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Speaker 1: How accurately has the Quran been preserved since it was

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Speaker 1: first written down? How does its copying and transmission compare

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Speaker 1: and contrast with the New Testament? Groundbreaking research, which we

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Speaker 1: are going to look at today, challenges the narrative that

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Speaker 1: the Quran is better preserved than the New Testament. Our

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Speaker 1: guest today, Dr. Daniel Brubaker, author, scholar, is a world

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Speaker 1: expert on corrections in early Quranic manuscripts. Thanks for coming

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Speaker 1: all the way to the East Coast in studio here

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Speaker 1: at Biola and Talbot. Good to have you.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, Sean.

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Speaker 1: I want to start with your backstory because there has

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Speaker 1: to be a story of what interested you to spend

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Speaker 1: so much of your research and your life studying these,

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Speaker 1: what some would say are just minute, some would say

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Speaker 1: bigger corrections in the Quran. What interested you in this topic?

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Speaker 2: Well, that's a good point, actually, Sean, because now I've

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Speaker 2: been reflecting over the past couple of weeks, even. It's

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Speaker 2: been about a third of my life now that we've

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Speaker 2: been spent, you know, on this from the time we

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Speaker 2: started down the road of going into doctoral studies. And,

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Speaker 2: you know, this time just goes on. But no, just

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Speaker 2: to paint the picture, well, we can go all the

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Speaker 2: way back to my childhood. I lived in Spain from

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Speaker 2: 1980 to 84, about. I got Just a little glimpse into,

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Speaker 2: I had a friend who was, his family had just

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Speaker 2: recently escaped from Iran during the revolution there. So I

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Speaker 2: got to know him. He lived in our apartment building,

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Speaker 2: traveling around Spain and seeing the Alhambra. I don't know

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Speaker 2: if you've ever been there, but it's- I have not.

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Speaker 2: You know, all the ornate calligraphic chronic inscriptions there and

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Speaker 2: so forth, the remnants of the Moors in Spain. And

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Speaker 2: then When I went into college, my freshman year at

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Speaker 2: University of Washington, I took a year-long course on Islamic

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Speaker 2: civilization and so forth. This is the early 90s. And then,

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Speaker 2: of course, 9-11 happens. I went in a different direction.

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Speaker 2: My degree is in molecular biology. Life happened. 9-11 happened.

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Speaker 2: But a mutual friend of ours, actually, that we were

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Speaker 2: just talking about, called me up in the years following

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Speaker 2: 9-11 and said, Hey Dan, would you consider doing a

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Speaker 2: PhD in the area of Islam? And we prayed about it,

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Speaker 2: thought about it. And I started to study Arabic and

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Speaker 2: apply to PhD programs. Eventually got in at Rice University

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Speaker 2: and started down that road. Now at that time, I

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Speaker 2: didn't know that I was, you know, what my topic

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Speaker 2: specifically was going to be. I was just in the

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Speaker 2: general area of Islam. But as I was doing my

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Speaker 2: general studies, um, at one point along the way, a

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Speaker 2: colleague was a little bit further along than I showed

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Speaker 2: me some pictures of a couple of Quran manuscripts that

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Speaker 2: had corrections in them, you know, the pages that had

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Speaker 2: big things erased and rewritten. And I thought that was

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Speaker 2: really interesting, partly because I had heard people say that

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Speaker 2: the Quran has been perfectly preserved, that there's no dot

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Speaker 2: or letter ever changed and so forth. So that kind

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Speaker 2: of piqued my interest. I started looking into it a

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Speaker 2: little bit further and sort of took a bit of

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Speaker 2: a leap of faith that there would be enough material

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Speaker 2: there to do a doctoral project on. So I declared

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Speaker 2: that as my topic, started looking around, just looking for

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Speaker 2: corrections in manuscripts, and that was the start of it.

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Speaker 1: That's a huge leap of faith. Having done a doctoral

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Speaker 1: research myself, I know— You're putting yourself out there hoping

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Speaker 1: you'll find this. But I would also guess hoping you'd

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Speaker 1: have access to these. Like how did you get access

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Speaker 1: to these early manuscripts? Were there any challenges to even

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Speaker 1: be able to look at them and study them?

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Speaker 2: Well, that's actually an interesting story in itself. And I'm

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Speaker 2: sure many people have that question. How do you get

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Speaker 2: to see these manuscripts?

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: At the beginning, of course, you're working from pictures, what

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Speaker 2: pictures you have available. The first photographs I had available

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Speaker 2: to me were from a UNESCO project that was dealing

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Speaker 2: with the Sana manuscripts that were discovered in Yemen in

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Speaker 2: the 70s. And it was a selection from among that

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Speaker 2: cache of early manuscripts. And I was able to find

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Speaker 2: even some of the things that we may look at.

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Speaker 2: One of the photographs that we may look at today

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Speaker 2: is from that group. And I just started looking through those.

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Speaker 2: At one point in my doctoral work, I planned, I

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Speaker 2: saved up money, and I made a big research trip

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Speaker 2: to several different countries over in the region. And the

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Speaker 2: first stop was Paris, the National Library of France, one

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Speaker 2: of the very important manuscripts, BNF. They have a lot

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Speaker 2: of good, important early Quran manuscripts, but one of them

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Speaker 2: is BNF Arab 328. And So I show up there

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Speaker 2: with my letter from the university in hand that I'm

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Speaker 2: a doctoral student in this area from my advisor and

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Speaker 2: so forth, thinking, you know, maybe there's a chance I

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Speaker 2: get to look at a manuscript or something like that.

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Speaker 2: But they had this thing at the time. They had

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Speaker 2: this place called The Crypt down in the basement where

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Speaker 2: they keep the really important manuscripts. And I presented my letter,

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Speaker 2: and they went off, and they disappeared into a back

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Speaker 2: room somewhere. And they come out, and they put this

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Speaker 2: thing in front of me. And it's this, you know,

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Speaker 2: one of the earliest– near complete Quran manuscripts sitting in

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Speaker 2: front of me. I'm like, okay, I've seen this. And

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Speaker 2: you know, so I spent the whole afternoon looking through

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Speaker 2: that page by page, photographing it, documenting for my doctoral dissertation.

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Speaker 2: And subsequent to that, I had many more opportunities to

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Speaker 2: see those. It really is an answer to your question.

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Speaker 2: It's really kind of case by case. Um, some of

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Speaker 2: the places that you would think would be very difficult to,

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Speaker 2: you know, they wouldn't let you see the manuscripts. They're,

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Speaker 2: they're very open. And some other places, um, In Egypt,

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Speaker 2: I had a lot of trouble. They're very closed with

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Speaker 2: access and so forth. But in Kuwait, I was given

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Speaker 2: amazing access. In Doha, they opened up the whole museum

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Speaker 2: for me and even took things out of displays and

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Speaker 2: let me look at them page by page on the

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Speaker 2: day that the museum was closed. So it's been like that.

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Speaker 2: It's been kind of an adventure. Sure. I've been to

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Speaker 2: Uzbekistan and, you know, all different kind of places.

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Speaker 1: Sounds a little bit like an Indiana Jones story. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I know. And is the reason some people are protective, like,

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Speaker 1: did they know what you were studying and have a

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Speaker 1: fear of like, wait a minute, if somebody really analyzes this,

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Speaker 1: it could challenge the narrative? Or is that thinking too

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Speaker 1: many steps ahead, maybe?

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Speaker 2: I am not sure that that could be the thinking

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Speaker 2: of some of the folks in, of course, the Some

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Speaker 2: people watching this may be familiar with Edward Said's book, Orientalism.

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Speaker 2: And so the word Orientalist and Oriental scholars had a

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Speaker 2: bad connotation for quite a while. So some people might

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Speaker 2: be sensitive to that. But in my experience, many of

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Speaker 2: the people who have custody of these manuscripts, even if

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Speaker 2: they are Arab or even Muslim, are more open, just

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Speaker 2: generally more open to academic study. And I'm a scholar.

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Speaker 2: I know we're talking about apologetics, but I'm an academic

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Speaker 2: working in this area. The other thing is that many

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Speaker 2: of these collections, the staff and curators are actually, you know,

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Speaker 2: British or from other countries who are, you know, they're

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Speaker 2: tasked with caring for the collections and doing it professionally.

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Speaker 2: And so that's just the situation there, which makes for

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Speaker 2: scholar comes in, you can have access.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. And I'll open your book. It's called

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Speaker 1: Hold Up Your Book, Corrections in Early Quran Manuscripts. And

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Speaker 1: it's very sober in terms of we draw from it.

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Speaker 1: It's not an apologetics kind of book. There's apologetic implications

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Speaker 1: we'll get into, but very much not overstating the data.

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Speaker 1: Let's study this. Let's see what's there. And I appreciate

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Speaker 1: that as a careful scholar, the way that you do that.

