Do you know the earliest manuscript of the New Testament? First, the earliest fragment. Fragment can be a very small piece of paper and the earliest manuscript, full manuscript. Do you know any of this information? Oh, I'm so sorry. Because this information is what you're claiming to be eyewitness account. Eyewitness account is people who were there who witnessed the account, right? That's what eyewitness accounts is. The earliest fragment you have is called the P-52 and it's as big as a card like this. Okay? Like this. And it has it's from John and has no relevant information to Christianity of today. The earliest full Bible that you have is called the Codicus. That's the name of the uh manuscript. Then you have the Vaticanus right after it. The codest both of them are from the 4th century nearly 400 years after Jesus. Do you know that these manuscripts are a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy? Yeah. And and for example, they would say they are a copy from a source called Q source. M source. That's what uh texture criticism scholars will say. Now this Q source and M source where are they? Nobody knows what was written in them. Nobody knows. Is it is that the only problem? No. Let me increase you. On top of that, who wrote these um uh manuscripts? Like who wrote the code of Sanatus? Nobody knows. Nobody has any idea who were those copists who were copying from what they left, what they what they wrote, what they didn't leave. Nobody knows. So there's no eyewitness accounts. That's a fact. 100%. Zero eyewitness accounts. It's getting based on, you know, what people see. That's not So okay. So now what you have is a hearsay written by unknown anonymous sources 400 years separate from the event which you no reliable person. I can't argue about the 400 years. I just don't have the knowledge to that extent to argue with you. I can't say you're wrong. I can't say I'm right. No no I I'll tell you something. It will take you one minute now in your phone to say what is the earliest manuscript of the Bible and you'll get the codeantics is the earliest one. This is not this is common knowledge. I would say it's not something critical thinking in the 21st century. You wouldn't look at the first source and say it's reliable enough to believe. Well, it's not about which source is more reliable. It's the fact that this is a very basic common knowledge, right? So, it doesn't require deep intellectual research for you to come about what the conclusion is. Manuscripts are very uh it's a very straightforward process. They have a dating right you do carbonation and then you have a dating. It's not something which is hard to find basically right. So, that's why I said a basic research will take anyone 5 minutes. They will realize okay the earest Yeah. you realize the earliest uh manuscript that that you have the full manuscript is 400 years later and the earliest fragment is the 352 and like anyone can you know research this or you can after after you go. So see a lot of Christians uh would assume that there is eyewitness accounts or the life of Jesus or or any of the things that he did but there isn't and you know Muslims believe in Jesus by the way you know that right? No, no. You just you think he's a prophet. I think he's a god. That's where we Okay. So, let's get into that. Let's get into that part. Right. So, we talk about the history part. We can talk a little bit on the theology part. Look, I'm going to for the sake of argument accept that the the statements that Jesus made in the Bible are reliable statement. For the sake of this argument, right? Even though we just said we cannot prove that. I didn't argue there. I just listened to you. But we can argue there later. Uh argue with where? By saying how reliable they are. Of course. Tell me. Do you have any uh where how can they be reliable historically? I mean personally like everything I tell like you know people who are far away from like my friends I'm saying tell me one thing said in the Bible that's bad right it's not going to improve your life you know not make you better right saying that people wrote it even if something isn't changed from the word of God the actual events that were everything is done in your faith everything is done to improve your life but you realize that's not an argument for historical rel reliability of the scripture or whether Jesus said the statements or not it's just an argument that you would say okay the teachings are good which is debatable as well. We can get into it. Yeah, we debate on Quran and Bible a lot of time. Yeah, of course. But in this case, I don't think you can present anything that says that the information in the Bible is historically reliable. Nobody can make the argument. By the way, it's a I can't say it's 100% reliable. I'm just saying it's the best we can get. I agree with that. So far, of course, it's the best you have, but the best you have is not good enough. I would say historically so you look at that time like what's what reliable sources you can get about people you know no there there is some random person writing something you know no there there is there is there's a fair amount of carbonated um you know fragments and stuff like that that you'd find depending on what the the question is you're asking like what is the thing that you want to prove right but for example the Quran we have full manuscripts of the Quran from the first century right of the we have the manuscripts which is 15,000 params that date back 150 different copies. You have the Birmingham portion of it here which dates to the life of the prophet himself. You have the uh top copy manuscript which is the late first uh century or early 2nd century and anyone can see it today and these are already radiocarbon dated right. So just it just depends on what you want to use as a source. We also have the oral tradition which is memorizing the full Quran from beginning to end. Yeah. So we have like methods of making sure that this is what the prophet said, right? And nobody has manipulated that. Nobody's introduced anything into it or took anything away from it. Now I said okay but I said for the