The Bible vs. Other Religious Books
Updated: Aug 15, 2023
What Are Some Rivals?
If you did not read our last blog post earlier this week, I would highly encourage you to do so. We are taking this week to discuss the reliability of the Bible and we started last week by discussing how we can know the Word of God really is true. We will be diving deeper into this study by not just looking at how the Bible is true, but how the Bible fairs in comparison to other religious books. We discussed last week that the Bible is the most historically accurate book ever written, and that should convince a majority of people that it is at least a reliable historic manuscript. But what about other books? What studies have been done on them? Are they close in accuracy? With Christianity being the top religion in the world, we’re going to look at the next top 3 religions and consider their ‘holy manuscripts’. Those 3 would be Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism.
The Qur’an
Let’s first take a look at Islam and more importantly for this matter, the Qur’an. The Qur’an and the Bible have a plethora of differences but we’re going to put the Qur’an through the same historical test we put the Bible through. As we recall from last week the Bible’s manuscripts had a gap of 25 years between the original ones and the copies that we read today. Even though these books differ in many ways, the interesting part is that they both claim to record the same timeline in history. The Bible, as discussed earlier has eyewitness testimony from multiple sources when we look at its texts. What about the Qur’an though? What’s its time gap and when was it written? If you were to research the timeline of manuscripts from the Qur’an, you might run into a few issues. The first one being, the fact that the Qur’an wasn’t written until 600 years after these events took place. You read that right, 600 years… The Bible on one hand was written during the events it claims to record and the Qur’an wasn’t written until 600 years after the events it claims to record. According to BibleReasons.com, “The Old Testament section of the Bible was written over many centuries, stretching from 1446 BC (probably earlier) to 400 BC. The New Testament books were written from around AD 48 to 100. The Koran (Qurʾān) was written between AD 610-632.” What’s even more incredible than this, is the actual eyewitnesses that Islam does have. According to Dr. Norman Geisler, “When Muhammad was challenged to perform miracles to confirm that he was from God, he never took the challenge. Instead, he said he was just a man and implied that the Qur’an authenticated him as a prophet. Miracles were only attributed to Muhammad by Muslims who lived 100-200 years after his death.” When held to the same flame as the Bible, we can see that the historical and eyewitness tests fail miserably in light of the Qur’an.
The Vedas
Let’s now take a look at Hinduism. The Hindus follow a series of books called ‘The Vedas’. This religion has many issues to address as well, with the first being the overall idea that The Vedas promote. GotQuestions.com notes, “The Vedas are unlike the Bible in that they do not proclaim truth and salvation. They are mainly thoughts, ideas, speculation, and poetry about man and the universe, plus prescriptions for sacrifice and ritual.” With this being observed, The Veda’s already can’t take the historical or eyewitness test because they don’t claim to record history, they simply pass down proverbs and ideals that they want to be carried on. So what exactly do the Hindus believe about the afterlife? Hindus believe in reincarnation similar to the Buddhists and many others. What’s interesting about this belief, however, is that it is nowhere found in The Vedas. The forbidden source, Wikipedia mentions, “The idea of reincarnation, Saṁsāra, did not exist in the early Vedic religions. The early Vedas do not mention the doctrine of Karma and rebirth but mention the belief in an afterlife.” You might be thinking to yourself right now, ‘If Hinduism has no historical basis and the idea of the afterlife was one that was brought up after its religious books had already been written, why does it have so many followers?!’ To that question, I can confidently give you this answer…I have no idea.
The Torah
The final religion we’ll be looking into today will that of Judaism. Jews believe in the ‘Torah’ and other writings that make up a majority of what we call today, the Old Testament. This is where things get interesting because these books are backed by what we studied earlier this week. After all, the Old Testament is a part of the Bible as a whole. So we know that Old Testament has reliable manuscripts and accurate eyewitness testimony. What’s absurd, however, is not that Jews believe the Old Testament, it’s that they don’t believe the New Testament. As we also discussed earlier, there are over 324 prophecies in the Old Testament that the New Testament fulfills. This means that all the questions that Judaism is seeking to find the answers to have been answered, recorded, upheld, and passed down in the same way and manner that the Old Testament was, they just don’t believe it. If we didn’t just look into Islam and Hinduism, I would think that Judaism is the religion we should pity most in this world because the answer for salvation is right under their nose and yet, they won’t take it.
The Truth
Even though Jews believe in a lot of the same things that Christians claim to believe in, when it comes down to the most important issues, we must be divided. This is why it is very important to remember that when you add or take away from the truth, the truth is no longer true. Revelation 22:18-19 makes this clear, “18 I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; 19 and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book.” When all is said and done, I hope we can see that all evidence doesn’t just point to the Bible being true, but it points away from other sources that claim to be true as well. The same tests that we put these 3 major religious books through we can do with any other religion or lifestyle. When we look at documents or manuscripts from old, we can test them historically, through eyewitnesses, and through the test of time from their original writing. This test not only shows us what is true and reliable, but it leads us away from considering anything else that can’t take on these challenges like the Bible can.
Sources
[1] “Access Your Bible from Anywhere.” BibleGateway.Com: A Searchable Online Bible in over 150 Versions and 50 Languages., www.biblegateway.com/. Accessed 2023.
[2] Geisler, Norman L., et al. I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Crossway, 2021.
[3] Chery, Fritz. “Bible vs Quran (Koran): 12 Big Differences (Which Is Right?).” Bible Reasons | Bible Verses About Various Topics, 23 June 2023, biblereasons.com/bible-vs-quran/.
[4] GotQuestions.org. “Home.” GotQuestions.Org, 26 Mar. 2015, www.gotquestions.org/Vedas.html.
[5] “Reincarnation.” Wikipedia, 11 July 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation#:~:text=The%20idea%20of%20reincarnation%2C%20Saṁsāra,the%20belief%20in%20an%20afterlife.
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