There was no Divine self sacrifice. God can not die.
Gospel of John is the least reliable when wanting to know anything about Jesus pbuh. Scholars say, whoever wrote it put words into the mouth of Jesus and presented his own theology. Jesus pbuh goes from being quite human in Mark's Gospel to the Divine word made flesh in John. In Mark the Pharisees want him out of the way after the Temple incident, in John's account his Ministry starts after the Temple event and he's presented as the 'lamb of God' who come to die for the sins of the World, and is condemned to die after raising Lazarus from the dead, as to appear Divine.
The only Scholars who accept your line of thinking are Conservative Evangelicals. Yes all manuscripts more or less agree, but that's only because they mostly go back to the 8th and 9th Century, with aprox 200 going back to the 4th Century, (Ehrman confirms this). Patristic quotations go back to the 4th Century too. All you have from 120 years after the events is 3 fragmentary manuscripts the smallest of which is less than the size of a credit card, and recently re-dated to nearer 200 A.D. The 3rd Century yields 25 partial manuscripts.
The further back you go, the wider the differences. Here's a few that impact doctrine:
No John 20:28 Thomas saying, 'My Lord and my God'
No Mark 1:1 'Jesus son of God'
No 1 john 5:7 Trinity verse
No Matthew 28:19 Trinity verse
No Mark 10:21 'pick up your cross' and follow me.
No John 9:38 He said, 'Lord, I believe,' and he worshiped him.
No Mark 16:8 onwards, don't worry it's only the resurrection account :/
No John 7:53—8:11 - Woman caught in Adultery.
What not to understand, Father Son and Holy Ghost = 3 Gods, yet you look at the diagram and say 1 God. You don't use the word nature, the term 'persons' is used. since when has a 'person' required another person before they were a fully functioning person?
No the God revealed by Jesus pbuh has been removed from the scriptures and a God concept inserted in its place by Greco-Roman Pagans. They of course worshipped Sons of Jupiter and held a Mother God in high esteem.
Allah swt has no need for innocent people to carry the sins of another. We are all responsible for our own actions, and this is the message of previous Scriptures. Even animal sacrifices found in the OT were for unintentional sins, and the poor could bring a bag of flour if need be, as the real way to be forgiven was to repent with sincerity to Allah swt and refrain from repeating the sin.
Offering innocent victims was acceptable to Baal and utterly condemned by Allah swt.
Islam and Judaism offer a GOD that makes sense and is easy to understand, not some self contradictory triune concept that was never preached by the earlier Prophets. Actually Jesus pbuh didn't preach it either, and any references found in the NT were likely inserted later.
You didn't read Surah 2 very well as in verse 79 it makes clear the previous Scriptures were not preserved.
So woe to those who write the "scripture" with their own hands, then say, "This is from Allah ," in order to exchange it for a small price. Woe to them for what their hands have written and woe to them for what they earn.
True, God cannot die as to His Divine nature. But the Divine Word became flesh, thus making both self-sacrifice unto death and God’s leading us by His own example possible. Christian theologians have thought through questions and answered objections about this long ago. There is no logical contradiction involved in the Incarnation and its consequents.
Some “scholars” are storytellers, telling themselves what they want to hear and perhaps trying to sell a few books by saying something controversial. As Søren Kierkegaard sarcastically said of those who used scholarship to shield themselves from the convicting words of the Bible, “Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you?”
Historically speaking, there are no credible, alternative narratives for what the Church has always believed about the Bible and its historical origins. More specifically, our Lord is quite human as well as Divine in Mark, right from the first chapter, particularly if you factor in the Old Testament background. I’m not sure what you were talking about in reference to John, but in the Gospel according to John, our Lord’s Deity is highlighted well before He raised Lazarus from the dead.
What’s wrong with conservative evangelical scholarship, other than the fact that they reach conclusions you personally wish they would not reach? You understated the wealth of manuscript evidence, patristic quotations, and ancient translations of the Bible. According to my scholarly, critical Greek New Testament (which features a preface by Ehrman’s professor Bruce Metzger), John 20:28, Matthew 28:19, and John 9:38 are not disputed.
Mark 1:1’s “Son of God” is supported by most manuscripts, at least eight church fathers from Irenaeus to Augustine, and at least six ancient translations. Of course, the teaching that Jesus is the Son of God is hardly confined in the New Testament to that one verse.
Mark 10:21’s “take up the cross” is found in the Majority Text and some ancient authorities, and as with the teaching that Jesus is the Son of God, our Lord’s command to take up one’s cross is familiar from elsewhere in the New Testament; the concept is not in dispute.
