Is the KORAN more
reliable than the BIBLE?

A brief look at the Koran (Quran) of Islam

Although a thorough critique of the Quran (Koran) is beyond the scope of this short paper, some brief points still need to be made in the light of Islam's fast-growing popularity. Although a standard Muslim claim says the Koran has no textual variations, this is in fact incorrect. No one original manuscript of the Koran ever existed, since Muhammad (c. 570-632 A.D.) didn't write any of it. Instead various followers wrote scattered revelations on whatever material came to hand, including pieces of papyrus, tree bark, palm leaves and mats, stones, the ribs and shoulder blades of animals, etc. Otherwise, they memorized them. These disparate materials were susceptible to loss: Ali Dashti, a Islamic statesman, said animals sometimes ate mats or the palm leaves on which Suras (chapters of the Koran) were written! After his death, Muhammad's revelations were gathered together to eliminate the chaos. (Even Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church did better than this: The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today possesses the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon).

To solve the problems of conflicting memories and possibly lost or varying written materials, Caliph Uthman (ruled 644-56) had the text of the Koran forcibly standardized. He commanded manuscripts with alternative readings to be burned. But he didn't fully succeed, since variations are still known to have existed and some still do. The Sura Al-Saff had 200 verses in the days of Muhammad's later wife Ayesha, but Uthman's version had only 52. Morey says Shiite Muslims claim Uthman cut out a quarter of the Koran's verses for political reasons. In his manuscript of the Koran, Ubai had a few Suras that Uthman omitted from the standardized version.

Arthur Jeffrey, in his Materials for the History of the Text of the Quran, gives 90 pages of variant readings for the Quran's text, finding 140 alone for Sura 2. When the Western scholar Bertrasser sought to photograph a rare Kufic manuscript of the Koran which had "certain curious features" in Cairo, the Egyptian Library suddenly withdrew it, and denied him access to it.

Did Muhammad revise earlier revelations?

Even when originally first written, certain problems existed, since Muhammad would make mistakes or corrections to revelations he had made. Before documenting examples of verses removed from the Koran, Arabic scholar E. Wherry explained first:

"There being some passages in the Quran which are contradictory, the Muhammadan doctors obviate any objection from thence by the doctrine of abrogation; for they say GOD in the Quran commanded several things which were for good reasons afterwards revoked and abrogated."

One follower of Muhammad, Abdollah Sarh, often made suggestions about subtracting, adding, or rephrasing Suras to him that he accepted. Later, Abdollah renounced Islam because if these revelations had come from God, they shouldn't have been changed at his suggestion. (Later, after taking Mecca, Muhammad made sure Abdollah was one of the first people he had executed). Muhammad had the curious policy of renouncing verses of the Koran that he spoke in error. In the Satanic verses incident he briefly capitulated to polytheism by allowing Allah's followers to worship the goddesses Al-Lat, Al-Uzzah, and Manat (see Sura 53:19; cf. 23:51) (Note that the title of Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, alludes to this incident. For writing this book he was sentenced to death by Iranian dictator Ayatollah Khomeini). Could anyone imagine Elijah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, or Jeremiah doing something similar? Did Muhammad's God make mistakes that required corrections?

Does secular logic show the Bible more reliable than the Koran?

Another problem of the Koran is that its teachings and stories in many cases contradict the Bible. Theologically, for Islam, this poses a major problem, because the Koran itself says the Bible is composed of earlier revelations from the same God. Hence, if the Bible's different version of some event or person's life is correct but contradicts the Koran's, then the Koran's own appeal to the Bible's authority is proven false. Hence, Muslims can't just throw away the Bible completely, but have to claim this or that part of it was corrupted, while the Koran has the right version. But now logically, granted the standard principles of the bibliographical test described above, since the Bible was finished about 500 years before the Koran, it is the more reliable document. In many cases, eyewitnesses wrote the Bible, or second-hand reporters using eyewitness accounts. Muslims may routinely claim the Bible has been corrupted, but the textual evidence shows otherwise: The variations in the Old and New Testaments are actually smaller than the textual problems the Koran ultimately faces, which Uthman's actions to standardize it merely paper over.

Furthermore, what textual variations the Bible does have do not bend towards Islamic theology in any kind of systematic manner. For example, the Koran denies the crucifixion of Christ. There are no New Testament variations that deny the crucifixion. Furthermore, by secular logic alone, who is more reliable about this? An eyewitness such as John, or Mark as informed by Peter? Or someone writing 500+ years later who never even saw Jesus alive? Since Muhammad did maintain his revelations built upon the Bible, seeing it as coming from the same God, the two shouldn't conflict--but of course, they do.