sake of argument cuz Christians already like yourself believe in the Bible right and what it says. So I'm going to say okay for the sake of argument let's accept that the statements about Jesus what Jesus said in the Bible are actually reliable statements. Now the question will be the next question I will ask is that you said to me I believe he is a prophet. Now Jesus said he is a prophet in the Bible. Are you aware of that? Oh you're going to go in argument that Jesus didn't say he was a god. No, no, but first first the the point about a prophet. Do you agree that he said he's a prophet in the Bible? You guys are going to say he's not just a prophet, but he did claim he's a prophet explicitly. Okay. Okay. So Jesus claims he's a prophet. So what I believe about Jesus is so far accurate even from your own scripture. Now what you believe about Jesus on the other hand saying that he claimed to be God. Where do you bring that from? Okay. I can from Jesus's statements. Okay. No, I won't lie. And I don't remember the exact name. You know, I'll probably tell you it's where he was saying that was something was done and like okay, it wasn't direct. That's why I remember I know that there is some indirect evidence saying so. So he never said he was God. No, he never there is no line saying specifically directly I am your God. Why worship me? Is there any place where he says worship me? Cuz worship is for God. No, I think he's saying worship his father. Okay. So God's worshiping someone else. No, but we believe in the holy trinity. No, no, but you realize that you claim in the trinity that they're all one. Yeah. So, how do you worship someone else if you're all one? Well, how would the son worship the father if they're all one? Because still it's just a different representative of the same entity. So, you're worshiping yourself for him? Yes. For him? No. It was him. Okay. There there we can get different perspectives, right? First of all, it wouldn't make sense for him to say I worship myself. All right. What would make sense is that he doesn't worship at all because he's God. For example, does the father worship anyone? No, but still if you're saying, okay, there is like his mind and you know, the actual entity of being the god is up there, but his physical existence is here on earth with us. But that's not the Christian belief. Christian belief is is a belief of the hypothetic union that when Jesus was on earth, he had two natures, God nature and the human nature. So it's not like that his godly nature was in heaven and the human nature was here. That he was just a human. Yeah. So if he was fully God according to Christian creeds, if he was fully God walking on earth, then he wouldn't pray to anyone. And as I asked you that question, does the father worship anyone? Does he pray to anyone ever? The father, we don't know whether we see the father, then we see the son. Yeah. Does I'm saying is there any scripture in the Bible that mentions the father worshiping anyone? No, it mentions mentions everyone worshiping the father. It mentions Jesus teaching people to worship the father, right? And him himself worshiping the father. So you agree with me that there's no explicit statements in the Bible at all explicit direct not only I am God not only I'm God I'm saying even saying worship me even saying I'm the creator of the heavens and the earth anything like that doesn't exist right so I'm saying and and we're taking these statements that I believe are changed cuz our position is that Jesus was a messenger prophet sent by God he was also the Messiah we believe in that as Muslims by the way and we believe he was raised up we believe in all of these things we believe in his second coming but you don't believe he was God. There's no trinity. There's none of that. Now, I said to you, there's there is not an explicit verse and any implicit verse that you're going going to bring, I will be able to answer for you. By the way, if you were to bring any verse that even hints divinity, I will give you a response for it. But not only that, this concept of the trinity that you assume is true, is it in the Bible? The Bible directly? No, they don't explain it. There's no trinity in the Bible. Explain this way. No, you know, in any way. Is there any uh verse in the Bible that mentions that there are three persons different between a person and the being? There are three persons in one being. Father, son and holy spirit are one God. Is there any verses like this in the Bible? No, it's more of an interpretation. Sure. So, do you see now where Muslims come from? So, this is where Muslims come from. We say we disagree with the Christians cuz we believe in one God. There's one God, the God of Abraham. God that God sent Abraham, send Noah, send Jesus and Moses and all of these. The Muslims perspective is the message of God was always the same. When Abraham came, he never believed in a trinity. He never preached the trinity. He never said God will come himself and die for anyone. That never existed. He never told the people there's something called the original sin that you guys need to account for. So not Abra Abraham didn't do that. Even in the Bible, I'm saying right. Uh Noah didn't do that. Solomon didn't do that. David didn't do that. Moses didn't do not a single prophet of God did that. And we believe Jesus didn't do that. And we're just highlighting this when we talked about it. This idea of divinity and all of that. It's not there directly stated. Yeah. So we're saying okay so these changes we are saying is coming from the church you see zero orthodox I know tradition matters a lot for for orthodox so you can see development of these beliefs in the councils starting by 325 you have the council of na which then you had aras arguing with aius etc and then they say okay Jesus is equal to god because aras believed in subordination that he's a demigod you know small god he's not like a big god like the father father is the ultimate authority Jesus Jesus is not an equal god to the father. So you have then this de this belief developed 3:25 so nearly 400 years again 325 years after Jesus you have this idea now