stevecanuck
Well-Known Member
This is just Allah completing his thought from the previous verse. He's telling Christians and Jews to also accept the third installment (the Qur'an) of his revelations.
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Comparing the Bible to the Qur'an.
- Thread starter stevecanuck
- Start date
This is just Allah completing his thought from the previous verse. He's telling Christians and Jews to also accept the third installment (the Qur'an) of his revelations.
Dimi95
Χριστός ἀνέστη
The Bible is the story , how God came to Earth as a man.
But the prophecy was fullfield..
Psalm 78:2:
"I will open my mouth with a parable; I will utter hidden things, things from of old"
I want to prove a fact here so i will give you an example - put the most clever people from every belief in one room and let them debate.The only thing they will agree is that they disagree about everything else except their own.We go to a point 0.
How to find what is the truth with everything that is presented?
The highest chances for the truth is to take the neutral side and to use the same critiria for every belief.
You need do understand the words Possibility and Probability if you put your self in that position.
"Probability and possibility are both used as nouns and can’t be used interchangeably. Although they have almost the same meanings, there is a little difference. Probability means something may happen, but it is more likely to happen. Meanwhile, possibility means something may happen, but we don’t know how likely. It describes the uncertainty of whether an event may or may not happen.
Therefore, probability has a higher chance that an event will likely happen, compared to possibility that’s uncertain whether something may happen or may not happen."
-No matter how poor the evidence is , if it has the highest chance of Possibility then it becomes the most probabel.
Automaticly goes to that place.
Christ humbles you , every time you want to test God and you think ok now i got you - it goes back to you like a thunder.
Look for testimonies also , if you don't see truth in what we follow.
There are many threw history , you will be shocked.
But the prophecy was fullfield..
Psalm 78:2:
"I will open my mouth with a parable; I will utter hidden things, things from of old"
I want to prove a fact here so i will give you an example - put the most clever people from every belief in one room and let them debate.The only thing they will agree is that they disagree about everything else except their own.We go to a point 0.
How to find what is the truth with everything that is presented?
The highest chances for the truth is to take the neutral side and to use the same critiria for every belief.
You need do understand the words Possibility and Probability if you put your self in that position.
"Probability and possibility are both used as nouns and can’t be used interchangeably. Although they have almost the same meanings, there is a little difference. Probability means something may happen, but it is more likely to happen. Meanwhile, possibility means something may happen, but we don’t know how likely. It describes the uncertainty of whether an event may or may not happen.
Therefore, probability has a higher chance that an event will likely happen, compared to possibility that’s uncertain whether something may happen or may not happen."
-No matter how poor the evidence is , if it has the highest chance of Possibility then it becomes the most probabel.
Automaticly goes to that place.
Christ humbles you , every time you want to test God and you think ok now i got you - it goes back to you like a thunder.
Look for testimonies also , if you don't see truth in what we follow.
There are many threw history , you will be shocked.
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Augustus
…
The Bible is easier to situate in a historical context, even if we understand it’s not a historically reliable document.
The Bible is more self-contained whereas the Quran assumes a significant degree of background knowledge of Abrahamic traditions, and is frequently in dialogue with these traditions even though they are not explained in the Quran.
It also contains far less narrative, making much of it opaque, vague or hard to understand.
From the mystical letters to passages about the 2 ilafs to the identity of the Sabians and numerous other things the original understanding seems to have been lost in between the time of Muhammad and the beginnings of the formalisation of Islamic orthodoxy a century or so later.
As such we don’t really understand all that much about the environment in which the Quran was formulated, who its audience was, its role in its environment and numerous other things we take for granted about many texts yet are uncertain regarding the Quran.
Most of our information for the Islamic tradition is from centuries after the fact, and sometimes seems to contradict earlier non-Muslim information.
As such, how we understand much of the Quran is anchored in sirah-maghazi and hadith traditions that were not written down until a couple of hundred years later and are of questionable veracity. So the equivalent of the Bible is really the Quran and related traditions.
Much of these, especially the “occasions of revelation” stories whereby we are told verse X was revealed to Muhammad in response to some purportedly historical event, are pretty clearly fabricated to explain ambiguous passages of the Quran and have no plausible historicity. When early exegetes don’t understand a verse, but centuries later there are clear, detailed stories that explain it perfectly, one might question why this is.
