As everyone knows the Kavanaugh hearings are all over the news. The big controversy is that three women have accused Kavanaugh of illegal sexual acts. The most prominent of these is Christine Blasey Ford who accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault. She said the following:
I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from yelling. This is what terrified me the most and has had the most lasting impact on my life. It was hard for me to breathe and I thought Brett was going to accidently kill me.
A pretty detailed description right? Unfortunately this is where the details stop as she can’t remember when or where it happened. It’s really hard to believe her story. I’m not saying that it’s false but if she can’t remember the time or location I’m not that impressed. How can one prove it? Kavanaugh denies that this happened.
Compare that with the details provided by Archbishop Vigano is his first letter released at the end of August. These details are contained in the letter.
On the morning of Thursday, June 20, 2013, I went to the Domus Sanctae Marthae, to join my colleagues who were staying there. As soon as I entered the hall I met Cardinal McCarrick, who wore the red-trimmed cassock. I greeted him respectfully as I had always done. He immediately said to me, in a tone somewhere between ambiguous and triumphant: “The Pope received me yesterday, tomorrow I am going to China.”
Impressive. Vigano gives the specific date, the building, who he met and what they were wearing. He remembers what McCarrick said, his attitude, and even what part of the building this all took place. This is a credible testimony since numerous details can be verified. He gives many other details of events in the letter. Here’s another example:
On Sunday June 23, before the concelebration with the Pope, I asked Monsignor Ricca, who as the person in charge of the house helped us put on the vestments, if he could ask the Pope if he could receive me sometime in the following week.
Again, numerous explicit details. Why can’t Christine Blasey Ford seem to do this? I’m not saying that her story isn’t true but if you can’t give details, your story lacks credibility.
As a Christian apologist who deals with Islam, I find Islamic claims about Jesus to be even more lacking. There’s of course Surah 61:6 which reads:
Remember when Jesus, son of Mary, said: “O Children of Israel! Verily, I am the Messenger of Allah unto you, acknowledging the Torah which came before me and giving glad tidings of a Messenger to come after me, whose name shall be Ahmad. But when he came to them with clear proofs, they said: “This is plain magic.”
Neither the Quran or the Hadith give us any context to this saying, but it explicitly says that Jesus said it. It’s not recorded in the Gospels, the Pauline epistles, other epistles, other NT documents, or early Church documents but the Quran goes against all of this evidence to say that Jesus said this. The same thing can be said about the mythical Taurat and Injeel that were supposedly sent down to Jesus and Moses. There is no proof that either of these documents existed and it doesn’t even fit the historical context.
Doing a comparison, Christine Blasey Ford actually has a far better case than the Quran because at least her story fits within history if true. The Quranic Jesus and the 1st century life of Jesus don’t seem to fit at all; they’re like oil and water. Muslims who look at Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony should take this into consideration.
My response to Allan:
https://quranandbibleblog.wordpress.com/2018/10/14/what-allan-ruhl-can-learn-from-muslims-christine-ford/
Here is a response by Faiz.
I may do a post regarding your statements on John the Baptist as I hear it quite often. I’ll let you know when I post it. Let’s just say that you put a lot of stock in the Temple authorities.
I should also point out that in response to the prophet/messiah distinction, Surah 61 doesn’t refer to a prophet, but a messenger named Ahmad. Hence the prophet/messiah distinction or supposed distinction is irrelevant to Surah 61. Also, when Jesus said this was he performing a sign? Surah 61 doesn’t say that. Also, the Dead Sea scrolls are completely irrelevant as this is a statement of Jesus according to Surah 61. No words of Jesus are recorded in the Dead Sea scrolls.
Nazar is the Hebrew word branch so that is where Nazarene comes from. Jesus is the branch of Isaiah 11:1. Any first century Jew would have recognized that. Now show me anything like that for Surah 61:6.
God bless,
Allan
“I may do a post regarding your statements on John the Baptist as I hear it quite often. I’ll let you know when I post it. Let’s just say that you put a lot of stock in the Temple authorities.”
So you are saying that the “Temple authorities” don’t have any say in this matter? We will come back to this, because it is just another example of your inconsistencies and double standards. It seems you put a lot of stock in certain Jewish opinions, but reject those which undermine your position. I have presented evidence which precedes Christianity by at least 100 years (the Community Rule document is dated to around 100 BCE), but quite unsurprisingly, I now find you ignoring this evidence. Why is that?
“I should also point out that in response to the prophet/messiah distinction, Surah 61 doesn’t refer to a prophet, but a messenger named Ahmad. Hence the prophet/messiah distinction or supposed distinction is irrelevant to Surah 61. ”
Irrelevant, because a messenger is also a prophet in Islam, and this is true of the Bible as well. For example, Malachi 3:1 is used as a prophecy about John the Baptist, and yet the prophecy uses the word “messenger”, even though John the Baptist is referred to as a prophet in the New Testament.
