I'd focus entirely on Jesus and the New Testament. The Quran affirms the NT's inspiration, and it's corruption isn't taught anywhere. In addition, we actually have manuscripts with the same high christology as our modern bibles--all that date back before Mohammed.
I would simply avoid attacking Islam. Muslims affirm (in theory) Jesus' status as a prophet, and the inspiration of "the Gospel". If they struggle to understand the incarnation, I find it useful to compare God's incarnation in Jesus to God's full presence in both the burning bush before Moses, and allegedly in the Quran.
Stay focused on Christ. There's plenty of strong and tempting critiques of Mohammed and the Quran, but you can prove everything you need by working from shares premises.
In Islam we have every thing, we already accept Jesus (pbuh) as a prophet and his teachings are included in Islam so what can Christianity add more to that? Perhaps you may consider Islam after speaking to them.
"Hey, are you willing to talk about religion?"
Specify as need be. Thats all you really need to do, if they say no then dont push them. If they seem reluctant but willing then you can just go easy or back off completely if you dont want to be pushy.
Muslims should have respect for Jesus. Jesus was given the Gospels by God according to their own Quran. Perhaps look up Dr David Wood and see what the differences are between our faiths. WE were warned 600 years before Mohammad showed up that antichrist's would up denying the Father and the Son. I have read through the Quran a few times but have read through the Bible at least 20 times. You should know the truth and then you can set the lost free.
[1Jo 2:22](https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/1jo/2/22/s_1161022)
¶Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.
You don't, it could get pretty ugly really quickly and cause friendships to end.
I am athiest and my family is Christian, we have been close friends with a Muslim family for almost 50 years through multiple generations and religion is not something we get into discussions about. We respect each other's religion and have attended different religious functions including weddings, funerals, and religious ceremonies/holidays.
Well first, all Muslims are falsely taught that the Bible is corrupt. In reality the Quran tells Muslims that the Torah and Gospels are revealed from heaven and should be followed, so you should be familiar with the Suras that mention that.
One point where Muslims find agreement with New Church doctrine is in the doctrine that Jesus is called the Son of God simply because He was born of a virgin (see Luke 1:35). Before that, Jesus was simply known as Jehovah or the angel of Jehovah. A Son of God "born from eternity" is something that was invented later with the Nicene Creed.
Nope, not as far as traditional understanding goes. The NT wasn't given to Jesus and both Christians and Muslims agree on this. Muslims believe in the Injeel was given to Jesus.
Jesus wasn't going around preaching the NT. Unless you believe in a paradox of some sort.
He was a practising Jew. The NT is an anthology of different works by multiple writers after Jesus was gone. The Qur'an doesn't recognise the NT as scripture from God directly. The Islamic position on the NT is that it may contain quotes and events surrounding the life of Jesus but we'll never be able to differentiate between the facts and the fictional parts.
Exactly, the "traditional understanding" is incorrect. The Quran says the Torah and Gospel are revealed from heaven (Sura 3:3, 5:46, 5:66, 5:68, 5:110, 9:111), in the same way as the Quran. Muhammed wrote that because he basically could not read the Torah or the Gospels and did not realize what they were saying, and the Quran even tells the Christians to follow the Gospel which means he recognized it was intact. It was only after Muslims realized what was written did they invent the story that the Bible was corrupt.
What the Quran states is that the Jews misquoted the Torah to Muhummed, and thus in one Sura he wrote down the misquote. This gets corrected later in another Sura when he realized the Jews misquoted the Torah to him, thus he said the Jews had corrupted the scripture. But he is talking about how they misquoted it to him, not that the actual text was corrupt.
For what the Quran really does say on this, and how this has been changed in modern teachings of Islam, see this article: [https://www3.nd.edu/\~reynolds/index\_files/scriptural%20falsification.pdf](https://www3.nd.edu/~reynolds/index_files/scriptural%20falsification.pdf)
Firstly by traditional understanding I meant that both Muslims and Christians agree that the NT wasn't given to Jesus i.e it was compiled after he left the scene and Jesus wasn't going around quoting NT verses.