It is increasingly uncommon for people to view the Bible as historically accurate, especially among those opposed to Christianity, yet popular understanding still seems to accept the Islamic tradition as being broadly accurate, both among pro and anti-Islamic factions.
Dimi95
Χριστός ἀνέστη
1.We claim that Jesus is God , he is telling you to LET the People of The Book JUDGE by what God has revealed to them.We are talking about a period that was 500 years after Jesus.Read History , and bring facts , not empty beliefs.He is confirming that Jesus brings the light in the previous verse that you mentioned , and Jesus claims to be the LIGHT in the BIBLE.
So what can we judge when someone tells you that he is the LIGHT , tell me ?
You need to understand also that when he is tellling that he accepts us the Christians as people of The Book.
2.How do we know in what order are the verses revealed when by Islamic tradition , it is to belive that the first five verses of Chapter 96(Al-'Alaq) are the first revelations to the Prophet.
I am asking you these questions only because you present it with such standards.
3.Do you know that verses from the Quran were abolished by Allah because of Satanic influence and then there is a verse in the Quran that contradicts what was done by Allah.You want me to show you?
4.Do you know the previous apperences of Angel Gabriel(Jibril)?
Do you want to talk about them and to compare them with the one with Mohamed?
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stevecanuck
Well-Known Member
I think I know what you mean by this, and I agree. My opinion is that the Qur'an contains almost no historical context for 'current events' because Mohamed's audience were living the experience and of course didn't need it. That fits with my opinion that Mohamed neither knew nor cared if his proclamations 'from Allah' would survive him. They served him nicely at the time, and that's all he cared about.
Again, I agree.
True, but the overall messages of God's oneness and of Mohamed's position as His prophet are very clear. Ditto that all infidels are evil and will be ushered into eternal torment.
I'll get to the rest later.
muhammad_isa
Veteran Member
A sweeping generalisation..
The Qur'an taken in context, does not say that.
You might say that it contradicts itself, as some verses imply G-d is full of wrath towards non-believers,
whilst others say the opposite.
You only quote the verses that suit your agenda .. to paint the Islamic faith as barbaric.
..while you are only digging yourself into a deeper hole .. a no-win situation.
Those people that you mislead, will complain about you when they find out i.e. upon death
Augustus
…
That is part of the issue, but also that for this and other reasons, it is hard for modern scholars to confidently understand many basic things about the text and its origins.
Qur’anic studies, as a field of academic research, appears today to be in a state of disarray. Those of us who study Islam’s origins have to admit collectively that we simply do not know some very basic things about the Qur’an – things so basic that the knowledge of them is usually taken for granted by scholars dealing with other texts. They include such questions as: How did the Qur’an originate? Where did it come from, and when did it first appear? How was it first written? In what kind of language was – is – it written? What form did it first take? Who constituted its first audience? How was it transmitted from one generation to another, especially in its early years? When, how, and by whom was it codified? Those familiar with the Qur’an and the scholarship on it will know that to ask even one of these questions immediately plunges us into realms of grave uncertainty and has the potential to spark intense debate.
To put it another way, on these basic issues there is little consensus even among the well-trained scholars who work on them. I am not speaking here of the kind of routine difference of opinion or tension that exists in the study of all scriptural traditions between those who take that scripture as a source for their belief and life, and those who study it as a text on the basis of historical, literary, sociological, and theological analysis. Rather, I refer to the fact that so many scholars over the past century, despite deep learning, serious commitment to understand the Qur’an, and on the basis of sophisticated and subtle methods, nevertheless remain so lacking in consensus on these basic issues.
The Qur’an in recent scholarship: Challenges and desiderata - Fred M. Donner from The Qur'an in Its Historical Context - GS Reynolds (ed.)
stevecanuck
Well-Known Member
Yes it is. And the Qur'an makes it hundreds of times.
The Qur'an, in any context you can dream up, says it hundreds of times.
Yup, he is full of wrath towards unbelievers.
2:98 - Allah is the enemy of unbelievers.
3:32 - Allah does not love the unbelievers.
I could give you hundreds more, but you would just wave them away like you're going to do with these two.
Nope. Give us some examples.
You don't seem to realize that gratuitous denial is not an argument. You have yet to actually disprove anything I've said. Not. Once.
stevecanuck
Well-Known Member
All of those things are known.
Augustus
…
From where? Which sources tell us this and when were they written? Why do you trust them?
