Textual Criticism of the Gospels

In the Name of Allah; Most-Merciful, Most-Compassionate.

In previous posts I shared some highlights of textual comparison (here) criticism of the Qur'an (here) and the Old Testament (here). For a complete discussion of the texts that relate to the Abrahamic faiths, this post will explore some points from textual criticism of the New Testament (the following is taken from Muhammad Mustafa al-Azami's The History of the Qur'anic Text):

"After the loss of the original gospel, no successful effort appears to have been made in the two thousand years of Christianity to compile a historical overview of Jesus. Robert Funk describes the case as follows: "So far as I have been able to discover, no one had ever compiled [a] list of all the words attributed to Jesus in the first three hundred years following his death" ... After twenty centuries the historical material remains so scant that even the sketching of a basic outline is problematic, unless one chooses to forsake historicity and rely instead on the 'Jesus of faith' as portrayed in the NT [New Testament]. (p. 267-268)

"All sources for the teachings of Jesus emanate from anonymous authors. As noted earlier, Herman Reimarus (1694-1768) was the first to attempt a historical modeling of Jesus. (p. 272)

"Confusion regarding the exact teachings of Jesus, coupled with the continuous persecution of Christians until the 4th century, resulted in a multitudinous array of practices set up under the umbrella of Christianity. Quoting Ehrman: "[T]here were, of course, Christians who believed in only one God; others, however, claimed that there were two Gods; yet others subscribed to 30, or 365, or more ... Some Christians believed that Christ was somehow both a man and God; others said that he was a man, but not God; others claimed that he was God, but not a man; others insisted that he was a man who had been temporarily inhabited by God." (p. 277)

"In the words of Sir Edwyn Hoskyns and Noel Davey: "If it has been found difficult, in spite of a certain amount of evidence, to give names to the authors of the synoptic gospels, it is much more difficult to assign their writing to a definite date. Here there is no clear evidence at all; and accurate dating is simply impossible." ... These books of uncertain origin and questionable accuracy were later accorded greater authority by the early church through the claim that they were sacred works inspired by God, to corroborate the Christian oral traditions... Not a single book from the NT [New Testament] has survived in the original author's handwriting, the closest thing being a fragment dated c. 100-115 and containing six verses of John 18. (p. 280-282)

"Erasmus published his first Greek NT [New Testament] in 1516 and the second addition three years later. Among the most serious criticisms leveled at this Bible was that it lacked the Trinitarian statement at the end of 1 John, which reads that the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost are three in one (1 John 5:7). Insisting that he had yet to find these words in any of the Greek manuscripts he had examined, he nevertheless buckled to pressure and agreed to add the Comma Johanneum (as it is known) if a single Greek manuscript with this passage could be found. Shortly afterwards such a manuscript was indeed given to him. In all likelihood it was a fabrication, written by a Franciscan friar in Oxford around 1520. Though Erasmus remained true to his word and inserted the passage in his third edition, he felt it necessary to append a lengthy footnote, expressing his suspicion that the manuscript was a forgery ... In the English language they found their way into the Authorised King James Version, printed in 1611 ... we can surmise that English translations of the Bible waited at least three centuries, if not more, before removing a spurious passage which had been inserted as late as the 16th century. (p. 290-291)

"Now we see that history has been no more kind towards the NT [New Testament]. The very found of Christianity, Jesus, is a figure whose
historical existence is impossible to prove through primary sources... Towards the end of the first century a few biographical works appeared; the authors were anonymous, none had any first-hand knowledge of Jesus' life, and none disclosed their sources of information. (p. 298)