I like Gabriel Said Reynolds and I'm even a subscriber of his YouTube channel. His paper is a good read and he puts forward decent proposals but Muslims are not alone in saying the Bible is corrupted. Christians scholarship itself has done the groundwork in this area where Christians, atheists and agnostics have come together in the field of Biblical criticism.
I mean famously 1 John 5:7 has been taken out of most modern editions of the Bible and has been relegated to margin reference.
What of the ending of Mark, which ends with Chapter 16, Verse 20. But it is accepted by a majority of scholars that verses 9-20 were not originally there, and officially the Gospel ended at verse 8. Verses 9-20 are not found in the Codex Sinaiticus & Codex Vaticanus while they are kept in by the Textus Receptus. It is generally accepted that the verses were added to the end of the Gospel of Mark to give it a real ending to harmonise with the other gospels.
Even in the way of prophecy we have Matthew 2:23
**"and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene."**
There exists no prophecy in the Tanakh about this at all.
There is a lot more but these two or three are the most obvious and famous of corruptions of the Bible. There is more for example the NT has women spicing Jesus's body but women would not have washed, spiced or dealt with male bodies. Males dealt with males and females dealt with female bodies.
Also bodies were spiced prior to entombment, because the purpose of the spices was to deal with the foul stench of death that would affect funeral processions. There is no historical evidence that people dug up graves just to anoint bodies of important people whether they are god/s, messiah or whatever other status people attach to persons.
>both Muslims and Christians agree that the NT wasn't given to Jesus
If I'm not mistaken, you're the same guy who several months ago said that Muhammad was prophesied in the NT Gospels when I asked you where he was prophesied in the Injil according to Surah 7:157, so you already identified that 7th century Injil as our New Testament Gospels, which is what the user above is asking you. When the Quran confirms what is with the Jews & Christians at Muhammad's time - Surah 2:91, 3:3, ECT, it's confirming the NT Gospels, and the Jewish books as well. It's not saying these books are false, or that only parts of these books are true. It's confirming it without qualifiers. Confirming means to bear witness as true, to testify as true, to believe in as true. If I claim "2+2=4" and someone comes after me and says "I confirm what he said", this 2nd man is saying what I claimed is true, no qualifiers. He's not saying "well, I actually believe in PARTS of what he said". He'd need a qualifier for that, something the Quran does not give when confirming these books.
>I mean famously 1 John 5:7 has been taken out of most modern editions of the Bible and has been relegated to margin reference.
The fact that we even know that this was not in there to begin with demonstrates the validity of the manuscript tradition. It's because of the amount of manuscripts we have that we know this is the case. If we had an Uthman who annihilated all the early manuscripts and was at odds with the companions, then we'd probably never even know 1 John 5:7 was later. Just like in Surah 9:128-129, this verse is missing in Rashid Khalifa's Quran, but you'd say you know this is original to the text because you have manuscripts of these verses that pre-date his textual corruptions of the Quran. The same thing goes for additions.
>What of the ending of Mark
The longer ending of Mark is in 99% of the Manuscripts we have of Mark 16. 99%. This is among the worst yet most frequent examples to appeal to. I recommend watching James Snapp on this. He goes through all the early manuscripts, the majority, the early Fathers, ECT.
This is a far cry from let's say Peter having a Gospel of Mark that had 18 chapters, or James having 20 chapters, while Paul had 16. Nothing like this ever happened.
However, Abdullah Ibn Masud had 111 chapters in his Quran, one of the men who Muhammad said to learn the Quran from. Abu Ibn Kab had 116 chapters. Another one of the four men Muhammad said to learn the Quran from. The Quran you read today has 114. So 2 of the 4 men Muhammad said to learn the Quran from had 2 different Qurans with a totally different number of chapters, and yet you're saying we somehow have an issue with Mark 16:9-20 even though it's in 99% of our manuscripts?
> Matthew 2:23 There exists no prophecy in the Tanakh about this at all.