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Speaker 1: Before we jump into some of the differences, it might

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Speaker 1: be helpful for people watching to understand, like, what kind

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Speaker 1: of book is the Quran? And I ask this because

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Speaker 1: probably Christians would assume, oh, we have a holy book,

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Speaker 1: they have theirs, it's the same. Or maybe skeptics on

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Speaker 1: the outside say, oh, they both have their holy books,

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Speaker 1: they're the same. But are there anything, things about the

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Speaker 1: nature of the Quran that are relevant as we get

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Speaker 1: into some of these differences that would help us make

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Speaker 1: sense of them?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a lot of, as I'm sure you're aware,

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Speaker 2: there are a lot of different things that could be

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Speaker 2: said in answer to that question. But just a few things.

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Speaker 2: The Quran is about, in length, it's about the the

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Speaker 2: size of the New Testament. If you were to take

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Speaker 2: out the repetitions in it, it would be much smaller.

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Speaker 2: It's a very formulaic, I'd say poetic, but there's a

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Speaker 2: lot of formulaic repetition in the thing itself. It's fairly elliptical.

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Speaker 2: It doesn't have a strong narrative. If anybody has tried

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Speaker 2: to read the Quran, you'll quickly become frustrated with what

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Speaker 2: is going on here, what is the story that's being told.

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Speaker 1: Hmm.

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Speaker 2: The story of Joseph appears in a certain form in

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Speaker 2: the Koran. But aside from that, it's a little bit

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Speaker 2: cryptic and in some cases disjointed. It is definitely a

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Speaker 2: theological book making theological claims. It is very, very concerned

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Speaker 2: with Jesus, which is something that a lot of people

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Speaker 2: don't realize. The Koran, one of its central themes is Jesus.

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Speaker 2: And it makes quite clear that Jesus is not God,

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Speaker 2: that he did not die, that he did not certainly

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Speaker 2: rise again. There is no way that anybody is going

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Speaker 2: to pay for anybody else's sin and so forth. This

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Speaker 2: is a very, very strong focus of the Koran. And

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Speaker 2: I actually believe spiritually that that's one of the main

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Speaker 2: purposes that the Koran exists, in fact. So that having

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Speaker 2: been said, what else can we say about the Quran

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Speaker 2: in terms of what it is? I assume we'll go

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Speaker 2: into history, but we'll come to that maybe next.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess I'm getting at the question of the

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Speaker 1: Bible is written by multiple authors. God speaks through prophets.

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Speaker 1: Tell me how the book would compare and contrast with

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Speaker 1: the Bible in that sense.

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Speaker 2: So of course, um, the, uh, so Muhammad was not

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Speaker 2: unlike the biblical authors. Muhammad was not of Jewish heritage

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Speaker 2: for one thing, but it, it is delivered, uh, according

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Speaker 2: to tradition, it's delivered through a single prophet, very similar to,

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Speaker 2: there are a lot of similarities as I'm sure you're

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Speaker 2: also aware with the book of Mormon and, uh, and Mormonism,

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Speaker 2: the way that it came about a single guy out

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Speaker 2: kind of off on his own, um, in a cave

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Speaker 2: in this case and, uh, encounters somebody who he later

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Speaker 2: realizes was an angel and figures out that he's a prophet.

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Speaker 2: And then over time he has, uh, has a book

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Speaker 2: that was delivered. So, um, it is 600 years more

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Speaker 2: recent than the, than the new Testament and so, and

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Speaker 2: so forth. But it is a, um, it is not a,

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Speaker 2: is not a group of books. Of course it claims

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Speaker 2: to be the final, But it disagrees with the other books, whereas,

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Speaker 2: for example, all the Old Testament books are cited in

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Speaker 2: the New Testament and referenced, and there's this coherence. The

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Speaker 2: Quran makes many references to, well, only, in fact, to

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Speaker 2: the familiar biblical stories like Jonah and so forth, but

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Speaker 2: not to the ones that would be less familiar, like

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Speaker 2: the Minor Prophets. Well, I guess Jonah was Minor Prophet.

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Speaker 2: But the ones that make for good stories. You see

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Speaker 2: the names pop up, but you're going, this doesn't sound

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Speaker 2: quite right. The details have kind of been changed, but

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Speaker 2: the name is there. And the general outline of the

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Speaker 2: story occurs in the Quran. So that exists. So it

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Speaker 2: places itself in the framework of the Bible, but it departs.

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Speaker 2: And it asks the readers to depart along with it.

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Speaker 2: And at any point at which it disagrees with the Bible,

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Speaker 2: it says, I mean, it implies that the Quran is

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Speaker 2: the one to be trusted.

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Speaker 1: Is there a difference between what Christians would say we

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Speaker 1: believe in inerrancy, but we don't have the original manuscripts?

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Speaker 1: So if we found them, that would be the ultimate source.

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Speaker 1: Our challenge is to get how close can we get

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Speaker 1: back to those original? It seems like it's a little

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Speaker 1: bit different in Islam that we have the Quran as

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Speaker 1: it was written down. in itself. There seems to be

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Speaker 1: a difference there. Am I correct? And if so, expand

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Speaker 1: on that or correct my point if I missed it.

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Speaker 2: No, that's entirely correct. The common belief or assertion among,

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Speaker 2: I would say, most Muslims is that what we have

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Speaker 2: today is exactly what was delivered to Muhammad way back then.

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Speaker 2: This is a fairly untested claim, but it's a common belief.

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Speaker 2: And the work that I'm doing and that some others

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Speaker 2: are doing is, is sort of, um, challenging that a

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Speaker 2: little bit at this point. There are a couple of

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Speaker 2: other factors that play into it though. And we're going

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Speaker 2: to talk about how early the manuscripts are and so forth. And,

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Speaker 2: but the, uh, way that the Quran was understood to

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Speaker 2: have been delivered to Muhammad was an oral and passed

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Speaker 2: from him to the earliest generation was an oral type

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Speaker 2: of situation. So the, um, The way the story goes

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Speaker 2: is that the Quran was recited by Muhammad. He would

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Speaker 2: get a revelation. He would recite it. For example, he'd

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Speaker 2: be praying in the mosque. Other people would be hearing, memorizing,

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Speaker 2: and then repeating, creating this oral memory. And then at

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Speaker 2: some point in time, they started writing things down on

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Speaker 2: bits and pieces of material. And then at some later

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Speaker 2: point in time, they started putting them together into a book.

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Speaker 2: And then, you know, of course, that leads to the

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Speaker 2: manuscripts that we have today. It's easy to think of

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Speaker 2: an orally transmitted thing, but of course, the only record

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Speaker 2: we have of any orality is the residue, which would

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Speaker 2: be the manuscript or the coins or the inscriptions on

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Speaker 2: buildings and things like that.

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Speaker 1: So the common narrative about the preservation of the Quran,

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Speaker 1: because if I ask the common narrative of the preservation of, say,

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Speaker 1: the New Testament, people might put a number on it

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Speaker 1: and don't stick me to this. Some might say 97,

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Speaker 1: some might say 99%. We can reconstruct with confidence just

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Speaker 1: historically speaking what the original said. So any changes would

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Speaker 1: be in the copies, not of the original itself.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: What is the story we hear about the preservation of

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Speaker 1: the Quran in terms of if I hold a Quran

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Speaker 1: in my hand, of course in Arabic as opposed to

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Speaker 1: being translated, what is the assumption that the common Muslim

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Speaker 1: is told to believe about the Quran we hold today?

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Speaker 2: The– With respect to the transmission and the copies that

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Speaker 2: were made of it and so forth, would be that

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Speaker 2: there's no variation whatsoever, that this is exactly what was

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Speaker 2: first written down.

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Speaker 1: Okay.

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Speaker 2: And so, yes, so we're thinking back to, as Christians,

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Speaker 2: as you said, we're trying to get back to the earliest,

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Speaker 2: as close as we can to the earliest as they

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Speaker 2: were first written. But one of the interesting things about

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Speaker 2: Muhammad is that he... was never recorded to have done

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Speaker 2: any miracles. In the Quran, later traditions attribute his son, right?

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Speaker 2: Later traditions attributed certain things. If you read the biography

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Speaker 2: of Muhammad, you're going to find him doing some things

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Speaker 2: here and there. But I don't think a lot of

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Speaker 2: people consider that those are things that he actually did.

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Speaker 2: And so when the early generations of Muslims started to

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Speaker 2: be challenged about that tradition, particular fact. You know, he's

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Speaker 2: claiming to be the prophet, but he didn't do any miracles.

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Speaker 2: They started looking around for validation. And so at some point,

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Speaker 2: the perfect transmission of the Quran itself came to be

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Speaker 2: seen as God's stamp of approval on his revelation because

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Speaker 2: it was a miracle that something could be preserved so perfectly.

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Speaker 2: And the theological assertion that God does preserve his revelations

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Speaker 2: has been asserted as well.

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Speaker 1: So this is really significant. This sounds like the founding

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Speaker 1: miracle is its preservation. In many ways, we'd say the

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Speaker 1: founding miracle is the death and resurrection of Jesus. So

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Speaker 1: Paul is like, Jesus is not risen, 1 Corinthians 15.

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Speaker 1: Our beliefs are false. We're to be pitied, still in

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Speaker 1: our sins. So our faith is tied to that historical event.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like the demonstrative miracle that's attributed to Muhammad

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Speaker 1: is the preservation of the Korans. So if I'm right

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Speaker 1: about that, and we find changes in early copies, that

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Speaker 1: gets right at the heart of Islam and trusting this

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Speaker 1: ancient book. Is that a fair way to put it?

