Do Contradictions Belie the Sanctity of Torah?

Can the contradictions and duplicating material in the early stories of Genesis be explained, in a manner that leaves religious faith intact?

Genesis contains two creation accounts, for instance, which differ significantly. In the first creation account, the name for God is Elohim; in the second it's Yahweh. The first account says the cosmic beginning is watery; the second says the earthly beginning is dry.

In the first account, birds are created from water; in the second they are created from earth. Animals were created before man and man is to rule them, says the first account; the second says the beasts were created after man, to be his possible companion.

And, strikingly, in the first creation account, male and female were created concurrently, but in the second, man was created first.

The Noah story is also contradictory: Noah is asked to bring two of all flesh into the ark – birds, animals and creeping things (Genesis 6:20). Genesis 7:15 says the living things will come to the ark of their own accord. And come Genesis 7:3-2, Noah is then asked to bring seven pairs of pure animal and birds and a pair of each impure animal into the ark.

So far the contradictions. The story of Noah also contains noticeable repetitions, such as:

“And YHWH saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and every imagination of his heart was but evil always. And YHWH regretted that He had made man upon the earth, and He was pained in His heart. And YHWH said: ‘I will blot out man, whom I created, from upon the face of the earth, from man to cattle to creeping thing, to the fowl of the heavens, for I regret that I made them.’ But Noah found favor in the eyes of YHWH.” (Genesis 6:5-8)

And a few sentences later:

“And the earth had become corrupt before Elohim, and the earth had become filled with injustice. And Elohim saw the earth and behold it was corrupted, for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. And Elohim said to Noah: ‘The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with injustice through them, and behold I am about to destroy them from the earth. Make yourself an ark . “ (Genesis 6:11-14)

The most common explanation in academic circles for these contradictions and extraneous material is the documentary hypothesis developed in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The documentary hypothesis

The documentary hypothesis proposes that the Pentateuch (the Five Books of Moses) is a composite of four primary sources – the Yahwist source, which exclusively used the Tetragammon or YHWH name for God and which was composed in the southern Kingdom of Judah in about 950 B.C.E.; an Elohist source that called God "Elohim," which which was written in about 850 B.C.E. in the northern Kingdom of Israel; a Deuteronomist source written in about 600 B.C.E. in Jerusalem during a period of religious reform; and a Priestly source put together in about 500 B.C.E. by Aaronic priests in exile in Babylon.

Others suggest that the Priestly source was composed much earlier during the First Temple period. The God of the Priestly source reveals himself in stages – first as Elohim, then to Abraham as El Shaddai, and finally to Moses as YHWH, they postulate.

According to the theory, these primary sources were joined together by a “redactor,” probably during the Babylonian exile. It is assumed that the redactor had considerable reverence for his original sources and was prepared to ignore contradictions and duplications.

The religious solution

The documentary hypothesis is, of course, anathema to religious Jews, since a man-composed Pentateuch undermines the Bible’s authority as a source of Divine instruction.

Religious Jews had only two ways to deal with these contradictions and duplications – to ignore them or synthesize them.

For instance, the much-studied Jewish commentator Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki), writing in the 11th century, suggests that the second creation account is but an elaboration of the first. Noting that birds were created from either water or earth depending on the account, he explains that in reality birds were created from mud.

The Cassuto approach

There is a third approach, developed by the academic biblical scholar Umberto Cassuto in the early 1900s.

Cassuto felt that the Pentateuch was a unitary account, although he was not prepared to say that its author was divine. Because of this, his ideas were largely ignored by the religious world, while secular biblical scholarship found his ideas irrelevant. His ideas were not, therefore, widely disseminated. Nevertheless, his ideas are not incompatible with a Divine origin for the Torah.

To Cassuto, the two creation accounts are allegories rather than factual accounts. Differences exist because these are two different allegories.

Like the documentary hypothesis, Cassuto’s unitary hypothesis is linked to the names of God used in the Bible. The names YHWH and Elohim are not a reflection of different authors but represent different aspects of God, he suggests.

Elohim, from the first chapter of Genesis, is a transcendent God who creates a universe specifically for man and is concerned with the general providence of mankind. The Tetragammon, YHWH, on the other hand, describes the immanent aspect of a God concerned with individual providence.

YHWH first appears in the second creation account, always linked with Elohim, as YHWH Elohim. The only exception is when the serpent speaks; this seems to emphasize that both aspects of God relate to a single Deity.

The name YHWH also has tribal significance: it is this aspect of God that elects Noah, and subsequently Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as progenitors of the Jewish people. Appreciation of the YHWH aspect of God becomes remote late in Jacob’s life, and his son Joseph refers exclusively to the name Elohim, the universal God knowable by all humanity. But it is YHWH who reveals Himself to Moses at the Burning Bush.

The documentary hypothesis holds that the Priestly and Yahwist authors both wrote stories about Noah, and the contradictions and extra material in today's version results from the redactor intermingling the two sources to build a composite account.

The unitary hypothesis, on the other hand, says the Noah story contains two stories because this is how it was written. There is a story about how the universal aspect of God, Elohim, destroys the earth but saves one righteous person and his family in order to repopulate the world. The immanent aspect of God, YHWH, recognizes the righteousness of Noah and chooses his family to repopulate the earth. This aspect of God will eventually call on Abraham, who comes from the lineage of Noah’s son Shem, to bring “righteousness and justice” to the world.

Elohim requires only two of each animal species (male and female) to repopulate the earth. Throughout the Bible, anything connected to a sacrifice is related to the YHWH aspect of God, since a sacrifice enables a person to draw close to a personal God. Noah is therefore commanded by YHWH to bring seven of each pure species, plus a pair of each unclean animal, into the ark. Without these extra animals, sacrificial service would have rendered these species extinct.

According to biblical source criticism, the following sentence is an example (albeit an unusual one) of the redactor joining a Yahwist source to a Priestly source within a single sentence in order to maintain the flow of the passage:

“Thus those who came [into the ark], came male and female of all flesh, as Elohim had commanded him [Priestly], and YHWH shut him in [Yahwist].” (Genesis 7:16)

By contrast, Cassuto’s unitary hypothesis would maintain that this is a crucial sentence describing the confluence of the Elohim and YHWH aspects of God. The transcendent God Elohim has brought all flesh into the ark to be saved as the flood ravages the land. Now, Noah’s personal God, YHWH, lovingly closes the ark on his behalf.

The personal God revolution

The Elohim and Yahwist aspects of God continue to wind their way through the Genesis stories. This results in some apparent duplications.

