Please, Revise the
Bible, Again!
Final Revision
Preface
God
sent many prophets to mankind with the same message “He is one and Only. He is
the only One to worship”. As a prophet delivered the message, some people
believed, and others rejected the message.
From generation to generation, the message of the Unity of God was
distorted and tainted by mankind through additions of some concepts and beliefs
that brought the original message closer to human imagination, like adding
idols that human can see and touch, or adding attributes to God that made Him love,
marry, and have children. The original message is pure and simple that He is
the creator of everything in this universe, He takes care of all His creatures,
humans cannot see him because the human mind is limited, and God is not limited
to certain time, space, power, knowledge, or anything for that matter. Rather
than accepting this concept of unlimited God, humans tend to visualize God as
limited like everything they experience in their lives.
Judaism,
in the Old Testament, shows a lot of human attributes to God such as: God regrets making man, God smells sweet
savor, God wrestles with Jacob, Jacob saw God face to face, and Moses sees
God’s back parts. These are obscene
and imperfect descriptions of the Perfect God. Probably, these were the
attempts of the writers of the Old Testament to bring a picture of God that
people could imagine. This was not a correct approach to emphasize the concept
of unlimited God, especially if there are verses in the Old Testament that
clearly depict God as an entity beyond and above all His creation.
Out
of all religions, Christianity is singled out to introduce confusing concepts
about God that are far from true monotheism, and were not mentioned by any
prophet before or after Jesus. Not a single prophet before or after Jesus
introduced the concept of the Trinity. Jesus himself did not state clearly that
God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost are one and they are all “made” of the same
substance, as was stated in the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea I – 325 CE. We have in our hands a New Testament that consists
of 4 Gospels, and Epistles. The reader of the Gospels will notice the word
“according to” in the title of each Gospel. This indicates uncertainty about
the real author. As a matter of fact, Christian scholars are not certain about
the real author, his biography, and the beliefs of any of the alleged authors
of the Gospels. This poses an interesting question: How can anyone trust
unknown authors for his or her life on earth from the present time to eternity?
That is not to say that Jesus did not exist, or that he did not have a great
message.
There
are basic questions about the Christian faith: Trinity, Son of God, original
sin, atonement, and incarnation of God into a human form. If these concepts are
true, they should have been mentioned by all prophets before and after Jesus,
and should have been explained clearly and without any ambiguity by Jesus. They
should have been also mentioned by Muhammad (peace be upon him), the prophet
that came after Jesus, and the last of the prophets of God.
What
is the origin of the Trinity? The word trinity does not exist in the Bible and
is not explained or introduced by Jesus. Is Jesus God? Jesus never said
obviously in the Bible “I am God”. Is Jesus the Son of God? Jesus never said
clearly in the Bible “I am son of god”. In the New Revised standard Bible,
Jesus called himself son of man 84 times; people and Paul called him son of God
63 times. The serious question now is who do we believe?
Many
times Jesus refers to God as “My Father”, and one time in Mark 14:36 Jesus said
“Abba, Father” in the
The
first two hundred years of Christianity are often called “lost centuries’ or
the dark period of the Christian history. It was a time of great Roman persecution
upon the church. Christianity at that time was an underground movement that the
Roman historians did not care very much about its history, and few of its
records have barely survived. The victor of the ideological debates of early
Christianity became the custodian of the church history. Victors always write
the history of the wars they win and those histories often fabricate the story,
justify their cause, ignore facts, and take liberties to demonize their
opponents. We only know the Catholic Church was the eventual victor in the
ideological debates, and we also know that the scarce information about the
Christian history was provided mainly by the Catholic Church. Such information
should not be accepted without valid questioning.
There are over 50 major translations of the
New Testament. Theories of translation are enthusiastically and even hotly
debated among both laymen and the scholars. The debate largely focuses around
whether a translation should be “word for word” equivalent to the existing
manuscript, or what is called dynamic or functionally equivalent focusing on the
ease of understanding of the intended reader. Every translation imperfectly
represents the existing manuscript, because languages and cultures differ in
ways that translation by itself cannot conquer. While translator bias is a fact
to be contended with, translations are being tainted by the theological
background of translators by interjecting their interpretation of ancient
Hebrew and Greek words and idioms. A translator's first and most essential job
is to bridge the language and time gaps. The translator attempts to seek the
best way of saying in English what was said first in ancient Hebrew or
Greek. But even this is not simple. No English word fully matches a Greek or
Hebrew word. For instance, the biblical words for "soul" are the
Hebrew “nephesh” and the Greek “psyche.” Unfortunately, nephesh
is also translated as "life," "appetite," "neck"
and "person," among other words.
Jesus attempted to steer the Jews away from
their rigid misapplication of the Law of Moses, in other words to add spirit to
Jewish Law.
