Is There Proof of the Koran's Divinity?

Now, Contending for the Faith. In this regular feature, Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call. Here’s this week’s question: “Dear Dave and T.A., the Koran mentions Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Moses, Jesus, John the Baptist, and other Biblical characters, as well as many events recorded in the Bible, but the Bible wasn’t translated into Arabic until 40 years after the Koran was written. Wouldn’t this prove divine inspiration of the Koran?”

Tom: Well, Dave…

Dave: Tom, who sent in a question like that? Oh, I shouldn’t say that, I’m sorry, but…

Tom: Dave, doesn’t that prove it?

Dave: Well, if the Bible had not been written yet, it might prove it. But the Bible was out there in Hebrew and Greek, perhaps some other languages. Mohammed had a number of acquaintances among Christians and Jews.

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Dave: In fact, he catered to them to begin with. It was only after they refused to acknowledge him as the prophet of Allah—they didn’t believe in Allah. Allah was the chief god of the Kabal right over there in Mecca, and it was an idol temple with 300, and some people say 360 idols, I think Will Durant says that, and they did not accept him as the prophet of God. Then he turned against them. But the Koran has all of these characters garbled. We talked about the golden calf at the base of Mount Sinai…

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Dave: Well, in the Koran, that was designed and built by a Samaritan. Well, Samaritans didn’t exist for 700 years. Jesus is born under a palm tree. Noah had not 3 sons, but 4 sons.

Tom: Four, one of them didn’t make the…before the ship left.

Dave: One of them refused…

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Dave: …to get in the ark. He was going to swim for it, and he drowned in the flood. Tom, we could go on and on about some of the absurdities in the Koran. Mohammed got it garbled, he got it mixed up. Now, whether the people that he got it from already had it mixed up and probably some of them did, or whether he mixed up what he got from them, I don’t know, but that doesn’t prove the divine origin of the Koran that these…

Tom: It disproves it, doesn’t it?

Dave: It does! But these people are named in there because he got the story wrong. There are a number of verses in the Koran that tell you that the Jews are God’s chosen people, that the Jews went through the Red Sea on dry land and that the Egyptians were drowned. It even mentions Pharaoh, Pharaoh pursued the children of Israel. The Koran says to the children of Israel, “Go into the land that Allah has promised and possess it.” The Koran says of the Israelites, “You are the chosen people above all people. The land is given to you,” and so forth. So…

Tom: So what happened? (chuckles)

Dave: Well, Tom…

Tom: How is it that this completely, according to Muslims, the reverse is factual, that’s what it says.

Dave: Right. Well, the Koran also says Jesus didn’t die on the cross, and so forth, so now we have problems. In the early passages of the Koran—and how do we know which are the early passages? Because there are 114 Suras and every Sura has a, not only a title to it, but it also says where it was revealed, at Medina or Mecca. Well, the ones in Mecca were the earliest ones and so forth—but the earliest passages in the Koran try to, as you indicate, quote from the Bible—they don’t, they get it messed up—but refer to the Bible. They refer to the Jews and the Christians as the People of the Book, even tell the Muslims, if you want to understand the truth, consult the people of the Book! So, at the very beginning when he was catering to the Christians and Jews, trying to win them, this was the attitude in the Koran. But then, when they rejected him, then not only did Mohammed turn against them and kill them, but the whole tenure of the Koran changes. Well then, how do you explain that? Well, the Muslim says, “Well, the Bible got corrupted.” Well, but we have manuscripts before Mohammed, we have manuscripts after Mohammed. The manuscripts before Mohammed are exactly the same as the ones that we have today. So, it didn’t get corrupted. Mohammed changed his mind; he was not being inspired of the true God, but Allah, of course, is not the true God. So, Tom, how do we explain this? How do they get around these contradictions? It says it was for the Jews, but they say, “No, it’s not.” You find that in every cult, you find that in Mormonism, you find that in Jehovah’s Witnesses, you find that in Buddhism, Hinduism, whatever it is—contradictions don’t seem to matter. But you will not find such things in the Bible, and that is amazing, because the Bible—you have to take Mohammed’s word for it about the Koran, that he was inspired; the angel Gabriel spoke to him and so forth. We have 40 different writers of the Bible; they all claim to be inspired of the One True God. Most of them never knew one another; they came different times in history, different cultures. There is no…

Tom: Sixteen hundred years!

Dave: Right! And there is no contradiction! In fact, you follow the themes that go from Genesis to Revelation—Tom, you couldn’t have done it with a computer. That’s only part of the proof.

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Dave: For the Koran, no proof that it was ever inspired of the True God. In fact, the proof is all to the contrary.

Tom: Dave, one of the heartbreak…we hear today promoted from the highest circles is that Islam is peace and the Koran is a book of peace. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Dave: Well, you had a delegation recently from Iraq, you remember? And they went to the Vatican, they presented the pope with a specially-bound, beautiful Koran, and the pope kissed it, which he has done on other occasions, and spoke of his honor to the Koran, and as you know, Tom, a former Catholic, the Vatican II and other Catholic documents of the highest authority say that the Muslims worship the same god as the Christians. It simply is not true.