The universal Elohim aspect of God renames Abram and Sarai, and informs him that another son will be born to him besides Ishmael (Genesis 17:4-23). The name Abraham means “the father of a multitude of nations” and Sarah “a princess (to these nations).”

However, it is the YHWH aspect of God who calls on Abram to leave his homeland and come to the Land of Israel (Genesis. 15:1-21). YHWH also informs Sarah that she will have a child.

But why would scripture mix two stories into a single account in this unusual way?

The notion of a single god who created the universe and is concerned about the fate of all humanity was a revolutionary idea in the ancient pagan world. So also was the notion of a personal god. The gods of the ancient world were never interested in individuals; if anything, they were often hostile to human interests.

Contemporary people can oscillate comfortably between the immanent and transcendent aspects of God because the Bible delineated these two aspects of the Jewish deity, blending them together into a single narrative, using the two names for God.

Richard Friedman, a leading writer on the ideas of biblical criticism, noted in the last chapter of his book “Who Wrote the Bible?” that the Bible contains “a dramatic and theologically profound ... balance between the personal and the transcendent quality of the Deity.”

To Friedman this was an accidental result of the work of the Bible’s redactor. By contrast, the unitary hypothesis would say that this is how the Bible was constructed from its inception, and it offers a very plausible alternative to the documentary hypothesis.

by  Arnold Slyper

Noah's Repetition and Contradiction

Read the Noah story—the whole thing, from the very end of Genesis 5 and not just from the beginning of the parashah—and you will immediately sense that there is a problem. Why are there so many repetitions, tensions, and outright contradictions? Why are we told twice about Noah's offspring (5:32 and 6:10)? Why does the story offer two explanations for God's decision to destroy all creatures, removing them from the face of the earth—one explanation relating to the transgression of the divine/human divide and the wickedness of the human heart (6:1-7), and the other relating to human violence (6:11-12)? And why, in almost a single breath, does the Torah contradict its own representation of God's command to bring animals onto the ark, first requiring two of every species (6:19) and then requiring seven of each pure species and only two of each impure species (7:2-3)?

These are the problems that made the Noah story one of the primary foundations of the so-called Documentary Hypothesis of biblical origins. In fact, if you divide the story according to the name of God used in each part (Elohim [E] or Jahweh [J]), you will find that the division produces two neat and almost complete stories, each with its distinct version of the Noah tradition. For this reason, many modern critical readers of the text have concluded that what we have here is two original documents (E and J) combined to create a larger whole, but with relative disregard for the issues their combination creates. To be sure, dividing the story eliminates the problems exemplified in the paragraph above, but it does nothing to make sense of the Torah's story as we have it, whatever its origins.

In the world before the invention of the printing press, a world that was largely illiterate, the tensions and even contradictions we see today when reading the Torah's text would mostly not have been a problem. When people experience a text orally and aurally—read out loud by a reader whose words they hear but do not see—they tend not to hear tensions or even contradictions, and they certainly cannot go back to compare what they hear now to what they heard before. Consequently, they tend to modify their memory or understanding of the earlier in light of the latter. Repetitions are assumed to be there for emphasis or simply because orality demands repetition for clarity, and tensions or contradictions are smoothed over without the listener even being aware that a problem was there to be solved. In the world where people heard but did not read the Torah, our Genesis 2 (the "second Creation story") would have been heard as a specification or filling out of Genesis 1 (our "first Creation story"), and the Noah story would have been worked out with similar lack of difficulty.

This does not mean, however, that the difficulties do not exist, and we as readers should pay attention to them. I would like to suggest that the Documentary solution provides us with an important key, but not because separating the stories solves the readers' problems. When we read the part of the story in which God is referred to by the J name and compare it with the part of the story in which God is known by the E name, we find that the two strands offer us two very different pictures of who God is and the nature of God's relationship with humanity. First separated and then combined, these two parts offer us, in the end, a very complex theology, one from which we can all learn.

In the J story, God wants to protect God's status vis-à-vis human beings and other creatures. It is in this story that the "divine beings" sleep with human women, provoking God's wrath. One expression of God's wrath is to limit the length of human life to one-hundred-and-twenty years, ensuring a clear distinction between humans and divine beings who live forever. It is in this story that God requires Noah to bring onto the ark seven of every pure animal, because it is in this story that God will demand animal sacrifices of Noah when he emerges from the ark. The God of the Jstory is appeased by the sweet smell of the sacrifices, because they are an expression of human subservience and obedience. All told, this is a God who demands a clearly superior position with relation to God's creation; the Supreme King to whom all creatures are radically subjects.

The God of the E story is portrayed very differently. The sin that this God sees is human violence; being concerned for human welfare, this God acts against that violence, but S/he never limits the length of human life (this God requires no such radical division between God and humans). This God requires only two of each species—male and female—to board the ark, because S/he will not demand sacrifices; the animals are needed only to perpetuate their species. Instead of demanding sacrifices upon Noah's exit from the ark, the God of the E story begins by blessing the humans, and then gives them laws. The most important of these laws is the one that protects human life.

Crucially, the God of E then goes on at length to express God's covenantal commitment to humanity, ensuring that flesh will never again be destroyed by a flood. The fact that this commitment is covenantal—the word covenant (brit) appears in this context (9:8-17) seven times!—is significant. A covenant is a contract, one in which two parties commit to one another by mutual agreement. The fact that this God can enter a covenant with humanity means that S/he views humanity as a worthy partner, not necessarily an equal but also not a radically submissive subject to be commanded and little more.

These are two very different Gods, one jealous and superior, the other caring and available for relationship. How could they have been put together? What is the meaning of the two when represented as one? The answer, I think, lies in our own need for different Gods or, to be more correct, for one God differently imagined. My guess is that most of us are more immediately and naturally attracted to the God of E, the one who respects us enough to make a covenant with us. But such a God would be only partial. We also need a God—the God of J—who is radically superior, one totally unlike us, one to whom we can submit. Perhaps better expressed, sometimes we need the God as represented in one of these stories, at other times the God represented in the other. Put together, as in the Noah story, we have a fuller God, one we can address in all of our complexity, even if God is, in reality, much simpler (i.e., more singular) than these stories express.

The publication and distribution of the JTS Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee and Harold (z"l) Hassenfeld.

by David C. Kraemer

The Messiah in Islam -

Christians often ask Muslims why Jesus is referred to as the Messiah in Islam. The Qur'an in 3:45 refers to Jesus as the Messiah using the Arabic term "Maseeh":

"[And mention] when the angels said, "O Mary, indeed Allah gives you good tidings of a word from Him, whose name will be the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary - distinguished in this world and the Hereafter and among those brought near [to Allah ]."

