Islam - The Summit of Religious Evolution — Page 24
24 1. It was forgotten but Ezra restored it. 6 2. Ezra re-established the text of Pentateuch, introducing therein the Assyrian or square characters. 7 Of Ezra's memory, Christian scholars themselves express great doubts. Adam Clark, the well-known commentator of the Bible, says in his commentary that here Ezra mistakenly writes the names of grandsons instead of sons and attempts to reconcile such contradictions are useless: The sons of Benjamin; Bela and Becher, and Jediael, three;… 8 Now Benjamin begat Bela his firstborn, Ashbel the second, and Aharah the third, Nohah the fourth, and Rapha the fifth. 9 Jewish scholars also take the view that Ezra did not quite know whether a given person was the son or grandson of another person. 10 When Jewish and Christian scholars doubt Ezra's memory, how can ordinary people, whether Jews, Christians or anyone else be satisfied about the spiritual value of such a book. Such a book will have little or no authority over important matters. True, the books were revealed, but revealed only means that God helped in their composition. It does not mean that God revealed the text, word for word. The Torah of today, therefore is not the Torah which was revealed to Moses. It is not even the Torah which Ezra recorded from his memory, parts of which he himself doubted, for Ezra wrote 204 books, and the current Old Testament does not contain 204 books. The followers of the Old Testament regard it as a revealed book. Christians also describe it as a Book of God, and Muslims also think that it was a revelation. Being a revealed book is the first criterion to believe in the message, but the most important criterion is the preservation of that message in its authentic form. No doubt, Jews, Christians and Muslims agree that God spoke to the Prophets of the Old Testament. However they no longer believe, and external and internal evidence no longer support the view, that the record of the current Old Testament wholly constitutes the absolute word of God as it was first revealed in its pristine purity. In spite of the numerous revisions and updates, a number of internal inconsistencies are still evident in many books of the Old Testament. Deuteronomy, Genesis, Judges, etc. contain such inconsistencies, which reconfirm human interpolation. A detailed comparison of such inconsistencies is reported elsewhere. 10, 11, 12, 13 THE NEW TESTAMENT Like the Old Testament, the New Testament also exists in many versions. The books of the New Testament were not written by Jesus himself or by his principal disciples. The current New Testament consists of twenty-seven short Greek writings, commonly called books , the first five of which are historical in character. Four of these books, written by Matthew,