Home > Refuting the Corruption Claims
According to Biblical scholars, even the authorship of the Old Testament books and the Gospels themselves is in doubt.
Torah: The first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch) are traditionally attributed to Prophet Moses, however, there are many verses within these books which indicate that Prophet Moses could not possibly have written everything in them. For example, Deuteronomy 34.5-8 states: "5 So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord, 6 and he buried him in the valley of the land of Moab opposite Beth-peor; but no man knows the place of his burial to this day. 7 Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. 8 And the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses ended." It is quite obvious that someone else wrote these verses about Prophet Moses' death. In the appendix of the Revised Standard Version entitled "Books of the Bible," the following is written concerning the authorship of over one third of the remaining books of the Old Testament, "Unknown".
Apocrypha: More than half of the world's Christians are Roman Catholics. Their version of the Bible was published in 1582 from Jerome's Latin Vulgate, and reproduced at Douay in 1609. The Old Testament of the RCV (Roman Catholic Version) contains seven more books than the King James Version recognized by the Protestant world. The extra books are referred to as the apocrypha (i.e., of doubtful authority) and were removed from the Bible in 1611 by Protestant Bible scholars.
The Gospels: Aramaic was the spoken language of the Jews of Palestine. Consequently, it is believed that Jesus and his disciples spoke and taught in Aramaic.30 "The earliest oral tradition of Jesus' deeds and sayings undoubtedly circulated in Aramaic. However, the four Gospels were written in an entirely different speech, common Greek, the spoken language of the civilized Mediterranean world, to serve the majority of the Church, which was becoming Hellenistic (Greek-speaking) instead of Palestinian. Traces of Aramaic survive in the Greek Gospels. For example, in Mark 5:41,"Taking her by the hand he said to her, ‘Tal'itha cu'mi'; which means 'Little girl, I say to you, arise.' " and Mark 15:34,"And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabachtha'ni?' which means, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'" The New Testament Gospel of Mark, though considered by Church scholars to be the oldest of the Gospels, was not written by a disciple of Jesus. Biblical scholars concluded, based on the evidence contained in the Gospel, that Mark himself was not a disciple of Jesus. Furthermore, according to them, it is not even certain who Mark really was.
The ancient Christian author, Eusebius (325 C.E.), reported that another ancient author, Papias (130 C.E.), was the first to attribute the Gospel to John Mark, a companion of Paul. Others suggested that he may have been the scribe of Peter and yet others hold that he was probably someone else. The same is the case with the other Gospels. Although Matthew, Luke and John are the names of disciples of Jesus, the authors of the Gospels bearing their names were not those famous disciples, but other individuals who used the disciples' names to give their accounts credibility. In fact, all the Gospels originally circulated anonymously. Authoritative names were later assigned to them by unknown figures in the early church. J.B. Phillips, a prebendary of the Chichester Cathedral, the Anglican Church of England, wrote the following preface for his translation of the Gospel according to St. Matthew: "Early tradition ascribed this Gospel to the apostle Matthew, but scholars nowadays almost all reject this view. The author, whom we can conveniently call Matthew, has plainly drawn on the mysterious "Q",41 which may have been a collection of oral traditions. He has used Mark's Gospel freely, though he has rearranged the order of events and has in several instances used different words for what is plainly the same story." The Fourth Gospel (John) was opposed as heretical in the early church, and it knows none of the stories associated with John, son of Zebedee. In the judgement of many scholars, it was produced by a "school" of disciples, probably in Syria in the last decade of the first century
"The Bible's books, especially the Gospels, come from anonymous authors—none signed by Jesus (peace be upon him) or his direct companions. Tradition names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but scholars agree these were added later; the texts themselves don't say who wrote them. The Qur'an warns of such tampering: ‘So woe to those who write the scripture with their own hands, then say, "This is from Allah"' (Surah Al-Baqarah, 2:79). Jesus preached Allah's message, but unknown writers, years after him, shaped the Bible we have.
In Islam, the Qur'an is direct from Allah, revealed to Muhammad (peace be upon him) and recorded in his lifetime: ‘This is the Book about which there is no doubt' (Surah Al-Baqarah, 2:2). Jesus was a messenger—‘He said, "Indeed, I am the servant of Allah"' (Surah Maryam, 19:30)—not God, and anonymous hands twisted his story. The Qur'an's clear origin stands firm, restoring what Jesus truly taught: worship Allah alone."
The standard Muslim Dawah narrative attempts to bury the textual history of the Bible under a wall of secular academic skepticism. By citing modern text criticism, the "Q source," and manuscript anonymity, the Dawah script presumes it holds the historical high ground.
However, this strategy relies on a fatal tactical blunder: it borrows the hyper-skeptical weapons of secular historians to attack the Christian scriptures, completely blind to the fact that those exact same academic weapons utterly decimate the foundations of Islam.
If we apply these identical critical standards universally, the Islamic narrative instantly self-destructs. Let’s look at the historical data by playing strictly by your rules.
You claim the Gospels are untrustworthy because they are internally anonymous and had names like "Matthew" or "Mark" assigned to them by the late, external tradition of the Early Church.