The answer is really simple, the term Messiah is a proof that Jesus is not considered to be God, hence the Qur'an using this term is an affirmation that Jesus is not God. The term Messiah from the Hebrew "Mashiach" refers to one who is "anointed", usually this refers to one of two things:

1. To rub oil on one's forehead.
2. To be appointed by God as a King, Prophet or Priest.

In the case of #1, anointing in this sense is not in reference to a position given by God but done out of religious observation, see Psalm 104:15, Ruth 3:3 or Matthew 6:17.

In the case of #2, anointing in this sense refers to a position of religious power and authority where a King, Prophet or Priest is always anointed by someone other than themselves, there can not be a case of self-anointing. We read in 1 Kings 19:16, 19:

"Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet."

"So Elijah went from there and found Elisha son of Shaphat. He was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair. Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him."

We also read from Isaiah 61:1:

"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners..."

In these quotes we see one person anointing another for ascension into a religious office they did not previously hold. In the case of God, how can God be a Messiah? This would have to mean that God anointed himself to hold a religious office he did not previously have. A Prophet becomes anointed to succeed another Prophet as seen in the quote from 1 Kings 19. Priests are anointed, read Exodus 40:12-13 :

"Bring Aaron and his sons to the entrance to the tent of meeting and wash them with water. Then dress Aaron in the sacred garments, anoint him and consecrate him so he may serve me as priest."

Kings are anointed, as we read in 1 Kings 1:39 -

"Zadok the priest took the horn of oilfrom the sacred tent and anointed Solomon. Then they sounded the trumpetand all the people shouted, “Long live King Solomon!”

So if to be God is to be Messiah (as Christians claim with Jesus), it would have to mean that God anointed Himself (something not done before in the Hebrew Bible), granting Himself ascension to a higher religious office that he did not occupy before. So what office did God ascend to that he did not have at one point? Therefore, it logically follows that to be a Messiah, is not to be God, but to be raised to a higher office by God. Which fits in line with the Islamic teaching that Prophets are Imams of their nations and that they are raised to a higher station (office of authority) by God.

Therefore the Qur'an correctly refers to Jesus as the Messiah, but in order for Jesus to be the God-Messiah in Christianity, they would first have to deny the tradition of anointing to a higher office in the Hebrew Bible and they would also have to explain what office of authority God did not hold that he later gained.

and God knows best.

“And if We had made this a foreign Qur’ān, they would have said, ‘Why are its verses not clarified? What! A foreign [book] and an Arab [prophet]?!’” Al-Qur’ān 41:44

• By Dr. Yasir Qadhi

Question:
It is an indisputable fact that the Qur’ān uses ‘foreign vocabulary’, that is to say, vocabulary that was adopted into the Arabic language of the Qur’ān as loanwords derived from Aramaic, Syriac, Ethiopian, Hebrew, Greek, and other languages, but already understood in the Meccan and Medinan environment of Muhammad’s time. Many of these loanwords are taken from their liturgical usage in the Jewish-Christian tradition. It is equally indisputable that the Qur’ān includes many passages that have their parallels in biblical or extra-biblical narratives. How do you critically assess these phenomena of the Qur’ān in view of the claim that the Qur’ān is divine revelation, word for word?

Answer:
Due to the multi-layered question, this response will be divided into three parts.¹

1. The Issue of Foreign Words

The controversy regarding the presence of foreign words in the Qur’ān is an ancient one, and although modern scholarship can claim that this fact is indisputable, it was certainly not so in the eyes of some early Muslims.

The famous Andalusian exegete, Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Qurtubī (d. 671/1272), summarized the controversy in the introduction to his Tafsīr. He stated that the scholars of Islam have unanimously agreed that there are no non-Arabic sentences or phrases in the Qur’ān, and they have also agreed that there are non-Arabic proper names such as ‘Jesus’ (‘Īsā), Gabriel (Jibrīl) and ‘Noah’ (Nūh). However, they differed into two groups regarding the presence of solitary foreign words in the Qur’ān.²

The controversy, of course, pre-dates al-Qurtubī by a few centuries. On the one hand were those who claimed that there were no foreign words in the Qur’ān, the most prominent amongst them being the jurist al-Shāfi’ī (d. 204/819), and also the exegete al-Tabarī (d. 310/922). They claimed that any word found in another language did not necessitate its origination in that language, for it could be the case that the other language took it from Arabic, or that both languages used those words simultaneously.³ The former, in his famous al-Risālah, has some harsh words for the followers of this opinion, and considered those who claimed that the Qur’ān has foreign words in it as being ignorant, bereft of wisdom and knowledge.⁴ Their concern, as they quite clearly delineate, was that the Qur’ān describes itself, in almost a dozen verses (e.g. Q. 16:103, 12:2, and 42:7) as being in pure Arabic, hence how could it be claimed that it contained foreign words? They also felt that, in accordance with the Qur’ānic principle that all prophets are sent speaking their native tongues, an Arab prophet would have to speak in Arabic to them. A third reason why such great consternation was felt, as the grammarian Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004) stated, was due to the fact that if there were non-Arabic words in it, it would be unfair to challenge the Arabs to produce a work similar to it, as the Qur’ān does.⁵

It is poignant to note that there does not seem to be any indication in the writings of these early and even medieval scholars that admitting the existence of foreign vocabulary in the Qur’ān might somehow challenge its claim of Divine origin or expose it to allegations of ‘foreign’ influence. Rather, for them, it was a matter of reconciling specific verses that they presumed contradicted the assertion that foreign words existed in it.

On the other hand, quite a few early authorities seemed to have no problem acknowledging the foreign vocabulary of the Qur’ān. In particular the Companion Ibn ‘Abbās has much narrated from him in this regard (whether it can be deemed authentic or not is another question). The prolific al-Suyūtī (d. 911/1505) wrote the largest work of its kind in Arabic, entitled al-Muhadhab fī ma waqa’a fī al-Qur’ān min al-mu’arrab, in which he compiled around five dozen such examples. For al-Suyūtī, the few examples of non–Arabic words found in the Qur’ān did not negate its overall Arabic nature, hence there was no conflict with this and the verses describing it as being an Arabic revelation.