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Speaker 2: Well, it certainly gets right at the heart of what

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Speaker 2: many Muslims today believe. Now, these beliefs about the Quran

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Speaker 2: don't go back to the very beginning. If you look

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Speaker 2: at the early literatures, yeah, in the early centuries, they

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Speaker 2: were far more comfortable with the variation within the manuscripts.

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Speaker 2: They even wrote books about them, you know, documenting about

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Speaker 2: the masahif, the manuscripts, and the peculiarities about them and

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Speaker 2: stuff like that. So this is a more modern development,

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Speaker 2: but yes, it is something that is seen as pretty

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Speaker 2: essential to the Quran and to the faith of many

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Speaker 2: Muslims today.

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Speaker 1: Okay, that's great. That's really helpful. So you write in

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Speaker 1: your book, you say we have a good number of

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Speaker 1: early manuscripts of the Quran. How many do we have?

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Speaker 1: where are they? And you, you say there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of early manuscripts. Like, why do you think we have

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Speaker 1: so many early ones? And what do we mean by early?

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Speaker 2: I'm not sure we actually, well, by early, I mean

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Speaker 2: probably within the first, uh, hundred, I, I sort of

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Speaker 2: cast my net as near as I could figure within

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Speaker 2: the first, uh, two or 300 years of, um, Muhammad's time. Um,

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Speaker 2: the whole dating of manuscripts is a, is a, another, uh,

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Speaker 2: question and so forth. But, um, It's sort of an

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Speaker 2: evolving awareness of what stuff was. One of the reasons

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Speaker 2: that this stuff hasn't been done is the availability hasn't

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Speaker 2: been there. We can thank the fact that I can

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Speaker 2: do this work. We can thank people who traveled in

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Speaker 2: the 1800s to Egypt and went through the book stalls

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Speaker 2: and tried to buy old manuscripts and brought them back

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Speaker 2: and donated them to Cambridge or the British Library or whatever,

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Speaker 2: things like that. So we've got that situation. And now

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Speaker 2: we have the digitization of many of these objects. So

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Speaker 2: they're becoming more available. Your question is how many do

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Speaker 2: we have? And even this past weekend we were talking,

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Speaker 2: there are maybe a dozen early significant number of pages, manuscripts,

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Speaker 2: maybe within the first hundred years or so. There are

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Speaker 2: probably more than that because I know that there are

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Speaker 2: collections in Iraq and Iran. There's one important early manuscript

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Speaker 2: that was identified within the last 15, 20 years by

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Speaker 2: a scholar in Iran that is the subject of my

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Speaker 2: forthcoming book. And a facsimile edition was published in 2024

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Speaker 2: by Professor Kurimi Nia, who was the one who noticed

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Speaker 2: it in the library in Mashhad and said, oh, this is...

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Speaker 2: So I think there are probably quite a few things

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Speaker 2: that we don't know about so i want to be

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Speaker 2: cautious about saying we only have this many manuscripts.

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Speaker 1: No that's great i appreciate the caution on that. So

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Speaker 1: a lot of them are two, 300 years removed, but

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Speaker 1: maybe within a hundred years, we have a dozen or so.

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Speaker 2: I think we probably have, we have a lot of fragments.

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Speaker 2: Of course, you know, a fragment could be a tiny

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Speaker 2: thing or many, many pages. I think we have quite

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Speaker 2: a few within the early period. But one comment I

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Speaker 2: would just make about that before we go on is that, um,

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Speaker 2: One of the differences is that the Quran was written

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Speaker 2: from a very early stage a lot on parchment, which

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Speaker 2: is much more durable over the centuries.

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Speaker 1: And what is parchment?

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Speaker 2: Parchment is animal skin.

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Speaker 1: As opposed to a codice or a scroll or papyri.

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Speaker 2: Papyri is made from the palm stalks that are overlaid.

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Speaker 2: And those will not last as many centuries as parchment

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Speaker 2: in those kind of climates typically.

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Speaker 1: That makes sense why they would be more preserved. So

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Speaker 1: I got a gift for you before we go on.

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Speaker 1: I just had to give it to you because you

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Speaker 1: study in Islam and you study manuscripts. This is from–

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Speaker 1: I started work with a– really a ministry called Manuscript Shop,

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Speaker 1: and this is a P66, which is probably around AD 200,

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Speaker 1: so end of the second century. And it's got a

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Speaker 1: huge portion of the Gospel of John, including the prologue.

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Speaker 1: You can open it up, take a quick look at

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Speaker 1: it if you want to. But it's a facsimile. So

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Speaker 1: it's obviously a replica. This is not the real P66.

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Speaker 1: That would be like tens of millions of dollars.

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Speaker 2: Oh, my goodness.

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Speaker 1: But it's actually– I mean it's really as close as

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Speaker 1: you could get. And the reason I wanted to give you– Oh,

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Speaker 1: look at that. The reason I wanted to give you

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Speaker 1: this one is because– obviously within Islam, like you said

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Speaker 1: earlier in the Quran, deny the claim that Jesus is God. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: That claim is made. And yet in John 1, 1,

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Speaker 1: same wording as P 75, roughly the same time, same

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Speaker 1: as in our Bibles today and began was the word.

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Speaker 1: The word was with God and the word was God.

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Speaker 1: That's an early one that I thought you might enjoy.

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Speaker 2: That is amazing. How did they, so they actually reproduced the, the, uh,

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Speaker 2: they do it itself with a, holes in it. That's incredible. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's, it's made on real papyri and just professionally done.

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Speaker 1: And so I've made them available, this one and a,

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Speaker 1: and a few others, P45 and P46 people can get

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Speaker 1: and some others.

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Speaker 2: Wow.

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Speaker 1: So that's very special. Wanted that for coming out here.

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Speaker 1: Wanted to give that to you.

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Speaker 2: Thank you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So let's, let's jump back in. So we're going

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Speaker 1: to get to some specific examples of these changes, but

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to set up for people so they understand

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Speaker 1: how significant these are. Caliph Uthman, the third caliph, played

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Speaker 1: a significant role in securing a kind of a common Quran.

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Speaker 1: What happened and how important is he a figure in

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Speaker 1: terms of the story of reconstructing the original Quran?

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Speaker 2: Okay. So we're going to go– for the moment, we're

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Speaker 2: going to assume that we're operating– That this is true,

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Speaker 2: that what Caliph Uthman did is true.

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Speaker 1: Oh, okay.

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Speaker 2: Which is, there's some question about that, because the earliest,

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Speaker 2: the historiography of Islam is, these things didn't start to

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Speaker 2: be written down until about 165 years later. Okay, so,

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Speaker 2: but what's generally reported, and there's some evidence within the

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Speaker 2: manuscripts themselves that some event like this may have happened

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Speaker 2: as well. But after the death of Muhammad in 632 AD,

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Speaker 2: There was a period of time when there were successors,

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Speaker 2: and the caliph were the successors of Muhammad in leading

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Speaker 2: the Muslim Ummah. At the time, they weren't called Muslim.

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Speaker 2: They called the community of believers. Usman was the third caliph,

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Speaker 2: and meanwhile, the Islamic conquests were going on. They were

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Speaker 2: spreading out, and along with the conquest go deaths in

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Speaker 2: battle and things like that. And one battle... a number

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Speaker 2: of the people, we are told, who had memorized the

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Speaker 2: Quran were killed in battle. And this raised some concern

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Speaker 2: among the people there that the Quran would be lost.

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Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm going back. I'm conflating a couple different stories.

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Speaker 2: So that's the way the Quran came to be written down.

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Speaker 2: There was some disagreement among the people who, among some

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Speaker 2: of the soldiers who are fighting off in, I believe, Azerbaijan.

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Speaker 2: over the pronunciation, over the recitation of the Quran, what was,

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Speaker 2: how it was supposed to be said. And this got

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Speaker 2: back and they thought, well, we better make, you know,

431
00:24:24,770 --> 00:24:27,129
Speaker 2: determine what the Quran is. So the Caliph Uthman commissioned

432
00:24:27,930 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 2: the production of an official copy or multiple official copies,

433
00:24:32,340 --> 00:24:37,780
Speaker 2: in fact. And they went ahead with this project, produced

434
00:24:37,820 --> 00:24:40,139
Speaker 2: their official copies, sent them off to the capital cities

435
00:24:40,240 --> 00:24:44,020
Speaker 2: of the empire at the time, and had the variant

436
00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:49,000
Speaker 2: copies destroyed. In other words, suppressed but destroyed. So that's

437
00:24:49,080 --> 00:24:53,660
Speaker 2: the first major standardization event after the initial writing down

438
00:24:53,700 --> 00:24:54,159
Speaker 2: of the Quran.

439
00:24:54,960 --> 00:24:57,669
Speaker 1: So how far removed, if you said this, sorry I

440
00:24:57,690 --> 00:24:59,929
Speaker 1: missed it, you said he's the third caliph, so how

441
00:25:00,010 --> 00:25:03,530
Speaker 1: far are we removed from 632? How far is it?

