Christianity

ISLAM 2

(A Fact Sheet)

	Christianity	Islam

God	One God revealed in three persons Omniscience, Omnipotent, merciful, loving A personal God. Can be known	One true God whose name is Allah (5:71) Transcendent, All-knowing, sovereign, merciful, Not a personal God. Cannot be known but followed
Jesus	Son of God; Diety Died on the cross & resurrected from the dead Sinless Performed miracles	Prophet of God; Son of Mary, not Diety Did not die on the cross & taken bodily into heaven Sinless Performed miracles
Holy Spirit	Third person of the Godhead	The angel Gabriel
Trinity	God the Father is God Jesus is God The Holy Spirit is God	Do not believe in the concept of the Trinity. God is one. To associate anything else with the one, true God is committing the sin of "shirk" (4:171) Understood the Trinity to be God the Father, Jesus and Mary
Abraham	Called by God Father of Isaac and Ishmael	Father of the Arabs Considered as neither Jew nor Christian, but the ideal Muslim

	Christianity	Islam

Adam	Created by God and placed in the Garden of Eden on earth Made of the dust of the earth Created in the image of God Created sinless, but misled by Satan, disobeyed God and ate of the forbidden tree Adam’s sin pervades to man today	Created by God and placed in a Garden in the heavens Made of clay Not created in the image of God Created sinless, but misled by Satan, disobeyed God and ate of the forbidden tree Adam’s sin does not pervade to man today. Adam & Eve repented and were forgiven. First prophet of God
Man	Born a sinner due to Adam’s sin (original sin) and needs a savior Bad deeds done because man is sinful Sinful by nature Given freewill	Not born a sinner so does not need a savior. Man is born innocent, weak, frail & forgetful of God Bad deeds are a result of external influences. Sinful by deed only, not nature Given freewill
Salvation	By grace through faith in Christ Certain	By works and complete surrender to Islam Follows the five pillars of faith Never certain

	Christianity	Islam

Hereafter	Believe in resurrection of the dead Believe in a Day of Judgement Heaven is where God is and where those who accept Jesus Christ as Lord & Savior will go Only Christians will go to heaven Hell is where God is not and where those go who do not accept Jesus Christ as Lord & Savior go	Believe in resurrection of the dead Believe in a Day of Judgement Heaven is a place of extreme beauty, sinless, with no presence of pain or sorrow, and much physical fulfillment Heaven is where those go whose good deeds out-way their bad Only Muslims will go to heaven Soldiers and martyrs have a special place in heaven Hell is a burning and odorous place where those go whose bad deeds out-way their good Women go to hell more often than men
Satan	Angelic being The power and source of evil; the deceiver of mankind and leads man astray from the straight path of God’s will	Jinn The power and source of evil; the deceiver of mankind and leads man astray from the straight path of God’s will
Polygamy	Condemned	Allowed. Up to four wives.
Fornication and Adultery	Condemned	Condemned
Homosexuality	Condemned	Condemned
Bible	The inerrant Word of God	Has been corrupted over the years and superceded by the Qur’an
Apostate		Per the Qur’an, must be put to death if doesn’t repent

	Christianity	Islam

How Spread during the time of Jesus and Muhammad	Spread non-violently by Jesus and His Disciples	Spread by the sword by Muhammad and his Caliphs. Those who were conquered were given the option of accepting Islam or death. The "People of the Book" (Jews & Christians) given the options of choosing Islam, paying a tax or death.
Lawful to shed the blood of a believer	Never	For (1) infidelity to the faith, (2) adultery after marriage and (3) killing a soul without a right
Women	The Bible commands husbands to love their wives.	The Qur’an commands men to beat their women as soon as they show any sign of disobedience to man’s authority and orders (4:34) Islamic law allows a father to force his virgin daughter or a daughter who has not reached the legal age to marry Temporary contract marriages were allowed for men to fulfill their sexual needs. Qur’an teaches that most of the inhabitants of hell are women Muhammad said women were deficient in mind and religion A woman’s testimony is equal to half of a man’s The Qur’an allows for a female’s inheritance to be half that of a man (4:11)

	Christianity	Islam

Angels	Believes in angels	Believes in angels. Created of light with no free will Each human being has two angels, one who records one’s good deeds and one who records one’s bad deeds Believe in Jinn. Possess freedom of choice and can propagate their species.
How revelation received	Jesus received directly from God	Muhammad received through the angel Gabriel

