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The Qur’an or the Bible—Which One Has the Authentic Account?
By Abd al-Masih

Muslims tell us that:

• Muhammad is the last and greatest prophet.
• The Qur’an is Allah’s final revelation sent down to Muhammad. It has never been changed from the time it was given by revelation to Muhammad.
• Islam is the final religion, based on Muhammad’s life and teaching and sayings.
• Because Islam is the final religion, it replaces all that has gone before it, especially Judaism and Christianity, and the account written in the Bible.

The Qur’an contains stories about Bible characters, including Abraham (the patriarch of the Jewish people) and Jesus (the Messiah of the New Testament). But these stories are changed in the Qur’an. The Muslim interpretation of the stories of Abraham makes Ishmael the promised son, not Isaac. This means that the line of promise goes through Ishmael to Muhammad and the Arab people, not through Isaac and Jacob to the children of Israel.

The Muslim “Jesus” is not the Son of God but the last prophet before Muhammad, and that Jesus did not die on the cross and rise from the dead to save man from his sins. According to the Muslim belief, someone like Jesus was crucified while he was taken to Heaven from where he will return in the company of another figure called the Mahdi to make the world Islamic (and in the process abolish Christianity and Judaism).

Muslims explain the difference between the Bible and the Qur’an by saying that the Jews and the Christians changed their books (the Bible) while the Qur’an retains the original “revelation.” However, if this is so, then why is there nothing in the Qur’an to say that this apparent forgery has been done by the Jews and Christians? In fact, there are verses (suras) in the Qur’an, which tell Muslims to learn from Jews and Christians:

And if thou (Muhammad) art in doubt concerning that which We reveal unto thee, then question those who read the Scripture (that was) before thee [i.e. the Bible]. (Sura 10:95)

O ye people of the book! Ye are not grounded on anything until ye observe the Taurat [Torah] and the Injil [Gospel] and that which has been revealed unto you from your Lord. (Sura 5:68)

The word Injil (Gospel) is mentioned twelve times. The word Zabur (Psalms) is mentioned thirteen times. The word Taurat (Torah) is mentioned eighteen times. Not once does the Qur’an associate any kind of alteration or corruption in all these many references. If those books were indeed corrupted, surely Allah would have made it abundantly clear?

When were “the books changed”? Before Muhammad who received his revelations between 610 and 632 AD? In which case, why does the Qur’an tell Muslims to learn from Jews and Christians? Or after Muhammad? In which case, how do you explain the existing manuscripts of both Old and New Testaments which predate Muhammad?

There are around 5,300 manuscripts still in existence of the whole or part of the Greek text of the New Testament pre-dating Muhammad. There are also quotations in the works of early Christian writers which are “so extensive that the N.T. could virtually be reconstructed from them without the use of New Testament manuscripts.”1 The Dead Sea Scrolls dated around 125 BC have brought to light manuscripts of the Old Testament books including the complete text of Isaiah. The Septuagint translation of the Hebrew text into Greek from around 165 BC contains the same material as the Hebrew Bible.

Now if the Muslim account is true, then Jews and Christians should abandon their faith and all convert to Islam (which is what Islamic preachers tell us we should do). But what if the Qur’an’s account is not true? A number of scholars are now questioning the origins of Islam as believed by Muslims today, subjecting the Qur’an to the kind of source criticism which has been applied to the Bible since the 19th century. This study which challenges and puts to question Islamic belief and practice is suppressed in Muslim majority countries. It is also under fire in the West, where authorities fear accusations of Islamophobia in any criticism of Islam; meanwhile, no phobias seemingly are associated with those who reject Christianity or the Bible.