442
00:25:03,530 --> 00:25:05,330
Speaker 2: 656 is when he died, so it was within that

443
00:25:05,390 --> 00:25:08,129
Speaker 2: time in the 650s, about 20 years.

444
00:25:09,780 --> 00:25:11,900
Speaker 1: Oh, so it's really, really close. So we don't have

445
00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:16,430
Speaker 1: any manuscripts from within that window before he did this,

446
00:25:16,590 --> 00:25:18,409
Speaker 1: as far as what you're aware of, possibly.

447
00:25:18,570 --> 00:25:21,609
Speaker 2: We might. In fact, there's a palimpsest that is fairly

448
00:25:21,650 --> 00:25:22,770
Speaker 2: famous now, the Son of Palimpsest.

449
00:25:22,790 --> 00:25:24,910
Speaker 1: And define what a palimpsest is for people.

450
00:25:25,030 --> 00:25:28,040
Speaker 2: Of course, yeah. So a palimpsest is not a word

451
00:25:28,060 --> 00:25:31,720
Speaker 2: that we use a lot in regular speech. I learned

452
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:33,520
Speaker 2: what it was through this work.

453
00:25:33,540 --> 00:25:33,790
Speaker 1: But....

454
00:25:36,220 --> 00:25:38,720
Speaker 2: You know, at the time in ancient times, you don't

455
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:41,090
Speaker 2: just go down to Staples and buy a ream of

456
00:25:41,420 --> 00:25:44,550
Speaker 2: parchments to write your Quran copies on. You have to

457
00:25:45,369 --> 00:25:47,909
Speaker 2: kill an animal, go through the process of preparing the

458
00:25:48,310 --> 00:25:50,790
Speaker 2: page and so forth. And so it's a costly and

459
00:25:50,810 --> 00:25:56,210
Speaker 2: time consuming process. Because of this, people would often wash

460
00:25:56,340 --> 00:26:01,659
Speaker 2: off and reuse parchments, either because they wanted to put

461
00:26:01,700 --> 00:26:04,760
Speaker 2: something more important on something that was, you know, not

462
00:26:04,920 --> 00:26:07,850
Speaker 2: seen as needing to be preserved or because the thing

463
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:11,110
Speaker 2: that was being washed off or scraped off was seen

464
00:26:11,190 --> 00:26:13,669
Speaker 2: to be incorrect and needed to be corrected. We don't

465
00:26:13,690 --> 00:26:17,590
Speaker 2: know the reasons in every case. But the sonopalmsist is

466
00:26:18,270 --> 00:26:22,590
Speaker 2: one which this was done with. It was washed off

467
00:26:22,630 --> 00:26:26,639
Speaker 2: or scraped off. And over the centuries, the chemicals of

468
00:26:26,660 --> 00:26:28,860
Speaker 2: the original ink have brought back a shadow of the

469
00:26:29,060 --> 00:26:30,780
Speaker 2: underlying text, of the original text.

470
00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:31,340
Speaker 1: Oh, wow.

471
00:26:32,380 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 2: And as it happens, the top text is Quranic material

472
00:26:36,100 --> 00:26:40,810
Speaker 2: and the underlying text is also Quranic material. However, the

473
00:26:40,850 --> 00:26:48,390
Speaker 2: underlying text is not, is variant, is significantly variant from

474
00:26:48,430 --> 00:26:52,610
Speaker 2: the Quran that we have today. So that has been

475
00:26:52,970 --> 00:26:56,180
Speaker 2: suspected as being a pre-hythmonic version.

476
00:26:56,600 --> 00:26:59,590
Speaker 1: You're a very careful scholar because you say suspected, and

477
00:26:59,609 --> 00:27:01,390
Speaker 1: you don't want to overplay your hand. I love that.

478
00:27:01,450 --> 00:27:05,429
Speaker 1: But it seems like we have a handwritten copy of

479
00:27:05,710 --> 00:27:10,710
Speaker 1: an early Quran on parchment, but it seems beneath it,

480
00:27:11,170 --> 00:27:15,510
Speaker 1: there was an earlier written Quran, and there's differences between

481
00:27:15,530 --> 00:27:19,770
Speaker 1: the one corrections that were made. That's the challenge. And

482
00:27:19,830 --> 00:27:24,530
Speaker 1: so those corrections could date back to the pre- Caliph

483
00:27:24,850 --> 00:27:28,310
Speaker 1: Uthman time that changed it. We can't definitively show that.

484
00:27:29,330 --> 00:27:30,010
Speaker 2: Okay.

485
00:27:30,090 --> 00:27:32,460
Speaker 1: I think that makes sense. I'm tracking with you. Okay.

486
00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:35,400
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit more. I think maybe

487
00:27:35,420 --> 00:27:38,140
Speaker 1: you've answered this, but tell us exactly what you researched.

488
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:41,979
Speaker 1: A third of your life, you're going in and chronicling

489
00:27:42,020 --> 00:27:43,760
Speaker 1: and doing what? What does this look like? Like lay

490
00:27:43,800 --> 00:27:44,649
Speaker 1: it out there for us.

491
00:27:46,150 --> 00:27:48,190
Speaker 2: It's actually not that complicated what I've done. Okay.

492
00:27:48,330 --> 00:27:48,630
Speaker 1: All right.

493
00:27:49,030 --> 00:27:50,870
Speaker 2: Everybody is like, wow, it's so amazing what you've done.

494
00:27:50,910 --> 00:27:55,810
Speaker 2: But it's pretty mechanical if you– I'm like, wow, is

495
00:27:55,869 --> 00:27:59,709
Speaker 2: it really that impressive? But I go through page by

496
00:27:59,730 --> 00:28:02,730
Speaker 2: page and I look for something that is clearly not

497
00:28:02,780 --> 00:28:07,440
Speaker 2: original on the page. Some correction. Something erased. Something added

498
00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:10,740
Speaker 2: after in a different ink or a different nib after

499
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:14,010
Speaker 2: the fact. That kind of stuff. And once I've identified it,

500
00:28:14,680 --> 00:28:18,150
Speaker 2: I go through. through, and these, you know, the manuscripts

501
00:28:18,190 --> 00:28:19,689
Speaker 2: don't have a heading at the top that says this

502
00:28:19,770 --> 00:28:24,310
Speaker 2: is Surah 5, 6, or whatever. You have to figure

503
00:28:24,350 --> 00:28:27,090
Speaker 2: out what part of the Quran it is. So there are,

504
00:28:27,109 --> 00:28:29,969
Speaker 2: you know, I have to find an identifiable words. Many

505
00:28:29,990 --> 00:28:33,169
Speaker 2: of these manuscripts also don't have the, even in the

506
00:28:33,230 --> 00:28:35,910
Speaker 2: Arabic text, there are dots and marks above and below

507
00:28:35,950 --> 00:28:40,160
Speaker 2: that tell you the pronunciation and the exact letters. Many

508
00:28:40,180 --> 00:28:42,660
Speaker 2: of these manuscripts just have the, what we call the rasam,

509
00:28:42,700 --> 00:28:45,350
Speaker 2: the skeletal text. So it's a little bit more difficult.

510
00:28:45,450 --> 00:28:49,030
Speaker 2: Even for a modern Arabic speaker, you can't immediately see

511
00:28:49,090 --> 00:28:53,290
Speaker 2: what every word is. So I'll identify a word or

512
00:28:53,310 --> 00:28:55,390
Speaker 2: a couple of words that I can, you know, recognize

513
00:28:55,430 --> 00:28:57,750
Speaker 2: on the page and then go through the Quran and,

514
00:28:58,010 --> 00:29:01,390
Speaker 2: and find where those words exist using a concordance and

515
00:29:01,410 --> 00:29:03,940
Speaker 2: so forth and find out what the passage is, identify it,

516
00:29:03,970 --> 00:29:08,830
Speaker 2: describe it and, uh, and document it in either, you know,

517
00:29:08,850 --> 00:29:12,110
Speaker 2: for my books or for, uh, Quran Gateway, which is a, uh,

518
00:29:13,770 --> 00:29:15,510
Speaker 2: digital tool that we've developed. We put it in there

519
00:29:15,570 --> 00:29:17,729
Speaker 2: so that people can go and reference it. And what

520
00:29:17,750 --> 00:29:21,570
Speaker 2: I'm really looking for is eventually, after documenting many of these,

521
00:29:21,630 --> 00:29:26,980
Speaker 2: is looking for patterns. And the significant thing would be

522
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:32,540
Speaker 2: to see if there's a correction that is theologically significant, obviously,

523
00:29:32,820 --> 00:29:35,970
Speaker 2: or if there are multiple corrections in different manuscripts at

524
00:29:36,010 --> 00:29:38,450
Speaker 2: the same word or the same passage.

525
00:29:39,570 --> 00:29:42,700
Speaker 1: So what's in to me is the way you described it,

526
00:29:43,320 --> 00:29:46,200
Speaker 1: the details, you're right, seems like somebody could go through

527
00:29:46,380 --> 00:29:49,660
Speaker 1: and compare these and find it. But the patience and

528
00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 1: the time and commitment to do this is where I

529
00:29:52,020 --> 00:29:54,440
Speaker 1: was like, wow, that takes a lot. You must have

530
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:58,640
Speaker 1: a unique personality to just work through details and chronicle carefully.

