Historical PROBLEMS With The Bible & Quran | Bart Ehrman & Javad Hashmi

welcome back to myth Vision podcast I'm your host Derek Lambert there is something very special about today's episode a unique course with Dr Bart D armman and Dr Javad T Hashi we have a new testament scholar who's doing a historical critical approach on the gospels do I need to introduce him as you know everybody has seen Bart armman uh but there's another scholar I want to highlight coming from the Quran and historical critical method applied to Islam its early sources how do we understand that and a lot of people don't realize that the practices we find in the New Testament and how we apply these things to the Bible are also being practiced on the Holy Quran so with that being said welcome to myth Vision how are you Dr Javad and Bart I'm doing fantastic thank you so much thanks for having me it's an honor to be on with you and of course with the esteemed Sheik Bart Man it's a pleasure thank you H thank you both yeah it's good to be good to be with the two of you I really appreciate you both taking the time to join me today and discuss about this project this never been done in the public eye it seems and uh before we do I want to just say upfront humans have crafted stories to give meaning and value to origin of identity their group lessons we do it today in fictional movies and things like that and one of the things I seriously value about you Javad is that you're recognizing what I think is obvious to most but because this is such a sacred area and there's been a long-standing tradition on how we should evaluate the Quran you're just coming out saying I find Legend and story in the Quran but how you interpret that is unique and so I have to highlight that with you because bman as everyone knows has long told there are legends there are stories there's some fiction we find in the gospels and the Testament just take any of his courses and you find out so I fig let's Jump Right In The Deep End and talk about Legends if you don't mind sure yeah go for it so what's the exact question though this are there Legends in the Quran well that's what the course is about so but you you're now going straight to the uh conclusion um that's what the course is going to explore so yes that is my own conclusion um and that's from a decade of study that I've uh had to change swallow a lot of bullets I would say uh that's the uh experience that I've had from you know uh studying the historical critical approach but in this course I hope to overview all of the different viewpoints on this issue including the kind of Islamic traditionalist idea that I grew up with and then what are the problems with that and how do people reconcile that and then I eventually I'll say okay this is what I landed upon but I don't want to make the course just what I think it's about the different viewpoints turning the question to you Bart and you could yes or no does the New Testament have Legends about Jesus I thought you're gonna ask me if the Quran does you turn it on me right part of the issue is how you define Legend you know know how you differentiate that from myth for example or fable or story or fiction or so I usually Define a legend as a a fictional account about a historical figure and so you know I think there are legends about George Washington for example and I think that there are there are definitely legends about Jesus in the New Testament by which I mean that there are narrations of things that he's that he did for example that I don't think historically happened but storytellers are telling these episodes uh for particular reasons often for religious reasons and so you don't get that with George Washington per se you don't get legends about him to support religion but you do get legends about George Washington uh because of who he was you know the founder of of uh you know the father of our country and so legends about him tend to support an understanding of America in a certain way legends about Jesus tend to support understandings of the significance of Jesus religiously in certain ways and so I would say that they they do function similarly and I definitely do think that there is that kind of thing in the New Testament I want to go to your course that both you gentlemen are participating in for one second and highlight what I think is is an interesting angle and that is the Bible and the Quran comparing their historical problems now we can't give away the course because that would take eight lectures to do and you got to sign up to do it tell us what was your intention what did you what did both you gentlemen have in mind when you said let's approach this from both sacred pieces of literature and uh we we need to educate the world on this what is it that you had in mind uh so if I could take the first stab at that I approached Bart on this because and that's why I called him Sheik Bart Man is because I noticed that a lot of my fellow Muslims love uh Bart 's course and I'm one of them of course uh I mean his material but I I don't think many of them think about if we take this the same historical approach and apply it to our own sources our own scripture well what is that going to look like and so that's kind of the impetus behind me asking Bart hey let's teach this course because I think some of those conclusions like I said they're going to be some tough