If internal anonymity invalidates a holy book, then you must throw away the Quran today. Where inside the actual text of the second chapter does it say, "This is the Surah of the Cow, revealed by Allah to Muhammad"? It doesn't. The Qur'an is entirely anonymous inside its own text. No Surah contains an internal signature by Muhammad, nor do the texts themselves name their own chapters.
Furthermore, paleography and textual history confirm that the earliest surviving Quranic manuscripts (such as the Birmingham or Sana'a palimpsests) contain no chapter divisions, no Surah names, and no verse markers. Humans invented those structural boundaries later. The titles of the Surahs—like Al-Baqarah (The Cow) or Al-Imran (The Family of Imran)—were completely made up and assigned later by human editors based on a random keyword buried within the text.
You only know Muhammad had anything to do with these anonymous texts because of an external tradition (Hadith and Sira) compiled centuries later. If a lack of signed manuscript authorship invalidates the Gospels, then the Qur'an fails its own test. Both rely entirely on late, human, external traditions to tell us who is speaking.
Your script points to the Protestant and Catholic versions of the Old Testament containing a different number of books as proof of human alteration and "tampering hands."
This is laughing at a splinter in the Christian eye while ignoring the total volcanic eruption in your own history. The Christian canon evolved through a transparent, centuries-long process of open scholarly debate, where books of doubtful authority were safely isolated in the light of day.
What is the Islamic history of textual variation? It is a history of state-sponsored arson. Do not try to claim that Caliph Uthman merely burned "pronunciation or dialect differences." Your own premier authentic sources destroy that myth. Sahih al-Bukhari 4987 tells us that Muslims across the empire were violently disputing the text of the Qur'an itself.
Even worse, Ibn Abi Dawud’s Kitab al-Masahif records that Abdullah ibn Mas’ud—the top companion whom Muhammad explicitly commanded Muslims to learn the Qur'an from—refused to give up his personal manuscript to be burned, calling Uthman’s compilation committee a fraudulent sham. Ibn Mas’ud’s codex did not even contain Surah Al-Fatiha, while the codex of Ubayy ibn Ka'b contained two extra Surahs (Al-Hafd and Al-Al'a). These were not regional dialects; these were entirely different textual compositions.
If a Christian king had rounded up and burned the alternative Gospels of Peter, Andrew, and John to force a single uniform text on the world, you would call it a massive conspiracy. Yet that is exactly how the uniform Qur'an you read today was manufactured.
Your script quotes biblical scholars to point out that the Gospel of Matthew allegedly relied on an underlying, oral collection of Jesus' sayings known as the "mysterious Q source," implying this makes it historically unreliable.
This is the absolute height of hypocrisy. The entire religious, legal, and historical matrix of Islam—including how you pray, how you fast, your laws, and the essential context needed to understand the Qur'an—is derived entirely from the Hadith literature (like Sahih al-Bukhari and Muslim). What are the Hadiths? They are a massive, sprawling collection of oral traditions that floated as oral gossip across Arabia for over 200 years before anyone compiled them into books.
If a Gospel writer drawing on oral traditions compiled within 20 to 40 years of Jesus' death makes the New Testament "unreliable," then your entire Islamic Sunnah, which floated orally for two centuries, is completely worthless.
If you try to defend the Hadith by appealing to the Isnad (the chain of narrators), you fall into your own trap. Remember the rules of engagement: you chose to use modern secular textual criticism against the Bible. If we apply that exact same secular criticism to your Isnad system, it completely collapses. Secular historians have proven that the Isnad system wasn't even systematically used until generations after Muhammad, and that chains of narration were routinely fabricated backward to grant divine authority to local legal traditions. You cannot use secular academic tools to chop down the trees of Christian history while expecting those same tools to spare your own orchard.
Finally, your script points to Deuteronomy 34, which records the death and burial of Moses, and claims this proves Moses didn't write the Torah.
This objection only exposes a profound ignorance of ancient Near Eastern literature. It has been understood for thousands of years by both Jewish and Christian scholars that Joshua, or a later inspired scribe, appended the obituary of Moses to the end of the scroll as an inspired editorial completion.
The presence of a postscript describing a prophet's death does not mean the entire five books are a fraudulent forgery. If a biographer adds a closing chapter to a great man's memoirs after he passes away, does that mean the man's memoirs are a fake? Of course not. It is a feature of historical preservation, not proof of "tampering."
The textual defense of the Dawah script is an absolute double standard that collapses under the weight of its own logical inconsistency. It demands a standard of mechanical preservation from the Christian scriptures that it completely waives for the Islamic tradition.
We are left with two starkly contrasting models of history. We can believe the Christian narrative: a faith that has proudly preserved its manuscript history, its deep textual variants, its early translations, and its open canonical debates completely in the open light of day. Or, we can believe the Islamic narrative: a late text that hides its internal anonymity behind fabricated chapter titles, relies on oral traditions written down two centuries late, and managed to present a unified text only because an emperor threw the competing manuscripts of Muhammad's closest companions into the fire.
You cannot use secular textual criticism to cut down the Bible if you are not prepared to watch the roots of Islam fall with it. Logic, history, and intellectual honesty all lead to the same place: the Greek Gospels stand firm as the true, historically verifiable Evangelion.