A third group of scholars tried to reconcile the two positions by claiming that there was an element of truth in both of them. The early linguist Abū ‘Ubayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām (d. 224/838) is the first that I know of who claimed that both of these groups were correct; he stated that the origin of some Qur’ānic words is indeed foreign, but they were introduced into Arabic, as is the case with any language, and were Arabicised by replacing their letters with Arabic letters, and eventually were incorporated into Arabic poetry and culture, such that for all practical purposes they could be considered Arabic.⁶ Al-Zarkashī (d. 794/1391), whose work al-Burhān fī ‘Ulūm al-Qur’ān is almost universally acknowledged as the greatest mediaeval work on the sciences of the Qur’ān, also leaned towards this position, as did al-Suyūtī in his other work, al-Itqān fī ‘Ulūm al-Qur’ān. Some proponents of this camp quoted the ‘father’ of Arabic grammar, Sībawayh (d. 180/796) himself, who wrote in his al-Kitābthat non-Arabic words could become Arabic if one substituted Arabic letters for the foreign ones, and then appended it to a known morphological form (wazn).⁷ The exegete Ibn ‘Atiyyah (d. 541/1147), in his al-Muharrar summarized his position regarding this issue when he stated that there is no doubt that Arabs interacted with other civilizations, through trade and other journeys, and in the process they took some of their words and introduced them into the common vernacular of the Arabs, such that they began to be used in their lectures and poetry, and this was the state of affairs when the Qur’ān was revealed with these words. It is this third opinion which is now almost universally acknowledge as valid by Muslim specialists in the field, and all the modern works that are written in the field of ‘ulūm al-Qur’ān’ reflect this.

As a final point, the fact that words of non-Arab origin are undeniably found in pre-Islamic poetry (in particular, the ‘Seven Hanging Odes’) clearly shows that Arabs, like all cultures, took specific phrases from other languages and incorporated them into their own.

Mention must be made here of the seminal work on this field in Western scholarship, and that is Arthur Jeffery’s The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur’ān (Brill, 2007). There is no doubt that this masterpiece of scholarship outshines anything else written on the subject, however, at the same time, it cannot be taken as the final authority on each and every word that it lists. Rather, it serves as an indispensable index to see which words might possibly qualify as being non-Arabic in origin. What sets Jefferey’s work head and shoulders above all other works is that he specifically links each alleged foreign word back to its original language, be it Aramaic, Syriac, Hebrew, Greek, or other.⁸

2. The Issue of Judaeo-Christian Influence on the Qur’ān

It is a given fundamental amongst non-Muslims, be they Christian, Jew, or secular, that Muhammad composed the Qur’ān from whatever sources were available to him, in particular Judaeo-Christian sources. And it is just as much a fundamental amongst Muslims (by definition!) that the Qur’ān was a revelation from God.

The earliest modern researcher who sought to methodologically prove this claim was Abraham Geiger, who published his Was had Mohammed aus dem Judenthem aufgenommen in 1833 (translated as Judaism and Islam). This was followed by a flood of writings on the topic, such as those of Wilhelm Rudolph, Tor Andrae, Richard Bell, and C. C. Torrey. In particular, the Scottish Orientalist William Muir (d. 1905) did much to lay the foundations of this viewpoint.

Muir maintained that the Prophet had obtained his knowledge of Judaism and Christianity via the followers of those religions who lived in the Hijaz, and who visited the ‘Ukādh fairs, as well as having learnt about them via his own journeys to Syria. Claims Muir, “We may be certain that Mahomet lost no opportunity of enquiring into the practices and tenets of the Syrian Christians or of conversing with the monks and clergy who fell in his way.” Muir laments that the Prophet was exposed to a distorted and faulty view of Christianity, for had he been given the correct understanding of the religion instead of ‘…the misnamed catholicism of the Empire,’ he would have instead converted to it rather than misleading others through a new faith.⁹

W. Montgomery Watt, taking the ideas of Muir a step further, claimed that one of the theses of his book Muhammad at Mecca is that the greatness of Islam is largely due to a fusion of some Arab elements with certain Judaeo-Christian conceptions. He also posits (p. 27), based upon Q. 16:103, that there was a ‘monotheist informant’ of the Prophet. For Watt, the Prophet intentionally launched a new monotheistic religion in order to avoid the political implications of adopting Judaism or Christianity (p. 38).

H. A. R. Gibb, in his Muhammadanism: A Historical Survey, puts forward another possibility concerning the sources of the Qur’ān. In view of the close commercial relation between Mecca and Yemen, he states, it would be natural to assume that some religious ideas were carried to Mecca with the caravans of spices and woven stuffs, and there are details of vocabulary in the Qur’ān which give color to this assumption.¹⁰ The Lebanese Philip K. Hitti wrote that the sources of the Qur’ān are unmistakably Christian, Jewish and Arab heathen, and that what Muhammad did was to Islamise, Arabicise and nationalize the material.¹¹ Richard Bell, in his The Origin of Islam in its Christian Environment, opines that much of the Qur’ān is directly dependent on the Bible (p. 42), yet also admitted that there was no evidence of any seats of Christianity in the Hijāz, and especially in Mecca and Medina (p. 100). The more modern Kenneth Cragg, while conceding the Christian influence on the Qur’ān, opines: “The Biblical narratives reproduced in the Qur’ān differ considerably and suggest oral, not direct acquaintance. There is almost complete absence of what could be claimed as direct quotation from the Bible.”¹²

And the quotes go on and on. The New Catholic Encyclopedia states quite correctly, regarding the divine origins of the Qur’ān:¹³

Non-Moslem scholarship has taken a different view of the matter. It has nearly always held that the major influences on Mohammed must have been principally, but not exclusively, Jewish and Christian, and that those influences were colored by Mohammed’s own character and made over to conform to aspects and need of the pre-Islamic Arabian mind.

It later goes on to claim that it was highly likely that the Prophet had access to the Scriptures of Judaism and Christianity.