bullets for Muslims to swallow now I don't think that that'll be the end of Faith or anything like that but I think it is some soul searching and existential crises that will take place if you do that yeah so on my part you know I uh Javad came up to me Serv out of the blue at a at a uh professional conference and introduced himself and said what he did and uh he probably came up with the idea of doing this course I think wow that's interesting and for me it's interesting because well for several reasons I mean for for a long time now I've I've talked and written about problems with the New Testament and it's been very interesting javat I don't think I told you this but I've had two groups of people especially who uh seem to really like my work and want to use it uh and the groups are uh Muslims and Mormons and I wish there were a third because as a as a good Evangelical I like to have alliteration with three things but the methodists just they don't go for it as much some do it's okay but but morons and Muslims and and in both cases when people uh people who have talked to me about it from from those communities it's been because they see then the New Testament standing in contrast with their own scriptures and so you know Mormons say yeah you know there may be problems with the new test but the Book of Mormon man that is there you go and you know and Muslims will say well yeah you know you got all these uh you know these scribes are changing everything in the New Testament but not the Quran we know exactly what it was originally said there are no errors in it and you know you need to convert the pro you gave up on Christianity you need to come to Islam man and so I thought wow it'd be really interesting to have the two of us you know you're we're not going to have of course we're not going to have the exactly the same problems we're not going to have the same extent of problems but to have someone talk about the historical issues with the Quran on the same topics that I'm talking about historical issues with the New Testament I just think that's going to be exceedingly interesting in uru we have this saying I'll translate it it sounds funny in English but it's uh it's basically saying that you're cutting your own feet with the axe and basically what I'm trying to say is when it comes to Muslim I think Bart nailed it that it's Muslims taking what Bart's saying about the Bible and saying haha look at their Bible look how bad it is is and look how great our Quran is but that has like two negative effects I think that Muslims don't really think about and that's where I'm saying they're cutting their own feet is number one is I actually think the Quran from a critical standpoint if you read it most critical Scholars seem to think that the Quran doesn't really say that the previous scriptures are corrupted I think on my reading it's actually saying that they are good to follow that you should follow them there's verses that explicitly say to Jews and Christians that they should follow their Torah and the gospel so if you're attacking the Torah and the gospel and Quran is saying to follow them that's something to think about there and then number two is actually in this comparison in this pical way Muslims have changed their own theology almost uh by saying that by hyper exaggerating the difference between the Quran and the Bible so that you grow up with this I grew up with this idea that no two crans anywhere in the world differ even letter and Dot and I do think that's a very modern argument and that came about I think in pical discussions with Christians where they were trying to they were reading this critical scholarship when it came to the Bible and then they wanted to make a comparison to the Quran and in that process they kind of exaggerated the claims about the Quran no no J jerck I was just gonna say you know dur during this course one of the fun things is going to be that you know I'll give a lecture on my the New Testament topic he'll do the Quan talk and then we're gonna talk to each other about it and so like when he says something like that man I want to I want to dig in find you find out more and so we're going to have a chance to do that plus a Q&A people are going to be able to ask questions too so yeah okay sorry I just uh wanted true no this is perfect that means dialog as well that means sign up everybody you got to sign up for this so Javad it's like saying are there scientific miracles in the Quran right this is a recent development a post Enlightenment kind of thing I think where we're forced or feeling coerced by society and the ideas we have to like put these like rules and and and structures that were never there by these original authors and so that leads me to the the Highlight I guess of course which is the historical problems and I say problems with a double-edged sword as you pointed out with the axe cutting the feet is that while it's a problem or we can point out problems or the the mundane facts that we might find from Historical Method it also might be a solution so I guess what I'm saying is is many people will go to the New Testament find flaws but sometimes that historical critical method can get you back to maybe what Jesus did and I'll give you an example on that looking at the New Testament to get you to maybe comment briefly on this is that when I look at the Historical Jesus