531
00:29:59,010 --> 00:30:01,270
Speaker 1: Does AI now help you in this research at all?

532
00:30:02,230 --> 00:30:05,209
Speaker 2: AI is a really interesting tool. Of course, we all

533
00:30:05,250 --> 00:30:08,310
Speaker 2: know the pitfalls of AI. But one thing that I

534
00:30:08,330 --> 00:30:15,100
Speaker 2: found it useful for lately is to shorten the time

535
00:30:15,140 --> 00:30:17,600
Speaker 2: that it takes me to reference something. Say, you know,

536
00:30:18,060 --> 00:30:20,180
Speaker 2: where else does this word occur in the Quran?

537
00:30:20,360 --> 00:30:20,840
Speaker 1: That makes sense.

538
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:23,620
Speaker 2: I would be opening a physical concordance versus things like that.

539
00:30:23,760 --> 00:30:27,750
Speaker 2: That's probably one of the most useful applications for me

540
00:30:27,770 --> 00:30:30,150
Speaker 2: at this point in this stuff. I think that there

541
00:30:30,230 --> 00:30:34,250
Speaker 2: is a strong possibility of, for example, machine learning for

542
00:30:34,330 --> 00:30:36,430
Speaker 2: reading that, you know, maybe there will come a day

543
00:30:36,450 --> 00:30:37,890
Speaker 2: when we can put the whole page in and have

544
00:30:37,930 --> 00:30:40,050
Speaker 2: it say, you know, tell me all the variants on

545
00:30:40,070 --> 00:30:42,150
Speaker 2: this page or things like that. I'm sure that day

546
00:30:42,190 --> 00:30:43,990
Speaker 2: is probably already here. I'm just not caught up to

547
00:30:44,010 --> 00:30:45,120
Speaker 2: it yet, but yes.

548
00:30:45,650 --> 00:30:48,080
Speaker 1: Have other people done this kind of work or similar

549
00:30:48,120 --> 00:30:50,980
Speaker 1: work before? Are you pioneering this? How much work has

550
00:30:51,020 --> 00:30:55,360
Speaker 1: been done textually on the Quran from a scholarly perspective,

551
00:30:56,460 --> 00:30:59,770
Speaker 1: in particular, somebody outside of Muslims doing it? Yeah.

552
00:31:00,510 --> 00:31:03,430
Speaker 2: Well, my mentor, the gentleman who first showed me that

553
00:31:03,540 --> 00:31:07,340
Speaker 2: paid picture of the correction on the page, his name

554
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:10,300
Speaker 2: was Keith Small. He passed away a number of years ago.

555
00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:15,020
Speaker 2: Also a believer, a wonderful man. And he wrote a

556
00:31:15,140 --> 00:31:19,560
Speaker 2: great book called Textual Criticism in Quran Manuscripts, which has

557
00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:24,060
Speaker 2: become a standard in work in the field now. Yeah.

558
00:31:25,020 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 2: There have been a number of people, probably a dozen,

559
00:31:27,240 --> 00:31:29,140
Speaker 2: you know, it's a handful of people. As you know,

560
00:31:29,160 --> 00:31:31,080
Speaker 2: as you get more specialized, you get a narrower number

561
00:31:31,100 --> 00:31:36,660
Speaker 2: of people working on things. But most people have been

562
00:31:36,700 --> 00:31:41,070
Speaker 2: more broadly focused on textual criticism generally than just on corrections.

563
00:31:41,150 --> 00:31:44,530
Speaker 2: So that's kind of my narrow emphasis. But those people

564
00:31:44,550 --> 00:31:47,150
Speaker 2: who are doing textual criticism have been taking note of

565
00:31:47,170 --> 00:31:50,010
Speaker 2: corrections as well, but it's just not been, you know,

566
00:31:50,030 --> 00:31:51,390
Speaker 2: it's been alongside everything else.

567
00:31:51,970 --> 00:31:53,510
Speaker 1: Do you have any sense of how much work has

568
00:31:53,530 --> 00:31:56,610
Speaker 1: been done on textual transmission and corrections in the Quran

569
00:31:56,670 --> 00:31:58,940
Speaker 1: compared to, say, the New Testament, just in terms of

570
00:31:59,020 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 1: how long it's been going on, the amount of it?

571
00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:03,600
Speaker 1: Is there any way to compare those?

572
00:32:03,620 --> 00:32:11,750
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say that this work is just lagging behind.

573
00:32:11,770 --> 00:32:16,610
Speaker 2: It's lagging behind. The critics, especially the Germans, started out

574
00:32:16,690 --> 00:32:20,630
Speaker 2: and were really going after, I think, to really try

575
00:32:20,650 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 2: to discredit the Bible for a couple hundred years ago.

576
00:32:23,780 --> 00:32:25,340
Speaker 2: And the Bible, as we know, has stood up very

577
00:32:25,380 --> 00:32:29,200
Speaker 2: well under that type of scrutiny. For whatever reason, the

578
00:32:29,220 --> 00:32:33,610
Speaker 2: Quran has been sort of left, hasn't been entirely left alone,

579
00:32:33,650 --> 00:32:38,010
Speaker 2: but it's been largely kind of left off limits from

580
00:32:38,030 --> 00:32:40,390
Speaker 2: this type of study. Not off limits, I won't say that,

581
00:32:40,430 --> 00:32:42,550
Speaker 2: but people haven't really gone at it with the gusto

582
00:32:43,230 --> 00:32:47,000
Speaker 2: that they went after at the Bible. So I think

583
00:32:47,020 --> 00:32:49,990
Speaker 2: we're getting there. And it's beginning. It's kind of exciting

584
00:32:50,010 --> 00:32:51,890
Speaker 2: to be at the front of that wave.

585
00:32:51,910 --> 00:32:56,209
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Could there be, and I'm totally speculating, could

586
00:32:56,230 --> 00:32:58,950
Speaker 1: there be some fear tied to this just because of

587
00:32:59,550 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: when people draw, for example, the cartoons of Mohammed, some

588
00:33:03,640 --> 00:33:07,980
Speaker 1: people have suffered physically for that? there's a precedent of this?

589
00:33:08,060 --> 00:33:09,980
Speaker 1: Is there a certain fear, like I might put my

590
00:33:10,060 --> 00:33:13,390
Speaker 1: family and my life at risk if I'm criticizing a book? Like,

591
00:33:13,450 --> 00:33:15,410
Speaker 1: is that a piece of it for you and or others?

592
00:33:15,670 --> 00:33:19,110
Speaker 2: You mean, could the death penalty for doing something possibly

593
00:33:19,170 --> 00:33:20,250
Speaker 2: be a deterrent to doing it?

594
00:33:20,990 --> 00:33:23,110
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one way that you could put it, or

595
00:33:23,150 --> 00:33:25,230
Speaker 1: like a, I don't know, like a fatwa on your

596
00:33:25,310 --> 00:33:29,730
Speaker 1: life because you're criticizing a holy book that people revere

597
00:33:29,810 --> 00:33:32,210
Speaker 1: and hold deeply and kind of saying, oh, wait a minute,

598
00:33:32,310 --> 00:33:34,510
Speaker 1: you know, if we look behind the curtain here, Yeah.

599
00:33:34,550 --> 00:33:35,510
Speaker 1: Something else is going on.

600
00:33:35,570 --> 00:33:37,650
Speaker 2: No, it's, it's a very real thing. And I, I mean,

601
00:33:37,670 --> 00:33:41,180
Speaker 2: I kind of joke about it because, um, even when

602
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 2: I was getting ready to publish this first book, even

603
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:47,980
Speaker 2: I'm going at it from a purely scholarly perspective, I

604
00:33:48,020 --> 00:33:52,050
Speaker 2: didn't know we, uh, my wife and I, you know,

605
00:33:52,770 --> 00:33:54,130
Speaker 2: didn't know what was around the corner. You know, I

606
00:33:54,350 --> 00:33:57,010
Speaker 2: knew I was publishing something that was, you know, it's

607
00:33:57,070 --> 00:34:00,969
Speaker 2: in the pictures, it's all there. It's, uh, it's nothing. But, um,

608
00:34:01,620 --> 00:34:02,920
Speaker 2: you know, was I going to have to go into

609
00:34:02,960 --> 00:34:06,219
Speaker 2: hiding the next week or month or whatever? Um, and

610
00:34:06,260 --> 00:34:08,520
Speaker 2: as it turns out, it was, it's, it's all been fine.

