ISLAM AND LIFE (ISLAMI DHE JETA)
Earliest manuscripts of Injil (New Testament)
I own a book about the earliest New Testament documents. It starts with:
“This book provides transcriptions of 69 of the earliest New Testament manuscripts…dated from early 2nd century to beginning of the 4th (100-300AD) … containing about 2/3 of the new Testament text”(P. Comfort, “The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts”. Preface p. 17. 2001 ).
This is significant since these manuscripts come before Roman Emperor Constantine (ca 325 AD) who often is accused of altering the text of the Bible. If he had corrupted it we can know it by observing the alterations of the texts before him (since we have them) by comparing it to the texts that come after him. In addition to this we have many complete Bibles in existence still today that were made long before the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The most famous of these are the Codex Sinaiticus (ca 350 AD) and the Codex Vaticanus (ca 325 AD). These and other thousands of manuscripts from before 600 AD come from diverse parts of the world. The idea of Christians changing these texts makes no sense at all. It would not have been possible for them everywhere to agree on the changes to be made. Even if those in Arabia had made changes, the difference between their copies and those of their brothers, let us say in Syria and Europe, would have been obvious. But since the Qur’an and haddith both clearly affirm the Biblical text as it existed around 600 AD, and the Bible is based on manuscripts that pre-date this time, then the Bible of today is not corrupted. The timeline below illustrates this, showing how the text base of the Bible pre-dates 600 AD.
The earliest manuscipts copies of the Taurat and Zabur date from even earlier. Collections of scrolls, known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, were found in 1948 by the Dead Sea. These scrolls make up the entire Taurat and Zabur and they date from 200-100 BC. This means that though, for example, the prophet Musa (PBUH), was given the Taurat long before that (around 1500 BC) we have copies of the Taurat that date even before the prophets Isa al Masih (PBUH) and Muhammad (PBUH). Since they both publicly used and approved the Taurat and Zabur that they had (which was the same as the Dead Sea Scrolls we have today) we have assurance that these first books of the prophets were also not corrupted. I explore what all this means about the reliability (or unchangedness) of al kitab from a scientific point-of-view in my article here.
The testimony of the Prophet Mohamed (PBUH) in the hadiths, along with background knowledge of the manuscripts of the Bible, point to the same conclusion as the testimony in the Qur’an – the text of the Bible has not been corrupted or changed.
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