Despite this, there are Muslims, even in Saudi Arabia, questioning the origins of the Qur’an. An article in the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is titled “Articles in Saudi Press Call to Amend Thousands of Scribal Errors in the Quran, Re-examine Islamic Texts in Light of Modern Perceptions.”2

The article mentions two authors, Saudi Ahmad Hashem and Kurdish Jarjis Gulizada, who say that the Qur’an can’t be a holy book since it was written after Muhammad’s time, during the rule of the third caliph, Uthman bin Affan (644-656) and therefore by a human hand, not the direct word of God. Hashem is contesting here the most fundamental Islamic belief which says that the Qur’an is an authentic scripture from God, in its original form, of which not a single letter has been changed.

So is the Qur’an true?

According to the classical account, Muhammad was born in Mecca in 570 AD. At the age of 40, he met Jibril (the angel Gabriel) in a cave and received the Meccan Revelations from 610-622, followed by the Medinan Revelations from 622-632. These revelations came from Allah. Muhammad was unable to read or write and memorized the revelations, which he repeated to his followers. These were then written down to become the Qur’an. Muhammad made the Hirja (flight) from Mecca to Medina in 622, returned to Mecca in 630 and converted the people there to his new religion. He died in 632.

Talks given by Dr. Jay Smith of the Pfander Centre dispute this account of the origins of Islam, drawing on the work of academics and researchers who have looked into the early history of Islam and have come to some startling conclusions.3 This leads them to question the historical accuracy of the official Muslim narrative.

According to Dr. Smith, Islam and the Qur’an, as we know it today, evolved and changed over a period of 200 to 300 years, many years after the death of its prophet.

Muslim sources themselves tell us that Caliph Uthman, the third Caliph after Muhammad, collected verses of the Qur’an that were being passed around and ordered all variant readings from his version to be burnt (around 650-653). The variations were so great that Muslims started attacking each other and accusing one another of disbelief.

The earliest Qur’anic manuscripts began to appear during the reign of Abd al Malik and his son al Walid in the 690s-750s. None of these versions of the Qur’an were complete. They continued to be changed and corrected by later Caliphs up to the 9th century. It was by this time that forms of the Qur’an, as it is today, began to appear (although even these have several variants among them).

Most of the information we have about Muhammad dates from a period about 200 years after he lived. He is only mentioned by name four times in the Qur’an, with no specific information of what he was like. Information we have about his life comes from the Sira, his biography which exists in an English translation, The Life of Muhammad by A Guillaume. Muslims attribute this book to Ibn Ishaq who died in 765, but Dr. Smith says the final version of this book was written by Ibn Hisham who took what he liked from the earlier book and added material of his own. This was written around 833, a full 200 years after Muhammad is supposed to have died. Certainly not an eye witness then.

There are many more reports of him in the Hadith (sayings attributed to Muhammad or about him), which date from the 9th-10th centuries. Bukhari, who died in 870, made a collection of about 600,000 such sayings, then rejected all but around 7000 as forgeries. These are now preserved as the Hadith, but this collection took place over 200 years after Muhammad which begs the question: how do we know the ones he preserved were authentic? Because of the late dating of all this material and the fact it has been changed by different authors, it is highly unlikely that it is an authentic account of what really happened.

When we come to the Qur’an itself, we find many things which do not add up with the claim that this was revealed directly by Allah to a man called Muhammad living in Mecca in Arabia in the early 7th century. For example, the Qur’an has 65 geographical references, with only nine places named. These include 23 references to Ad (biblical Uz, related to Edom in southern Jordan), 24 to Thamud (Nabateans, again southern Jordan, northwest Arabia) and seven to Midian (east side of Gulf of Aqaba, north of Arabia). All these places are about 600 miles north of Mecca.

While Muslims believe that Mecca is the center of Islam, there is only one direct reference to Mecca in the Qur’an (in Sura 48:24). There are references to Bakkah, which is said to be the site of the Kaaba stone (which is today the object that Muslims make pilgrimage to in Mecca). According to the Qur’an and the Hadith, this place is situated in a valley and a parallel valley with a stream, fields, fruit, olive trees, and mountains overlooking the Kaaba (al Bukhari 2:645, 685, 9:337, 4:281, Sura 32:3, 16, 80, 2:40-42). Yet, Mecca is not in a valley, has no stream or river, no mountain overlooking it, and is too arid for fruit trees to grow. Olives only grow in the Mediterranean region 600 miles north of Mecca.