Matthew
5:38-3938 "You
have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' 39 But I say
to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right
cheek, turn the other also”,
This was a huge step forward because a complete religion is neither a
set of commandments nor spiritual guidance. It should include commandments and
emphasize moral spirituality such as mercy and love between humans, and between
humans and other creatures.
Paul, the best marketing Evangelist in Christian history,
took the above message of Jesus literally and rejected the Law of Moses:
2
Cor. 3:7 "The service that
brought death (the law) was written and engraven in stone"
Gal.3:
13 "Christ hath redeemed us from
the curse of the Law".
There is compelling evidence to produce one unified final
revision of the New Testament that is free from inconsistencies and additions
or deletions of verses. The existing main discrepancies in the New Testament
can summarized as:
1.
Inconsistencies in events or words in the Gospels according
to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
2.
Inconsistencies in additions or deletions of verses of the
Gospels between different versions of the New Testament.
3.
Inconsistencies in important verses of the Gospels between
different versions of the New Testament.
In the following part, one example is presented for each of
the above mentioned inconsistencies. The following chapters of this book
elaborate on the seriousness of the inconsistencies in the New Testament.
First:
Inconsistencies in events or words in the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John.
The last words of Jesus on
the cross come as shock to me and a big embarrassment to Christian scholars.
First, there are four different versions in the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John. These verses are part of a Christian doctrine of divine
inspiration. If God had inspired these four writers, why did God inspire them
to record different words? These verses are not just different words, but
totally different concepts.
The following are the "last
words" of Jesus, just before his departure from earth:
If God inspired the
Evangelists, and if they considered Jesus the Son of God, then how could there
be any discrepancy about the last words of God or the Son of God on Earth? How
can these verses be part of a supposed "divine inspiration"? No
Answer. One Christian Scholar has a simplistic answer: Jesus said all of the
above! Then why none of "divine inspirations" stated all of the
above? It seems that the reasonable statement should be the one that Jesus said
in his own Aramaic language. Besides, those words were reported in two Gospels,
Matthew and Mark. But this statement raises more serious questions.
The last words of Jesus
according to Matthew and Mark represent an eternal mystery for Christianity.
Why did Jesus say that God abandoned him? It is hard to believe that Jesus said
that God abandoned him. There are three possibilities:
The Gospel
of Barnabas, which was referred to by the Fathers of the Church, gives a
reasonable explanation. The man on the cross was not Jesus. He was Judas.
Barnabas reported that before the alleged arrest of Jesus, God commanded the
Angels to take Jesus out of this world, Barnabas 215. Then God acted
miraculously that Judas was so changed in speech and in face to be like Jesus
that the apostles believed him to be Jesus, Barnabas 216. When Judas was taken
to the cross, he did nothing else but cried out "God, why hast thou
forsaken me, seeing that the malefactor hath escaped and I die unjustly?"
Barnabas 217. The first sentence is a prayer of the Jews from Psalm 22:1, so
Judas was praying to God from the Old Testament. The guardian angles of Mary
ascended to the third heaven, where Jesus was in the company of Angels, and
told him that his mother was weeping. Jesus prayed to God to come down to Earth
to see his mother and his disciples. Then God commanded the angles to bear
Jesus into his mother’s house, and they kept watching over him for three days.
After the third day, Jesus was carried up into heaven.
Looking further at Biblical contradictions
I found out that this problem is a way of life for Apologists, who are
Christian scholars whose job is to attempt to explain contradictions in the
Bible, sometimes without reasonable success.
Second: Inconsistencies in additions or
deletions of verses of the Gospels between different versions of the New
Testament
I have five different versions of the Bible at my home. I
was reading the Holy Bible, Easy-To-Read Version - Matthew 18:10-14. I found
that the number of verse 11 existed with no text! The footnote for this verse
states that some Greek copies add verse 11: “The Son of Man came to save
lost people.” I could not believe it. Some Greek copies add a verse and
some don’t. So the Easy-To-Read Version decided against including this verse.
Why? Isn’t the Bible the “inspired Word” of God that no verse should be added,
removed, or changed?
I started investigating this problem by looking at
footnotes! I was shocked that this is a common problem in the “inspired” Word
of God. Then I found about 50 verses also do not exist in American Standard
Version, Revised Standard Version, and New Revised Standard. The explanation of
these lost verses is that they do not exist in ancient copies.
Third:
Inconsistencies in important verses of the Gospels between different versions
of the New Testament.
When
I started looking at the different versions of the Bible, I was under the
impression that these versions are translations of the same document. I was
wrong. There are completely different versions of the same verse of the Bible.
