Alan explains why the Bible is more historically reliable than the Qur’an.
Transcript
Is the Qur’an as trustworthy as the Bible? I’ll give you one reason why it’s not.
Well one of the main reasons I find the Qur’an untrustworthy has to do with the source criticism, which entails studying the sources upon which a text relies.
For example, the Qur’an tells stories about Jesus that are from sources known to be fraudulent. For example, in Surah 19, you can read the story of Jesus’ birth, and we’re told that the pains of childbirth drove Mary under a palm tree. And she hears this voice that tells her that God will provide for her, at which point the tree provides her with some dates and a stream that appears below it. So she could, of course, now eat, and drink, and be comforted.
Now, we don’t see that story in the gospels which, of course, were eyewitnesses or written by eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life. But we do see this story in almost exact same detail in the lost books of the Bible, which are second-century apocryphal fables written over a hundred years after Jesus was born. In fact, there are other stories about Jesus where He speaks in full sentences while still a baby and makes birds come alive after shaping them out of clay.
Now, although these stories are not found in the gospel accounts, they are found in the first gospel of the infancy of Jesus Christ and the infancy gospel of Thomas which, again, are apocryphal gospels written, in some cases, hundreds of years after Jesus’ life and are known to be fakes.
Now, one of the most dramatic examples of the Qur’an borrowing from other sources is in Surah 5:32 where the context is about Cain killing Abel. Now, this verse contains a warning that if you kill one innocent person like Cain did with Abel, it’s as bad as killing all of humanity. But if you save one life, it’s as good as saving all of humanity.
Now, it turns out those words are almost identical to a Jewish rabbi’s commentary on Genesis 4:10 found in the Jewish literature of the Talmud written about four hundred years before the Qur’an. Now, the rabbi argues that the Hebrew word for “blood” is written in plural form, and because of that grammatical point, key reasons that even though Abel was a single person killing him is as bad as killing all of humanity.
Now to me, this is incorrect commentary right? But the Qur’an inadvertently quotes that mistaken commentary written by a Jewish rabbi and then passes it off as divine writ. Now remember, Muslims claim that the Qur’an is a book that was written exclusively by Allah and has eternally existed in Heaven. So they don’t believe in the doctrine of inspiration. They don’t claim Allah inspired human authors to write down the words of the Qur’an. Every word is supposed to be from the mouth of Allah. And that’s why it’s significant that the Qur’an copies words from a Jewish rabbi who wrote down mistaken commentary about Genesis 4. And that’s one of the reasons I don’t think the Qur’an is trustworthy.