based on the best research I can pick up from the academics you have a Jewish guy sh's apocalyptic let's put that to the side for a second he's standing up for the poor he's trying to do what I would say is a socially good thing for the people in the class I think he comes from and that are people who are less fortunate they don't have the best they're in a struggle they're in a bad predicament in the world the meek shall inherit the earth the first shall be last these kind of philosophical ideas that you're finding floating around and still ISM and other things but here's this guy who kind of stands for the weak stands for the poor wants to help the Widow wants to that kind of idea and he becomes of course God over time but can we find something with Muhammad because I hear a lot of people are anti-islam go just a pure warlord there's nothing good there I engaged recently doing a video against David would because everything he said about Islam applied to Christianity and I was like what are you doing man so sorry for the rant I just feel it's necessary that we have these conversations great question um I'm answering first and all of these should Bart uh do do you want to say anything or no go for it okay uh yeah so I I agree with you that and and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to do the course is that I was I think there's a lot of public interest in Islamic Origins but it's because academics aren't really giving introductory material and putting it out there the discourse is dominated by apologists on the one side and then pists on the other and they both kind of weaponize the material and stretch it to fit their own agenda so I was like hey why don't we do a broad survey introductory course that you would teach at Harvard or order Dame or wherever and give it to the public so that's just based on your last comment that I was saying now as far as uh what you asked I think it's absolutely true that well number one is I would say that in some sense the historical critical approach can be a Pious Endeavor for whether it's liberal Christians or liberal Muslims because they're trying to get back to what the historical Jesus or what the historical Muhammad actually said or did so as a Muslim I want to know that and I want to know that beyond what the tradition claims because the tradition can attribute all sorts of things so that's why I think it's actually a Pious act in that sense and number two is sometimes it can uh contradict or often does later Orthodoxy which has a tendency to in the construction of Orthodoxy you have to uh argue who's in and who's out which can lead to some intolerance and so when you're working backward to get beyond that that can sometimes have highlight certain positive aspects against the tradition so on this issue of like Warfare my dissertation is basically trying to show that it's the later exegetes who are you know living under Empire who weaponized or militarized the chonic text um and so I'm trying to undo some of that and say you know look at that process so I think that's a benefit of historical critical scholarship Bart airman's book right no no I think it's really that's gonna be really interesting because it's stuff that most of us don't know and so I think that it's really good I mean when you when you get to the New Testament it's very hard to convince um conservative Christians whether they're Evangelical or Catholic or whatever that seeing discrepancies in the accounts say of the life of Jesus or discrepancies between what Paul says about himself and what the book of Acts says about him or you know seeing seeing this kind of range of like these discrepancies and contradictions it seems like a threat to most people which I understand because you know it did to me as well at one point in my life but the point that Javad was just making is a very important one which is that if you recognize diversity and variety at kind of the early stages of these religions it actually it in most cases it leads to Greater tolerance because you recognize that it wasn't always like a single thing and if you don't subscribe to this single thing then you're out you know you're off you're out of lim you're off limits and you're out of bounds and and it's not like that because in the New Testament if you can show that Matthew has a very different understanding of the Jewish law say than Paul or if you say if you can show that Mark has a different view of why Jesus died than Luke among other things it shows variety but it also allows you to let each author say what he wants to say and not pretend that he's saying something that some other author is saying and so when you do that then you actually understand him better and so this is a way to understand things better it's not a way to destroy the book or to destroy it's actually looking for the truth about these things and what you do with it religiously is as Javad was saying the you know I you know I always people always tell me I'm trying to destroy people's faith and it's just not true because um you if you see these things about the Bible you understand it better and so if you're a Christian surely you want to understand the Bible better and so um yeah so I I'm a big fan of historical criticism and seeing it apply to the Quran is gonna be very very it's G to be very enlightening for many of us but also uh kind of hopeful for