Was Alexander the Great a prophet of God?

Consider some sample contradictions and historical inaccuracies of the Koran as compared to the Bible. The Koran says the world was made in eight days (2+4+2--Sura 41:9, 10, 12), while the Bible says six in Genesis 1. Then, still more problematically, the Koran elsewhere says it was made in six days (Sura 7:52, 10:3). The Koran says one of Noah's sons chose to die in the flood, and that the Ark landed on Mount Judi, not Ararat (Sura 11:44-46). "Azar" becomes the name of Abraham's father, not Terah (Sura 6:4).

The Koran also blunders by asserting Alexander the Great (Zul-quarain) was a true prophet of God (see Sura 18:82-98). Secular history proves this to be patently absurd. Alexander was a thorough-going pagan who never knew Jehovah, the God of Israel.

Are there chronological mistakes in the Koran?

The Koran often gets its chronology skewered, putting together as living at the same time who may have lived centuries apart according to the Bible. This occurred because Muhammad evidently got many of the stories second and third hand orally, ultimately often from apocryphal sources such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Barnabas, not from the Bible itself.

For example, the Koran portrays Haman, the prime minister for King Ahasuerus (Xerxes I, ruled 486-474 B.C.) of the Persian Empire as Pharaoh's chief minister when Moses challenged the king of Egypt (c. 1445 B.C. ) (see Sura 28:38; 29:38; 40:25-27, 38-39). Another leading error of the Koran occurs by mixing up Mary, the mother of Jesus, with Miriam, the sister of Aaron and Moses, who had lived some 1,400 years earlier. Note Sura 19:29-30:

"Then came she with the babe to her people, bearing him. They said, "O Mary! now hast thou done a strange thing! O sister of Aaron! Thy father was not a man of wickedness, nor unchaste thy mother."

In a footnote to his translation of the Koran, Dawood tries to rescue Muhammad by saying it was an idiomatic expression in Arabic meaning "virtuous woman." But elsewhere the Koran refutes this interpretation, because Muhammad asserts the father of Mary was Imran, Moses' father!. Note Sura 66:12:

"And Mary, the daughter of Imran, who kept her maidenhood, and into whose womb We breathed of Our Spirit . . ."

The father of Moses and Miriam, according to the Bible, was Amram (Exodus 6:20; Numbers 26:59). The Virgin Mary's father was Eli or Heli (Luke 3:23--see above for details). Muhammad confuses King Saul with the earlier judge Gideon. At God's inspiration, Gideon reduced Israel's army in size by eliminating those who drank from the water in one way rather than another (compare Judges 7:4-7 with Sura 2:250).

Another mistake, although it may be obscured in translation, concerns "The Samaritan" deceiving the children of Israel into worshiping the Golden Calf at the base of Mt. Sinai (mid-fifteenth century B.C. ). Later settling in the Holy Land centuries later, the Samaritans didn't exist until after the Assyrians had taken Israel into captivity (late eighth century B.C. and afterwards--see 2Kings 17:22-41). Rodwell translates "Samiri" here, but according to Morey, this obscures the real meaning in Arabic (see Sura 20:87, 90, 96).

Is Islam the cult of the Moon God?

Further problems with the Koran could be explained, but this suffices for our purposes here. Although few Muslims know this, the religion of Muhammad's ancestors and his tribe the Quraysh involved the worship of Allah, the name of the moon god, in pre-Islamic times in Arabia. Anciently an idol was set up for Allah near the Kabah, where today Muslims travel in pilgrimages to Mecca, Saudi Arabia to walk around. In myth, Allah married the sun-goddess, and they together had three goddesses named Al-Lat, Al-Uzzah, and Manat. It's hard to over-emphasize the significance of the truth that "Allah" was the name of the moon god in Arabia before the time of Muhammad. It's no coincidence that during the "Satanic Verses" incident when Muhammad weakened against idolatry briefly, he had allowed the same three goddesses to be worshiped. Even today, the standard symbol Islam uses to represent itself is (along with a single star) the crescent moon! (It's not sensibly seen as just a symbol for Ramadan, the month of fasting during the daytime). Evidently, Muhammad took a pre-existing pagan moon god of Arabia, and then applied to this false god various stories ultimately from the Bible and apocryphal literature about the True God. As Morey summarizes:

"The cult of the moon god which worshipped Allah was transformed by Muhammad into a monotheistic faith."

Compared to the Almighty God of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, the God of the Koran is a limited god who "inspired" the writing of historically inaccurate, contradictory revelations. (1)