611
00:34:09,160 --> 00:34:11,180
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think that that type of fear, I

612
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:15,870
Speaker 2: noticed it's real. And one other thing that I'll say

613
00:34:15,910 --> 00:34:20,250
Speaker 2: about that, Sean, is I've thought about these things a

614
00:34:20,390 --> 00:34:24,189
Speaker 2: lot and I've actually, I've compared it to the, to

615
00:34:24,250 --> 00:34:30,239
Speaker 2: the Berlin wall. And here's why. Um, The Berlin Wall,

616
00:34:30,300 --> 00:34:32,920
Speaker 2: as you know, was not built to keep people out

617
00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:35,840
Speaker 2: of the Soviet Union or out of East Germany. It

618
00:34:35,860 --> 00:34:38,700
Speaker 2: was built because they recognized that if there was no

619
00:34:38,760 --> 00:34:42,340
Speaker 2: barrier there, that people would flee. And so when I

620
00:34:42,390 --> 00:34:44,890
Speaker 2: look at the death penalty for leaving Islam or for

621
00:34:44,930 --> 00:34:50,430
Speaker 2: criticizing Islam's most sensitive, either Muhammad or the Quran, I

622
00:34:50,489 --> 00:34:53,110
Speaker 2: see that as the greatest evidence of the weakness of

623
00:34:53,150 --> 00:34:54,090
Speaker 2: the ideology itself.

624
00:34:54,130 --> 00:34:54,570
Speaker 1: Wow.

625
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:58,020
Speaker 2: You don't have to erect that kind of barrier to

626
00:34:58,080 --> 00:35:03,719
Speaker 2: keep people in something that is self-evidently true. So if

627
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:05,460
Speaker 2: people can remember that, I think, you know, when you

628
00:35:05,500 --> 00:35:08,660
Speaker 2: see people engaging in these kind of, you know, essentially

629
00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:11,400
Speaker 2: killing somebody for leaving Islam or for criticizing, that is

630
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:15,919
Speaker 2: a form of terrorism. You're creating terror to prevent people

631
00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:17,680
Speaker 2: from doing the type of action that you don't want

632
00:35:17,719 --> 00:35:21,880
Speaker 2: them to do. So just remember that, you know, when

633
00:35:21,900 --> 00:35:24,670
Speaker 2: you see that happening, That that is what people are

634
00:35:24,710 --> 00:35:27,620
Speaker 2: telling you about what they believe about the strength and

635
00:35:27,719 --> 00:35:30,360
Speaker 2: or weakness of their object that they're protecting.

636
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:34,940
Speaker 1: That's a profound comparison because I remember when the Berlin

637
00:35:34,980 --> 00:35:38,800
Speaker 1: Wall came down. I remember that well. We're probably roughly

638
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:41,230
Speaker 1: the same age. You don't have to give me any specifics.

639
00:35:41,910 --> 00:35:43,489
Speaker 1: But the idea is not to keep people out. It's

640
00:35:43,530 --> 00:35:47,110
Speaker 1: to keep people in. Well, you know, it kind of

641
00:35:47,130 --> 00:35:51,339
Speaker 1: reminds me of, you know, an old lawyer joke. That's like,

642
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:53,819
Speaker 1: if you have the facts, argue the facts. If you

643
00:35:53,860 --> 00:35:56,870
Speaker 1: don't preach with the gusto of a reformer and use

644
00:35:56,930 --> 00:36:01,189
Speaker 1: emotion and some other means to persuade people, well, that

645
00:36:01,390 --> 00:36:04,150
Speaker 1: acts as a threat to keep people from just seeing

646
00:36:04,190 --> 00:36:06,770
Speaker 1: the truth. And that's why I think, I mean, in

647
00:36:06,810 --> 00:36:09,870
Speaker 1: my experience, Christians are like, let's look at the early manuscripts.

648
00:36:09,989 --> 00:36:13,190
Speaker 1: I hope we find more. We have nothing to hide here. Now,

649
00:36:13,230 --> 00:36:15,780
Speaker 1: there's some challenges we have to address. I'm not saying

650
00:36:15,820 --> 00:36:18,660
Speaker 1: it's all neat and clean, but we invite that comparison.

651
00:36:18,700 --> 00:36:21,339
Speaker 1: We're not afraid of the facts. And it seems like

652
00:36:21,380 --> 00:36:25,219
Speaker 1: there's a very different take when it comes to early manuscripts.

653
00:36:25,260 --> 00:36:25,540
Speaker 1: There is.

654
00:36:25,560 --> 00:36:28,900
Speaker 2: We're interested in truth. As Christians, like, I don't want

655
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:30,580
Speaker 2: to— do you want to believe something that's not true?

656
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:31,779
Speaker 1: No chance. No.

657
00:36:32,040 --> 00:36:37,140
Speaker 2: I mean, your dad famously was, you know, he was

658
00:36:37,200 --> 00:36:39,170
Speaker 2: going to take something apart, and he found, this is

659
00:36:39,730 --> 00:36:42,109
Speaker 2: so evidently true that I have to follow it. And

660
00:36:42,410 --> 00:36:45,750
Speaker 2: that would be the case in both directions. What we

661
00:36:45,790 --> 00:36:48,910
Speaker 2: find with Islam is many Muslims are coming from more,

662
00:36:48,930 --> 00:36:52,770
Speaker 2: not a truth-falsehood community, But an honor shame type of culture.

663
00:36:52,810 --> 00:36:57,430
Speaker 2: And so it's much more about preserving honor, regardless of

664
00:36:57,469 --> 00:36:58,069
Speaker 2: whether it's true.

665
00:36:59,850 --> 00:37:02,450
Speaker 1: All right. This is the longest interview I've done where

666
00:37:02,469 --> 00:37:05,090
Speaker 1: we've waited to actually get to the details because I

667
00:37:05,090 --> 00:37:09,300
Speaker 1: have so many questions for you. But you have 20

668
00:37:09,300 --> 00:37:11,700
Speaker 1: examples in here and your research coming out. I think

669
00:37:11,719 --> 00:37:14,540
Speaker 1: you said there's thousands of examples of corrections. Is that

670
00:37:14,780 --> 00:37:15,259
Speaker 1: is that right?

671
00:37:16,260 --> 00:37:19,529
Speaker 2: There are thousands that I've documented at this point. The

672
00:37:19,590 --> 00:37:22,129
Speaker 2: next book that's coming out has, I think it's 219

673
00:37:22,130 --> 00:37:26,290
Speaker 2: or something around in that range. So about 10 times

674
00:37:26,330 --> 00:37:28,799
Speaker 2: as many corrections as are in this book. Okay.

675
00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:30,460
Speaker 1: So I asked you to pick 20 that were just

676
00:37:30,620 --> 00:37:33,080
Speaker 1: somewhat easy, or not pick 20, pick three out of

677
00:37:33,340 --> 00:37:34,960
Speaker 1: the 20. I guess you could pick outside of it.

678
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:39,210
Speaker 1: They're kind of illustrative. Easy to understand, interesting, relevant. So

679
00:37:39,250 --> 00:37:42,009
Speaker 1: these are just three of at least 20. 200 more

680
00:37:42,030 --> 00:37:44,940
Speaker 1: are coming out. There's thousands of these. So I don't

681
00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:46,740
Speaker 1: even know where you're going with this. I'm super interested.

682
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:49,359
Speaker 1: But let's go example number one. Explain to us the

683
00:37:49,380 --> 00:37:52,860
Speaker 1: kind of Quranic correction that you've documented.

684
00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:58,589
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah. This is from Surah 6, verse 99. There

685
00:37:58,770 --> 00:38:03,070
Speaker 2: is a— this is a manuscript. It's a fairly small manuscript

686
00:38:03,170 --> 00:38:05,790
Speaker 2: from probably the late 8th century, would be my guess—

687
00:38:06,480 --> 00:38:09,600
Speaker 2: or the mid-8th century, that is, about 100 years after Muhammad.

688
00:38:10,580 --> 00:38:15,560
Speaker 2: And this manuscript fragment has about 12 pages in it,

689
00:38:16,610 --> 00:38:19,410
Speaker 2: and it has many corrections, but it also has many

690
00:38:19,450 --> 00:38:23,730
Speaker 2: places where the manuscript itself remains out of conformity with

691
00:38:23,989 --> 00:38:26,070
Speaker 2: the Quran that we have today. It's a very interesting

692
00:38:26,150 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 2: little fragment. And on this page that I'm showing here,

693
00:38:29,500 --> 00:38:30,840
Speaker 2: it has.

694
00:38:33,140 --> 00:38:35,120
Speaker 2: A section that is not corrected, so I'm not even

695
00:38:35,239 --> 00:38:37,259
Speaker 2: dealing with a correction, which is the main thing that

696
00:38:37,300 --> 00:38:39,840
Speaker 2: I do, but I'm showing you a place on the

697
00:38:39,860 --> 00:38:45,980
Speaker 2: page where there are just different words in this place. So,

698
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:51,799
Speaker 2: the verse says, here indeed are signs for a people

699
00:38:51,820 --> 00:39:03,259
Speaker 2: who believe, and the word in question is or the

700
00:39:03,280 --> 00:39:06,640
Speaker 2: words in question, are to a people. That's the way

701
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:09,820
Speaker 2: the Quran reads today, the Arabic word. It's four letters.

