Christian Scriptures

A similar state of affairs exists in the case of Hadrat Isa's character and teachings. Jesus (pbuh) conveyed orally to the people the Bible which God originally revealed to him. His disciples, too, propagated it among the people by the spoken word in such a manner that they presented an admixture of their Prophet's life-story and the revealed verses of the Bible. None of this material was put into writing during the lifetime of Jesus (pbuh) or even in the period following him. It fell to the lot of the Christians whose vernacular was Greek to transform these oral traditions into writing. It must be borne in mind that Christ's native tongue was Syriac or Aramaic and his disciples spoke the same language as well.
Most Greek-speaking authors heard these traditions in the Aramaic vernacular and committed them to writing in Greek. None of these writings is dated prior to the year 70AD; there is not a single instance in these works where the author has cited an authority for an event or maxim attributed to Hadrat Isa (pbuh) in order that we might construct a chain of transmission. Furthermore, even these works have not survived. Thousands of Greek manuscripts of the new Testament were collected, but none of them is older than the fourth century AD; the origin of most of them does not go beyond the period spanning the 11th to the 14th centuries.
Some scattered papyrus fragments found in Egypt can lay claim to no greater antiquity than the third century. We cannot say when the Bible was translated from Greek into Latin. Nor do we know the writer's name.
In the fourth century AD, the Pope commissioned a review of the Latin translation. In the sixteenth century, this version was discarded and a fresh translation from Greek into Latin was prepared. The Four Bibles were most probably rendered into the Syriac language from Greek in 200 AD, but the oldest Syriac manuscript extant was written in the 4th century. A handwritten copy dated back to the 5th century AD contains, in frequent parts, a different version.
Among the Arabic translations made from the Syriac none is known to have been prepared before the 8th century AD. It is curious that some seventy different versions of the Bible were prepared, four of which were approved by the leaders of the Christian religion, while the rest was rejected. We have no information concerning the grounds for their approval or rejection. But can this material be credited to any extent with authenticity as regards the character and message (gospel ) of Jesus (peace be upon him)?
With regards to other leaders of religion the situation is not dissimilar. Take, for example, Zoroaster whose birth date is not shrouded in mystery. The most that can be said about him is that there is evidence of his existence some 250 years before the subjugation of Persia by Alexander. In other words, his life can be dated some five centuries before Christ (pbuh). His book "Avasta," in its original language, is extinct today; the language in which the book was originally written or orally propagated is dead.
In the 9th century AD, a translation of "Avasta" was published in nine volumes, out of which the first two volumes perished. The earliest surviving manuscripts of the book dates from the middle of the 13th century. Such is the condition of Zoroaster's book. As for his character, our information does not extend beyond the detail that he began preaching his religion at the age of forty. Two years earlier, King Gustaph became his disciple and Zoroaster's creed turned into a State religion. Zoroaster lived to be 77, and after his death, as time went on, legends were spun around his life, all of them apocryphal.
One of the renowned religious personalities of the world was Buddha. Like Zoroaster, he might have been a Prophet. Yet he left no boo, nor did his followers claim that he had given one. A hundred years after his death, a movement was started which lasted for several centuries to collect his maxims and the account for his life. But no compiler of the Buddhist scriptures produced during this period furnishes a chain of evidence for the maxims and teachings of Buddha. It is evident that even if we wished to turn for guidance to other Prophets (peace be upon them) and religious leaders, we could not come by a reliable source from which might be derived authentic and unassailable information on their history and teachings.
We are left with no alternative but to turn to the Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) who left a trustworthy Book free of any excisions or adulterations; the Prophet (pbuh) whose detailed history, sayings and practices were transmitted to us by authoritative sources so that we would be guided by his example. In the entire course of history such a leader could only be found in the sublimely gifted person in Muhammad (pbuh). The Holy Prophet (pbuh) put forth a Book ( the Holy Qur'an) with the definite claim that it was the Word of God which had been revealed to him. On scrutiny, we positively feel that this Book is free of interpolations. The Book does not incorporate a single maxim of the Holy Prophet (pbuh) ; rather, the inclusion in this Book of any sayings of the Prophet(pbuh) has been scrupulously avoided.
In this Book, the Holy Prophet's life(pbuh) , the history of the Arabs and the events which occurred during the period of the revelation of the Qur'an have not been mingled with the Divine verses, as is the case with the Bible. The Qur'an is the pure Word of God. Not one word therein is not divine. Not a single word has been deleted from its text. The Book has been handed down to our age in its complete and original form since the time of Muhammad(pbuh). From the time the Book began to be revealed, the Holy Prophet(pbuh) had dedicated its text to the scribes. Whenever some Divine Message was revealed, the Holy Prophet(pbuh) would call a scribe and dictate its words to him. The written text was then read to the Holy Prophet(pbuh), who having satisfied himself that the scribe had committed no error in recording, would put the manuscript in safe custody. The Holy Prophet(pbuh) also used to instruct the scribe about the sequence in which a revealed message was to be placed in a particular Surah. In this manner, the Holy Prophet(pbuh) continued to arrange the texts of the Qur'an in systematic order until the end of the chain of revelations. Again, it was ordained from the beginning of Islam that a recitation of the Holy Qur'an must form an integral part of worship. Hence the illustrious Companions (pbut) would commit the Divine verses to memory as soon as they were revealed. Many of them learned the entire text by heart and an even greater number memorized different portions of it.
Besides, those of the Companions(pbut) who were literate used to keep a written record of several portions of the Holy Qur'an. In this manner, the text of the Holy Qur'an was preserved in four different ways during the lifetime of the Holy Prophet(pbuh):