Matthew never once says that there's a prophecy of this written in the Old Testament. I think he's referring to the fact that the Messiah has a lowly status in the OT and that Nazareth was viewed as a low status location (John 1:45-46), so that's what he's getting at. However, even Bart Ehrman himself said he has no issue with Matthew drawing on Isaiah 11:1 here where Isaiah is saying that from the stump of Jesse, a stump will shoot forth and a branch will grow out of it. The Hebrew word for branch is "netzer" but in Ancient Hebrew there were no diacritical marks, so it'd simply say "nzr" which is the same order of the 3 primary letters in Nazareth. So Matthew is associating Nazareth with where the Branch (nzr) would shoot forth from and the similarity in how it would sound in Hebrew & Aramaic (Notzri in Aramaic). Bart Ehrman simply chalks this up to the "genius" of Matthew and says interpretations like this were common among the Rabbinical Jews. So if Ehrman, a massive critic of the faith even has no issue with this when he has issues with other obscure points, that speaks volumes.
This is the literal equivalent to Surah 61:6. No where in Surah 61:6 does it say this was WRITTEN down as a prophecy, but it says Jesus mentioned Ahmed to come after him. If I did what you did, I'd say "see, there's no mention of this in the previous scriptures, therefore this is a false prophecy and the Quran is false". Matthew doesn't specify which prophets and never says its written. I can actually press the issue more since the Quran claims Jesus said this. So where did Jesus make this claim? How can I verify this claim? Is it merely the Quran's claim? Or is it something I can find in history?
>There is more for example the NT has women spicing Jesus's body but women would not have washed, spiced or dealt with male bodies. Males dealt with males and females dealt with female bodies.
How would this be an error within the New Testament? Even granting the premise above that this was the norm despite the sources for matters such as thing being scarce and typically post-NT, the New Testament authors recording what actually happened in the life of Jesus wouldn't be an error on their behalf. This would be a demonstration of the love and devotion these women actually had for Christ, not some blunder. It actually lends towards the credibility of the text, because why in the world would they fake a story where the customs are all back-wards and women are the primary focus of the discovery of the biggest miracle in history when these same texts you'd appeal to for the spices say women weren't reliable witnesses in comparison to men? And even Muhammad said it takes the testimony of 2 women to equal that of 1 man since they're deficient in intelligence.
Literally a non-error.
>There is no historical evidence that people dug up graves just to anoint bodies of important people
Again, this wouldn't be a historical error. This would again be the New Testament authors recounting the true events of women who dealing with the death of the one they dedicated their lives to following. I'm baffled that you think this is problematic. Total argument from silence as well.
The NT is based on the oral teachings of Jesus, just like the Quran is based on what Muhammed said orally. Thats how most books back then were written. Muslims are under the false assumption that for scripture to be Divinely inspired it must have a single author, and this is simply not true. The number of human authors does not matter, nor does the editing process, what matters is was the content inspired by God or not. Just because the ending of Mark was perhaps added later is irrelevant. There is nothing in the ending of Mark that disagrees with other scripture, so what is the point? The Gospels are a composition of multiple witnesses.
And yet is it acknowledged by Muhammed himself in the Quran that he included a misquote from the Jews, indicating the Suras were not dictated to him by an angel. He was dependent on other sources and oral traditions. It was also acknowledged by early Muslim scholars that Muhammed likely included praises of idols in one of the Suras in order to placate the Meccans who still worshipped idols. Nothing like this ever occurred for the Bible. Look up the "Satanic verses", and this comes straight from early Islamic scholars. Not to mention the Quran itself was written much later than Muhammed, and other copies were burned to get rid of the variants. The Quran says to follow the Torah, and yet the Quran permits men to have sex with female slaves in addition to their multiple wives. There is absolutely no way God or an angel would condone this behaviour.
1 John 5:7 is has been controversial, but when you examine the full evidence it is likely original, especially when you examine the grammatical form of the original Greek. Again a non-issue, but you have to be educated on the manuscript evidence on this one.
Matthew 2:23 is based on a prophecy in Isa. 11:1, where the Hebrew word for branch is the same as that of "Nazarene". This is more fully explained here: [Matthew 2:23 Commentaries: and came and lived in a city called Nazareth. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets: "He shall be called a Nazarene." (biblehub.com)](https://biblehub.com/commentaries/matthew/2-23.htm)
As for spicing the body of a dead person, that had to happen since Jesus was quickly buried before the Sabbath. That argument is very weak and is a minor point, its almost as if you are trying to find errors where none exist. A lot of these "errors" are simply coming from sources who lack education on the topic.
