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The Bible: What Changes Were Made? Part 2

25 December, 2016
Q The view of Bart Ehrman regarding the changes in Bible has been appreciated by many, but he supports Christianity and also says that the Council of Nicaea was drastically different from what Muslims suppose it to be? What is your justification?

Answer

Asalamu Alaikum Salma,

Thank you for contacting About Islam with your question. Please find part two of the answer to your question below. Find the first part at the link here.

The Quran made clear in the seventh century what it has taken Biblical scholars all those centuries to agree on:

{So, woe to those who wrote the Book with their hands, and then say: “This is from Allah,” that they may sell it for a little price. So, woe to them for what their hands have written, and woe to them for their earnings.} (Al-Baqarah 2:79)

The craftsmanship in the writing the Bible is what has led to errors over the years.

Muslims, of course, believe that the Quran is the final revelation of Almighty God to humankind. That it was not crafted in any way by individuals, and is the literal Word of God.

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Muslims, in proving this, would point to the fact that different copies of the Quran from different countries and centuries agree with one another totally, even down to punctuation.

There is no room, in this Muslim understanding of revelation, for human writers to convey God’s message as best they can. The words revealed directly to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him-PBUH) over a period of twenty-three years are what we have today as the Quran.

As for the Council of Nicaea, the Christian Church came to believe–over a period of nearly three centuries–that God’s revelation could be understood and interpreted by the Church itself. When the Church fathers declared with certainty at this Council that Jesus was Divine, God’s son; they were exercising that belief.

How and why the Council of Nicaea was called and how it carried on its business is subsidiary, in the Church’s mind, to the fact that it represented the voice of the Church speaking on behalf of its Creator to His Creation.

Muslims’ view is that men cannot speak on God’s behalf. A Muslim understanding of what happened at Nicaea is that the Church backed itself into a corner, heavily influenced by the writings of Saint Paul, and tried to put into human words things that cannot be described by the human mind.

The logical conclusion of all this is that eventually the Church found itself having to defend doctrines and ideas which became increasingly indefensible.

For example, the Council of Chalcedon in the next century declared that Jesus was not only fully divine, but that he was also fully human. Stepping back from the debate itself, such a statement is not only impossible, but also rather ridiculous.

Islam is very simple. With respect to the beliefs of people of other faiths, for Muslims there are no intermediaries between God and human beings.

There are no popes or priests, or even Biblical scholars, who intercede on our behalf or explain to us things which we cannot understand. On Judgement Day, each Muslim—and indeed, each person—will have to answer to Almighty God for how he or she has lived on this earth.

How this or that Biblical scholar, then, interprets or understands the texts of the Christian scriptures, does not take away from that central Islamic belief: that God spoke to His creation throughout history, sending Prophets and Books to call them back, time and time again, to the straight path, and that He spoke finally, and for all time, to all people in the Quran.

I hope this answers your question. Please keep in touch.

Walaikum Asalam.

Please continue feeding your curiosity, and find more info in the following links:

Is The Bible the Word of God?

How The Quran Differs from The Bible

Did Prophet Muhammad Copy the Bible?

Could the Quran Be a Copy of the Bible?!

The Revelation of the Bible