A Muslim tells his story

I read an interesting account by a Muslim who encountered a Christian and debated several key questions with him--has the New Testament been corrupted? did Jesus ever claim to be God? did Jesus really die on the cross?. Like all Muslims, the narrator believed the New Testament had been changed, that Jesus never claimed to be God, and that He did not die on the cross. Read his story to see the results. What would be your response to these crucial questions?


Has the Bible been corrupted?
I challenged David, stating that no reasonable person could trust the Bible. As a Muslim, I knew that the Qur’an was the uncorrupted word of God transmitted from God Himself, through the Prophet of Islam. And although the Qur’an says that the Gospels (al-Injeel) were given by God, they had been irretrievably modified and corrupted in the centuries after Jesus. Why else would there be so many versions of the Bible throughout history, with constant editions and revisions even today? I advocated the position that Christ never claimed to be God, but rather that Christians had forged all verses that would indicate such a claim. And without a divinely inspired book worth trusting, Christians have no ground to stand on. False ideas were introduced into Christianity by power-hungry followers such as Paul, a self-proclaimed "apostle," and others like him.
Unbeknownst to me, David was not just a Bible-reading Christian, but a Christian with every intention of becoming a devoted apologist. So when he heard this argument, he wasn’t overcome by its logic (as I had assumed) but instead was shocked that I had decided to enter into such a discussion without any prodding of his own. And so began our series of informal debates about the truth of Islam versus Christianity, as well as my intellectual journey towards the throne of Christ.
David’s response to my argument ran as follows. First, while there are indeed many variations of the Bible obtained from more than 5,000 Greek manuscripts, there is such a large amount of early manuscript evidence and such a concordance between those manuscripts that we can reconstruct the Bible and be certain of about 95% of the original content. Second, no doctrine of the Bible is in jeopardy by any of the variations. Third, there are so many quotations of and references to the New Testament from the ancient world that we can reconstruct practically all of it from early quotations alone. Fourth, there are multiple fragments of manuscripts that can be dated to within a couple of centuries after Christ’s death which we have in our possession even now (the earliest dating to less than 100 years after Christ, 125 AD). Fifth, he claimed that whole copies of the Bible are available from around three centuries after Christ’s death. Finally, the previously mentioned estimate of 95% accuracy was a conservative one; in actuality it is closer to 98 or 99%.
Blown away by the overwhelmingly convincing argument he provided, I determined that he had made it all up, and I decided to investigate the issue myself. The result of my investigation was that there is no evidential reason to believe that the modern editions of the New Testament are in any way substantially different from the original autographs themselves. To challenge the scriptural integrity of the New Testament after sincere investigation is to reflect a bias against it.

Did Jesus claim to be God?
After being satisfied that the New Testament is trustworthy, I decided to take David to task on a different point. Nowhere, ever, did Christ claim that He was the literal Son of God, let alone God Himself. Christ, being the Messiah for Muslims as well as Christians, was a holy man. How dare the Christians ascribe such hubris to one of the greatest men of history, especially when He never claimed divinity in the Gospels themselves!
This discussion took more time than the first. David’s claim was that Christ did say that He was the Son of God, though He didn’t run around proclaiming it from the rooftops, as this would have gotten Him killed immediately. Here is some of the evidence David offered.
In the Old Testament, Isaiah prophesied that a child would be born who would be called "Mighty God" (Isaiah 9:6). But this isn’t the only Old Testament support for the deity of Christ. Jesus’s most common title for Himself was "Son of Man," which referred back to a prophecy in the book of Daniel:
In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. (vv. 7:14-15, NIV)
According to the New Testament, Jesus was worshiped shortly after His birth (Matthew 2:11), during His ministry (Matthew 14:33; John 9:38), and after His resurrection from the dead (Matthew 28:9, 28:17; Luke 24:52), yet He never told his worshipers to stop what they were doing. Jesus claimed to have existed before Abraham (who lived in the 18th century BC). When asked whether He was the Son of God, He answered, "I am . . . And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven" (Mark 14:62). Jesus also claimed to be the final Judge of all mankind (Matthew 25-31-32).
After actually reading parts of the New Testament itself instead of merely reading Muslim books on the topic, I came to agree with David’s claim: both the New Testament in general and Christ Himself claimed that Jesus is God.

Did Jesus die on the Cross?
As a Muslim, there was one thing I had always believed that would make Christianity completely invalid, regardless of anything else. According to Qur’an, Christ did not die on the cross.
That they said "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah." But they killed him not, nor crucified him, … of a surety they killed him not. (Al-Qur’an 4:157-158)
If Christ did not die on the Cross, then Christianity is without question a vain belief, even according to Paul himself! Paul said that if Christ was not raised from the dead, then the faith of a Christian is worthless (1 Corinthians 15:17). Of course, His resurrection requires His death, and so Paul is stating that if Christ did not die on the cross, then the Christian faith is worthless.
Thus we are presented with a question: "Which is right—the Qur’an or the Bible?" Of course, if I were to pick the Qur’an without perusing the evidence, I would not be searching for the truth; rather, I would be robotically defending what I had prejudicially taken as the truth. After investigating the facts surrounding the crucifixion of Christ, I was amazed by how incontrovertibly clear it is that He did die on the cross, a fact which is considered by some historians to be among the best established facts of history. Based on the first century evidence (including both Christian and non-Christian sources), as well as our historical knowledge about Roman crucifixion, there turns out to be no rational way to deny the death of Jesus. Any notion that says otherwise requires an elaborate conspiracy theory of some sort, and even those fail because the conspirators would have been His apostles, the very disciples who were quite obviously convinced of the truth of the Gospel message.