Nuray, thank you for your history lesson!!

Submitted by allonehhob (Canada), Oct 20, 2005 at 20:33

You said

"It is historical fact that Quran is written at the life time of Muhammad ( peace upon him).
Instead of accusing others not making any effort for checking history, perhaps you need to refresh your knowledge before attempting to add contribution to religious discussions like this."

This is not true, the complete copy of Quran was compiled at year 786 around 154 years after Muhammad's death. This fact is from Islamic resources.

Although I mentioned this so many times, but I'll repeat it again, I have read the Quran at least 3 times, I know about sunnah, Sharia law, hadith, I have been taught all of this from Muslims teachers since I was in kindergarten until I graduated from school. Not only this, in the Muslim country I used to live in, all TV channels was continuously talking about Islam, Muhammad's life, even in taxis you hear the Quran. I have countless number of Muslims friends female and male. This is to let you know that I know what Islam is all about and it doesn't appeal to me based on this knowledge. I do NOT need to refresh my knowledge about Islam. However from reading your comments, it only comes from Islamic resources, I kindly ask you to revisit your history knowledge.

Having said that, please do not try to proof to me whether Quran is original because I am not interested. Quran to me even in its original present status (Arabic language which is my native language) doesn't appeal to me at all for millions of reasons that I will not bother listing them here

You said

"I mentioned Church of England as a proof for the corruption of Bible. Still no comment on it."

I don't know what resource you are talking about, however, you can pick and choose whatever resource appeals to you, this is your problem. Although I am Catholic but my resources about the originality of the bibles are from secular historians which happen to match the Vatican's record. There are lots of unbiased resources about the history of the bibles.

There are countless proofs about the credibility of the bibles and historical proofs about its originality thousands of years B.C. The reason why I say B.C. it is because over 300 prophets from the time of Prophet Abraham talked about Jesus birth, his life, the purpose of his coming, his death and his resurection. Although to proof to you that bibles are not corrupted needs a very long time, but I trust your intelligeouns, I am sure you will dig more into this subject if you are sincerely planning to know the truth. Here is a very quick glance on the history of the bibles: however, I suggest that you do not consider this as your only reference
Old Testament

The following are brief snap shots of the beginning and ending of the Old Testament and the reasons for the first two translations of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Aramaic and Greek

• 1875 B.C. Abraham was called by God to the land of Canaan.
• 1450 B.C. The exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
Autographs
• 1450-1400 B.C. The traditional date for Moses' writing of Genesis-Deuteronomy written in Hebrew.
• 586 B.C. Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. The Jews were taken into captivity to Babylon. They remained in Babylon under the Medo-Persian Empire and there began to speak Aramaic.
• 555-545 B.C. The Book of Daniel Chapters. 2:4 to 7:28 were written in Aramaic.
• 425 B.C. Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, was written in Hebrew.
• 400 B.C. Ezra Chapters. 4:8 to 6:18; and 7:12-26 were written in Aramaic.
Manuscripts
The following is a list of the oldest Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament that are still in existence.
• The Dead Sea Scrolls: date from 200 B.C. - 70 A.D. and contain the entire book of Isaiah and portions of every other Old Testament book but Esther.
• Geniza Fragments: portions the Old Testament in Hebrew and Aramaic, discovered in 1947 in an old synagogue in Cairo, Egypt, which date from about 400 A.D.
• Ben Asher Manuscripts: five or six generations of this family made copies of the Old Testament using the Masoretic Hebrew text, from 700-950 A.D. The following are examples of the Hebrew Masoretic text-type.
o Aleppo Codex: contains the complete Old Testament and is dated around 950 A.D. Unfortunately over one quarter of this Codex was destroyed in anti-Jewish riots in 1947.
o Codex Leningradensis: The complete Old Testament in Hebrew copied by the last member of the Ben Asher family in A.D. 1008.
Translations
The Old Testament was translated very early into Aramaic and Greek.

• 400 B.C. The Old Testament began to be translated into Aramaic. This translation is called the Aramaic Targums. This translation helped the Jewish people, who began to speak Aramaic from the time of their captivity in Babylon, to understand the Old Testament in the language that they commonly spoke. In the first century Palestine of Jesus' day, Aramaic was still the commonly spoken language. For example maranatha: "Our Lord has come," 1 Corinthians 16:22 is an example of an Aramaic word that is used in the New Testament.
• 250 B.C. The Old Testament was translated into Greek. This translation is know as the Septuagint. It is sometimes designated "LXX" (which is Roman numeral for "70") because it was believed that 70 to 72 translators worked to translate the Hebrew Old Testament in Greek. The Septuagint was often used by New Testament writers when they quoted from the Old Testament. The LXX was translation of the Old Testament that was used by the early Church.

1. The following is a list of the oldest Greek LXX translations of the Old Testament that are still in existence.
o Chester Beatty Papyri: Contains nine Old Testament Books in the Greek Septuagint and dates between 100-400 A.D.
o Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus each contain almost the entire Old Testament of the Greek Septuagint and they both date around 350 A.D.