According to the narrative, Mecca was on a trade route, and Muhammad was a trader operating out of there. Yet, 7th century maps of the area show no sign of a city called Mecca and no trade routes passing by that area. The earliest maps showing Mecca on them date from 900 AD. In recent times, there have been excavations made for the foundations of large towers and buildings in modern Mecca. These have revealed no trace of an ancient city buried in the ground at the time when there should have been one for the Qur’anic account to be correct. Compare this with the massive amount of archaeological evidence found for Jerusalem as written about in the Bible.

The earliest mosques (including the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem) direct prayer (the qibla) toward Petra in Jordan, not Mecca. The description of the city with the valley and the parallel valley with a stream and the fruit and olive trees does describe Petra, but not Mecca. Petra was a center of trade and the sanctuary for the Umayyads who ruled out of Damascus in this period. It is also close to the other places mentioned in the Qur’an, namely Ad, Thamud, and Midian.
All this leads us to see that most of what Muslims are taught to believe about Muhammad comes from a period later than the time he was supposed to have lived and written down years later and hundreds of miles away from Mecca and Medina. This began with the Umayyads who ruled from Damascus and continued with Abbasids who rebelled against the Umayyads in 750, claiming to be the true successors to Muhammad. They ruled from Baghdad. Thus,

Islam and the prophet’s life, as we know it, was not derived from the 7th century, but evolved over a period of 200-300 years, and redacted back on to the prophet’s life and compiled possibly in the 9th century.4

When the Arabs conquered areas of the Byzantine Empire and set up their rule from Damascus (the Umayyads), they needed a religion to hold their growing empire together, one that would distinguish them from the nominally Christian empire of the Byzantines and give them a distinctive Arab identity.

Abd al Malik took possession of Jerusalem and built the Dome of the Rock in 691 to be larger and more prominent than the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and to be situated on the site of the destroyed Jewish Temple. This purpose was to confirm the superiority of his religion over Judaism and Christianity. He placed in the Dome of the Rock the earliest Qur’anic texts, which contradict the Christian claim of the nature of Jesus Christ:

O people of the Scripture. Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter aught concerning Allah save the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and His word which He conveyed unto Mary and a spirit from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers. (Sura 4:171)

This confirms the role of Islam as a rival religion that denies the central teaching of Christianity.
Dr. Smith claims that at this time, the central sanctuary of Islam was in Petra, now in modern Jordan, not in Mecca. The sanctuary in Petra was destroyed by an earthquake in 713 AD. Because of a conflict between the rival Umayyads and Abbasids, the black stone was moved from Petra to Mecca, which became the central sanctuary, housing the black stone in the Kaaba. Now the Muslims had a Prophet (Muhammad), a revelation (the Qur’an) and a sanctuary (Mecca). They needed a history, created by the later writings, the Sira in 833, the Hadith in 870 and the Tafsir in 923. By the 9th century, they had the book, the man, the place, and the story. A new religion was formed and growing, evolving over 200-300 years after the death of its founder.

In conclusion, the evidence is missing that would prove that Islam and the Qur’an were revealed directly by Allah to Muhammad in Mecca. Much of what we know of early Islam is in doubt; nothing is known of Muhammad until the late 7th century or Mecca until the 8th or Muhammad’s life story until the 9th, hundreds of years later and hundreds of miles away from where it was supposed to have happened. Islam is nothing more than a later redaction possibly begun by the Caliph Abd al Malik and continued by his successors. They have the wrong man at the wrong place doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Authenticity of the Bible

By contrast, the New Testament was written by people who were eyewitnesses of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth (or who got their information from eyewitnesses). Luke introduces his Gospel with the words:

Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed. (Luke 1:1-4)

The apostle Peter writes:

For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. (2 Peter 1:16)

If we follow the internal evidence of the New Testament, all its books (apart from the writings of John) were most likely completed before the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, putting them within forty years of the events taking place. As eyewitnesses or contemporaries who talked to eyewitnesses, they got the details of geography, history, and customs of Israel in the first century right.

