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The Bible Needs No Defence

Bassam Michael Madany

November 2021

Muslims throughout the last 1400 years have claimed that Christians altered their Scriptures to suppress a “prediction” about the coming of a final prophet of Allah.

Two passages from the Qur’an advocate the charge.

2. O Muslims, do you then expect that these people will accept your invitation and become believers? whereas there have always been among them some who have been hearing the Word of God, understanding it well and then perverting and tampering with it knowingly. Baqra:75 

5. And there is a party among them who twist their tongues while reciting the Book to make you think that it is part of the Book when in fact it is not. They say: 'It is from Allah', when in fact it is not from Allah. They falsely fix a lie upon Allah and do so wittingly. Aale Imraan:78

These polemics ignore the fact that the Canon of the New Testament was settled early in the second century A. D.

The New Testament has been preserved in more manuscripts than any other ancient work of literature, with over 5,800 complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts catalogued, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic, and Armenian.