Tuesday, April 26, 2011

A Muslim Dawagandist Refutes the Qur'an With the Help of Josephus - Part II

It looks like my earlier blog post found here did not go over well with my Muslim friend. It also appears my plea fell on deaf ears and he has decided not to take off that old silk hat of his, even though it doesn’t fit and the magic has long since run out.

One of his complaints is that I focused on only one of the issues dealt with in his blog post, but it was to his own benefit that I only narrowed in on one of his errors rather than all of them. As I will show, his complaint here is like that of a convicted murderer objecting to the fact that he was not also brought up on rape charges for raping a woman on the same day he committed first degree murder.

Before coming to the other issue he is anxious to be refuted on, I need to return to the original problem that I addressed in my post, a problem he desperately tried to disentangle himself from but only managed to get himself more tied up.

Here is the problem in a nutshell:

1) The Testimonium Flavianum (hereafter, TF) is not considered by most scholars to be a pure, unadulterated statement of Josephus free of any mishandling by some Christian(s), whether this is attributable to an accidental scribal gloss or is due to some nefarious reason(s). The basis on which most scholars suspect a Christian interpolation into TF is because it calls Jesus "the Messiah", which Josephus would not have done since he was a non-Christian Jew.

2) Surah 4:157 in the Qur’an attributes a statement to those first century Jews who rejected Jesus that would likewise have to be rejected as either an interpolation into the Qur’an or a bald-faced error on the part of the original author(s), if the above reasoning is granted as valid. That is, since first century Jews would not have boasted that they killed Isa “the Messiah” and “the messenger of God”, for the very obvious reason that they desired his death precisely because they rejected his claim to be the Messiah, this verse as it exists in the present day Uthmanic recension of the Qur’an must be rejected as an error.

In response to this, he replied as follows:

I suppose the thought of context left his [Anthony Rogers – AR] mind as he appealed to Quran 4:157. Did he ever stop to think the Jews could have appended those titles to Jesus out of sarcasm as a form of mockery or the titles are due to paraphrasing from the Author (God)? The sarcasm point is similar to the passage where Jesus was allegedly mocked in Mark 15:16-20 with the title of “king of the Jews”.”

Since he never tells us himself just what the context offers us to help clarify the meaning of this verse, it is hard to know what it was that supposedly left my mind as I read the verse. And since he says the Jews “could have” given those titles to Jesus out of sarcasm, it is also apparent that the context did not clearly settle the matter for him either. In fact, he even goes on to give a second possibility in the same sentence when he says the author of this verse could have been “paraphrasing” the Jews. So which is it? Does the context clearly point to the fact that the Jews were being sarcastic? Or does it clearly point to the fact that Allah was simply paraphrasing the Jews? Apparently the necessary context to make it clear that either of these meanings was intended left the mind of the author who penned them, leaving future generations of readers in the precarious situation of trying to make heads or tails of the verse and no other option but flipping a coin to settle the controversy.

In support of the idea that the Jews could have engaged in sarcasm, though the passage does not clearly say this and the context does not indicate it either, he points to the fact that “Jesus was allegedly mocked in Mark 15:16-20 with the title ‘king of the Jews’”. The mistakes involved in drawing this comparison to Mark’s gospel are stark. In the first place, Mark 15:20 explicitly says that the Jews said this in mockery: “And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak…” On the other hand, neither the immediate passage nor the broader context of Surah 4:157 say anything of the sort. And that’s why not all Muslims hold this interpretation. In fact, they have many more interpretations on offer than the two dogmatically asserted by My Muslim friend. Given that the text of the Bible is sufficiently detailed and clear on this point while the text of the Qur’an is not, we also have to smart from the fact that this Muslim would say the Jews “allegedly” mocked Jesus. The only thing that we may fairly say is being alleged here is that the Quranic statement compares to the Biblical one when it clearly does not, at least as far as the issue of clarity goes. Moreover, some translations of the Qur’an even suggest the very opposite of this view, such as Yusuf Ali’s translation which parenthetically adds the words “in boast”, which shows that on his reading of the verse the Jews were not mocking but actually boasting when they said this. Couldn’t the “allegedly” omniscient author of the Qur’an see that the way he communicated this event might suggest to people that the Jews were not being sarcastic as we see in the case of Yusuf Ali? Or couldn’t the allegedly omniscient author of what boasts to be the world’s most eloquent book have spoken more clearly and explicitly said “mockery” so that those who follow him would not be left to cast about for explanations and fall all over each other in the process?