We can visit Israel today and see places mentioned in the Bible. They are in the right place, with archaeological and historical evidence to support them. We can walk from the area where the Temple stood in Jerusalem and cross the Kidron Valley to the Garden of Gethsemane as Jesus did on the night He was betrayed. We can go to Bethany and the Mount of Olives and follow Jesus’ route on His triumphal entry. We can see the place where He wept over Jerusalem from where there is a stunning view over the city as Jesus would have had on that day (Luke 19). We can visit sites claimed to be the place of His trial before Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate and the probable site of the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of the Lord. While there is debate about the exact location of some of these places, the general location backed by historical and archaeological evidence is all there. The Mount of Olives from where Jesus ascended into Heaven forty days after the resurrection is just a short walk from Jerusalem as it says in Acts 1:12.

We can go through the tunnels in the City of David and see what is most likely the water shaft that David’s men climbed up to capture the city from the Jebusites (2 Samuel 5:6-9), the tunnel that King Hezekiah had built to divert the waters of the Gihon stream to the Pool of Siloam (2 Chronicles 32:30), and the remnants of the wall that Nehemiah built to defend the city after the return from Babylon (Nehemiah 3). The Israel Museum contains many artifacts testifying to the accuracy of the biblical account. None such can be found in Mecca to testify to the Qur’anic account.

Regarding history, the Bible mentions many figures who existed at the right time in the right place as confirmed by non-biblical historical records such as the Jewish historian Josephus or Roman records. It was once thought that Luke made a mistake when he said Quirinius (Cyrenius) was governor of Syria at the time of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:2). Josephus said Quirinius had this position from 6 AD, far too late for the birth of Jesus. Then an inscription was found in Antioch dated at around 7 BC giving evidence that Quirinius was governor in Syria at that time. So either there were two people called Quirinius or one person who was governor of Syria on two different occasions, one of which was the time when Jesus was born.

In the Gospel of Luke, we read:

Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. (Luke 3:1-2)

Details of all these people and their positions are accurate for a period around the year 27-28. In this case, Jesus began His ministry a little while later and continued for three and a half years. This brings us to the crucifixion and resurrection which most likely happened in 31-32.
In the Book of Acts, we read of the conversion of Paul, which probably took place around 35-36. This was followed by his time in Damascus, from where he escaped by being lowered over the wall in a basket at the time when Aretas was governor (2 Corinthians 11:32). According to Josephus, Damascus had a governor called Aretas who left the post around 39 (right man in the right place). It is known there was a famine in the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius around 44-45. This corresponds to the time when Paul and Barnabas were warned of famine and went from Antioch to Jerusalem with aid (Acts 11:27-30). In Acts 18, we read that Paul was in Corinth and charged before a proconsul called Gallio. The year would have been around 51, corresponding with the time when there was a proconsul called Gallio in Corinth. Acts 18:2 also informs us that Aquila and Priscilla had “lately” come from Italy because “Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome.” This expulsion took place between 49-51—the right time and the right place.

Acts 24-25 tells us of Paul’s arrest in Jerusalem and trials before the governors Felix and Festus. This should have happened around 58-59 according to the events recorded in Acts. Josephus agrees with Acts that Festus succeeded Felix as governor around 59 and died in 62. According to Acts 27, Festus granted Paul’s request to be tried in Rome. Acts 27 records how Paul traveled by sea to Rome and was shipwrecked on Malta (Melita) on the way. All the geographic details of this journey are correct. Paul then arrived in Rome and stayed two years (Acts 28:30). This takes us to around 61-62.

Then the Book of Acts ends rather abruptly, without giving any details of the trial of Paul in Rome, which had been the subject of the last four chapters of the book. The most likely reason for this is that Acts was written by Luke in 61-62 after Paul arrived in Rome, but before his trial took place. We know that the trial did take place and that Paul was acquitted and continued his ministry until his eventual execution around 65.

