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believer wrote: Your belief is that the various translations contradict each other but they are actually complimentary. I have mentioned before that many Bible studies request that you bring more then one translation to class.  It actually adds a fuller deeper meaning to the verse. That is why all of Christianity has worked to save scriptures and not burned them the way Uthman did the Quran.   Muslims have no originals to compare and prove that the Quran has not changed.    KIA? MIA?  It is known through history that verses were lost from the Quran before the Quran was compiled and there was war where people who had memorized the Quran were killed.  Aisha talks about chapers that had more verses then were present in her day.  What would be helpful to Islam is if some of the bones and leaves had been saved.  Also the various copies from the companions of Mohammd had been collected and saved.   We have bits of scripture from 125AD- now remember the Scripture was written on a very fragile material so it is a miracle any of it has survived.  We also have are church fathers that reference scripture in their writings.

Why not quote sources Believer.

Ah Nur,

   Yes, there is still original text in the world. It is written in Aramaic, Hebrew and in Greek. Ever heard of the DEAD SEA SCROLLS, which consists of roughly about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include some of the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 C.E., and preserve evidence of considerable diversity of belief and practice within late Second Temple Judaism. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, mostly on parchment, but with some written on papyrus.^[1] These manuscripts generally date between 150 BCE to 70 CE.^[2] The scrolls are most commonly identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, but recent scholarship has challenged their association with the scrolls.^[3]

   You seem very one sided here, You may want to GOOGLE questions or statements you make, because you are not making correct ones and they coming out as assumptions instead.


   Salome
  

Edited by Salome - 05 May 2009 at 4:33pm

believer wrote: salome I have read the Quran.   I have been told many times that if I don't read the Quran in arabic the message is not complete.   Do you believe that the message is lost when reading the Bible in various translations?  I don't believe it is.

More on the Dead Sea Scrolls from the perspective of a Muslim = http://www.missionislam.com/comprel/scrolls.htm

Lawrence Schiffman says regarding Pesher Habakkuk: "It (Pesher Habakkuk) describes the struggle between the Teacher of Righteousness and his opponents - the Man of Lies (also termed the Spouter or Preacher of Lies) and the Wicked Priest. The Spouter is pictured as heading a community. The dispute between the Teacher and the Spouter is seems to have been based on matters of religious interpretation and law. The Wicked Priest is said to have begun his rule in truth but then to have abandoned the way of truth. He then persecutes the Teacher, confronting him on the holiest day of the year, the Day of Atonement" (Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lawrence H. Schiffman, p. 228).

This prophesy also continues in Pesher Psalms: "This text also mentions the familiar dramatis personae: the Teacher of Righteousness, termed 'the priest'; the wicked priest; and the Man of Lies. The Wicked Priest persecuted the Teacher and sought to kill him. The man of lies lead people astray" (Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lawrence H. Schiffman, p. 229). What we begin to see in all of this is the story of the coming of Jesus (peace be upon him), his selection of Judas as one of the apostles, the deviance of Judas from the truth, how a sect of the Jews persecuted Jesus (peace be upon him), how this sect tried to deceive the masses and differed with Jesus (peace be upon him) regarding the truth of God's message, and finally, how they schemed with Judas to kill Jesus (peace be upon him). The Teacher of Righteousness is thus a reference to Jesus (peace be upon him); the "priestly" Messiah. The Wicked Priest is a reference to Judas, and the Spouter of Lies is most likely the leader of the "chief priests and Pharisees" who persecuted Jesus (peace be upon him) and are mentioned so often in the Bible.

Many Christian scholars have snatched up these prophesies in order to prove the validity of their claim that Jesus (peace be upon him) was indeed sent by God and that the Jews are required to follow him. However, they have been thwarted in their attempts by one other quite amazing piece of evidence that the Jews continually manage to refute their claims with, specifically, that the Dead Sea Scrolls claim that the coming messiah will be persecuted and that the Wicked Priest will try to kill him, but that the Wicked Priest will not be successful and that it is he who will receive the fate he wished for the messiah.

