The Bible and the Qur’an - 17 July 2009 |
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I’ve been chatting with a number of Muslims recently. One of their objections to Christianity runs something like this:
You can’t rely on the Bible, because there are so many different versions. Pick up any two Bibles and they’ll say different things. OK, it’s partly down to translation differences, which we can cope with. But that’s not the whole story. Everyone knows that there are thousands of Greek and Hebrew biblical manuscripts, and they all say different things. Which one of these is the ‘real’ Bible? How can the Bible be God’s word, if Christians can’t even decide what it says?
The Qur’an, on the other hand, is different. There is only one Arabic version of the Qur’an in existence. Even if different translations are possible, there’s no doubt for Muslims about the word of Allah. There are no differences, no discrepancies, no debates. What Muslims have is what Muhammad wrote, which is what Allah dictated.
Well, what are we to make of this? At first glance, it sounds impressive, doesn’t it? There’s a degree of clarity about the Muslim position that makes it compelling for many – at least, that’s certainly what my Muslim friends think.
However, if we dig a little deeper, we’ll find that exactly the opposite is the case. We have a very high degree of certainty about the text of Scripture, but we have very little idea about the text of the original Qur’an. Today’s Arabic Qur’an is not a reliable guide to the original. Far from establishing the reliability of the Qur’an, the fact that only a single version is in existence today serves to underline its unreliability. We will never be able to recover the Qur’an as Muhammad knew it.
The Bible
Let’s think about the Bible first, and ask ourselves the question: Why are there so many different manuscripts of the Bible in existence today?
We don’t have any original biblical manuscripts today. The actual letters written (or dictated) by Paul have all been lost, together with the actual Gospels penned by the hand of Matthew, Mark and so on.
Instead, what we have are copies. Lots of them. In fact, there are over 5000 copies of portions of the New Testament, some dating from within a few decades of the originals. Some of them are small fragments; others are almost complete. Some date from hundreds of years AD; others were written just a few decades after the originals.
These manuscripts contain differences. We need to be careful not to overstate this, and the vast majority of the differences are tiny – a letter here, a word there. But a glance at the footnotes of a standard Greek New Testament demonstrates beyond doubt that the manuscripts are certainly not all the same, and some of the variations are fairly substantial. For example, one of the most significant variations occurs at the end of Mark’s Gospel, where different manuscripts vary by several sentences. So, how do we navigate through this maze to figure out the original text?
It’s important to realise that this is precisely what we’d expect to find. The Bible was written long before the invention of printing, so all the early copies were made by hand, and it’s very hard to copy out a long text without making mistakes. If you don’t believe me, try copying out this article by hand then ask a friend to check the results. Yeah, pretty embarrassing. Don’t give up your day job. It’s no surprise that the different biblical manuscripts contain accidental variations.
Other variations probably came about deliberately. For example, it’s likely that some well-meaning scribes occasionally introduced what they regarded as ‘improvements’ – smoothing out bits of grammar that seemed ambiguous, or adding ‘clarifications’ to parts they found confusing. As a result, we’re left with a large pile of different manuscripts.
All is not lost, however. Far from it. By careful analysis of the different texts, it’s possible to reconstruct with surprising certainty the original text of Scripture. Sure, it’s not a trivial task, but neither is it impossible, especially when we take into account the amount of evidence provided by the vast number of manuscripts. Indeed, given that both accidental and deliberate variations are inevitable, the fact that we have so many different texts is a great help in recovering the original. Taking into account the nature of the discrepancies, the age and provenance of the different manuscripts, the likely motives of the scribes and so on, the original text can be established with confidence in the vast majority of cases. The remaining uncertainties are generally insignificant – certainly far too small to call into question any aspect of historic Christian doctrine.[1]
The Qur’an
So much for the Bible; what about the Qur’an? My Muslim friends claim that today’s Arabic Qur’an agrees exactly with Muhammad’s version, and that the agreement between all the Arabic versions is proof of its reliability. The truth, however, is very different.
For the sake of argument, let’s accept the claim that all the existing Arabic copies of the Qur’an are identical. In fact, this is widely disputed, even by some Muslim scholars, and if these scholars are right then this pro-Qur’an argument collapses. But let’s give my Muslim friends the benefit of the doubt for the time being. Then the key question is this: How did all these identical copies of the Qur’an come into existence, especially given the near-impossibility of avoiding errors when copying documents by hand?