According to the prelude to Acts, Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke before he wrote Acts. In the prelude to Luke’s Gospel, he tells us that others wrote Gospels before him, very likely referring to Matthew and Mark’s Gospels. Presumably, Paul wrote his letters before he died (!) as did Peter and James. They all died before 70, which means we have the whole of the New Testament apart from John’s writings completed within forty years of the events of Jesus’ ministry, His death, and His resurrection. There are claims of a fragment of John’s Gospel existing which predates the year 70, so John’s Gospel may have been written before then also.

The geographical, historical, and cultural details are all correct. There is ample and solid evidence that the writers of the New Testament consistently got the right people in the right places at the right time.

Jesus in the Qur’an

The Qur’an and the Hadith were written between 600—900 years after Jesus by people who lived in a different time, a different place, and a different culture to the people who wrote the New Testament. So it is not surprising that they got many things about Jesus wrong.

For example, in Sura 19:28-29, Mary, the mother of Jesus is designated as “sister of Aaron” and in Sura 66:12 as “daughter of Imran.” Imran is an Arabic form of the Hebrew Amram, who was the father of “Aron, Moses, and Miriam” (Numbers 26:59). The title “sister of Aaron” is given to Miriam in Exodus 15:20. Therefore, not only was the mother of Jesus a virgin, she was also about 1500 years old! Some Muslim writers have attempted to explain this by saying that Miriam was miraculously preserved alive, purposely to become the mother of Jesus, quoting a Jewish tradition that the angel of death did not have power over Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron. The obvious explanation is that the writer of the Qur’an simply confused the identity of these two women whose names in Hebrew (Miriam) and Arabic (Maryam) are similar.

The Islamic Jesus was never crucified and therefore did not rise from the dead:

And because of their saying (in boast), “We killed Messiah Jesus, son of Maryam [Mary], the Messenger of Allah,”—but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but it appeared so to them the resemblance of Jesus was put over another man (and they killed that man), and those who differ therein are full of doubts. They have no (certain) knowledge, they follow nothing but conjecture. For surely; they killed him not: But Allah raised him up unto Himself (and he is in the heavens). And Allah is ever all powerful, all wise. (al-Nisaa’ 4:157-158)

This rips out the very heart of the message of the Gospel and contradicts everything that the New Testament teaches about Jesus.

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. . . . And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. (1 Corinthians 15:3-4,14)

It also connects to the teaching of heretical Gnostic sects. In “The Second Treatise of the Great Seth” (a Gnostic text from the 2nd century), a false Jesus says:

I did not die in reality but in appearance . . . Those who were there punished me . . . Yes, they saw me, they punished me. It was another, their father, who drank the gall and vinegar; it was not I. They struck me with the reed; it was another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. . . . I was rejoicing in the height over all. . . . I was laughing at their ignorance.5

There are other connections to Gnostic writings in the Qur’an, like the story of Jesus as a child making clay birds, breathing on them, and they flew away. This suggests that whoever put it together had some contact with Gnostic sects which deviated from true Christianity. The Qur’an also contains Talmudic stories like Abraham destroying the idols in Ur and Solomon knowing the language of birds, so he may also have picked up influences from Jewish teachers of the time.

The Islamic Jesus is not God in the flesh; in fact, anyone who believes that God is three in one will be thrown into Hell according to the Qur’an:

Surely, disbelievers are those who said: “Allah is the third of the three (in a Trinity).” But there is no AIlah (god) but One AIlah. And if they cease not from what they say, verily, a painful torment will befall on the disbelievers among them. (al-Maa’idah 5:73)

He is simply another prophet: “Jesus, and that given to (all) prophets from their Lord: We make no difference between one and another of them.” (Surah 2:136, 2:84)

The Islamic Jesus is a created being:

The similitude of Jesus before Allah is that of Adam: he created him from dust, then said to him, “Be; and he was.” (Sura 3:59)

In the Bible, Jesus is revealed as an eternal being who said of Himself, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). He is the Creator, not a created being: “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:3)

The New Testament teaches that Jesus is Lord, entirely different from the prophets and is above them all:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (John 1:1, 14)

The apostle John equates Jesus with the Word who is God.

Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)

Muslims have a number of beliefs about the second coming of Jesus based on the Hadith (traditions) rather than the Qur’an. They believe he will come back as “a man of medium height, reddish hair, wearing two light yellow garments,”6 that he will land on the minaret of the mosque in Damascus when he will invite the whole world, including Jews and Christians, to become Muslims (Hadith 814). He will then destroy the Dajjal (Antichrist) and “kill all pigs and break all crosses,”7 confirming Islam as the only true religion and thus, abolish Christianity. He will then live for forty years, marry and have children, and perform the Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca. Then he will die and be buried beside the grave of Muhammad.

It is interesting that there are a few end-time references in the Hadith to the area of Syria. One came out recently when ISIS was fighting a battle near a place called Dabbiq (a small town in northern Syria). They connected this to apocalyptic writings in Islam about an end-time battle at Dabbiq (based on Hadith 6924). This is another indication that significant elements of what we now know as Islam may have originated in Syria, not in Mecca in Arabia.

All of this contradicts what the Bible tells us about the second coming of Jesus, which says: He will return to the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem as King of Kings and Lord of Lords with all the power of God at His disposal. Then He will set up His 1000 year reign of peace and justice on the Earth prior to the eternal state in which He is glorified and worshipped for eternity (see Zechariah 12-14, Revelation 19-21).
Behind any teaching which denies the identity of the Lord Jesus as revealed in the New Testament is the spirit of antichrist. In First John, we read:

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. . . . Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also. (1 John 2:19, 22-23)

Denial of the Christian concept that God is a tri-unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and that the Lord Jesus Christ is Emmanuel / God with us / Son of God is a central belief of Islam. According to this passage, it means that if you do not have the Son, you do not have the Father either. The Jesus of the New Testament said:

I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6)

He also said:

I am the door of the sheep. All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers . . . by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. (John 10:7-11)

Islam is destined to play a role in the events of the last days as one of the forces of antichrist persecuting true Christians, involved in the end-time conflict over Jerusalem. As such, it will meet its end when Jesus returns as King of kings and Lord of Lords and establishes His kingdom on Earth for 1000 years. When the 1000 years are over, He will dissolve this world and create the new Heavens and new Earth where all true believers will dwell for eternity (2 Peter 3, Revelation 21).

It is our heart and sincerest desire to see many people who now follow Islam turn to Jesus to find true salvation and a glorious hope for the future. God loves the whole world including Muslims and wants them to come to Him through faith in Jesus the Messiah.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)

To order copies of The Qur’an or the Bible—Which One Has the Authentic Account?, click here.

Endnotes:

1. Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict (Here’s Life Publishers, 1979), chapter 4, section 5C; citing J. Harold Greenlee.
2. “Articles in Saudi Press Call to Amend Thousands of Scribal Errors in the Quran, Reexamine Islamic Texts in Light of Modern Perceptions” (August 18, 2020, https://www.memri.org/reports/articles-saudi-press-call-amend-thousands-scribal-errors-quran-reexamine-islamic-texts-light).
3. https://www.pfander.uk/?s=jay+smith&submit=Search.
4. Jay Smith, “A Historical Critique on Islam’s Beginnings” (October 2017, http://www.ysljdj.com/topic19/tc-19-181l.html), Jay Smith quoting Stephen Humphreys.
5. “The Second Treatise of the Great Seth,” translated by Roger A. Bullard and Joseph A. Gibbons (The Gnostic Society Library, http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/2seth.html).
6. Sunan Abu Dawud Book 37, Number 4310.
7. Ibid.

To order copies of The Qur’an or the Bible—Which One Has the Authentic Account?, click here.