Take John 9:35,
as an example, the following is the text from different versions of the Bible”
The
Douay-Rheims Bible “Jesus heard that
they had cast him out. And when he had found him, he said to him: Dost thou
believe in the Son of God?”
The
King James Version “Jesus heard that they had cast him out;
and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of
God?”
The
New Revised Standard Version “Jesus
heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, "Do
you believe in the Son of Man?"
FOOTNOTES: Other ancient authorities read [the Son of God]
New International Version “Jesus heard that they had thrown him
out, and when he found him, he said, "Do you believe in the Son of
Man?"
Another Example is Acts 3:13:
The
King James Version “The God of Abraham,
and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son
Jesus”
The
New Revised Standard Version “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus.”
FOOTNOTES: Servant or Child
There is an enormous difference between
“son of man”, “son of God”, and “servant of God”. The following questions need
answers:
Like the above deleted verses, I found many
other inconsistencies in the different versions of the Bible for the same
verse.
When a text was written by different
authors of the Gospels, you are bound to find inconsistencies. When translators
find different documents of the same verse, you are certain to find
inconsistencies. When a text was written
and copied by humans in a region where different forms of trinities existed,
you are guaranteed to find insinuations to trinities. All that can happen since
we really don’t know who were the original writers and copiers, and certainly
we don’t know their beliefs, and their level of trust worth.
The author Jasper Ray in his book “God Wrote Only
One Bible” accused the editors of the Revised Standard Version of not
understanding simple English, let alone Hebrew or Greek!" He also accused
the editors of plainly revealing the fact that they do not believe in the Deity of Christ. This is because in a
footnote of John
The Jews realize God as Elohiym, or Yahweh. The Christians
recognize God as God, Father, Lord, Jehovah, or Jesus. Muslims and all Christian
Arabs accept Allah as the name of God. In the Arabic Bible, any reference to
God is written as “Allah”. However, some TV Evangelists claim that Allah is not
the same God of the Christians. They refuse to acknowledge that the
In January, 2004 Reverend Pat Robertson visited
Moreover, Allah clearly states in the Quran not to worship the sun or the
moon:
Holy Quran 41:37 “Among His Signs
are the Night and the Day and the Sun and Moon. Prostrate (adore) not to the
Sun and the Moon but prostrate to Allah, Who created them, if it is Him ye wish
to serve”
Unfortunately,
many Christians believe Reverend Pat Robertson that God of the Muslim is the
moon-god.
The Quran literally means “the recital.”
Muslims regard the Quran as the authentic revelation of God to Muhammad,
revealed in Arabic by Gabriel, the Angel of revelation to all the Messengers of
Allah. This divine revelation of the Quran implies that the words are divinely
given; so any text of the Quran can be interpreted in the light of other Quranic
texts. Both Islamic and non-Islamic scholars agree on the essential integrity
of the text of the Quran throughout its history. Because of the distortion of
all previous Holy Books by humans, God kept his promise that He Himself will
protect the Quran. The Quran is complete and authentic. Nothing of it is
missing and no more of it is expected. Its authenticity is beyond any doubt,
and no serious scholar or intellectual has ventured to question its
genuineness. God made it incumbent upon Himself to protect it against
distortion of any kind. Thus it is given to mankind as the standard or the
criterion by which all other books are judged. Consequently, whatever agrees
with the Quran is accepted as divine truth, and whatever differs from the Quran
is rejected. God says:
Surah 15, Ayah 9 “We have, without
doubt, sent down the Message; and We will assuredly guard it (from
corruption).”
The
purity of the text of the Quran through fourteen centuries is a foretaste of
the eternal care with which Allah’s Truth is guarded through all ages. Allah’s
Pure and Holy Truth will never suffer eclipse in any time or in any place.
Unlike any other book since the Quran was revealed, millions of Muslims (Arabs
and non-Arabs) memorize the whole Quran by heart. Some of them have been able
to memorize the entire Quran by the age of ten. This is a simple and yet an
overwhelming fact. Not only did God preserve the text of the Quran, but also
the style of reciting the Quran by today’s Muslims is exactly the same style of
recitation as that of Muhammad himself. Muslims, when reading verses of the
Quran, stop where the Messenger of Allah stopped, and continue where he
continued. One may really wonder about the strength of God’s promise to
preserve the Quran in writing, reading as well as in memorization by millions
of Muslims. When one recites the Quran, one is reading the authentic Words of
the One and Only God, with the exact reading style of the greatest man who ever
lived. This is definitely an enormous spiritual experience.
From
the very beginning of the revelation, the Messenger of Allah and the Muslims
recited the Quran by heart, and the scribes wrote it down in his presence. The
Quran therefore starts with two elements of authenticity that no other book
has: true divine inspiration and immediate recording and memorization. This
continued until the death of Messenger of Allah. This memorization of the Quran
by heart was crucial because not everyone could write, but everyone was able to
recite. About thirty thousand companions of the Prophet memorized the whole
Quran during his time. The Arabs at that time used to memorize very long poems.