702
00:39:10,880 --> 00:39:15,900
Speaker 2: And in this manuscript, though, it says something different. It

703
00:39:15,920 --> 00:39:21,530
Speaker 2: has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, nine letters,

704
00:39:21,590 --> 00:39:29,330
Speaker 2: three words. It's lakum in kuntum. And it makes sense

705
00:39:29,350 --> 00:39:32,070
Speaker 2: in the pat in the verse it would read instead

706
00:39:32,130 --> 00:39:34,750
Speaker 2: of here indeed are signs for a people who believe

707
00:39:35,510 --> 00:39:39,230
Speaker 2: it reads um here indeed are signs for you if

708
00:39:39,350 --> 00:39:44,779
Speaker 2: you are believers okay so it's you know it's it's

709
00:39:45,280 --> 00:39:49,549
Speaker 2: is it theologically significant Not necessarily, but is it theologically

710
00:39:49,610 --> 00:39:52,529
Speaker 2: significant if you embrace the idea that the Quran has

711
00:39:52,550 --> 00:39:57,450
Speaker 2: been perfectly preserved in a single transmission form, whatever, over

712
00:39:57,489 --> 00:40:00,550
Speaker 2: all the centuries? So pretty interesting.

713
00:40:00,969 --> 00:40:02,759
Speaker 1: Okay, I got that. That makes a lot of sense.

714
00:40:02,860 --> 00:40:05,589
Speaker 1: So when it comes to the New Testament, some might

715
00:40:05,660 --> 00:40:11,140
Speaker 1: say that the authors had some variance to capture what's

716
00:40:11,180 --> 00:40:15,270
Speaker 1: called the Ipsissima principle. I'm trying to remember the term

717
00:40:15,310 --> 00:40:17,950
Speaker 1: for this, like the word, the meaning itself, and then

718
00:40:17,989 --> 00:40:20,590
Speaker 1: the words that are used to communicate the meaning.

719
00:40:20,610 --> 00:40:21,030
Speaker 2: Yeah.

720
00:40:21,550 --> 00:40:26,410
Speaker 1: Because it's God speaking through prophets and say Mark's personality

721
00:40:26,469 --> 00:40:29,910
Speaker 1: different than Luke's personality. Yeah. But the Quran is saying

722
00:40:29,989 --> 00:40:35,680
Speaker 1: it's the very words themselves that have been preserved perfectly

723
00:40:35,840 --> 00:40:39,440
Speaker 1: and with complete accuracy. And so even though the point

724
00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:44,120
Speaker 1: is not radically different theologically, the words differ. undermines the

725
00:40:44,180 --> 00:40:47,660
Speaker 1: claim that it has been preserved exactly. Is that fair?

726
00:40:47,680 --> 00:40:49,440
Speaker 1: Am I explaining this in a way that.

727
00:40:49,620 --> 00:40:52,940
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. There's a term in the Quran itself.

728
00:40:53,980 --> 00:40:58,490
Speaker 2: The Arabic term is lauch mafuz. It means a preserved tablet.

729
00:40:58,570 --> 00:41:00,990
Speaker 2: It's an idea similar to the... Again, once again, we're

730
00:41:01,010 --> 00:41:04,730
Speaker 2: back to Mormonism. The idea that there is a tablet

731
00:41:04,790 --> 00:41:10,300
Speaker 2: in heaven that is a template that has been... transmitted

732
00:41:10,340 --> 00:41:13,419
Speaker 2: down here, it is a set form, and word by word,

733
00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:16,470
Speaker 2: dot by dot, letter by letter, syllable by syllable, has

734
00:41:16,489 --> 00:41:20,310
Speaker 2: been passed to Muhammad. And that's not the way that,

735
00:41:20,790 --> 00:41:26,029
Speaker 2: as Christians, we understand biblical inspiration. It's God-breathed, is that.

736
00:41:26,150 --> 00:41:31,120
Speaker 2: The writers were inspired. They were humans. They communicated God's

737
00:41:31,140 --> 00:41:35,050
Speaker 2: Word through their writing. But But we do still believe

738
00:41:35,150 --> 00:41:39,089
Speaker 2: that those writers wrote something specific and that we try

739
00:41:39,110 --> 00:41:41,049
Speaker 2: to get back to exactly what it is that they wrote.

740
00:41:41,070 --> 00:41:42,129
Speaker 1: What they first wrote. Yeah.

741
00:41:42,150 --> 00:41:45,240
Speaker 2: We don't think that, you know, John wrote multiple different

742
00:41:45,260 --> 00:41:47,940
Speaker 2: versions of, you know, 1-1.

743
00:41:48,080 --> 00:41:48,660
Speaker 1: Right. Good.

744
00:41:49,260 --> 00:41:51,480
Speaker 2: So it'd be the same case here that you have

745
00:41:51,500 --> 00:41:55,799
Speaker 2: two different versions of this exact verse. Okay. Yeah.

746
00:41:56,080 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 1: That's helpful. So I don't want to go too far aside,

747
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:02,529
Speaker 1: but there's debate sometimes whether or not the Quran is

748
00:42:03,130 --> 00:42:10,870
Speaker 1: is this eternally self-existing word apart from Allah, which challenges

749
00:42:10,890 --> 00:42:16,029
Speaker 1: Allah's self-existence and aseity. We don't have to get into

750
00:42:16,090 --> 00:42:19,150
Speaker 1: that debate, but what you're saying is what's often believed

751
00:42:19,210 --> 00:42:22,640
Speaker 1: is the Quran is eternal, and then he just wrote

752
00:42:22,780 --> 00:42:28,219
Speaker 1: down what already existed before in the exact words of

753
00:42:28,500 --> 00:42:32,339
Speaker 1: its eternal form. So now that we see Different forms

754
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:33,660
Speaker 1: in the early manuscripts.

755
00:42:33,680 --> 00:42:34,660
Speaker 2: It challenges that doctrine.

756
00:42:34,719 --> 00:42:35,600
Speaker 1: Challenges that doctrine.

757
00:42:35,660 --> 00:42:36,540
Speaker 2: Okay. All right.

758
00:42:36,600 --> 00:42:37,120
Speaker 1: That's helpful.

759
00:42:37,280 --> 00:42:39,320
Speaker 2: Just if I can take a quick aside. Please.

760
00:42:39,340 --> 00:42:39,460
Speaker 1: Yeah.

761
00:42:39,480 --> 00:42:45,319
Speaker 2: Because you brought it up. The interesting challenge about, with

762
00:42:45,340 --> 00:42:47,640
Speaker 2: the Quran that we're just remembering the past day or so,

763
00:42:48,340 --> 00:42:51,870
Speaker 2: is that the Quran affirms Jesus, affirms certain titles that

764
00:42:51,890 --> 00:42:54,770
Speaker 2: he has. It calls him Messiah. It admits that he's Messiah.

765
00:42:54,810 --> 00:42:57,350
Speaker 2: The Quran doesn't really know what Messiah means. It also

766
00:42:57,390 --> 00:42:59,390
Speaker 2: calls him the word of God, the word of Allah.

767
00:43:00,250 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 2: It acknowledges that. that term, that title for him. But

768
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:07,819
Speaker 2: it says that Jesus is not eternal. He's not God.

769
00:43:07,900 --> 00:43:11,320
Speaker 2: He's just a prophet and so forth. But the question becomes,

770
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:13,989
Speaker 2: if he is the word of God, as the Bible says,

771
00:43:14,030 --> 00:43:16,970
Speaker 2: but also as the Quran affirms, and he's not eternal,

772
00:43:17,670 --> 00:43:22,790
Speaker 2: was God mute before Jesus was created? That's a theological

773
00:43:22,830 --> 00:43:27,140
Speaker 2: problem that the Quran sort of stumbles into, I would say, or,

774
00:43:27,160 --> 00:43:30,259
Speaker 2: and I didn't I heard that from somebody else over

775
00:43:30,280 --> 00:43:31,879
Speaker 2: the weekend. I thought, that's a really interesting point.

776
00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:35,330
Speaker 1: That is really interesting. I'm like mega tempted to go

777
00:43:35,390 --> 00:43:38,170
Speaker 1: down that road, but we will let that sit. Sorry, sorry. No,

778
00:43:38,210 --> 00:43:40,910
Speaker 1: maybe circle back to that. I love that. If people

779
00:43:40,930 --> 00:43:42,850
Speaker 1: watch right now, they're like, wait a minute, explore that,

780
00:43:42,890 --> 00:43:45,260
Speaker 1: go into detail. Maybe we'll have you back or somebody

781
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:48,280
Speaker 1: who specializes in that to explain that. Because it sounds

782
00:43:48,320 --> 00:43:51,420
Speaker 1: like this is a serious challenge for the chronic depiction

783
00:43:51,440 --> 00:43:54,950
Speaker 1: of who Jesus is and a potential inconsistency. But let's

784
00:43:54,969 --> 00:43:58,000
Speaker 1: get back to the inconsistency in the manuscripts that you

785
00:43:58,060 --> 00:44:01,980
Speaker 1: have seen and found with your own eyes. So first

786
00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:06,000
Speaker 1: example is helpful. Give us your second example, if you will, Dan. Okay.

787
00:44:06,380 --> 00:44:08,840
Speaker 2: Before I choose a second example, can we do four?

788
00:44:08,940 --> 00:44:11,130
Speaker 1: You know what? You're the boss. We can do that.