When Muhammad died in AD 632, no complete written version of the Qur’an existed. Instead, portions of it had been memorised by Muslims, including some who had known Muhammad personally. After a number of these people were killed in the Battle of Yamama in 633, the Muslim ruler Abu Bakr ordered that the Qur’an should be written down, based on the recollection of Muhammad’s surviving disciples. This task was completed in 634, and considerable care was taken – only readings supported by at least two witnesses were allowed. This version of the Qur’an, known as the Hafsah Codex, was undoubtedly the most accurate written text of the Qur’an ever produced, closer than any other version to the words of Muhammad.
Unfortunately (for Muslims) the Hafsah Codex no longer exists. As Islam spread through military conquest during the following decades, it was noted that Muslim soldiers were reading different versions of the Qur’an. This shouldn’t surprise us, since we’ve already noted that manual copying inevitably introduces variations. But these differences were so serious that the different groups regarded each other as heretics. In an effort to restore order, the Muslim leader Uthman ibn Affan, ruler from 644 to 656, ordered just four men to rewrite the entire Qur’an from memory. Not the best way to ensure reliable textual reproduction, especially in a context when large differences between different versions were provoking such hostility between different Muslim groups. No attempt was made by Uthman’s scribes to adhere to the Hafsah Codex. Worse still, all other surviving manuscripts, including all extant copies of the Hafsah Codex, were collected and burned.
This is not a biased historical reconstruction taken from ill-informed anti-Muslim propaganda. On the contrary, it’s taken from the Hadith, a collection of sayings related to the life and teaching of Muhammad, regarded by Muslims as an important guide to interpreting the Qur’an and following the Muslim way of life. Here’s the relevant section in full:
Hudhaifa bin Al-Yaman came to Uthman at the time when the people of Sham and the people of Iraq were waging war to conquer Arminya and Adharbijan. Hudhaifa was afraid of their (the people of Sham and Iraq) differences in the recitation of the Qur’an, so he said to Uthman, ‘O chief of the Believers! Save this nation before they differ about the Book (Qur’an) as Jews and the Christians did before.’ So Uthman sent a message to Hafsa saying, ‘Send us the manuscripts of the Qur’an so that we may compile the Qur’anic materials in perfect copies and return the manuscripts to you.’ Hafsa sent it to Uthman. Uthman then ordered Zaid bin Thabit, Abdullah bin AzZubair, Said bin Al-As and Abdur Rahman bin Harith bin Hisham to rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies. Uthman said to the three Quraishi men, ‘In case you disagree with Zaid bin Thabit on any point in the Qur’an, then write it in the dialect of Quraish, the Qur’an was revealed in their tongue.’ They did so, and when they had written many copies, Uthman returned the original manuscripts to Hafsa. Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur’anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt.[2]
I guess this might come as a bit of a surprise to many Muslims. I wonder how many of my Muslim friends realise that their claims about the integrity of the Qur’an are contradicted by their own Hadith?
According to the Hadith, then, the consistency of the Qur’an is not a mark of authenticity. Rather, it is the result of Uthman’s attempt to promote Islamic unity by wiping out all but one manuscript tradition. This rather drastic action eliminated permanently any chance of recovering the original Hafsah text produced shortly after Muhammad’s death. It might have been possible for Muslims today to reconstruct the Qur’an as Muhammad transmitted it if Uthman had left the Hafsah Codex well alone, along with all the other different versions. Muslim scholars could then compare all the different manuscript traditions in order to establish the original, just as Christian scholars do with the Bible. But this task is now utterly impossible. The original Qur’an, the Hafsah Codex, has been lost for ever.
Conclusion
My Muslim friends claim that the diversity of biblical manuscripts proves that the Bible can’t be trusted, whereas the consistency of the Qur’an testifies to its authenticity and reliability. In fact, the exact opposite is the case. The diversity of biblical manuscripts is exactly what we would expect to find after two millennia, and the large number of manuscripts allows scholars to reconstruct the original with a high degree of confidence. By contrast, the consistency of modern Arabic versions of the Qur’an is the result of an ill-fated attempt to promote Islamic unity, which resulted in the destruction of all the most reliable manuscripts. My Muslim friends will never know what Muhammad originally said.
[1] This is a very sketchy summary of the complex field of textual criticism. For more detail see for example B. M. Metzger and B. D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament (Oxford University Press, 2005) or J. H. Greenlee, Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism (Hendrickson, 1999).
[2]‘The Virtues of the Qur’an,’ from The Hadith, Volume 6, Book 61, Number 510, translated by Sahih Bukhari. Online www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/061.sbt.html
Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Islam, Minister's Blog