Jesus vs. Muhammad

Jesus	Muhammad

Claimed to be God, Diety	Never claimed to be God, only a prophet
Performed miracles	Did not perform miracles. Muslims say the Qur’an is his miracle
Died and was resurrected	Died and still dead
Prophesied	Never prophesied
Jesus forgave sins	Never forgave sins
Was sinless	Was a sinner
Waged no war	Waged war
Ordered the death of no-one	Ordered the death of many
Will come again to rule	Will not come back
Mentioned in the Qur’an 97 times	Mentioned in the Qur’an 25 times

Qur’an Reliability

TO EVERY MUSLIM AN ANSWER
(Part Two in a series on Islam from Forward magazine)

by Joseph P. Gudel

Preservation of the Qur’an?

Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, in The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, tells us that at the time of Muhammad’s death the surahs (or chapters) of the Qur’an had not yet been collated. This was accomplished during the Caliphate of Abu Bakr.⁹

The second Caliph, Omar, "subsequently made a single volume (mushaf) that he preserved and gave on his death to his daughter Hafsa, the Prophet’s widow."¹⁰ Finally, under the Caliphate of Uthman all copies of the Qur’an were ordered to be brought in and any that deviated from Uthman’s text were burned.

We have no quarrel with the Islamic position that since the Recension of Uthman the Qur’an has remained intact. However, because of the destruction of all deviant copies no one can know with any certainty if the present Qur’an is exactly the same as what Muhammad gave them.

Islam teaches that the only reason Uthman had all the other collections of the Qur’an burned except his was that there were slight dialectical variations in the different texts. However, there is some evidence which tends to refute this.

First of all, it is very significant that the Qurra, the Muslims who had memorized the entire Qur’an, were vehemently opposed to the Recension. And second, the Shi’ites, who are the second-largest Islamic sect in the world, claim that the Caliph Uthman intentionally eliminated many passages from the Qur’an which related to Ali and the succession of leadership which was to occur after Muhammad’s death.

L. Bevan Jones, in his work The People Of the Mosque, succinctly answers the Muslim argument for the alleged miraculous preservation of the Qur’an: "But while it may be true that no other work has remained for twelve centuries with so pure a text, it is probably equally true that no other has suffered so drastic a purging."¹¹

Bible Reliabiltiy

TO EVERY MUSLIM AN ANSWER
(Part Two in a series on Islam from Forward magazine)

by Joseph P. Gudel

The Reliability of the Bible

For Muslims the Bible is virtually worthless as far as being an authentic revelation from God. They believe it has been totally corrupted and is therefore not trustworthy. However, if we examine the biblical documents, using the same thorough standards any historiographer would use, we discover that its reliability is unimpeachable.

The New Testament documents, for example, have more manuscript authority than any 10 works of antiquity put together. As mentioned earlier, we have over 24,000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament dating from before A.D. 350. In comparison, the number two book in all of ancient history for manuscript authority is the Iliad with 643 manuscripts.

Dr. John Warwick Montgomery, dean of the Simon Greenleaf School of Law and a noted theologian, comments on this: "To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament."³¹

When we turn to the text of the New Testament itself we see that the writers of the New Testament books claimed that they were eyewitnesses, or close associates of eyewitnesses, of the events they narrated.³² We also have excellent external evidence confirming this. Papias, a disciple of the apostle John, confirms the fact that Mark did indeed write the Gospel which is ascribed to him, obtaining his information from the apostle Peter.³³ Polycarp, another disciple of the apostle John, taught his own disciple Irenaeus that the men to whom the four Gospels are ascribed were in truth their real authors.³⁴

In addition to these evidences we can also add the findings of modern archaeology. Time after time archaeology has vindicated biblical accounts which had previously been ridiculed as being grossly inaccurate.³⁵ Concerning this, Nelson Glueck, a world-famous Jewish archaeologist, went so far as to say that "it may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference."³⁶

In any responsible examination of the biblical documents the evidence for their reliability comes out positive. Even well-known secular historians accept the biblical accounts as being historically reliable. A.N. Sherwin-White, a non-Christian, accepts without question the essential reliability of the Gospels and the Book of Acts:

For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming...any attempt to reject its historicity in matters of detail must now appear absurd. Roman historians have long taken it for granted.³⁷

It is very interesting to note that Yusuf Ali, in his widely used English translation of the Qur’an, twice cites Sir Frederick Kenyon as a renowned authority.³⁸ Kenyon, formerly the principal curator of the British Museum, was one the world’s greatest authorities on textual criticism of ancient works. Concerning the textual reliability of the Bible, he concluded that "the Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God."³⁹

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When we consider the New Testament, however, we find a completely different scenario. We have today in our possession 5,300 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, another 10,000 Latin Vulgates, and 9,300 other early versions (MSS), giving us more than 24,000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament in existence today! (taken from McDowell's Evidence That demands a Verdict, vol.1, 1972 pgs.40-48; and Time, January 23, 1995, pg.57).