It is just because the verse does not clearly indicate that the Jews were saying this in mockery that my Muslim friend turns around and says Allah could have simply been paraphrasing what the Jews said. On top of the fact that this exposes the error of pretending that this passage somehow clearly shows in context that the Jews were mocking, the idea that Allah was paraphrasing the Jews is also problematic. The very idea of a paraphrase is to communicate the gist of something in roughly approximate language. But how is putting a statement in the mouths of Jews that they wouldn’t have spoken approximate what they could have said? To suggest such a thing is laughable, but perhaps my Muslim friend is just engaging in a little mockery and is pulling my chain when he pretends that he is actually offering well-thought out, problem free explanations of what is going on in Surah 4:157. In fact, I wonder if he would mind if I paraphrase him in a way that inaccurately expresses his actual position in the way he says his god did in S. 4:157.

Unmindful of my aim in the blog post – which was to show that the very reasoning this Muslim appealed to in order to argue that Christians added things to TF, and that this is a good illustration of one of the many problems with Surah 4:157 – this Muslim objects to the fact that I did not deal with his point that an interpolation among the handlers of Josephus writings at one point shows that some scribe was dishonest. He says:

“Even if Jews sincerely called Jesus by such titles [in 4:157] it would have NO bearing upon the blog post as it simply repeats one of the reasons as to why the critics doubt the passage in Josephus was interpolated whilst travelling in a culture of dishonesty amongst the scribes. I guess this was lost on Mr Rogers.”

It might have no bearing on the point of his post, but why should that matter to me? So I had a different point in mind when I used something this Muslim said in the process of arguing against the authenticity of TF. Big deal. How is this helpful to him and other Muslims? He was arguing against the authenticity of Josephus, and I was using his argument to refute the Qur’an. This means at best his argument shows a problem in the transmission of Josephus, while my argument on the other hand points up a problem in the Qur’an. As I see it, this is a great trade off. I was minded to freely give him the point of his post, which was that Jospehus was partially corrupted for the reasons he appealed to, and to be consistent that means he has to give me the error or corruption of the Qur’an on the basis of the same reasons. In other words, I freely granted that he has a pair of two’s; now consistency demands that he realize I have a royal flush.

Although it wasn’t my intention to address his concern that Josephus was mishandled, since he is hopping up and down about it I would simply point out that scholars, even though we have an incredibly impoverished manuscript tradition for Josephus as compared to the Bible, still believe they can, with some degree of confidence, by comparing and collating manuscripts (such as Greek, Slavonic, and Arabic texts of Josephus) and through the application of critical thinking and a sound methodology, determine what Josephus would have said. In fact, such reconstructions have been offered by a number of scholars, including one of the scholars this Muslim favors and often quotes in other contexts: Geza Vermes.

As for the charge of dishonesty on the part of later scribes, at best this Muslim has only shown that someone along the way was dishonest, not that there was “a culture of dishonesty”. But of course he didn’t even prove or even so much as argue that someone was dishonest; he merely asserted this, nothing more. The fact of the matter is there may be another explanation for how the change occurred, such as a marginal comment that was accidentally copied by a later scribe as if it were part of the original text, a mistake that often occurred in hand written manuscripts.

