Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society
Chapter 4
THE Qur’ân AS THE ONLY AUTHENTIC REVEALED BOOK IN THE WORLD
Absolute authenticity in respect of the purity of its text forms the Holy Qur’an’s distinctive claim—a claim in which it stands unique among all the sacred books of the world: those based on the concept of Divine Revelation and others that are not. Among the former, the Jewish and Christian scriptures stand out most prominently.
As to the Jewish sacred books, from where Christianity derives its base, the reformed Judaism of today has forsaken completely the age-old claim, which is the very foundation of the Jewish faith, namely, the claim relating to their status as divinely-revealed books, as also their authenticity as records of the teachings of Jewish Prophets. According to the Jewish Encyclopaedia, the emphasis on divine origin has given way to the admission of “the human origin of the Holy Scriptures”, with all their holiness and infallibility shattered, so much so that “the ancient view of a literal dictation by God must be surrendered.” Also, “the prophet and the sacred writer were under the influence of the Divine Spirit while revealing by word or pen … (but) the human element in them was not extinguished, and consequently, in regard to their statements, their knowledge, and the form of their communication, they could only have acted as children of their age.” (vol. 6, pp. 608-609).
This ugly situation has emerged for Judaism basically because the Message of God preached and taught by the Jewish Prophets (God bless them all!) was lost, in respect of its original purity, by the Jewish people long ago under the strains and stresses of historical circumstances. What remained was an adulterated and corrupted form of religious teaching and incorrect history, and on that Judaism has been fed ever since. As a result, we find today Jewish scholarship between the devil and the deep sea in respect of the authenticity of the Jewish religion.
While “the ancients regarded the whole mass of the national religious writings as equally holy,”[1] the moderns have denied completely God’s authorship of any Jewish sacred book. “That the real authority of the Bible is intrinsic rather than prescriptive”, says Joseph (Judaism as Creed and Life), “becomes clear as soon as we think of the circumstances in which the Scriptural canon was formed. The decision by which certain books were included in the Bible and others excluded, was a purely human decision. The great teachers [2] sat in judgment upon the claims of various works, and decided upon those claims by the light of reason [3]—in other words, by the internal merits of the works themselves.[4] Nor was the decision always easy.[5] The fate of some books, like Ecclesiastes, and Centicles, and Esther, was, we learn, trembling in the balance even as late as the third century of the present era …
The Bible, being the work of godly men, necessarily contains both a Divine and a human element. But since everything human is imperfect, we must not expect to find an absolutely perfect representation of Divine truth even in God’s Book [6]… Some of the Biblical stories are clearly legends … The Pentateuch is the work not of one hand but of many hands [7] … Similar views prevail among scholars with regard to other books of the Bible (pp. 18, 20, 22, 23, 24).”
Modern scholarship, which has given birth to reformed Judaism, supports the above views of Joseph unanimously. For instance: with respect to the infallibility of the Jewish scripture and its authenticity as the Word of God, Vellentine’s One Volume Jewish Encyclopaedia tells us: “Jewish tradition … does not hesitate to admit later elaboration and revision of certain books in the Bible… As an unimpeachable source of history and chronology the Bible is often disappointing, exhibiting statements and data which seem either vague or contradictory, or else fail to agree with what is known of contemporary oriental history and chronology.” (pp. 93, 95).
As to the Christian version: “With the advance in the technique of textual criticism during the course of the last generation, with a more searching analysis of the matter of the text, and with the use of the comparative method in evaluating the tradition embodied in the narrative, it has become even more patently evident that orthodox opinion in regard to the authenticity of the Bible cannot be maintained.”[8] One has only to go through the findings of the official representatives of Christianity, as recorded in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, to discover the impeachment of the authenticity of the Old and the New Testaments by the Christendom of today. In the words of one of the best Biblical apologists, who wrote for the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (vol. 7, p. 263): “It is now a common-place of Biblical learning that God has been at no pains to prevent errors of history and knowledge and defects in the text and its transmission [9] from finding an entrance into the sacred pages of His Written Word.”[10] Rev.
Bosworth Smith, who seems to be more frank, is more rational in his confession. Comparing the confirmed claim of the Qur’an to absolute authenticity with the baseless orthodox Christian claim concerning the Bible, he says: “The Bible in particular makes no such claim… The Bible is the work of a large number of poets, prophets, statesmen, and lawgivers, extending over a vast period of time, and incorporates with itself other and earlier, and often conflicting, documents.” (Mohammad and Mohammadanism, p. 19).
It may be observed here in passing that it is not only the so-called ‘revealed’ religions but also the ‘unrevealed’ ones that suffer from inauthenticity with regard to their sacred texts. Although our present discussion does not directly relate to unrevealed religions owing to their different basis, we may with advantage refer to one such major religion, namely, Buddhism, to reveal the situation on that side.[11] To quote just one authority: “The truth is that the oldest stratum of the existing scriptures (of Buddhism) can only be reached by uncertain inference and conjecture… I confess that I do not know what the ‘original gospel’ of Buddhism was … Buddhism is a body of traditions in which few names stand out, and in which fewer dates are precisely known. It is indeed most exasperating when we try to apply our current ideas of historical criticism.[12]
To revert to the scriptures which claim to be revealed, the following verdict of an English scholar is final: “The truth of the message is intimately connected with the authenticity of the record, and a critical theory which assails the one assails the other.”[13]
With this verdict—and the principle on which it is based is incontrovertible—Judaism and Christianity, both, are ruled out; while the absolute authenticity of the Qur’an proves the genuineness of its Message, and here the judgment emerges in all its grandeur that if Divine Revelation alone is the true and valid basis for Religion, then the Holy the Qur’an alone gives us the true Religion—the Religion revealed by the Creator and Sovereign of the universe and man.
[1] Jewish Encyclopaedia, vol. 3, p. 140.
[2] And not the Jewish Prophets who had delivered the Message of God! And these ‘great teachers’ also ‘sat’ long afterwards!!!
[3] And not by the light of Revelation!
[4] Merits—in what respect?
[5] How could it be when there was no standard of judgment?
[6] In what sense is it ‘God’s Book’ ?
[7] According to the Jewish Encyclopaedia, the contents of the Pentateuch have been derived from twenty eight different sources, where the authorship of Moses vanishes into thin air (p. 590). We are also informed that “the many inconsistencies and seeming contradictions contained in it (‘i.e., Pentateuch) attracted the attention of the Rabbis. who exercised their ingenuity in reconciling them (p. 589).”
[8] Sir Richard Gregory: Religion in Science and Civilisation, p. 86.
[9] “errors of history and knowledge and defects in the text and its transmission” are there only because the Old Testament as well as the New are the products of human brains, where the truth revealed by God has been perverted and mixed up with falsehood by human ignorance as well as wrong motives. The Divine Wisdom is absolute and cannot, even in the understanding of a child, admit of the slightest error or defect.
[10] But, what Written Word from God did Jesus ever give, so far as the Christian testimony goes?
[11] Of course, Hinduism, Jainism, Confucianism, Tao-ism, etc., also suffer from the same defect.
[12] Edward Conze: Buddhism, its Essence and Development, pp. 27, 29-30.
[13] The Church Times, February 10, 1905.
to be continued . . . . .
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