established because there was disagreements different sex believing different things now 381 you have the custom noble creed you have this idea now oh the holy spirit also comes into the picture they're actually three co-equal co-eternal uh persons in one being whatever that means right cuz the person and the being has always been the same thing throughout history but in in in this case is something different and then later on you have more councils calcium and all of these councils and then they introduce hypersic union so why there's issues the text conflicts so for example if I ask you does god know everything so all the time right does Jesus know everything given the fact that he's 100% God okay I I don't memorize the Bible but I sense your argument coming so just pour it out no my argument is that that he doesn't know like he said he doesn't know. So my argument is if God has attributes and you would agree with me that he's all knowing all that's what God is. When you say something is God you mean these attributes omnisient omnipotent all of these omni right words. This is what god is. So if someone lacks these attributes then they are not god by definition. So Jesus for example he says in mark 13 32 that no one knows no one knows the day and the hour and he even excludes the holy spirit. He says, "No one knows the day and the hour, not the angels in heaven, not the son, only the father. Only the father knows." Not only that, Jesus actually he says the only true God is the father. You know, he said that. Yeah. But he didn't say Allah. No, but this is the thing. These are all terms. Like for example, if you go to a Jewish person and say Jesus didn't say Elohim. Let me ask you something very interesting. Do you know the New Testament does not have a name of God? Where's the name of God according to the New Testament? I mean the name of God. God does God have a name? Of course he has a name, right? God. No. God is an English word, right? Obviously it comes from German. I mean we have Russian word for that. Yeah. Yeah. But Jesus didn't speak Russian. What do you speak? Aramaic. Aramaic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He spoke Aramaic. Do you know how to say God in Aramaic? Was it say Allah? So you just said to me Allah wasn't there. Yes. Research. Good. No problem. How do you say God in Arabic? It's interesting, isn't it? You're just asking me for where God is. I'm telling you that Jesus this is what Jesus used to say. That's why when he he said, "My father, my father, why have you forsaken me?" It means my God. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Yeah, they are all Semitic languages. So, you have uh Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. They're all Semitic. So Jesus is closer to what we say more than any Christian on the earth today. Not only that and he's practicing as well. His mother had the full headscarf. If you go to any Orthodox church, the image of her practicing. Yeah. Covering your head with a hijab. What we call a hijab. Jesus being from the Middle East. He was a Middle Eastern. He prayed. Do you know how he prayed? No. That's how you guys pray. He fell on his face. You know who prays like that? Who prostrates by putting their face on the floor? Muslims. Who says that? The Bible Matthew 26:39 says Jesus fell on his face and he prayed all night. So this is how he prayed. He was circumcised. He didn't eat pork. You know, uh unlike what Christians do today, they have intercourse before marriage. All these things that many Christians today are not following, right? So if you really want to look at the practicing, you'll see that Muslims are practicing and following Jesus more than anyone who says they are Christian today in reality. I mean it really depends on the country because I think that there is a real shift in European culture and we just developed much faster. So we went away from religion much faster, right? Including an empire. I'm I'm not Russian myself. Yes. Yes. Yes. Anyways, right. We still have strict rules like there are communities in Yeah. Eastern Europe is it's stronger than than the West. Much stronger than Catholic. No, absolutely. I know 100% 100%. But this is the thing the division happened when when when the church fought science essentially this is where where the division happened. Islam not only embraced science, it's what developed science. The science of today, the scientific method that has been used today is developed by a Muslim called. So the new modern scientific method is developed by him in his book optics. Algorithms is just a translation of a Muslim's name algorithm. That's translation of his name in English. He developed algorithms that we're using today. So you're not going to be able to use computers, cameras or any of that without these Muslims, right? So uh when uh we talk about science for example, Muslims had no problem with it. That's why there's no conflict of people moving away, right? But what happened in the west and and also in the eastern church as well is when science came about, they said, "Oh, this is witchcraft and all of that." And there was these issues of against science. So people started stepping away from religion and saying, "Oh, these are old fairy tales." Right? But the point I'm trying to make is this is the message of Prophet Muhammad is not different from Jesus. So when I when I try to tell you that Muslims are following Jesus more than any of the Christians today, I'm not it's not about competition. I'm trying to make a point. The point I'm trying to make is that the message of prophet Muhammad was the same of Abraham, of Jesus, of Moses, of Noah, of all of these messengers of God. And that we are supposed to follow the message of God, not something that changed that happened later on by the church or by anyone. And even I said to you this scripture that I know is not reliable historically. Even that does not justify what Christians are following today. So even using that scripture, you don't find the beliefs which are the core tenences of the Christians today. You don't even find them in that scripture. You get what I'm saying? So all we're saying