In interpreting Psalms 37:32: "The Wicked watches for the righteous, seeking to put him to death," the text states: 'Its interpretation concerns the Wicked Priest who watched out for the Teacher of Righteousness and sought to put him to death'" (Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lawrence H. Schiffman, p. 233). So Judas will try to kill Jesus (peace be upon him).

"The Wicked Priest began his career with the support of the sectarians, but he quickly lost his way and began to transgress in order to increase his wealth" (Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lawrence H. Schiffman, p. 233).

"And said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver". (Matthew 26:15)

"Various theories have sought to identify the Teacher with Jesus, claiming that he was executed by the Wicked Priest. However, had that been the case, the text would not have gone on to explain how God took vengeance against the priest by turning him over to the 'ruthless ones of the nations'. And according to this text, the teacher certainly survived the ambush. Indeed the entire passage is an interpretation of Psalms (37:33) where the text continues:

"The Lord will not abandon him (the Righteous), into his hand (the Wicked); He (The Lord) will not let him (the Righteous) be condemned in judgement (by the wicked)." (Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lawrence H. Schiffman, pp. 233-234).

The author goes on to quote Pesher Habakkuk with regard to the Wicked Priest's intentions and his punishment. He says: "Ultimately, however, the Wicked Priest was punished: '.. because of his transgression against the Teacher of Righteousness and the men of his council, God gave him over to the hands of his enemies to afflict him with disease so as to destroy him with mortal suffering because he had acted wickedly against His chosen one'.

The Wicked Priest's enemies tortured him which represents divine punishment for his attacks on the Teacher of Righteousness. The sufferings of the Wicked Priest are even more graphically described in another passage: 'and all his enemies arose and abused him in order for his suffering to be fit punishment for his evil. And they inflicted upon him horrible diseases, and acts of vengeance in the flesh of his body'. But the one who suffered was the Wicked Priest, not the Teacher of Righteousness.

"The enemies of the Wicked Priest, the nation against whom he had made war, are said to have tortured him, so that his life ended in mortal disease and affliction." (Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lawrence H. Schiffman, p. 234). If we read the Gospel of Barnabas, we will find that when Judas came with the Roman troops in order to betray Jesus (peace be upon him), God raised Jesus (peace be upon him) unto Him and saved him. He then made Judas look and even speak like Jesus (peace be upon him) so that the Romans dragged him (Judas) away with them kicking and screaming that he was not Jesus (peace be upon him) but Judas. Even the Apostles were totally bewildered.

After the Romans had their fill afflicting Judas with all manner of abuse and torture, he was finally taken to trial. By now he had totally given up hope of ever being believed. So now when he was asked, "art thou Jesus?" He replied "Thou sayest". In other words, "you will not believe me if I say otherwise, so why fight it any more". His enemies (the Romans) then took him, mocked him, kicked him, cut him, spat on him, humiliated him, and tortured him. Finally, they put him up on the cross. It appears, however, that shortly after they took him down, he disappeared from his tomb (maybe to live in disease and torment and die later on if he was not already dead). The Gospel of Barnabas then goes on to describe how Jesus (peace be upon him) returned to the apostles to tell them of how God had saved him from the hands of the Jews and the Romans and how the traitor (Judas) was taken instead.

This is exactly what the Qur'an has been saying for 1400 years now; that Jesus (peace be upon him) was not forsaken by God to be killed by the conspiracy of the Jews and Judas, but that "it was made to appear so to them":

"But when Jesus became conscious of their disbelief, he cried: Who will be my helpers in the cause of Allah? The disciples said: We will be Allah's helpers. We believe in Allah, and bear you witness that we have surrendered (unto Him). Our Lord! We believe in that which You have revealed and we follow him whom You have sent. Enrol us among those who witness (to the truth). And they (the disbelievers) schemed, and Allah schemed (against them): and Allah is the best of schemers"

(Qur'an, Al-'Imran 3:52-54)

Edited by Nur_Ilahi - 06 May 2009 at 6:04pm