1. The Holy Prophet(pbuh) had the whole text of the Divine Messages from beginning to end committed to writing by the scribes of revelations.
2. Many of the Companions(pbut) learned the entire text of the Qur'an, syllable upon syllable, by heart.
3. All the illustrious Companions(pbut), without exception, had memorized at least some portion of the Holy Qur'an, for the simple reason that it was obligatory for them to recite it during worship. An estimate of the number of the illustrious Companions(pbut) may be obtained from the fact that one
hundred forty thousand Companions(pbut) participated in the Last Pilgrimage performed by the Holy
Prophet(pbuh).
4. A considerable number of the literate Companions(pbut) kept a private record of the text of the Qur'an and satisfied themselves as to the purity of their record by reading it out to the Holy Prophet(pbuh).

It is an incontrovertible historical truth that the text of the Holy Qur'an extant today is, syllable for syllable exactly the same as the Holy Prophet(pbuh) had offered to the world as the Word of God. After the demise of the Holy Prophet(pbuh), the first caliph Hadrat Abu Baker(pbuh) assembled all the Huffaz (those who have memorized the Qur'an) and the written records of the Holy Qur'an and had the whole text written in Book form.In the time of Hadrat ' Uthman (pbuh) copies of this original version were made and officially dispatched to the capitals of the Islamic world. Of these copies extant in the world today, one is in Istanbul and the other in Tashkent. Whoever is so inclined may compare any printed text of the Holy Qur'an with those two copies. He shall find no variation. And how can one expect any discrepancy, when there have been several million Huffaz in every generation since the time of the Holy Prophet(pbuh) and in our own time? Should anyone alter one syllable of the original text of the Qur'an, these Huffaz would at once expose the mistake. In the last century, an Institute of Munich University in Germany collected forty-two thousand copies of the Holy Qur'an including manuscripts and printed texts produced in each period in the various of the Islamic world. Research was carried out on these texts for half a century, at the end of which the researchers concluded that apart from copying mistakes, there was no discrepancy in the text of these forty-two thousand copies, though they belonged to periods spanning the first century Hijrah to the 14th century Hijrah and had been procured from all parts of the world. This Institute, unfortunately was destroyed in the bombing raids on Germany during World War ll , but the findings of the research project survived. Another point that must be kept in view is that the word in which the Qur'an was revealed is a living language in our own time. It is still current as the mother tongue of some hundred million people from Iraq to Morocco.In the non-Arab world also hundreds of thousands of people study and teach this language.
The grammar of the Arabic language, its lexicon, its phonetic system and its phraseology, have remained in tact for fourteen hundred years.
A modern Arabic speaking person can comprehend the Holy Qur'an with as much proficiency as did the Arabs of fourteen centuries ago. This, then, is an important attribute of Muhammad(pbuh), which is shared by no other Prophet or Leader of Religion. The Book which God revealed to him for the guidance of mankind today exists in its original language without the slightest alteration in its vocabulary.