“Also, when Jesus said this was he performing a sign? Surah 61 doesn’t say that.”
You missed the point. I referred to it to show that just because something is not recorded, it does not mean it didn’t happen. In other words, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If I were to say that Jesus could have gone to the moon, I can easily refer to the Gospel of John to say that even though it is not recorded, it still could have happened. It is not supposed to be a substitute for actual evidence. I am simply pointing out the inconsistency in your approach.
“Also, the Dead Sea scrolls are completely irrelevant as this is a statement of Jesus according to Surah 61.”
This is a straw-man. I referred to the DSS to show that there was an expectation of a prophet and a Messiah (in fact, two messiahs). This expectation predates Christianity. I often hear Christians trying to make the argument that since the Bible came before the Quran, the former is more credible. Why can’t Christians be consistent?
“No words of Jesus are recorded in the Dead Sea scrolls.”
Well of course not. The DSS were written decades or centuries before Jesus (peace be upon him).
“Nazar is the Hebrew word branch so that is where Nazarene comes from. Jesus is the branch of Isaiah 11:1. Any first century Jew would have recognized that. Now show me anything like that for Surah 61:6.”
This is what I was referring to at the beginning. You reject the “Temple authorities” but then simultaneously appeal to “first century Jews”. Why the inconsistency? Don’t you think that the majority of the “first century Jews” would have based their views on the Temple authorities? I showed you evidence from 1st century BCE Jews and 1st century CE Jews to back up the view that a prophet was expected to come, and he was NOT the messiah.
As it stands, your desperate attempt to appeal to Isaiah 11:1 fails miserably. The word “Nazarene” does not come from “Nazar”. The word you are referring to is actually “neser” or “nezer” but it has a completely different context. According to the 19th century scholar William Benjamin Smith:
“The use of the segholate nezer in the sense of sprout, shoot, branch, is only occasional, thrice in Isaiah, once in
Daniel, and may here be left out of account, since it could not yield the plural nozrym and has naught to do with the matter in hand.” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/27899560.pdf)
Matthew was clearly referring to the locality of Nazareth, and used that as the context for the so-called “prophecy”, which doesn’t exist anywhere. So I ask again: will you be consistent and acknowledge that your Bible refers to a prophecy for which there exists no evidence? And as I said before, in contrast to the above non-existent prophecy in the Gospel of Matthew, the evidence for the Quran’s claim about Jesus prophesying Muhammad (peace be upon them both) is at least historically plausible, though one can say that the “Nazarene” prophesy is simply lost to history.
I will respond to the bulk of this in my next post which will come out Tuesday morning. I will weigh the evidence for these two verses. Ahmad vs Nazarene. You’re also misunderstanding what I said about the temple authorities. You made an estimate before I even made the argument.
Sometime in the near future I will also do a response to the missing books that you mentioned in footnote 14.
Hello Allan. I have just dicovered your blog and I like it a lot. Like you, I am a Catholic interested in Islamic apologetics.
I disagree with your claim that “The Quranic Jesus and the 1st century life of Jesus don’t seem to fit at all ; they’re like oil and water” : First, one has to take into account that (as a honest Muslim admitted to me once) the Quranic view on something and today’s Muslim consensus are often different things. Today’s “general Muslim” view on Jesus for example is much more influenced by people like Bart Ehrman (which Muslims today find “cool”) than by the Qur’an. The Quranic Jesus also has a virgin mother, is also God’s word, also performed miracles, also preached to the Jews, also seemed to die on the cross, is also the Messiah, etc. The well-known differences (over the divinity of Jesus, on what really happened at the crucifixion event, etc), are theological rather than historical.
The context of Surah 61:6 is not at all a “proof of Muhammad’s prophetic mission by historical evidence”, but simply an sequence of [alleged] historical examples of people being unfaithful to their religion. Thus, 61:2-3 says it is bad to not practice what you preach, 61:5 is about Moses being unfairly rejected by some Jews, 61:6 is (mostly) about the same for Jesus. I do not know what the mention of “Ahmad” is supposed to do there (it looks like an interpolation) but in any case, I think it is fair to say that you misrepresented the context of that surah.
It’s pretty much the same with the “Taurat” and the “Injeel”. For a Christian reading the Qur’an while unaware of today’s “Muslim consensus”, the obvious understanding would be that the Taurat is the Old Testament and the Injeel is the New. Unfortunately, this is obscured by the fact of the typical inconsistency (and dishonesty even) of Muslim apologists today, who believe that the Injeel is the Gospel when it suits them (when they need some continuity between Islam and pre-Islam), and believe it is not when it suits them (when they need to claim in a vague way that “the Bible has been tampered with”, a breathtakingly simple answer-to-everything indeed).
Hello Jonathan,
Thanks for the input. Feel free to share this website.
God bless,
Allan