The connection between the foreign vocabulary of the Qur’ān and its alleged foreign sources is obvious, as the quotation from Gibb above hints at. Arthur Jefferey’s work, mentioned above as well, is a perfect illustration of this frame of mind. He states factually that “…it is plain that Muhammad drew his inspiration…from the great monotheistic religions which were pressing down into Arabia of his day.^“14 Based on this premise, he then asserts that researching the foreign vocabulary of the Qur’ān will allow us to understand the influences and sources that Muhammad used to come up with his religion.¹⁵Jefferey then proceeds to lay out how Muhammad might have had possible access to Ethiopic, Persian, Greek, Syrian, Hebrew, Nabataean and Indian sources, how he had ‘…close contact with the Syrian Church,’ how he attempted to purchase information from the Jews, was possibly taught Coptic legends from his slave-girl, and was inspired by the success and might of the Byzantine and Persian Empires to lead the Arabs to higher levels of civilization.¹⁶

3. The View From Within: Muslim Responses

For Muslims, such a view as expressed by Jefferey and others is inherently biased. Many of the earlier generation of Orientalists were quite staunch Christians who made no qualms about their religious views on Islam. For later scholars, who worked in a time when, even if such a bias existed, its admittance would be looked upon disapprovingly, the general paradigm from which academic research was (and is) undertaken is that of a secular one, where there is no God who communicates with man and who sends different prophets with the same message to different peoples. Of course, this paradigm is applied to the same standards by most modern researchers to all faiths, and not just Islam. To do otherwise would automatically constitute an unacceptable bias that modern academia would not allow. Thus, the ‘The Great Flood’ that is mentioned in the Bible (and the Qur’ān) is viewed as a universal myth that has its origins in a plethora of sources, such as the Hindu Puranas, Greek mythology, and even the Epic of Gilgamesh. The mythology of Christianity is seen as having been derived from previous parallels, some of which are indeed quite striking, such as the stories of the Egyptian Sun god Horus and the Hellenistic cult of Mithra.

Hence, some of the problems that religiously devout Muslim academics will have when dealing with such research into the origins of the Qur’ān are very similar to the problems that members of other faiths will have when dealing with their respective traditions.

But this is not the only line of defense that Muslim academics draw. They point out the social and intellectual milieu that the Prophet found himself in and ask whether the portrayal of him tallies with historical facts and realities. One cannot be blamed for getting the distinct impression that some Western authors attribute to Muhammad a type of encyclopedic knowledge that no one else of his time or era reputedly had, or could even come close to. The impression is given that either he knew or had access to a library that included Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and ancient Arab beliefs, and was cognizant of many different languages and dialects, before ‘writing’ the Qur’ān. Yet, modern research has failed to show any significant center of Jewish or Christian learning in Arabia, or translation of the Holy Scriptures into Arabic. In fact, some specialists have shown that the first known translation of the Gospels into Arabic occurred in the third century after the hijra.¹⁷

Again, for Muslims, such claims seem to ignore simple historical realities of the time, some of which even the Qur’ān alludes to. Of them is that Muhammad was an illiterate man raised in an uneducated Bedouin society. Both Q. 10:16 and 29:48-9 remind listeners that the Prophet had spent an entire lifetime (i.e., forty years) in their midst, during which he showed absolutely no inclination for any sort of literary activity or flair for writing skills – had he done so, the Qur’ān explicitly states, there would indeed be a legitimate reason to be skeptical.

Another issue that must be kept in mind is that any ‘parallels’ found between Qur’ānic and Biblical stories or materials are seen as proving, rather than disproving, the Qur’ān’s claim that it, along with the previous revelations, are Divinely revealed. A number of verses (e.g., 12:3, 12:102 and 28:44-6) plainly link the mentioning of such stories as proof that these revelations are not from mortal sources, but from God, “…for neither you, nor your people, knew of them before this” (Q 11: 49). Believing Muslims point out that even at the revelation of this Meccan verse, there are no recorded instances of anyone challenging the veracity of this claim, and state, “Actually, I was aware of these particular stories before the revelation.” Hence, far from looking at such stories and any similarities between them and other literature as proof against his prophethood, believers take them to be proofs for his claims!¹⁸

The same applies for any theological or moral similarity between Islam and Judaism or Christianity, or even ancient Arab customs, for they are taken to be of the common rubric given to Moses, Jesus and Abraham respectively. Hence this type of ‘back-projecting’ of ideas is not as much of a problem for Muslims as it is, say, for Christians when confronted with clear parallels between Christian theology and pagan beliefs (since, for them, there should be no Divine connection between the pagan cult of Mithra and the image of Jesus Christ, for example). For Muslims, the continuity of theology between prophets is a clear Qur’ānic principle and a proof for prophethood (as in Q. 46:9). In fact, in more than one verse the Qur’ān quite explicitly and unabashedly states that God has given the same message to the previous prophets in their respective Scriptures. In Q. 21:105, the Qur’ān states that God had already written, in the Psalms, that the righteous shall inherit the Earth (‘anna al-arda yarithuhā ‘ibadiy al-sālihūn’). This is almost an exact parallel of Psalm 37:29 “The righteous shall inherit the land and dwell therein for ever.”¹⁹ Other verses also give quotations from Biblical Scripture (see, for example, Q. 49:29).

It is also interesting to note that while the classical works related to the sciences of the Qur’ān discussed a multitude of issues, and strove to ‘defend’ the purity of the Revelation by tackling, head on, the claims of those who opposed it, it is rare to find in their works, or even in the treatises that responded to Christian polemics against Islam, a detailed defense of the accusation that the Qur’ān is taken from Judaeo-Christian sources because of parallels between them. Again, this returns to the psychological frame of mind that Muslims have, in which they see such parallels as being an indication of the continuity of the same chain of prophets and the same message, revealed from the same God. In other words, such parallels are simply not as ‘troubling’ to them as they are to a secular, Christian or Jewish observer, since each of these three groups will explain such parallels from within his or her own paradigm.²⁰

In conclusion, and on a personal note, I accept as a given that, as a believer in a particular faith, there are certain areas where academic scholarship and religious belief will simply have to agree to disagree. I find claims of neutrality and objectivity to be purely relative; secular researchers into any field of religion will have their biases (although they would probably not label them as being ‘biases’), believing adherents to one tradition will have other biases when they examine other faiths, and they will have yet another set of biases when they examine their own faith.

That does not mean that research in any religious field is doomed to be bound by one’s own religious views. Rather, it is precisely because of such alternate viewpoints that academics and researchers will continue to enrich and engage with one another and provide fertile ground for ideas to be tossed around and explored; eventually, some will germinate and be nurtured, while others will fail to take root. And even of those that are nurtured, the fruits produced by such ideas will always be sweet to some, and bitter to others.

