A foundational reason why the
Qur'an could not be Divine in origin
A foundational reason why the
Qur'an could not be Divine in origin
A basic test that any prophet
must meet is consistency of doctrine with the revelation that has
preceded it: the New Testament goes to great lengths to demonstrate
that it completes and fulfills the Old, for example Christ says:
''Think
not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come
to destroy, but to fulfill.
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven
and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the
law, till all be fulfilled.
Whosoever therefore shall break one of
these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called
the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach
them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Matt.
5.17-19
Had He claimed otherwise, he
would immediately have been recognised as a false prophet. Christians
and Jews strenuously argue over whether the New Testament fulfills
these criteria or not - but noone would doubt that the New Testament
takes great pains to demonstrate its authenticity by this criterion.
"If
there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth
thee a sign or a wonder,
And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee,
saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let
us serve them;
Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer
of dreams:
for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD
your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his
commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave
unto him.
And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death;
because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God, which
brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house
of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God
commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the
midst of thee." Deut .13.1-5
To this day, some
Orthodox Jews, like Asher Norman, justify the execution of the Messiah
on the basis of failing to fulfill this test.
Christians argue that not only does Jesus fulfill these criteria, but the essence of the Torah, the means of access
to God's presence,
has been abnegated and denied by
so-called 'Orthodox' Jews, who for their Hellenic notions would not be regarded as orthodox by their Biblical forebears. Each of the true prophets, including Moses himself, had
to face this test of consistency
and demonstrate independent seals of Divine authority (Exod.3.13,
4.1-9).
That is why Christ when he walked with
two troubled disciples from Emmaus after His rising from the grave,
said, ''O fools, and slow of heart to
believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have
suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?"
And beginning at Moses and all the
prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things
concerning himself. Luke 24. 25b-27.
He, like Christians today, appealed to the detail of the length and
breadth of previous revelation to confirm who He is and what he had
done.
These tests are
insufficient to detect the 'superbill'.The
change in the direction of the Qiblah, the introduction of pagan sites and rites of
worship, the introduction of new feasts and fasts, the implementation
of
the copycat Adha sacrifice, the innumerable and massive discrepancies
with scriptural narratives, the 1,001 nights
fairy-tale anecdotes (like Solomon's corpse being fixed upright for
year after his death to fool the Jinn), amongst
many others not only fly directly in the face of the plain prohibitions
of
Scripture about assimilating pagan myths and practices, they often
represent a regression to old and obsolete form
of approach (see John 4.19-22 or Heb. 12.18-29 for example).
All these innovations are unauthorised by miraculous foretelling, which
new revelation should always be accompanied by (Deut. 18.22, Jer. 28.11
for example), and by a man of character which may be described as mixed
at best, sometimes noble and rigorous but also sometimes scandalously
immoral, even by the low standards of his own times, at worst
(Matt.
7.16).
The
sad reality is that Muslims are living in a three storey house, with no
second or first storey below them - a castle in the air, devoid of
support by previous revelation.
The imagined corroboration they seek
from the Torah, Zabur and Injil just doesn't exist - it is pure
presumption -
these books testify to the
necessity of a substitutionary blood sacrifice for atonement, the
Divine Sonship of the Messiah, and the principle of justification by
faith without works, even if unbelieving Jews try to deny it, as we
often testify to them.
To those who fondly imagine that Jews and
Christians have uniquely conspired to modify the preChristian Jewish
scriptures to embarass Muslims, Again to pay lipservice to the Torah and
Injil but claim that Almighty God would fail to keep His cast iron
promise is selective doubt and a base and ignoble form of blasphemy. To our dear Muslim friends, we say, wake
up from this death sleep - it is high time to awake - before the Dawn
scatters the shadows of sin!
of which manuscripts exist from long before Messiah's advent (7
centuries before their
prophet), or that the disparate groups of Christians have conspired to
corrupt the New Testament to embarass Muslims, of which fragments exist
right back in the second century (5 centuries before Mohammed)
- nothing must seem impossible -
not even pigs flying and castles floating in the air.
'The words of the LORD are pure words:
as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.
Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou
shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.' Psalm 12.6-7.
(Isaiah 8.22)