No God but One: Allah or Jesus?: A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity

by Nabeel Qureshi

As an example, let us consider the book of the Bible called 1 Peter. When the disciple Peter wrote this letter, he sent it to its recipients. They made copies of it and sent the copies to other churches in other cities. Those churches made copies of it and sent them out to yet other churches. Now let’s imagine that the church to which Peter sent it made five copies, and each church they sent a copy to made five more copies. Even at this early stage in the life of the letter, there are thirty-one extant copies. If someone wanted to effectively alter the text, they would have to recall all thirty-one copies. But nobody had the ability to do that. Nobody had ruling power over all of Christendom until the fourth century, three hundred years after Jesus. By that time, there were thousands of copies of the biblical texts, and even someone with authority over them would not have the practical ability to collect them all. Even if someone had the capacity to recall all the texts and edit them, there would certainly have been some record of such a massive recall. It is virtually impossible to envision every Christian calmly handing over sacred texts to be altered without some trace of resistance or complaint. So the only way the Bible could have been corrupted on such a grand scale is if someone early in Christian history had the authority and the power to recall all the texts, destroy them, and issue official copies, resulting in complaints and resistance. Yet no such person or rec...