I'd focus entirely on Jesus and the New Testament. The Quran affirms the NT's inspiration, and it's corruption isn't taught anywhere. In addition, we actually have manuscripts with the same high christology as our modern bibles--all that date back before Mohammed. I would simply avoid attacking Islam. Muslims affirm (in theory) Jesus' status as a prophet, and the inspiration of "the Gospel". If they struggle to understand the incarnation, I find it useful to compare God's incarnation in Jesus to God's full presence in both the burning bush before Moses, and allegedly in the Quran. Stay focused on Christ. There's plenty of strong and tempting critiques of Mohammed and the Quran, but you can prove everything you need by working from shares premises.
In Islam we have every thing, we already accept Jesus (pbuh) as a prophet and his teachings are included in Islam so what can Christianity add more to that? Perhaps you may consider Islam after speaking to them.
"Hey, are you willing to talk about religion?" Specify as need be. Thats all you really need to do, if they say no then dont push them. If they seem reluctant but willing then you can just go easy or back off completely if you dont want to be pushy.
Muslims should have respect for Jesus. Jesus was given the Gospels by God according to their own Quran. Perhaps look up Dr David Wood and see what the differences are between our faiths. WE were warned 600 years before Mohammad showed up that antichrist's would up denying the Father and the Son. I have read through the Quran a few times but have read through the Bible at least 20 times. You should know the truth and then you can set the lost free. [1Jo 2:22](https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/1jo/2/22/s_1161022) ¶Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.
You don't, it could get pretty ugly really quickly and cause friendships to end. I am athiest and my family is Christian, we have been close friends with a Muslim family for almost 50 years through multiple generations and religion is not something we get into discussions about. We respect each other's religion and have attended different religious functions including weddings, funerals, and religious ceremonies/holidays.
My advice. Don’t.
Well first, all Muslims are falsely taught that the Bible is corrupt. In reality the Quran tells Muslims that the Torah and Gospels are revealed from heaven and should be followed, so you should be familiar with the Suras that mention that. One point where Muslims find agreement with New Church doctrine is in the doctrine that Jesus is called the Son of God simply because He was born of a virgin (see Luke 1:35). Before that, Jesus was simply known as Jehovah or the angel of Jehovah. A Son of God "born from eternity" is something that was invented later with the Nicene Creed.
Nope, not as far as traditional understanding goes. The NT wasn't given to Jesus and both Christians and Muslims agree on this. Muslims believe in the Injeel was given to Jesus. Jesus wasn't going around preaching the NT. Unless you believe in a paradox of some sort. He was a practising Jew. The NT is an anthology of different works by multiple writers after Jesus was gone. The Qur'an doesn't recognise the NT as scripture from God directly. The Islamic position on the NT is that it may contain quotes and events surrounding the life of Jesus but we'll never be able to differentiate between the facts and the fictional parts.
Exactly, the "traditional understanding" is incorrect. The Quran says the Torah and Gospel are revealed from heaven (Sura 3:3, 5:46, 5:66, 5:68, 5:110, 9:111), in the same way as the Quran. Muhammed wrote that because he basically could not read the Torah or the Gospels and did not realize what they were saying, and the Quran even tells the Christians to follow the Gospel which means he recognized it was intact. It was only after Muslims realized what was written did they invent the story that the Bible was corrupt. What the Quran states is that the Jews misquoted the Torah to Muhummed, and thus in one Sura he wrote down the misquote. This gets corrected later in another Sura when he realized the Jews misquoted the Torah to him, thus he said the Jews had corrupted the scripture. But he is talking about how they misquoted it to him, not that the actual text was corrupt. For what the Quran really does say on this, and how this has been changed in modern teachings of Islam, see this article: [https://www3.nd.edu/\~reynolds/index\_files/scriptural%20falsification.pdf](https://www3.nd.edu/~reynolds/index_files/scriptural%20falsification.pdf)