The New Testament
Autographs
45- 95 A.D. The New Testament was written in Greek. The Pauline Epistles, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke, and the book of Acts are all dated from 45-63 A.D. The Gospel of John and the Revelation may have been written as late as 95 A.D.
Manuscripts
There are over 5,600 early Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament that are still in existence. The oldest manuscripts were written on papyrus and the later manuscripts were written on leather called parchment.
• 125 A.D. The New Testament manuscript which dates most closely to the original autograph was copied around 125 A.D, within 35 years of the original. It is designated "p 52" and contains a small portion of John 18. (The "p" stands for papyrus.)
• 200 A.D. Bodmer p 66 a papyrus manuscript which contains a large part of the Gospel of John.
• 200 A.D. Chester Beatty Biblical papyrus p 46 contains the Pauline Epistles and Hebrews.
• 225 A.D. Bodmer Papyrus p 75 contains the Gospels of Luke and John.
• 250-300 A.D. Chester Beatty Biblical papyrus p 45 contains portions of the four Gospels and Acts.
• 350 A.D. Codex Sinaiticus contains the entire New Testament and almost the entire Old Testament in Greek. It was discovered by a German scholar Tisendorf in 1856 at an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Sinai.
• 350 A.D. Codex Vaticanus: {B} is an almost complete New Testament. It was cataloged as being in the Vatican Library since 1475.
Translations
Early translations of the New Testament can give important insight into the underlying Greek manuscripts from which they were translated from.
• 180 A.D. Early translations of the New Testament from Greek into Latin, Syriac, and Coptic versions began about 180 A.D.
• 195 A.D. The name of the first translation of the Old and New Testaments into Latin was termed Old Latin, both Testaments having been translated from the Greek. Parts of the Old Latin were found in quotes by the church father Tertullian, who lived around 160-220 A.D. in north Africa and wrote treatises on theology.
• 300 A.D. The Old Syriac was a translation of the New Testament from the Greek into Syriac.
• 300 A.D. The Coptic Versions: Coptic was spoken in four dialects in Egypt. The Bible was translated into each of these four dialects.
• 380 A.D. The Latin Vulgate was translated by St. Jerome. He translated into Latin the Old Testament from the Hebrew and the New Testament from Greek. The Latin Vulgate became the Bible of the Western Church until the Protestant Reformation in the 1500's. It continues to be the authoritative translation of the Roman Catholic Church to this day. The Protestant Reformation saw an increase in translations of the Bible into the common languages of the people.
• Other early translations of the Bible were in Armenian, Georgian, and Ethiopic, Slavic, and Gothic.
• 1380 A.D. The first English translation of the Bible was by John Wycliffe. He translated the Bible into English from the Latin Vulgate. This was a translation from a translation and not a translation from the original Hebrew and Greek. Wycliffe was forced to translate from the Latin Vulgate because he did not know Hebrew or Greek.

You said
"White Jesus" another issue, Still no comment on it. I guess these are difficult matters.
You know Nuray, these kinds of messages makes feel that I am really wasting my time, however, I'll will do my best to stay patient
Jesus' messages to all humanity are very clear, equilaty, peace and love. No one ever denied this not even Quran denies it. It doesn't matter to humanity if Jesus was black, white or yellow, he is still Jesus the son of GOD the saviour, he is our lord.
Black Africans do not see Jesus as a white man, and do not think that it is discrimination to picture Jesus as a white man, as much as Christian women don't wish that Jesus was a woman. What matters to human kind is the message that Jesus came with. He cured the poor, the sick, he reached to the sinners and thieves before he preached to high class society, he came to all humanity not only to white race. His message can not be more clear when he says "you have to love your enemies as much as you love yourself". Where is the discrimination

Now, to tell you about the origin of Christ's picture, there are lots of historic proofs that when Jesus was on his way to crucifiction, currying the cross and in so much pain, his face was full of blood and sweat, saint Helaneh wiped Jesus face with a piece of cloth, and Jesus made yet another miracle by placing the picture of his face on the cloth, this incident was written in the bibles and also the piece of cloth was discovered recently, you can dig into more information about this subject if your intention is to reach the truth. the picture doesn't show if Jesus was white or dark skin, but who cares.

You said
"In this website people from different religions are sharing knowledge from their original source. I believe that it is good chance for mutual understanding. This is not a battle ground. "The GAP" shouldn't be seen as a trap for anybody. People, not only Christians shouldn't fear from learning Islam. I believe that both Muslims and Christians can understand and show respect to each other and survive under the same society. That's why I send my emails to this website. This should be the ultimate aim."

Who fears from learning Islam, I explained to you before that I know about Islam maybe more than so many what they call themselves muslims, I am not accusing you that you have fear to learn Christianity though, but my suggestion to you is to depend on unbiased resources in order to understand that the bibles are not corrupted. This subject needs lots of work from your side. If you are sincerely interested in knowing the truth then maybe you need to enroll in RCIA it is a program for people who needs to know about Christianity, since I am catholic, I suggest that you check with any Catholic church near you, ask as much questions as you want, I am sure that you will find answers if you are planning to.

Since I spent my entire life (long) learning about Islam, I encourage you to start digging information from unbiased resources, again if your ONLY reference is Quran then there is no way that you will know what I am or most of the world is talking about.

Peace be with you

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