On Mark 16, I favor the traditional ending, which is found in most manuscripts, in at least seven ancient translations, and church fathers from at least Irenaeus to Didymus. The omission of Mark’s longer ending in some manuscripts may be due to nothing more sinister than a missing last leaf of an ancient exemplar. Even Codex B from the Vatican library, one of the main authorities for the omission, contains a blank column at the end of Mark, the only vacant column in the whole codex, as if making room for the longer ending known to the scribe to exist. John 7:53ff has an “A” rating in the critical Greek New Testament due to its strong ancient support, as it is found in most manuscripts, at least five ancient translations, and in patristic literature from Papias (circa A.D. 60-130), who heard the apostle John speak and who was bishop of Hierapolis, to Augustine. Also, the apostles and their companions may have produced more than one “official” edition of their works, so that two variant readings may both be original and equally authoritative. On 1 John 5:7, its superfluous character and appearance in only a few late manuscripts are well known. The verse thus illustrates how the witness of a majority of manuscripts from various times and locations expose later additions to the Bible. The Holy Scriptures were inspired by God, and scribes made copies in different places and at different times, without collusion. Above all, God is a faithful Father. His providence has always been at work. It was His purpose to provide us with the Holy Scriptures and He has done so competently. We can trust Him. No man can thwart His purposes. A concept of God that is less than that, as with your Islamic Allah, is an unworthy one.
The diagram might have three gods, but it is flawed as I pointed out. Human nature admits of only one person per human being. But the one Divine nature is not so limited; there are three Persons in the one Nature. The diagram thus equivocates on the term “nature.” Equivocation can be a handy tactic in polemics, and unclear thinking is able reach many conclusions with admirable facility.
I agree that we are all responsible for our own actions and that offering innocent victims to Baal is wrong. What’s your point? What is the analogy between sacrificing to Baal and voluntary self-sacrifice, the concept I have been discussing all along?
If something is ”easy to understand,” does that make it true? Unipersonal pagan gods and idols are easy to understand. Are they therefore true? Are differential calculus and quantum physics false because they are hard to understand? Also, there are hints of the Trinity in the Old Testament, in the figure of the Angel of the Lord, for example, and plurality in the Godhead was not unknown to late Temple Judaism even according to modern Jewish scholarship.
Again you did not answer my multiple-choice question, and again your mother analogy has exposed the inferiority of the Islamic Allah. He is not so good as she. Your choice of a parental analogy was an unfortunate one for a Muslim to make, all the more so since slavemaster, not father, is the highest relationship in which Allah stands to his creatures according to Islam. Moreover, the Divine Fatherhood is at the root of Christian theology, and perhaps all Christian doctrine could be derived therefrom as a logical implication.
Surah 2:79 is too vague and narrow in scope to support such a broad conclusion as thorough corruption of the Bible. First, on the Quran generally, there is no reason to accept the book as true in the first place. A man goes into a cave, foams at the mouth, snorts like a camel, feels like committing suicide for the umpteenth time, does not know whether an angel or Satan has spoken to him, but eventually says, Believe me or else! heedless of the fact that his teachings contradict the previously-given Holy Scriptures. Such a man is no more credible than an uneducated man would be who today in 2017 went into a cave, foamed at the mouth, and came out threatening those who did not believe him.
Secondly, as for surah 2:79 itself, the verse only says some wrote false things. Like many Quranic accounts, it is lacking in specifics. It does not say that a few Jews in ancient Nabatea managed to alter all the copies and translations and patristic quotations of all the Scriptures, both Jewish and Christian, throughout the whole world.
Thirdly, if surah 2:79 implies that the Quran does not confirm the Bible, then the Quran contradicts itself, since the Quran repeatedly and unambiguously confirms the Bible.
Let’s take a closer look at just surah number 2. Surah 2:87-89 teaches that a “Book from Allah confirms that which is with” the Jews and Christians, with them as a present possession. In context, that which is with the Jews and Christians is the Bible. Surah 2:91 says the same thing again: “the truth confirms that which is with” the Jews and Christians. Surah 2:97 says the Quran “confirms that which is before it,” i.e., the Quran confirms the Bible. Surah 2:101 says for a third time that the Quran “confirms that which is with” the Jews and Christians. Surah 2:106 says Allah does not abrogate or cause anything to be forgotten unless he brings a replacement for it. The verse also says Allah is competent over all things. Surah 2:136 says Muslims are to believe “in what has been revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Descendants and what was given to Moses and Jesus and what was given to the prophets.”
So putting it all together, surah 2 clearly teaches that the Quran confirms, reconfirms, and re-reconfirms the Bible that Jews and Christians possessed in the A.D. seventh century. If the Bible was corrupt, then the Quran confirmed a corrupt book. So the Bible, according to the Quran, is true. Moreover, even if the Quran replaced the Bible, the Quran says the Bible was preserved at least until the Quran replaced it. But Bible translations today are based on manuscripts that predate the seventh century; therefore, by implication, the Bible has been preserved until today according to the Quran itself. Furthermore, Muslims are to believe in what was Divinely revealed before the Quran. This necessitates the preservation of those earlier revelations in an accessible and uncorrupt form, for no one can believe what is no longer available. Therefore the Bible where those earlier revelations are found has been preserved and not lost, and Muslims are expected to believe the Bible too. Also, Muslim scholars agree with me that the Bible has been preserved.