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^Footnotes

1. I must point out that it is not even remotely possible to do justice to this question in the space allotted; however the goal is to show as wide a grasp of the sources and issues as possible, and that is what I intend to accomplish.
2. Al-Qurtubī, al-Jāmīʾ li Ahkām al-Qurʾān, v. 1, p. 104.
3. Al-Tabari, Tafsīr, v. 1, p. 8.
4. Al-Shafiʿī, al-Risālah, p. 41
5. Ibn Fāris, al Sāhibī, p. 28.
6. Ibn Fāris, al Sāhibī, p. 29.
7. Sībawayh, al-Kitāb, v. 4, p. 304.
8. There is one minor reservation that I have about the work, and I say this fully recognizing and appreciating the level of scholarship it displays (apart from the fact that it includes proper nouns such as Ilyās, Sabiʾūn, and Majūs – this is a matter that even the likes of al-Shafiʿī would not have had an issue with!) Jeffery shows that many common nouns and verbs (such as khubz, p. 121, kataba, p. 248 and sajada, p. 162) have ‘originated’ from a foreign language; this might very well be the case, but their use and understanding amongst the Arabs, perhaps for centuries before the coming of the Prophet, had made them as ‘Arabic’ as could possibly be. My point here is that the case cannot be made with such common nouns and verbs that the Prophet himself had anything to do with them or that he somehow introduced them into the language of the Arabs (whereas the case may indeed be made with other words). Hence their inclusion on a list of ‘foreign’ vocabulary of the Qurʾān(as opposed to a list of foreign vocabulary of the Arabic language), seems, to me at least, foreign.
9. Muir, The Life of Mahomet, (Edinburgh, 1923) v. 2, p. 20-21.
10. Mohammadanism: A Historical Survey (London, 1961) p. 37.
11. Hitti, Islam and the West: A Historical Cultural Survey (New York, 1979), p. 15.
12. The Call Of The Minaret, p. 66
13. New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967), Vol. VII, p.677.
14. Jeffery, Foreign Vocabulary, p. 1.
15. Jeffery, Foreign Vocabulary, p. 2.
16. Ibid., p. 22, 28-9, 38.
17. Sidney H Griffith, “The Gospel In Arabic: An Enquiry Into Its Appearance In The First Abbasid Century” Oriens Christianus, Volume 69, p. 131-132.
18. For the above paragraphs, see, inter alia: Mohammad Khalifa, The sublime Qur’ān and Orientalism (London; Longman, 1983), Hamza Njozi, The Sources of the Qurʾān: A Critical Review of Authorship Theories, (WAMY Press, 1995); Mohar Ali, Sirat al-Nabi and the Orientalists (Madina, 1997); my own comments in Qadhi, An Introduction, p. 274-6. Also see Watt’s comments on this verse in Mohammed at Mecca, p. 45.
19. Although I am not knowledgeable of Hebrew, I am told that the parallel in the original is even more profound.
20. I am not implying that such defense does not exist in the classical sources, for it does; what I am saying is that when one compares the quantity of material on this specific issue, versus other issues (for example, proving the iʿjāz of the Qurʾān), it is quite clear that this issue was not of as great a concern to them as other issues.

No Contradiction

korede is at it again, this time he claims to have found “another contradiction”. one thing i can confirm is, it’s another copy and paste from an anti Muslim website. Korede hasn’t come up with anything new. His only mission in life is to go through anti Muslim websites and claim it for himself, how sad!

Let bury this lie Korede is using against Muslims just for some Facebook fame. Korede claims the Story of Lut Pbuh in the Quran contradicts when reading other verses side by side. He quotes 2 verses and compares them to say what did the people of Lut Pbuh say in response ? lets read the verses and find out if they really contradict. Even though the story of Lut Pbuh is found in many other chapters in the Quran, anti Muslims tend to focus on these three chapters Surah 7:82, Surah 27:56 and Surah Surah 29:29.

Now to be honest I don’t see where the contradiction is? But just to be on safe side lets find out from these anti Muslims on where this apparent contradiction is.

And his people gave NO answer but this: 
They said, "Drive them out of your city: 
these are indeed men who want to be clean and pure!" 
-- Sura 7:82 & 27:56

But his people gave NO answer but this:
They said: "Bring us the Wrath of Allah if thou tellest the truth."
-- Sura 29:29

nothing surprising on how desperate these guys have become, lets look into this apparent contradiction and see how ignorant these anti Muslims including korede have become. We shall read from context and not cherry pick so we can get the gist of what is being said.

(7:80) And remember when We sent Lot [as a Messenger to his people and he said to them:'Do you realize you practise an indecency of which no other people in the world were guilty of before you? (7:81)You approach men lustfully in place of women. You are a people who exceed all bounds. Their only answer was: 'Banish them from your town. (7:82) They are a people who pretend to be pure.' (7:81-82)

So here we read Lut Pbuh was send as a Messenger to his people. He admonished them and made them realize the practise which they were doing were indecent and no people before them had done such a thing. He also told them how they lustfully approach men rather women. Here’s where the Christians flop! They question the verse by saying “ what did the people say to Lut Pbuh”? the problem with their question is, the verse does not tell us that the people spoke to Lut Pbuh, rather THEY SPOKE AMONG THEMSELVES “Their only answer was: 'Banish them from your town. They are a people who pretend to be pure.'”

Lets move on to the second related story

We also sent Lot, and recall when he told his people: "Do you commit shameless acts with your eyes open? (27:55) Do you lustfully approach men instead of women? Nay, you engage in acts of sheer ignorance." (27:56) But this had only one answer from his people. They said: "Expel Lot's folk from your city. They pretend to be absolutely clean." (27:54-56)

Once again we read Lut Pbuh admonishing his people, telling them how they commit such shameless acts, and they approach men over women? This episode is not different from Surah 7:80-82, here more spoken words by Lut Pbuh is being mentioned in addition to what he said as found in Surah 7. We also read the people SPEAKING AMONG THEMSELVES “They said: "Expel Lot's folk from your city. They pretend to be absolutely clean." Here they are not speaking directly to Lut Pbuh. The crowd who are being speoken to and speaking to themselves in rage. Also The Arabic construct "fama kaana jawaba qaumihi illa an qaloo" ("but the reply of his people was naught but that they said..") is a popular construct used to imply someone snubbing or looking down upon someone else when spoken to. It is used to imply that the speaker did not want to give the person the time of day. It implies a restricted answer to a specific question, otherwise, if his claims were true then the verse would not have said "but their reply (to that specific question) was naught but to say," rather, it would have said "but they never spoke to him but to say."