Author	Date Written	Earliest Copy	Time Span	Copies (extent)

Secular Manuscripts:
Herodotus (History)	480 - 425 BC	900 AD	1,300 years	8
Thucydides (History)	460 - 400 BC	900 AD	1,300 years	?
Aristotle (Philosopher)	384 - 322 BC	1,100 AD	1,400 years	5
Caesar (History)	100 - 44 BC	900 AD	1,000 years	10
Pliny (History)	61 - 113 AD	850 AD	750 years	7
Suetonius (Roman History)	70 - 140 AD	950 AD	800 years	?
Tacitus (Greek History)	100 AD	1,100 AD	1,000 years	20

Biblical Manuscripts: (note: these are individual manuscripts)
Magdalene Ms (Matthew 26)	1st century	50-60 AD	co-existant (?)
John Rylands (John)	90 AD	130 AD	40 years
Bodmer Papyrus II (John)	90 AD	150-200 AD	60-110 years
Chester Beatty Papyri (N.T.)	1st century	200 AD	150 years
Diatessaron by Tatian (Gospels)	1st century	200 AD	150 years
Codex Vaticanus (Bible)	1st century	325-350 AD	275-300 years
Codex Sinaiticus (Bible)	1st century	350 AD	300 years
Codex Alexandrinus (Bible)	1st century	400 AD	350 years

(Total New Testament manuscripts = 5,300 Greek MSS, 10,000 Latin Vulgates, 9,300 others = 24,000 copies)
(Total MSS compiled prior to 600 AD = 230)

^{-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------}[Are the Biblical Documents Reliable?, Jimmy Williams, Probe Ministries]

Author and Work	Author's Lifespan	Date of Events	Date of Writing*	Earliest Extant MS**	Lapse: Event to Writing	Lapse: Event to MS
Matthew, Gospel	ca. 0-70?	4 BC - AD 30	50 - 65/75	ca. 200	<50 years	<200 years
Mark, Gospel	ca. 15-90?	27 - 30	65/70	ca. 225	<50 years	<200 years
Luke, Gospel	ca. 10-80?	5 BC - AD 30	60/75	ca. 200	<50 years	<200 years
John, Gospel	ca. 10-100	27-30	90-110	ca. 130	<80 years	<100 years
Paul, Letters	ca. 0-65	30	50-65	ca. 200	20-30 years	<200 years
Josephus, War	ca. 37-100	200 BC - AD 70	ca. 80	ca. 950	10-300 years	900-1200 years
Josephus, Antiquities	ca. 37-100	200 BC - AD 65	ca. 95	ca. 1050	30-300 years	1000-1300 years
Tacitus, Annals	ca. 56-120	AD 14-68	100-120	ca. 850	30-100 years	800-850 years
Seutonius, Lives	ca. 69-130	50 BC - AD 95	ca. 120	ca. 850	25-170 years	750-900 years
Pliny, Letters	ca. 60-115	97-112	110-112	ca. 850	0-3 years	725-750 years
Plutarch, Lives	ca. 50-120	500 BC - AD 70	ca. 100	ca. 950	30-600 years	850-1500 years
Herodotus, History	ca. 485-425 BC	546-478 BC	430-425 BC	ca. 900	50-125 years	1400-1450 years
Thucydides, History	ca. 460-400 BC	431-411 BC	410-400 BC	ca. 900	0-30 years	1300-1350 years
Xenophon, Anabasis	ca. 430-355 BC	401-399 BC	385-375 BC	ca. 1350	15-25 years	1750 years
Polybius, History	ca. 200-120 BC	220-168 BC	ca. 150 BC	ca. 950	20-70 years	1100-1150 years

*Where a slash occurs, the first date is conservative, and the second is liberal.
**New Testament manuscripts are fragmentary. Earliest complete manuscript is from ca. 350; lapse of event to complete manuscript is about 325 years.

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