Unless you uncritically swallow Islamic theology as historical fact, where is the information coming from?
When one of the world’s leading scholars on a subject, writing in a scholarly volume compiled by another highly respected scholar and published via a respected scholarly publisher, notes elementary details about their subject of expertise, why would you assume they are simply ignorant of basic facts rather than that they might actually have a better and more nuanced understanding of the issue than you do?
muhammad_isa
Veteran Member
"Allah does not forbid you to deal justly and kindly with those who fought not against you on account of religion and did not drive you out of your homes. Verily, Allah loves those who deal with equity”
Al Qur'an - al-Mumtahanah 60:8
It was narrated from ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Amr (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) said: “Whoever kills a mu‘aahid (a non-Muslim living under Muslim rule) will not smell the fragrance of Paradise, although its fragrance may be detected from a distance of forty years.”
Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 2995
Islam is a religion of peace. That does not mean that Muslims are instructed to be pacifists.
On the contrary.
Nevertheless, it is clear to educated Muslims, that Allah SWT does not like ignorance and aggression.
We are instructed NOT to become angry, as uncontrolled anger is from satan.
Dimi95
Χριστός ἀνέστη
You can use today's public figures to explain the questions.
I will take for example Jordan B. Peterson.
Question his arguments and what's the purpose of it , you will end up concluding that he has a point.Why would a person like him claim the idea that God exist and that he has found him.From where did he get the that.What will cause his mind to think so.
With everything that he brings intelectually,we would agree that he is a reasonoble person.So why would he claim that?
The opposition is - crazy man , don't you think?
When you judge by many ways you will get more answers , you start asking questions by yourself and you study it - like in school,when you studied math.If you want to be good at Math,you have to study and learn it and that's the most-probabal way to be good at it.
That's why i told in the previous posts about probability and possibility.
We as human - kind with the evidence that we have , we don't know for 100 % the orign of our existence, how it all started.
Approch it intelectually with so much knowledge and it beats you.
That's one of the reasons i was shocked when i saw in the gospel of Matthew:
For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.
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Augustus
…
TBH I’d already answered the actual questions in my earlier post:
From the mystical letters to passages about the 2 ilafs to the identity of the Sabians and numerous other things the original understanding seems to have been lost in between the time of Muhammad and the beginnings of the formalisation of Islamic orthodoxy a century or so later.
As such we don’t really understand all that much about the environment in which the Quran was formulated, who its audience was, its role in its environment and numerous other things we take for granted about many texts yet are uncertain regarding the Quran.
Most of our information for the Islamic tradition is from centuries after the fact, and sometimes seems to contradict earlier non-Muslim information.
As such, how we understand much of the Quran is anchored in sirah-maghazi and hadith traditions that were not written down until a couple of hundred years later and are of questionable veracity. So the equivalent of the Bible is really the Quran and related traditions.
Much of these, especially the “occasions of revelation” stories whereby we are told verse X was revealed to Muhammad in response to some purportedly historical event, are pretty clearly fabricated to explain ambiguous passages of the Quran and have no plausible historicity. When early exegetes don’t understand a verse, but centuries later there are clear, detailed stories that explain it perfectly, one might question why this is.
The latter questions were rhetorical as it is ridiculous to assume that multiple respected scholars are unfamiliar with the most elementary facts about their field.
This is different from having a subjective opinion on an issue.
One may disagree with Donner and Reynolds’ theses on Islamic origins but it wouldn’t be very logical to assume they became leading scholars without ever learning that these basic issues were already established facts and there was no longer any debate.
The most likely answer is the non-expert on the internet is simply unaware of contemporary scholarship and simply overestimates their knowledge.
They don’t know enough to understand what they don’t know.
Dimi95
Χριστός ἀνέστη
But why the same criteria is not used for Christianity?
Why is not threated equally?
I will give you a fact about Jesus:
-Jesus is asked 183 questions directly or indirectly in the four Gospels.He only answered 3 of them directly!
The others he either ignored, kept silent about, asked them a question in return, changed the subject, told a story or gave an audio visual aid to make his point, told them it was the wrong question, revealed their insincerity or hypocrisy,made the exactly opposite point, or redirected the question elsewhere!
He himself asks 307 questions, which would seem to set a pattern for imitation.Considering this, it is really rather amazing that the church became an official answering machine.