many of us I've been found guilty I confess on comparing or trying to use kind of a heris approach on the scholarship of what we find on New Testament when I'm looking at Islamic stuff and it isn't typically Muslims who have this problem even though I'm sure if they watch they may but I get attacked by the Christian apologist online and they always get angry because I draw back to Christianity to use an example of scholar I've learned thank you Bart uh you got me in trouble but seriously it's important to to highlight this and I want Javad to to maybe uh tune into this because I've been doing that is that a false dilemma is is it is there not something comparable in what's going on I know that there aren't gospels there's a Quran but the tradition is very messy you know how we get the Quran exactly you know there's variations on that in the tradition of exactly you know who uh and when and what what text or what words may be in it and things like that so I'm kind of asking you Javad like while the Endeavor is not how Matthew used Mark and and how Luke May rewrite Mark or John might know all three in redactional layers and stuff in the same identical way what is comparable that you've noticed on New Testament scholarship to the Quran without giving away too much of the course uh that's a great question so modern Islamic Studies began with Bible scholars who basically used the same tools and started applying them to the Quran and the life story of the Prophet Muhammad often we place like Abraham gger he had a book that was called what did Muhammad borrow from Judaism it's translated that from the from the German but uh that's really the first book uh one of the first books that's considered the impetus for modern Islamic Studies so to counter this some Islamic traditionalists will say that this is problematic that you're just assuming that the techniques and methods of biblical studies will apply to the Quran when the Quran has a different history and cultural context Etc I take a middle ground approach which is I think a lot of it does definitely apply and that's precisely why I think a course like this is so important because when you study the Quran you should definitely do it in comparative in a comparative way especially since biblical studies is so much more advanced it's it's just had so much more time and scholarship behind it so we in Islamic Studies and quranic studies can really benefit from the knowledge that Bart Ur and other Bible scholar are bringing but with that in mind it's I I would make the caveat that we do need to recognize that it is a different text there are some differences so you can't just translate everything one to one but you have to kind of learn from what you know biblical studies did and see how it does it apply and to what degree does it apply to the Quran and the Quest for the historical Muhammad so a lot does translate but it's not just one to one so there's some work that you have to do to get to it so that's the kind of uh approach that I would take B did you want to add anything to that or do you want me to carry on I think he's absolutely right it's not going to be like these strict thing you know kind of strict you can't put them in columns so they got go across the columns like that I would say in addition to that that history is history and people who are historians have pretty well set you know views about how you establish what happened in the past and so to you know kind of in Broad terms that's why you could apply historical criticism to various uh to various Fields not expecting the same results but you know you don't um you basically you know historians look for similar things when they're trying to establish and it doesn't matter what you're doing I mean if you're studying Charlamagne or something or you're studying you know Thomas Jefferson or you're studying Julius Caesar you've you've got sources and you've got to figure out how the sources are valuable where they have mistake you know how reliable they can be when you can check them whether they contradict each other whether they're internally coherent whether they are things you do right as a historian and I think that the Striking thing for a seminar like this is to see how it could be done across two very different sets of scripture not to get the same results but to compare the two and but doing serious history on both is because you know for of course for many centuries it was never done on the Bible until the Enlightenment and uh until fairly recent times as far as I know wasn't really done much on the Quran either and so now now we're kind of breaking into this era where we can do both I agree with Bart completely that you know we have to approach this just as you approach any other text you can approach the Quran in the same way one of the kind of counters that the conservative Islamic traditionalists give is that they kind of want to bag this all in with you you know use the word orientalism and say that this is using Western uh presuppositions uh and epistemology and it just doesn't apply when you translate it across the culture Etc but you know when I read like Christian fundamentalists when they're responding to historical critical scholarship I find that they use some of the same exact counterarguments against uh critical Western Scholars for example one of the things that we use about theart