as Muslims is that God send these prophets and messengers. He sent Prophet Muhammad to also rectify and correct these changes that people manipulated in the message of God to bring them back to pure montheism just to worship on God alone. Okay. Okay. Let me ask the question there. And I know a lot of Muslims are using the argument that like Bible is not reliable in the fact that we have many copies, right? That's not my argument. My argument is Yeah. No, the dating. Yeah. I'm saying most of them. But you also guys had two different versions before you weren't one and decided to choose one. We didn't have two different versions. It's incorrect. After the uh death of the prophet prophet Muhammad wasam it was all written in his life during his lifetime. We had people who called writers of revelation. They wrote the whole Quran during the life of the prophet was written on paraments or whatever they had right rocks. Whoever they had they could write on. When the prophet passed away the first caliphate of Islam is called Abu Bakr who ruled ruled for only 3 years. At the time of Abu Bakr, he sent someone called Zabat to collect the parliament, right? All of these paraments, collect these parments in one place, gather them in one place and have two witnesses for each verse. Even though they already memorize the whole Quran, there's hundreds of people, thousands of people who memorize the full Quran. So, you don't really need a witness. But to just make sure the process goes as strictly as possible and things are preserved in the best way, they said for each verse that you bring, you need to bring a witness that you took this verse from the prophet. So he brought the Quran, they collected the Quran, person called Zabat, collected it and then he kept with the first caliphate of Islam with the second of Islam and then when he passed away with his daughter. Then the third caliphate of Islam came which is who you talk about. What he did is he brought Z, same person who collected the Quran at the time of the first caliphate and then he brought the same copies the originals if you want to use that term and then he made a standard version and he sent to different regions and then he burnt personal uh mah personal books of the companions. So the companions of the prophet had their own personal books and they would write interpretation in it. For example, like the wife of the prophet had a book. She would write um in one of the verses of the Quran maintain the prayers and the middle prayer and she would put the prayer of that's not in the Quran but it's her interpretation for example right or the prayer of she would put it as an interpretation right so he burned these extra uh not the original nothing to do with with any of that he standardized that and he sent it to different regions but he burned these extras so people don't get confused that this is a part of the Quran if you leave it and someone finds it later on thinking that this this was a part of the Quran So he burned these extra copies and he made one standard version so he can unite the Muslims on that standard version. And the person who made this authorization and standardization based on the original is the same person who collected them after the death of the prophet. We don't have no versions of the Quran. None of that one of our history is airtight when it comes to preservation of Quran. I'll read more. You honestly encourage me to read more. Of course. And and like I told you look even writings is not what we rely on memorize on preservation. The oral tradition of memorization is what we rely on mainly for the preservation of the Quran. Because if you have people, millions of people or hundreds or thousands of people memorizing the Quran today, millions with certificates tracing back to the prophet. Every single person that you learn the Quran from, we know their name, their biography, where they were born, what they did. We know everything about them. We don't have anonymous writers. We don't have anonymous memorizers. We don't have that. Anything that we take reliable, we need to know where it comes from. So that is the main way we're preserving the Quran through the oral tradition. So not even the writings, even if you throw every Quran, every book in the sea, even if you burn it all in two hours, you'll have it brought back just from memory, someone will recite it and write it down. So there's no way you there is no way anyone can manipulate preservation of the Quran or put any shade on it. That's why you will find it any decent uh um historian, anyone that have any self-respect, they all I'm saying that with respect, they would all say the Quran is uh fully preserved. You don't have anyone who's reputable and respected in the academic community that says otherwise. That doesn't say the Quran is preserved. I didn't read them fully. So, but I know you can do your research and you'll see like you have this book from the Oxford edition by different scientists and they say the same thing. Quran is preserved. There is so many people I can mention to you. There are people who went um like are different. She went herself to um um in Yemen and she saw the manuscript herself and revised them and she said this is the same Quran that people are reading today. You have many many many people like I said there is no one who is selfrespecting unless someone who is getting funding by missionary. There's only one person I know that is getting funding by missionary that wrote a book that is uh so unacademic that he's a laughing stock because of writing it. But there is no other self-respecting uh historian or textual criticism scholar that puts any shade on the preservation of the QR. You're not going to find that. Yeah. Do your research and you're welcome to come back. You don't want to be here. I'm not going to get I mean I have respect. It's a pleasure talking to you. I have respect for you as well and I appreciate the kind discussion. Hope I didn't offend you in any way. That was not the purpose. It was just a discussion. It was a pleasure talking to you as well and uh thank you for listening both of appreciate it. Thank you. Bye-bye.