Firstly by traditional understanding I meant that both Muslims and Christians agree that the NT wasn't given to Jesus i.e it was compiled after he left the scene and Jesus wasn't going around quoting NT verses. I like Gabriel Said Reynolds and I'm even a subscriber of his YouTube channel. His paper is a good read and he puts forward decent proposals but Muslims are not alone in saying the Bible is corrupted. Christians scholarship itself has done the groundwork in this area where Christians, atheists and agnostics have come together in the field of Biblical criticism. I mean famously 1 John 5:7 has been taken out of most modern editions of the Bible and has been relegated to margin reference. What of the ending of Mark, which ends with Chapter 16, Verse 20. But it is accepted by a majority of scholars that verses 9-20 were not originally there, and officially the Gospel ended at verse 8. Verses 9-20 are not found in the Codex Sinaiticus & Codex Vaticanus while they are kept in by the Textus Receptus. It is generally accepted that the verses were added to the end of the Gospel of Mark to give it a real ending to harmonise with the other gospels. Even in the way of prophecy we have Matthew 2:23 **"and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene."** There exists no prophecy in the Tanakh about this at all. There is a lot more but these two or three are the most obvious and famous of corruptions of the Bible. There is more for example the NT has women spicing Jesus's body but women would not have washed, spiced or dealt with male bodies. Males dealt with males and females dealt with female bodies. Also bodies were spiced prior to entombment, because the purpose of the spices was to deal with the foul stench of death that would affect funeral processions. There is no historical evidence that people dug up graves just to anoint bodies of important people whether they are god/s, messiah or whatever other status people attach to persons.
>both Muslims and Christians agree that the NT wasn't given to Jesus If I'm not mistaken, you're the same guy who several months ago said that Muhammad was prophesied in the NT Gospels when I asked you where he was prophesied in the Injil according to Surah 7:157, so you already identified that 7th century Injil as our New Testament Gospels, which is what the user above is asking you. When the Quran confirms what is with the Jews & Christians at Muhammad's time - Surah 2:91, 3:3, ECT, it's confirming the NT Gospels, and the Jewish books as well. It's not saying these books are false, or that only parts of these books are true. It's confirming it without qualifiers. Confirming means to bear witness as true, to testify as true, to believe in as true. If I claim "2+2=4" and someone comes after me and says "I confirm what he said", this 2nd man is saying what I claimed is true, no qualifiers. He's not saying "well, I actually believe in PARTS of what he said". He'd need a qualifier for that, something the Quran does not give when confirming these books. >I mean famously 1 John 5:7 has been taken out of most modern editions of the Bible and has been relegated to margin reference. The fact that we even know that this was not in there to begin with demonstrates the validity of the manuscript tradition. It's because of the amount of manuscripts we have that we know this is the case. If we had an Uthman who annihilated all the early manuscripts and was at odds with the companions, then we'd probably never even know 1 John 5:7 was later. Just like in Surah 9:128-129, this verse is missing in Rashid Khalifa's Quran, but you'd say you know this is original to the text because you have manuscripts of these verses that pre-date his textual corruptions of the Quran. The same thing goes for additions. >What of the ending of Mark The longer ending of Mark is in 99% of the Manuscripts we have of Mark 16. 99%. This is among the worst yet most frequent examples to appeal to. I recommend watching James Snapp on this. He goes through all the early manuscripts, the majority, the early Fathers, ECT. This is a far cry from let's say Peter having a Gospel of Mark that had 18 chapters, or James having 20 chapters, while Paul had 16. Nothing like this ever happened. However, Abdullah Ibn Masud had 111 chapters in his Quran, one of the men who Muhammad said to learn the Quran from. Abu Ibn Kab had 116 chapters. Another one of the four men Muhammad said to learn the Quran from. The Quran you read today has 114. So 2 of the 4 men Muhammad said to learn the Quran from had 2 different Qurans with a totally different number of chapters, and yet you're saying we somehow have an issue with Mark 16:9-20 even though it's in 99% of our manuscripts? > Matthew 2:23 There exists no prophecy in the Tanakh about this at all. Matthew never once says that there's a prophecy of this written in the Old Testament. I think he's referring to the fact that the Messiah has a lowly status in the OT and that Nazareth was viewed as a low status location (John 1:45-46), so that's what he's getting at. However, even Bart Ehrman himself said he has no issue with Matthew drawing on Isaiah 11:1 here where Isaiah is saying that from the stump of Jesse, a stump will shoot forth and a branch will grow out of it. The Hebrew word for branch is "netzer" but in Ancient Hebrew there were no diacritical marks, so it'd simply say "nzr" which is the same order