Many(if not most) of Jesus teachings would never pass contemporary orthodoxy tests in either the Roman Office or the Southern Baptist Convention.Most of his statements
are so open to misinterpretation in almost all areas except one: his insistence upon the goodness and reliability of God.
That was his only consistent absolute.
We are not ignorant , we accept what is to be truth and we don't deny facts.
And fact is that we have MORE trusthworthly evidence that defend our belief.
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stevecanuck
Well-Known Member
This is a fascinating topic, and I've put Donner's book on my read list. If you want to discuss it further you should start a thread.
However, the underlined and bolded phrase is key, because the world's Muslims do exactly that, thereby rendering the entire question moot. They have swallowed it like a boa constrictor ingests a wild pig - in one giant gulp.
Let's say Islam is actually cobbled together by who knows who, where, or why. What difference does that make to the fact that mujahadeen around the world have dedicated their lives to imposing Islamic rule on the world based on the dictates of the Qur'an? None. Absolutely none.
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stevecanuck
Well-Known Member
I've always said that there are a very small number of verses that seem to counsel peace in direct contradiction of the many hundreds that demand intolerance, hatred, and/or violence. 60:8 is indeed one of them. The preceding verse is also interesting. It says, "Perhaps Allah will make friendship between you and those whom you hold as enemies." This is an admission that you are enemies.
Now, please reconcile 60:8 with 9:29 (revealed much later) that says, "Fight those who believe not in Allah". You can't.
Augustus
…
If you found it fascinating, you wouldn't keep making the same errors in every thread you post because you'd have spent the 10 minutes or so that would be necessary to correct them
You started a thread on the Bible and Quran, therefore noting that we don’t really understand many basic things about the Quran is highly relevant, especially when pseudo-historical narratives have been constructed to explain all of these 'facts'.
You clearly didn’t know this, and learning is good no?
Your OP uses a secular description of the Bible, but an Islamic theological description of the Quran that incorporates information that is not in the Quran, and that is very debatable historically.
How to understand the Quran has been a key part of Islamic tradition, and as I noted, much of this understanding comes from hadith and Sirah-maghazi traditions.
Islam has been evolving since day one and continues to evolve. A better understanding of the historical origins of the Quran will play a role in how it evolves, as will differing theological interpretations.
Jihadis like ISIS base their theological justifications far more on these and fringe jurisprudence than the Quran.
Even if attitudes to the Quran don't change, attitudes to how to understand. the Quran via tradition are important in the real world.
Many do, many don’t ( outside of a few key pillars), there is far more nuance and diversity than you seem to be aware of and always has been.
Certainly, many of them have a far more critical attitude towards Islamic traditions than you do.
The approach to Islam where a non-Muslim uncritically accepts Islamic traditions as fact, other than polemically replacing the supernatural stuff with their own confections regarding Muhammad’s deviousness and charlatanry, went out of scholarly fashion in the 19th century.
stevecanuck
Well-Known Member
If you found it fascinating, you wouldn't keep making the same errors in every thread you post because you'd have spent the 10 minutes or so that would be necessary to correct them
Such as?
Oh, If I add a
, does that help me look smarter?The origins of the Qur'an don't change what it says and what Muslims believe.
I had not heard of Donner or his claims. Learning is always good.
Augustus
…
The are not really 'his claims', but basic statements about modern scholarship on early Islam. Surprised you’ve never encountered them in your decades of study.
I have even mentioned them many times to you to no avail. I also quoted parts of one of Donner’s books in another thread to illustrate some of them.
For some reason, you have always seemed pretty resistant to understanding secular scholarship on early Islam though.
The assumption that the historical context for the emergence of Islam is that which is outlined in the Islamic traditions minus the supernatural stuff.
Verse X was revealed to Muhammad in response to situation Y, etc.
As already noted, much of the Quran is understood via hadith and Sirah-maghazi traditions.
Exegesis using these traditions very much changes what it says, or to be more precise changes how Muslims understand what it means.
These traditions have always been contentious within Islam from the very beginning, and which ones are reliable and how they should be interpreted is an ongoing process.
Such questions are highly relevant for the future if Islam, as such questions have been highly relevant for its present and past.
stevecanuck
Well-Known Member
Firedragon, your transparent attempt to derail a comparison between the Qur'an and the bible are duly noted. I will get into this with you if, and only if, you start a thread.
Nothing you have said changes the fact that both the Qur'an and the bible exist, and that people are forever trying to compare them.