Lets more to the next episode

(29:28) We sent Lot and he said to his people: “You commit the abomination that none in the world ever committed before you. (29:29) What! Do you go to men (to satisfy your lust), engage in highway robbery, and commit evil deeds in your gatherings? ”Then they had no answer to offer other than to say: “Bring Allah's chastisement upon us if you are truthful.” (29:30) Lot said: “My Lord, aid me against these mischievous people.” (29:31) When Our emissaries brought the good news to Abraham, and said (to him): “We are surely going to destroy the inhabitants of this city; its inhabitants are immersed in wrong-doing.” (29:32) Abraham said: “But Lot is there.” They replied: “We are well aware of those who are there. We shall save him and all his household except his wife.” His wife is among those who will stay behind. (29:33) When Our emissaries came to Lot he was distressed and embarrassed on their account. They said: “Do not fear nor be distressed. We shall save you and all your household except your wife who is among those that will stay behind. (29:28-33)

This story is more longer and detailed on the destruction of the people of Lut Pbuh. Again the Message of Lut Pbuh was ongoing, he would always preach to his people. After all he was a Messenger to them and bringing them towards the straight path by preaching would be his mission. This conversation with Lut Pbuh and his people is more detailed on what else they did other than committing homosexual acts. They were also engaging in highway robbery acts, conspiring with eatch other on how they would rob and even kidnap men and rape them. This time the people SPOKE TO LUT PBUH DIRECT asking for God punishment on them, “Bring Allah's chastisement upon us if you are truthful.” The Quran is clear that ther people of Lut Pbuh were warned and they even had conversations with him telling him what they wanted.

(11:77) And when Our messengers came to Lot, he was perturbed by their coming and felt troubled on their account, and said: 'This is a distressing day.(11:78) And his people came to him rushing. Before this they were wont to commit evil deeds. Lot said: 'My people! Here are my daughters; they are purer for you. Have fear of Allah and do not disgrace me concerning my guests. Is there not even one right-minded person in your midst?' (11:79) They said: 'Surely you already know that we have nothing to do with your daughters. You also know well what we want.' (11:80)

Notice when Lut Pbuh offered the women of his town (referring to them as his daughters) they reject it and responded by saying 'Surely you already know that we have nothing to do with your daughters. You also know well what we want.'” The people of Lut Pbuh had already decided and made mention to Lut Pbuh that they were after men not women, this is soilid proof that Lut Pbuh had preach to them on many occasions and they spoke to him, Lut Pbuh did not had a one-off conversation with them like Christians claim. Below is a list of chapters where Prophet Lut Pbuh is mentioned, which Christians seem to avoid when making such bogus claims about contradictions

(Surah Al-Aaraf: Ayats 80-84); (Surah Hud: Ayats 74-83); (Surah Al-Hijr: Ayats 57-77); (Surah Al-Anbiya: Ayats 71-75); (Surah Ash-Shuara: Ayats 160-174); (Surah Al-Ankabut: Ayats 28-75); (Surah As-Saffat: Ayats 133-138); (Surah Al-Qamar: Ayats 33-39).

It’s highly embarrassing that Christians along side Korede would stoop so low to prove a point, not knowing how they only made a fool of themselves. just for the record, Korede admits his Bible has been written by over 40 Authors.which means his Bible is not the word of God, but rather words of 40 men.

Question what did the people of Lot say?

They are two different questions asked at two different times, and thus, the answers too are different. We will study the evidence of this below. It appears that the author of this list is attempting to make the case that the word "no" in the first two verses implies that the people of prophet Lot (pbuh) never said any other words to him but those found in the first two examples. However, this is a false argument for two reasons:

First of all: We need to notice that the first verse presented by the author, Al-A'araf(7):82, is one verse in a group of five (verses 80-84) which are intended to summarize the whole ministry on Lot in only five verses. It is one in a list of very short stories, narrated one after the other, each one giving a broad summary of the life of a given prophet, the major sin of his people, and how God dealt with each one. The general theme is one of a list of major sins and how God dealt with each people. Noah, Hood, Salih, Lot, Shuaib.., each one's story is run off in rapid-fire succession in only a few verses, each one dealing only with the broadest possible summary of their ministry and their people's response.

Similarly, the second verse presented by him, Al-Namil(27):56, is once again a five verse summary of the whole mission of Lot (verses 54-58). Once again, it is part of a list of extremely short summaries of the ministries of a list of prophets, their people's major sins, and how God dealt with them. Of the prophets mentioned in this list is Lot. In both of these cases the moral is to notice how these people's arrogance and rejection was stamped out quite effortlessly by God, one after the other, till they became naught but tales told to others in a couple of pages. Thus can we too have our arrogance and evil just as quickly stamped out by Allah if we follow in their footsteps.

In both cases the theme is the same throughout. They both deal with very briefly casting light on the most major sin of a given people, their prophet's admonition of them in this major sin, their response, and how God dealt with them. Both of the first two examples do not concern themselves with many side-issues such as these people's secondary sins or vices. In both of these cases the question presented by prophet Lot (pbuh) was the same. It only dealt with their "major" sin, their sodomy. Fittingly, in both cases the answer is exactly same.

Now let us look at a different case. The third verse selected by this author, Al-Ankaboot(29):29, is part of a slightly longer narration of the whole ministry of Lot in only seven verses (verses 28-35). In this case the life of prophet Lot is taken up in a little more detail and closely intertwined with the even longer story of prophet Abraham (pbuh) which itself starts way back at verse 16. In this case more of the side issues and lesser sins of his people are dealt with. In this case we also notice that the question asked by prophet Lot is different than in the first two cases. This time it is a little more comprehensive. Fittingly, in this new situation the answer too is different in some of its details.

What does this all mean? Well, hopefully it will not be considered assuming too much to presume that we can agree that Lot's ministry and preaching to his people consisted of more than two minutes and one sentence which he said only once. It would then be logical to assume that he might have met with his people on many occasions, that he might have spoken to them in the market places, in the streets, in their homes, and in their meeting places. None of the accounts listed by this author specifies a well defined date, occasion, or event, such as saying for example "This is what prophet Lot said on the 16^th of January 502 BC while in the town hall and during his one and only trial in front of the governor of that town," etc. or to mention that the person he spoke to was a very specific member of Lot's people, such as a mayor or Governor, whom he is know to have never met nor spoken to except on one very specific and restricted occasion. This is the first major piece of evidence we must notice and it is indeed an important one, as shall be expounded upon shortly by the will of Allah.

Continuing, hopefully we can further agree that the words of admonition prophet Lot spoke to his people during all of these visits and continuous preaching might exceed a one line sentence. And hopefully we can further agree that this would especially be the case with regard to his tribe's "major" sin. In other words if a given tribe is well known for murder but has also been known on occasion to lie, then it would be natural to assume that their prophet would admonish them at times for their lying and at times for their murder, however, his admonition in murder would be much more continuous, diverse, frequent, and varied in nature. When we look at the verses selected by this author we find that this is indeed held out by the text.