mentioned was that people are people anywhere and that's uh one of the you know it's a principle of analogy that whether it's in the time of the Prophet Muhammad and the companions after him they act in a certain ways that's kind of a presupposition that you can use rely on and I think that applies to Islam or Christianity but you'll see Bible fundamentalists arguing against that kind of thing as well so what I'm trying to say is that the arguments that are used against the historical critical method are not really specific to Muslims uh they're kind of used by fun it's it's these are tough bullets to swallow if for people of faith when you grew up with these kind of Orthodox beliefs is what I would say you know I think most American Christians assume that um the Bible was produced in California it do is not a western document I mean but you know they treat you know it's like it has all the assumptions I have growing up that kind of thing yeah that's funny yeah I really appreciate this perception and hopefully encouraging more Believers to I guess get to the facts maybe what does what does the historical critical method help us understand what may have really happened and possibly separating Legend from or myth from reality in the sense of what actually happened but also with the caveat of saying just because it's Legend and myth doesn't mean it doesn't have value I was listening to the audio book by Les Leslie Hazelton the first Muslim and I have to say this as a Westerner who really is born and raised in a military household where my dad went over to the Middle East during 911 and has all the reasons and bias to be just anti-islam right in the west as you know and I listened to it and I had kind of like a deep respect and interest in curiosity about this character this person we call Muhammad and he's a prophet in this religion we call Islam and understanding its roots and things like that from almost like a story telling way that I was interested and as you know I don't not a Believer but I could appreciate it and and I was like okay hold on what if more people understood this wouldn't this create less bias less less Judgment of other people and at least empathizing with each other and I'm hoping my heart in the whole course that you're doing is that this creates more unity and finds a way to give people more respect even if we disagree at the end of the day over whatever conclusions ontologically we draw from these religions we're on board I amen my my goal is to bring people to the middle I would say and so from a for Muslims who are on a more a fundamentalist side I want to bring them into the middle and realize that the things that they're attacking like the Bible for and Christianity for well maybe we should take a look at our own scriptures and sources and say okay we have some similar issues to deal with and I think that would kind of push them more to the middle and then people on the other side kind of on the pical side or the anti-is side I I want to show them that you know it's not like you said even if you take it as myth and Legend and all this that there is something meaningful going on you may not agree with it you may have your differences but it's not all just you know ho-ha garbage kind of thing there is something deep and meaningful to like you can appreciate the Bible you don't have to be someone of Faith to appreciate the Bible from a literature standpoint uh so the S same way I think you could take that position when it comes to the Quran this course last word guys why should people sign up why shouldn't they sign up are you kidding me when you said you've never heard of something like this in the public sphere before I mean maybe Javad has I haven't heard of anything like this in the private sphere I mean this is like I've never heard of something like this before and it just like it's amazing that you know it hasn't been done and uh so I'm I'm really looking forward to this and I think this is going to be one of those things that that people are gonna are they're just going to learn a ton with you know people who are really knowledgeable about the Quran are going to learn all sorts of things that they probably don't know and people are interested in New Testament you know if they don't learn anything new from me they're going to learn it from Javad and it's going to be it's like this is going to be uh I think a really really interesting and important thank you any final words from you Javad no I'm just going to you know reiterate or uh agree with Bart on that I think this is one of a kind course and putting the Bible and the Quran and conversation and to have the honor of doing it with uh Sheikh Bart Man I mean this is this is huge so this is I'm really excited about this well thank you so much ladies and gentlemen you heard the guys sign up right now the link is in the description you see it on the screen and I hope to see you there

Channel: MythVision Podcast

Views: 25,408

Keywords: Mythvision, MythVision Podcast, Bart Ehrman, Bible & Quran, New Testament, Christianity, Islam, Jesus & Muhammad, Historical problems with the Bible and Quran, Legends in the Bible, Legends in the Quran, Myth in the Bible, Myth in the Quran, Critical scholarship, Bart Ehrman and Javad Hashmi, Derek Lambert

Id: _Hz8jIYr7Z8

Length: 24min 33sec (1473 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2024