| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
How to Refute the Qur’an According to Paul Williams and Bart Ehrman
Saturday, March 26, 2016 19:49
% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.
In a post titled “Today is Good Friday,” Paul Williams recently shared a response he gave to someone who quoted the Testimonium Flavianum, which refers to a famous, and much disputed, statement about Jesus in the writings of Flavius Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian and eyewitness to the destruction of Jerusalem. The statement as it currently appears in Josephus is as follows:
“At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was a doer of amazing deeds, a teacher of persons who receive the truth with pleasure. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. And when Pilate condemned him to the cross, the leading me among us having accused him, those who loved him from the first did not cease to do so. For he appeared to them the third day alive again, the divine prophets having spoken these things and a myriad of other marvels concerning him. And to the present the tribe of Christians, named after this person, has not disappeared.” (Ant. 18.3.3)
Here is what Paul Williams said in response:
After making this comment, Williams then cited Bart Ehrman on the reasons why many scholars believe something has been interpolated into what Josephus originally wrote about Jesus:
The reasoning offered above by Ehrman, which Williams appealed to, is of no consequence for Christianity; however, the same can’t be said for Islam. Just as this reference in Josephus must be seen as a corruption of what he said since he would not have referred to Jesus as “the Christ,” so it also shows that the Qur’an was either corrupted or the author of the Qur’an simply didn’t know what he was talking about. According to the Qur’an, Josephus’ co-religionists made the following boast:
“Surely we have killed THE MESSIAH [al-Masih], Isa the Son of Marium, THE MESSENGER of Allah” (S. 4:157).
If, as Ehrman pointed out, Josephus would not have identified Jesus as the Christ, for which reason the Testimonium Flavianum must be seen as a corruption, then it follows that the Qur’an is either wrong when it puts such words in the mouth of the Jews or the Qur’an has been corrupted. QED.
Happy Resurrection Day, Paul!
Source: http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2016/03/how-to-refute-quran-according-to-paul.html