This brings us, finally, to the other issue that this Muslim complained about that I did not address, i.e. the fact that Josephus did not report anything about the slaughter of the innocents. According to him, this is supposed to show that the slaughter of the innocents reported in Matthew’s account of the Gospel did not actually take place.

“-Anthony, you failed to adequately cover the main point to the post; why did Josephus fail to mention Herod’s massacre of young boys despite chronicling Herod’s brutal history.”

Several things may be said in response to this argument from silence:

At no point in Josephus’ writings does he say anywhere that he aims to be exhaustive. In fact, by comparing Antiquities of the Jews to Jewish War, we see that Josephus mentions things in the one work that he doesn’t mention in the other. It is evident from this that Josephus was not aiming to be exhaustive in either one.

This is not only true in a general sense; it is particularly true when it comes to Josephus account of Herod. In one place in Antiquities, Josephus says:

"And since Herod had now the government of all Judea put into his hands, he promoted such of the private men in the city as had been of his party, but never left off avenging and punishing every day those that had chosen to be of the party of his enemies." (Antiquities Of The Jews, 15:1)

But Josephus does not tell us each and every act of punishment that Herod inflicted on his enemies every day. This is a clear indication that Josephus was not trying to be exhaustive even when it comes to the history of Herod.

Worse still, there are events from the time period that Josephus does not record that we know about from other sources. For example, we know from other historical sources that Herod persecuted and repressed the wilderness Essenes, but Josephus makes no mention of this.

When we put all of this together, what we have is this. In the first place, Josephus did not aim to be exhaustive in everything that he recounted. Second, we know that Josephus did not aim at or achieve an exhaustive account of the person and acts of Herod. Third, we have a specific example of something Herod did that Josephus did not recount. Given all of this, can anyone seriously argue that an event, such as the slaughter of the innocents reported in Matthew, did not take place just because Josephus does not report it? Obviously not.

Many more things could be mentioned, but this post has already become quite long and the above is more than adequate to remind my Muslim friend why the apologetic task is best left to others. In trying to argue for Islam and against Christianity, he has not given us any cogent reason to reject or doubt the latter, and in the process has given us good reason to reject the Qur’anic claim to be clear, exhaustively detailed, and without error. Worst of all, we learn all of this by a comparison of his own reasoning with the very verse that accuses those who believe in the crucifixion of Christ of having no certain knowledge about what actually happened and of being full of conjecture and doubt. If my Muslim interlocutor has shown anything, he has shown that he can’t defend against the error of S. 4:157 without showing in the process that he does not really know what is going on at this point in the passage and therefore has to engage in conjecture, and these very conjectures themselves are open to many serious objections, including the objection that S. 4:157 is supposed to dispel all such conjecture on his part.

Although it won’t be a continuation of this article, many more errors and/or ambiguities in Surah 4:157 will be mentioned in future posts. Of course if my Muslim friend wants to further entangle himself and try to respond to the above, then I will happily continue this discussion as well.

Some arguments in this vein were already made in a previous post, others were not repeated. Hence, the reader is encouraged to read the earlier article, found here: The Qur’an: A Book Full of Conjecture and Doubt

See also a post done by David a long time ago on this verse: The Irony of the Qur’an–Surah 4:157-158

Sam Shamoun has also written on this general subject:

The Qur’an, Bible Preservation and the Crufixion

And the latter article in particular from Sam contains a section towards the end addressing the claim that the Jews were mocking or being sarcastic in S. 4:157.

Did Jesus Really Obey Satan? Exposing Another Muslim Fraud and Lie

12 comments:

Radical Moderate said...

I don't know if it is a case of Reading Comprehension, or that they just do not read, or they just don't think, or a case of all of the above.

But the Muslim arguments just keep getting worse and worse.

This is a classic example.

On the one hand the Muslim argues for the authenticity of Josepheous, and then on the other hand says Christians were dishonest and forged Josehpeous.

First if they were forging Josephus then why didn't they include all kinds of things found in the gospel. For instance the slaughter of the innocence, the dead being raised, etc...

