Do Jews and Christians have God’s word?!
By: Ahmed Spea أحمد سبيع
Translated from Arabic by: Abu Ali maghribi أبو علي المغربي
"The bible has thousands of manuscripts and translations"; this statement would be the most common argument made by the apologetics. Yet, these apologetics tend to indulgently pretermit stating the fact that each manuscript and translation of those thousands manuscripts and translations cannot be considered a whole inerrant and infallible sacred book[1], because each manuscript contains all forms of error that can be found in a handwritten copy made by a copier who might; either accidentally or intentionally, intervene in the copied text by some form of distortion. In short, each manuscript of the manuscripts in hand contain all forms of errors; whether intentional or unintentional ones, thus, a manuscript cannot be corrupted and infallible at the same time. Consequently, the manuscript must be either infallible; which cannot be true as claimed by everyone, or fallible, knowing that a fallible word cannot be sacred, and what cannot be sacred cannot be the word of God, thus, none of all those biblical manuscripts can be true word of God.
None of the manuscripts of the bible can be considered the word of God, and same thing can be said about the Old Testament witnesses (Masoretic text; Septuagint, Samaritan, Syriac Peshitta, Latin Vulgate, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc…) because each of these is brimming with all forms of error, for none is infallible.
So; and such being the case, we may wonder upon the bible translations in hand today, which being labeled as (The Holy Bible)!
Most of the Arabic translations in hand today are translated from the Masoretic text (except in some portions which the translator turn to other than the Masoretic text to translate from for some reason), therefore none of these translations can be the word of God; not for being only a translation, but rather for being a one source translation, knowing that this one source is full of all forms of errors; thus, neither the Jews nor the Christians should claim having a copy of the word of God, because they indeed do not have it, nor any others; unfortunately, have it!
[1] Prof. Brotzman said: It will be noted that
no single witness reproduces fully and faithfully the wording of the
Urtext and that the critic has no direct recourse to the
Urtext. (Brotzman, E. R. (1994).
Old Testament textual criticism : A practical introduction (124). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books).