All these poems exist in the present Arabic literature. So it was not difficult
for the Arabs to memorize a very long text by heart. Also the fact that
millions of present day Muslims know the entire Quran by heart provides an
assurance that it was done before. This memorization of the Quran provides a
considerable advantage because of the double-checking that occurred when the
definitive text was compiled.
God stated in the Quran, that He made the Quran easy:
Quran
54:17 “And We have indeed made the
Quran easy to understand and remember: then is there any that will receive
admonition?”
This is again another promise from Allah to make it
easy to memorize the whole Quran, 604 pages. I would like to find a Christian
theologian who memorizes the whole Bible, the whole New Testament, or even the
whole four Gospels for that matter.
There
is a common misconception in the West that Muslims hate Christians. Islam
recognizes Christians as the nearest to Muslims. Allah states otherwise:
Quran 5:82 "...and nearest among them (mankind) in love to the
believers (Muslims) will you find those who say 'we are Christians': because
among these are men devoted to learning and men who have renounced the world,
and they are not arrogant"
Allah also orders the Muslims
not to argue with "The people of the book" (Jews or Christians) unless
it is in a nice way.
Quran 29:46 "And argue not with the people of the book unless
it be in [a way] which is better [than mere arguing], except with such of them
that do wrong, and say [to them]: 'We believe in that which has been revealed
to us and revealed to you, and our God and your God is One, and to Him we have
submitted (literally: 'We are Muslims')"
However
Islamophobia is taking over the Western media, and some top politicians in the West.
On
This is not the first time that Bush and members of
his Administration have used this deliberate coupling of Islam with evil
ideologies or actions, such as fascism or terrorism. Bush referred to
“Islamo-fascism” in his address to the National Endowment for Democracy,
In Britain, the term “Islamophobia” was not used in
government policy until 1997, when the race relations think tank Runnymede
Trust published the report “Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All” (http://www.runnymedetrust.org/publications/pdfs/islamophobia.pdf).
In a section entitled The Nature of Islamophobia, the report itemizes eight
features that
So where do go from here? The Christian Crusaders
definitely do not have basic knowledge about Islam, and they don’t understand
the peaceful nature of Islam. They also do not know their Bible either. They
raise slogans like war of ideology, war on Islam, clash of civilizations. When
the American Columnist Ann Coulter declared “We should
invade their (Muslim) countries, kill their leaders and convert (them) to
Christianity”, how does she suggest to do that? Can the Christian crusaders
wipe out over 1.5 billion Muslims from Earth? Muslims are humans, they believe
in peace, dignity, and most of all they believe in the One and Only God.
Now we are at crossroad:
Certainly
the first option is rejected, and the second option requires major preliminary
steps. The basis for this dialogue is the Bible and the Quran. Muslims have one
original Quran in Arabic text, and all Muslims everywhere on earth agree on
this single authentic text. The biggest obstacle for a useful dialogue is that
Christians do not have one single text of the Bible. This is not a new idea,
president Thomas Jefferson attempted to consolidate the whole New Testament in
one single Gospel to eliminate contradictions between the existing four Gospels.
Christian
scholars have to agree on one unified copy of the New Testament. As it is
stands right now, no one can really claim the Bible that we have now is the authentic
words of God, if one accepts the fact that God does allow contradictions or inconsistencies.
This is a big helping hand first for the Christians who read the New Testament
carefully, and second for a beneficial interfaith dialogue between Christians
and Muslims.
Hundreds of books have been
published by Christian scholars on the topic of contradictions which have
resulted in the existing versions of Bible after centuries of continuous
revisions, corrections, additions, and deletions of verses of the Bible.
This book is a call to resolve
the problems in the New Testament once and for all. This can be accomplished by
three step solutions:
When
this is done, Christianity and Islam, the two largest religions on earth, can
have a civilized dialogue and peaceful coexistence and not the constant feud
that we see in the present time, between the two members of the same family.
Some
Christians with arrogant ideas ventured to write a “New Quran” which is
considered a ridiculous joke by all Muslims. Therefore, I am not suggesting
that Muslims should do that out of respect to the Christian scholars. I am
suggesting a committee of well educated and respected Christian scholars,
theologians, historians, and experts in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, and English
languages to handle this historic project. This project is not impossible to
accomplish when we know that President Thomas Jefferson did it single-handedly
in 10 years.
This
book is not intended to offend any Christian or a Jew. My main references are the different versions
of the published Bibles, and the Quran. My references also include writings of
Christian scholars. I did not include any writings from a non Christian who may
have any hateful ideas to Christianity or the West in general.
References