Category: Catholicism

There’s a question I ask whenever I meet a Muslim who claims that the Qur’an has been perfectly preserved by Allah…

If the Qur’an was always perfectly preserved, then why were perfectly preserved Qur’ans burned?

If the Qur’an had been perfectly memorized, why does the hadith describe its compilation as it does? If the Qur’an was already committed to memory then the production of a manuscript would have been the easiest thing in the world – just assemble a few who had memorized it, put them in separate houses with a scribe for a few days. Then just confirm that the texts are identical and the job is done! But this isn’t what we see in the hadith… we see the hunting for scraps, collections with a different number of chapters, memories of missing chapters, …

The first time I read the Qu’ran and noticed that Allah sweared by lots and lots of things in creation. This struck me as odd. All I could think of was Hebrews 6:16 where it says “People swear by someone GREATER than themselves…”

However, David Wood points out that this problem actually shows an inconsistency between the Qur’an and the claims of the hadith:

Ibn Umar heard a man swearing: No, I swear by the Ka’bah. Ibn Umar said to him: I heard the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) say: He who swears by anyone but Allah is polytheist [he has committed an act of shirk]. – Sunan Abi Dawud 3251

Obviously I’m a huge fan of the East, but Cameron Riecker presents here three key problems. The first point he makes is particularly important to me, it’s part of the you-lose-I-win mentality I’ve noticed among Orthodox Christians. Orthodox Ecclesiology needs to be able to justify itself.

Joe Heschmeyer has a very thoughtful take on a particular argument used by both Mormons and Muslims..

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Ralph Woodrow wrote about Alexander Hislop’s “The Two Babylons”…

Many preferred my book over “The Two Babylons” because it was easier to read and follow. Sometimes the two books were confused with each other. Letters in a steady flow were received praising my book. Only occasionally would there be a dissenting voice. ONE WHO DISAGREED was Scott Klemm, a high school history teacher in southern California. Being a Christian, and appreciating other things I had written, he began to show me EVIDENCE THAT HISLOP WAS NOT A RELIABLE HISTORIAN. As a result, I realized that I needed to go back through Hislop’s work, my basic source, and prayerfully check it out!

As I did this, it became clear-Hislop’s “history” was often only mythology. Even though myths may sometimes reflect events that actually happened, an arbitrary piecing together of ancient myths can not provide a sound basis for history. Take enough tribes, enough tales, enough time, jump from one time to another, from one country to another, pick and choose similarities-why anything could be “proved”!

The concern about not having anything pagan in our lives can be likened to a ship crossing a vast ocean. This concern has taken us in the right direction, but as we come to a better understanding as to what is actually pagan and what is not, a correction of the course is necessary in our journey. This is not a going back, but a correction of the course as we follow “the shining light, that shines more and more unto the perfect day” (Prov. 4:18).

Although we challenge some of Hislop’s claims in THE BABYLON CONNECTION?-this is not intended as an attack against him personally. As far as we know, he was a dedicated Christian, a brother in Christ. Nor is it our goal in writing this book to merely discredit another book. Instead, it is our desire that this effort will help us understand “the way of God more perfectly” (cf. Acts 18:26), find a biblical balance, and glorify Him who said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).