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Does the Quran Require Christians to engage in Redaction Criticism?


James finds it incredible that the Quran would tell Christians to judge by the Gospel if indeed the Gospel is corrupted. The verse he refers to is as follows in the Yusuf Ali translation:

Let the people of the Gospel Judge by what Allah hath revealed therein. If any do fail to judge by (the light of) what Allah hath revealed they are (no better than) those who rebel. (Quran 5:47)

From this verse James argues as follows:
1. This verse approves of the Gospels as they are;
2. Muhammad who authored the Quran did not know the contents of the Gospels to realize that his own teachings contradict the Gospels; and
3. Muslims now seeing the contradiction between the Quran and the Gospels defend their faith by inventing the doctrine of biblical corruption.

In the first place, however, this verse does not approve of the Gospels as they are. It calls on Christians to judge not ‘by the Gospels’ but ‘by what God has revealed in the Gospel’. There is a difference between Gospel and Gospels. One is singular; the other plural. God taught the Gospel to Jesus, and we may presume that this is the Gospel that Jesus preached. Now in the Bible there are four Gospels which contradict each other on essential points. Obviously God did not reveal such contradictory statements in the Gospels.

Second, it is no secret now, nor was it a secret in the time of the Prophet, that the Gospels teach that Jesus is the Son of God. Yet the Quran says that this is an invented claim matching that of those who disbelieved of old:

The Jews call Uzair a son of Allah and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouths; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah's curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the truth! (Quran 9:30)

Hence it is incorrect to say that Muhammad did not realize that the Quran contradicts the Gospels on this point.

Third, Muslims did not need to invent a doctrine of biblical corruption, because the errors in the Bible were already plain for everyone to see. Some early Church Fathers did acknowledge that the Bible contained errors. But later, the doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible became generally accepted after the Quranic revelation was already established. Therefore at the time of the Quranic revelation it was not necessary to go to great lengths to debunk the doctrine. The Quran mostly took a passive stance of merely correcting the narratives that are known from the Bible. On occasion, however, the Quran does make statements about the invention of scripture such as in the verse already cited, and in 2:79:
Then woe to those who write the Book with their own hands and then say: "This is from Allah" to traffic with it for a miserable price! Woe to them for what their hands do write and for the gain they make thereby. (Quran 2:79)

Redaction criticism is of course a highly developed aspect of modern Biblical studies. It would seem ridiculous to assert that the Quran was asking Christians in the seventh century to engage in an activity which will not become known until the twentieth century. But this does not mean that people at the time were naïve. Even at the time people could differentiate between what God revealed in the Scripture and what people invented without sanction from God.

At the time people could see that what Jesus preached was in many respects different from the later claims made about him. It was already obvious that the Gospel of John presented a highly developed Christology, for example, that could not be credited to the historical Jesus. People at the time could ask themselves, even if they did not do so before: Is not everything in the Scripture inspired by God? Why would anyone say, “Judge by what God has revealed therein”?

We should recall that at the time the Canon of the Eastern Syriac Christians was still being worked out. For a long time they had accepted only twenty-two of the now twenty-seven books that now make up the New Testament. Hence it would still be fresh in the minds of Christians that the inspiration of Bible is not self-evident, and needs some human judgment to accept or reject certain books.

At the time the Quran did charge believers with the responsibility of verifying news that came to them. Based on this principle Muslims soon developed elaborate measures to sift conflicting claims about what our prophet said, and did. This was their version of Redaction Criticism, even though they did not use this term. There is no reason to suppose that Christians were not capable of doing something similar which would eventually develop into full-blown redaction criticism.

But the fact that the Quran did not require seventh-century Christians to engage in Redaction Criticism with all its modern apparatuses does not mean that the Quran would excuse present-day folks from exercising their mental faculties. The Quran requires us to use our faculty of reason, and God will hold us responsible for that which we are capable. If the tools and thinking were not developed at the time people would not be responsible for applying it, but now that they are available we would be held responsible if we reject their use.

James’ Mention of Bart Ehrman

It is already evident to me from the Biola debate that mention of Bart Ehrman will not help to advance my point with James. In the Seattle Debate, therefore, I did not appeal to Bart Ehrman, proving my case instead either by (a) presenting the actual proof that leads to my conclusions, by ( citing scholars other than Bart Ehrman, or by doing both (a) and ( .

But the fact of Bart Ehrman’s importance in modern discourse on the Bible is also evident from the fact that James himself cannot seem to avoid mentioning him.

Aside from the recognition that this scholar must receive, however, James’ mention of him creates the very distraction I wished to avoid. If I had cited him James would have attacked him. I did not mention him and James is still attacking him while attempting to refute me. Why?

James needs to deal with the scholars whom I did cite in specific reference to Redaction Criticism, such as Scott McKnight, James Dunn, and Raymond Brown. But it seems that he is unable to attack these scholars, and he picks on Ehrman instead. Even if we do not like the man, is it fair to keep criticizing him like this? Moreover, even if this scholar is the worst devil around, how does James’ attack on him disprove my points which I supported with reference to McKnight, Dunn, and Brown whom James evidently does not dare attack in a similar fashion?

James’ Understanding of Redaction Criticism
James expresses the view that Bart Ehrman starts with the assumption that the synoptic Gospels are giving different views of Jesus. He asks why it should be necessary to assume that, whereas a more reasonable hypothesis would be that the various writers were addressing different audiences.

I am sorry to say that this manner of putting the matter does not demonstrate adequate knowledge of Redaction Criticism. The ‘assumption’ that the Gospels give different views of Jesus is not an assumption with which scholars such as Ehrman, McKnight and Dunn begin. Rather, it is the conclusion that comes from a careful examination of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Of course this is now an inherited conclusion from previous generations of scholars who, having conducted such investigations found this conclusion unavoidable.

But even if one starts with the assumption that the writers were addressing different readers, a fair mind will be compelled, on examining the evidence, to conclude, all over again, that Matthew and Luke in using Mark have each in their own way modified the information about Jesus to make him conform to the writer’s own view of Jesus. In our debates I have shown clear evidence of an author modifying the facts of the story about Jesus, such as in the story of Jairus’ daughter. In this particular case James admitted that Matthew has telescoped the story; and I as I have pointed out, this gave Matthew the license to take what one man said and put in into the mouth of another man at a different point in the story.

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