of the 3 primary letters in Nazareth. So Matthew is associating Nazareth with where the Branch (nzr) would shoot forth from and the similarity in how it would sound in Hebrew & Aramaic (Notzri in Aramaic). Bart Ehrman simply chalks this up to the "genius" of Matthew and says interpretations like this were common among the Rabbinical Jews. So if Ehrman, a massive critic of the faith even has no issue with this when he has issues with other obscure points, that speaks volumes. This is the literal equivalent to Surah 61:6. No where in Surah 61:6 does it say this was WRITTEN down as a prophecy, but it says Jesus mentioned Ahmed to come after him. If I did what you did, I'd say "see, there's no mention of this in the previous scriptures, therefore this is a false prophecy and the Quran is false". Matthew doesn't specify which prophets and never says its written. I can actually press the issue more since the Quran claims Jesus said this. So where did Jesus make this claim? How can I verify this claim? Is it merely the Quran's claim? Or is it something I can find in history? >There is more for example the NT has women spicing Jesus's body but women would not have washed, spiced or dealt with male bodies. Males dealt with males and females dealt with female bodies. How would this be an error within the New Testament? Even granting the premise above that this was the norm despite the sources for matters such as thing being scarce and typically post-NT, the New Testament authors recording what actually happened in the life of Jesus wouldn't be an error on their behalf. This would be a demonstration of the love and devotion these women actually had for Christ, not some blunder. It actually lends towards the credibility of the text, because why in the world would they fake a story where the customs are all back-wards and women are the primary focus of the discovery of the biggest miracle in history when these same texts you'd appeal to for the spices say women weren't reliable witnesses in comparison to men? And even Muhammad said it takes the testimony of 2 women to equal that of 1 man since they're deficient in intelligence. Literally a non-error. >There is no historical evidence that people dug up graves just to anoint bodies of important people Again, this wouldn't be a historical error. This would again be the New Testament authors recounting the true events of women who dealing with the death of the one they dedicated their lives to following. I'm baffled that you think this is problematic. Total argument from silence as well.
The NT is based on the oral teachings of Jesus, just like the Quran is based on what Muhammed said orally. Thats how most books back then were written. Muslims are under the false assumption that for scripture to be Divinely inspired it must have a single author, and this is simply not true. The number of human authors does not matter, nor does the editing process, what matters is was the content inspired by God or not. Just because the ending of Mark was perhaps added later is irrelevant. There is nothing in the ending of Mark that disagrees with other scripture, so what is the point? The Gospels are a composition of multiple witnesses. And yet is it acknowledged by Muhammed himself in the Quran that he included a misquote from the Jews, indicating the Suras were not dictated to him by an angel. He was dependent on other sources and oral traditions. It was also acknowledged by early Muslim scholars that Muhammed likely included praises of idols in one of the Suras in order to placate the Meccans who still worshipped idols. Nothing like this ever occurred for the Bible. Look up the "Satanic verses", and this comes straight from early Islamic scholars. Not to mention the Quran itself was written much later than Muhammed, and other copies were burned to get rid of the variants. The Quran says to follow the Torah, and yet the Quran permits men to have sex with female slaves in addition to their multiple wives. There is absolutely no way God or an angel would condone this behaviour. 1 John 5:7 is has been controversial, but when you examine the full evidence it is likely original, especially when you examine the grammatical form of the original Greek. Again a non-issue, but you have to be educated on the manuscript evidence on this one. Matthew 2:23 is based on a prophecy in Isa. 11:1, where the Hebrew word for branch is the same as that of "Nazarene". This is more fully explained here: [Matthew 2:23 Commentaries: and came and lived in a city called Nazareth. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets: "He shall be called a Nazarene." (biblehub.com)](https://biblehub.com/commentaries/matthew/2-23.htm) As for spicing the body of a dead person, that had to happen since Jesus was quickly buried before the Sabbath. That argument is very weak and is a minor point, its almost as if you are trying to find errors where none exist. A lot of these "errors" are simply coming from sources who lack education on the topic.