In the first two verses the author has chosen, the verses only deal with the most major aspects of Lot's ministry. If one of us were asked to summarize the ministry of Lot in three sentences, then obviously we would scan the whole life of Lot for the specific occasions which best embodied the broadest possible summary of his mission. Similarly, for this very same reason, the specific admonition of Lot (pbuh) to his people which was selected by God is one where he only mentioned to them their sodomy, their "major" or most well known sin. However, in the third verse he has selected (the longer narration), God is giving us a little more insight into some of the secondary details of Lot's ministry, and for this reason, He chose to present Lot's words on a different occasion wherein he admonished his people not only in their major sin, but also in their other sins which they used to commit. In this case the admonition of Lot (pbuh) mentions three vices: (1)Their sodomy, (2)their banditry (their robbery of travelers), and (3)their further evil over and above these two which they used to practiced in their gatherings. So this implies a different admonition in a different time and place. Fittingly, the answer too is different in its details, but the same as the first two in its general attitude towards his advice. In other words, the author of this list is comparing two different questions to one another and requiring that the answer to both be exactly the same, otherwise he shall consider them a "contradiction."  

Secondly: The Arabic construct "fama kaana jawaba qaumihi illa an qaloo" ("but the reply of his people was naught but that they said..") is a popular construct used to imply someone snubbing or looking down upon someone else when spoken to. It is used to imply that the speaker did not want to give the person the time of day. It implies a restricted answer to a specific question, otherwise, if his claims were true then the verse would not have said "but their reply (to that specific question) was naught but to say," rather, it would have said "but they never spoke to him but to say."

We need to notice that the first two verses say that their "REPLY" was naught but to say… But their "reply" to what? The answer is "the reply to the STATED QUESTION." But the stated question is NOT THE SAME in both cases. In the absence of the text of both verses restricting both questions to having occurred in a specific time, place and occasion, then the only way to force the two questions to be one is to force Lot's ministry to be restricted to only one question and one answer which they said to one-another only once in passing. In other words, the only way he can have his desired "contradiction" is for him to allege that Lot got up one day, said one sentence to his people, they replied with one sentence, and then God killed them all. In this manner he can obtain his desired "contradiction" by forcing both questions and both answers to be the same ones, despite their obvious textual differences. 

Such concise narrations are indeed a hallmark of the noble Qur'an. In many places throughout the Qur'an God very briefly narrates the story of a given prophet in only a few verses while placing emphasis on a given aspect of that prophet's ministry as the topic at hand requires. For example, Al-Thariat(51):38-40 contains a three-verse summary of whole mission of Moses (pbuh). It says:

"And in Moses too [there is a portent] when We sent him to Pharaoh with a manifest authority. But he turned away along with his hosts and said: 'A sorcerer or a madman.' So We took him and his hosts and discarded them in the sea while he was blameworthy."

However, in Al-Muminoon(23)"45-49 we find another similar very concise narration of the ministry of prophet Moses (pbuh). In this one the verses say:

"Then We sent Moses and His brother Aaron with Our signs and manifest authority. To Pharaoh and his chiefs, but they scorned and were arrogant, They said: 'shall we believe in two men like ourselves and their people are servile to us?' So they denied them both, therefore they became of those who were destroyed. And indeed we gave Moses the Scripture so that they might be guided."

So now, according the current author's logic, do these two passages too "contradict" one another?

These first three verses sum up the whole ministry of Moses (pbuh) in about one paragraph, however, does this mean that it all occurred in a couple of minutes while Moses was standing before Pharaoh? Of course not. For the details of what happened in-between we need to go to other verses which fill in the picture more completely. This is actually part of the beauty and miracle of the noble Qur'an in that it only presents in each case just enough detail in each case in order to get the intended point across without getting into useless "trim." When a different issue is discussed then the details related to that issue are then presented clearly, directly, and only in as far as is pertinent to the topic at hand. There are no frivolous details in the Qur'an that have no use to the reader such as describing fifty generations of ancestors for a given obscure person, or what colors a given obscure engraver used to embroider his work in, etc.

Would it then be a contradiction if the Qur'an were to after recounting the above three verses of the ministry of Moses to then narrate in a different set of verses (like Al-Muminoon(23)"45-49) more details of a given occurrence in his ministry which "fill out" the picture a little and, for example, describe in more detail how exactly the "manifest authority" of Moses (pbuh) was displayed to Pharaoh through his many miracles?  

There is a distinct difference between this situation and between saying that on a very specific and well defined time, date, and location a person said two different things. For example, in the Bible, we find two different version of one story that occurred in a very "specific" time and "specific" place, specifically the trial of Jesus before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. In Matthew 27:11-14 Mark 15:1-5 and Luke 23:1-4 Jesus said "Thou sayest" and NOTHING ELSE and he adamantly refused to answer any more of the governor's questions. Jesus refusal to answer the questions even went so far as to cause Pilate to "marvel." However, in John 18:33-38 we are told that in this very same trial, on this very same day, in front of the very same person, and in the very same room, Jesus (pbuh) said many things and answered more than one question in detail, responding to all of the questions of the governor and refusing to answer none. No "marveling" by Pilate. No refusal of Jesus (pbuh) to answer. Same time, same place, same people, different claims.

What this author has just attempted to do is to generate a case where, in order to be fair, it will then be permissible to generalize the specific contradiction between Matthew 27:11-14 Mark 15:1-5, Luke 23:1-4, John 18:33-38 to now also include any instance where Jesus (pbuh) is claimed to have said anything at all to the Jews without it being restricted to differing claims regarding matters which occurred on a specific time, place, occasion, and in front of a specific person.

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Response by Randy Desmond to more problems with the story of Lot

There are two obvious ways I can think of which we can solve this proposed contradiction. One way is to consider the context within the questions Lut(Peace be upon him)'s people answer. The second way is to consider the questions themselves.
If we look at the context of the questions (see the verses which precede the one's listed here), we notice that for similar contexts, we get the same answer. And where the context is slightly different, we get a different answer. This would mean that with respect to the same context, the answer is only one. When the question was changed (and with it the context), the answer was different, and that answer is the only answer given for that context.
The other way to solve this proposed contradiction is to entertain the possiblility that because the questions themselves differ for each of the verses, then it can be understood that for each of these questions only one answer was given for each question and so for two of the questions the answers happened to be the same.
Look at it this way: If you asked me what color is a red car and a different time you asked me what color is a red truck, because my only answer would be red for both questions, does that mean you asked the same question both times?
I think it is a bit sneaky to just compare the answers without considering the questions that were asked, and as already pointed out the context of the questions disprove any discrepency there too.

There is no contradiction here. My faith keeps growing. Islam has all the answers to any challanges. God is one.