If anything the fact that Josepheous does not make mention of the "Slaughter of the Innocence" is a clear indication that Christians were not forging things.

It is interesting that Muslims relay on what they call the Haddeeth, to explain away the incoherent and nosnesnical statements of the Quran. At the same time saying that these hadeeths are corrupt, forgeries, made up by Muslims to promote a agenda. And they have the gonads to accuse us of forging texts lol

Muslims a little bit of advice. Don't try to explain your religion.
A surface level glance is enough to tell anyone who can discern that your religion is nonsensical. But when you guys try to explain it, you really make it that much worse.

GreekAsianPanda said...

Small error. Mark 15:20 says that the (presumably Gentile) soldiers were mocking Jesus in this particular instance, not the Jews. However, it was also the Gentile authorities who made the sign, so your argument still works.

I had actually been convinced by the Muslim appeal to the sign that read "King of the Jews," but now I realize that the preceding context makes it clear that the sign was sarcastic, as you showed, Anthony, whereas the Quran does not make it clear that the Jews were being sarcastic.

I think you're right about his "paraphrase" argument because (assuming that there is no sarcasm involved) the paraphrase is STILL historically incorrect. A paraphrase does not change an event, it just compresses it.

But I think there's a possibility that Yahya actually means something else here. I don't really know how to explain it well (and apparently Yahya doesn't, either), but there is an example I can show. I'm thinking of Jesus' baptism. In the Synoptic Gospels, the baptism actually happens in the narrative, while in John's Gospel, the author puts the event into the mouth of John the Baptist, so the baptism is only recounted in dialogue. It could be a small stretch, but perhaps the Quran is doing this--taking an event and putting it in the mouth of someone who supposedly saw it. So perhaps that's what Yahya meant by "paraphrase."

Zack said...

GAP said...
"I had actually been convinced by the Muslim appeal to the sign that read "King of the Jews," but now I realize that the preceding context makes it clear that the sign was sarcastic, as you showed, Anthony, whereas the Quran does not make it clear that the Jews were being sarcastic."

I don't think that is the case either..
As far as I recall, it was Pilate who had the sign made.
The Jews saw the sign and what it read, and actually asked Pilate to have the sign changed to 'Jesus, who claims to be the King of the Jews'..
but Pilate refused their request and the sign remains how it was originally written, "Jesus, the King of the Jews".
SO it was NOT sarcasm nor was it done by the Jews.

Hogan Elijah Hagbard said...

Good stuff Anthony

Radical Moderate said...

GAP

Are you the Anon or posted on Frosty the Snowmans blog? Because if you did you put blood in the water.

J. Moses said...

THere are so many doubts in this text 1. Was it Jesus ? 2. Was it Judas 3. Did he die or survive (Swoon Theory) 4. Who was Allah decieving? the Jews or the Apostles and the followers of Jesus, 5. Did the Jews believe him to to be the Messiah? 6. Were they being sarcastic? 7. Is Allah paraphrasing their sarcasm? 8. Why did the person crucified not deny he was Jesus? Koran=Konfusion

Anonymous said...

Just a small error. Messiah is a Jewish term. The controversial statement is that Josephus said "he was the Christ". More information here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testimonium_Flavianum#Josephus.27s_faith

Fernando said...

Is Yahya Sonw still on apologetics? Realie? He hasn't been putt on any sharia trial due to his destruction off islam? good for Christianity...

GreekAsianPanda said...

Zack, I didn't say the sign was made by the Jews.

Anthony Rogers said...

GAP, thanks for the correction. I have tried to change it but am having trouble with blogger at the moment.

On your other point, I am not sure I get what you are saying, but I will continue to think it over and see if it becomes clearer to me.

Anthony Rogers said...

Thanks, John K.

GreekAsianPanda said...

I don't read Yahya's blog, RM. I've been there a few times and I didn't see any reason to continue visiting it.

When did I "put blood in the water"?