789
00:44:11,170 --> 00:44:13,529
Speaker 2: Let's do it. Let's do this one next because I

790
00:44:13,550 --> 00:44:16,410
Speaker 2: just want to– here's just a simple word that is

791
00:44:16,450 --> 00:44:22,919
Speaker 2: included that is not in the current Quran. Okay. And

792
00:44:23,020 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 2: the text, as it is written today, says, Shall I

793
00:44:25,560 --> 00:44:29,660
Speaker 2: seek a judge other than Allah? When he has sent

794
00:44:30,180 --> 00:44:36,770
Speaker 2: his book clearly expounded. And as it is in this manuscript,

795
00:44:36,810 --> 00:44:39,890
Speaker 2: it includes what looks like the word din, which means religion.

796
00:44:40,730 --> 00:44:54,219
Speaker 2: Which means, shall I seek another religion? I don't know. Yeah,

797
00:44:54,400 --> 00:44:56,940
Speaker 2: shall I seek a religion other than that of Allah?

798
00:44:56,980 --> 00:44:59,880
Speaker 2: I'm kind of paraphrasing it here. So the word religion,

799
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:04,040
Speaker 2: in other words, is present in this manuscript. It does

800
00:45:04,100 --> 00:45:06,410
Speaker 2: look like it is written with a different ink, so

801
00:45:06,430 --> 00:45:08,050
Speaker 2: it looks like it might be written over an erasure,

802
00:45:08,070 --> 00:45:10,750
Speaker 2: but it's in a space that is, clearly there's a

803
00:45:10,810 --> 00:45:15,229
Speaker 2: space there between the two words that have no space

804
00:45:15,270 --> 00:45:18,279
Speaker 2: between them in the text as it is today. So

805
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:19,580
Speaker 2: people can look at that, and we don't need to

806
00:45:19,620 --> 00:45:21,740
Speaker 2: discuss everything about what it means, but just to understand

807
00:45:21,780 --> 00:45:24,549
Speaker 2: that there's some variation there. We can move on from that.

808
00:45:24,570 --> 00:45:26,469
Speaker 1: Okay, before we go to the third, the variation would

809
00:45:26,510 --> 00:45:29,790
Speaker 1: just be whether it's the word religion, which could change

810
00:45:29,870 --> 00:45:33,529
Speaker 1: potentially the meaning, how you understand it. That's a significant word. Yes.

811
00:45:33,770 --> 00:45:36,670
Speaker 1: Between the manuscripts themselves. Yes. Okay, all right.

812
00:45:36,710 --> 00:45:39,890
Speaker 2: It's a different word. It's a verbal difference between the

813
00:45:39,910 --> 00:45:41,009
Speaker 2: manuscript and the— Fair enough.

814
00:45:41,070 --> 00:45:43,390
Speaker 1: So the first one is a different way of saying

815
00:45:44,090 --> 00:45:47,620
Speaker 1: kind of the same thing, but a correction— here's a

816
00:45:47,640 --> 00:45:50,420
Speaker 1: whole nother word that's not there. So it's almost a

817
00:45:50,460 --> 00:45:52,520
Speaker 1: different kind of correction, so to speak. Yes.

818
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:52,960
Speaker 2: Yeah.

819
00:45:53,060 --> 00:45:55,000
Speaker 1: Okay, good. All right. Let's go to three and then

820
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:56,719
Speaker 1: we'll do four just for you. We'll do five if

821
00:45:56,760 --> 00:45:57,910
Speaker 1: you want to. Okay.

822
00:45:57,930 --> 00:45:58,770
Speaker 2: We'll see where we go.

823
00:45:58,830 --> 00:45:59,069
Speaker 1: Yes.

824
00:45:59,910 --> 00:46:02,130
Speaker 2: So here's one that I've, I have talked about before,

825
00:46:02,170 --> 00:46:04,069
Speaker 2: but it's, I just think it's so interesting. This is

826
00:46:04,110 --> 00:46:06,150
Speaker 2: from the Osana manuscripts. This is one of the earliest

827
00:46:06,270 --> 00:46:08,790
Speaker 2: ones that I, that I found and I wrote about

828
00:46:08,810 --> 00:46:09,890
Speaker 2: in my doctoral dissertation.

829
00:46:10,770 --> 00:46:12,450
Speaker 1: And it's a page that, hang on, before you get

830
00:46:12,469 --> 00:46:14,460
Speaker 1: to the page, when do these ones date? What's the

831
00:46:14,500 --> 00:46:16,239
Speaker 1: backstory of this manuscript?

832
00:46:16,520 --> 00:46:18,940
Speaker 2: Actually, I, I'm not sure the date of this. I

833
00:46:18,980 --> 00:46:23,790
Speaker 2: would say this is probably, this is a horizontal format.

834
00:46:23,810 --> 00:46:27,729
Speaker 2: I mean, I would say, you know, I'm just guessing

835
00:46:27,770 --> 00:46:29,710
Speaker 2: maybe mid-8th century, something like that.

836
00:46:29,730 --> 00:46:33,190
Speaker 1: So this is mid-700s. Yeah, maybe. You die 632, so

837
00:46:33,230 --> 00:46:35,270
Speaker 1: maybe a century after roughly. Okay, that's fair.

838
00:46:35,450 --> 00:46:38,100
Speaker 2: It's one of the earlier forms. So there are two,

839
00:46:38,360 --> 00:46:40,680
Speaker 2: a couple of factors that you would take into consideration.

840
00:46:40,739 --> 00:46:44,319
Speaker 2: It's the dimension of the page. So Kron's began with

841
00:46:44,400 --> 00:46:47,490
Speaker 2: a vertical format page and then they, the style changed

842
00:46:47,510 --> 00:46:49,419
Speaker 2: to where it was a horizontal format and then changed

843
00:46:49,460 --> 00:46:51,680
Speaker 2: back to vertical. Okay. And then there's the script style.

844
00:46:52,420 --> 00:46:52,660
Speaker 2: Got it.

845
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:53,560
Speaker 1: All right.

846
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:56,380
Speaker 2: Okay, so this page has corrections on it in a

847
00:46:56,400 --> 00:47:00,739
Speaker 2: couple of different places. There's the word Allah was left

848
00:47:00,840 --> 00:47:02,719
Speaker 2: out at first writing, and then it was inserted at

849
00:47:02,780 --> 00:47:05,609
Speaker 2: one point. You bring it back to what it is,

850
00:47:06,130 --> 00:47:09,210
Speaker 2: conformity with what it is now. It's got another place

851
00:47:09,250 --> 00:47:12,230
Speaker 2: where there's a correction near the, I don't know, maybe

852
00:47:12,310 --> 00:47:15,740
Speaker 2: seventh or eighth line down there. in the margin that, again,

853
00:47:15,900 --> 00:47:18,400
Speaker 2: brings it into line with the Quran that we have today.

854
00:47:19,140 --> 00:47:20,859
Speaker 2: But if you go down to the very last line

855
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:22,799
Speaker 2: of the page, and there's an arrow here pointing to

856
00:47:22,840 --> 00:47:26,170
Speaker 2: where the spot is, there are three words that are

857
00:47:26,250 --> 00:47:31,390
Speaker 2: omitted from this manuscript. And whoever saw those other deficiencies

858
00:47:31,550 --> 00:47:34,089
Speaker 2: on the page didn't seem to think that there was

859
00:47:34,110 --> 00:47:37,380
Speaker 2: a problem on this last line. In other words, it

860
00:47:37,410 --> 00:47:40,440
Speaker 2: seems that they thought that this page was correct as

861
00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:44,060
Speaker 2: it was first written. Which tells me that there is

862
00:47:44,420 --> 00:47:50,830
Speaker 2: possibly a variant tradition, maybe memory or oral transmission or

863
00:47:50,910 --> 00:47:53,469
Speaker 2: whatever it is. Somebody at some point thought that this

864
00:47:53,510 --> 00:47:57,570
Speaker 2: was correct. And the words that are missing are sab'in

865
00:47:57,590 --> 00:48:01,050
Speaker 2: maratan fa, 70 times. The verse is talking about forgiveness.

866
00:48:02,700 --> 00:48:07,700
Speaker 2: And the words that are missing are 70 times.

867
00:48:07,700 --> 00:48:09,980
Speaker 1: 70 times, anything like Matthew 18?

868
00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:14,410
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. Exactly. So the very interesting thing about this

869
00:48:14,450 --> 00:48:18,130
Speaker 2: is that this verse has some intertextuality with the New Testament.

870
00:48:19,150 --> 00:48:22,819
Speaker 2: And is it possible that at some point somebody was

871
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:25,930
Speaker 2: reading this verse about, some Muslim was reading this verse

872
00:48:25,969 --> 00:48:31,000
Speaker 2: about forgiveness and thought, hmm, you know, there's a connection there.

873
00:48:31,060 --> 00:48:33,160
Speaker 2: Maybe this is supposed to have 70 times in here

874
00:48:33,260 --> 00:48:35,540
Speaker 2: or whatever. Maybe the, I don't know what the nature

875
00:48:35,580 --> 00:48:38,380
Speaker 2: of that situation would be, but there is clearly some

876
00:48:38,739 --> 00:48:40,779
Speaker 2: thematic intertextuality with this.

877
00:48:41,110 --> 00:48:45,450
Speaker 1: Okay, so the first one was changing the words, similar meaning,

878
00:48:45,489 --> 00:48:48,430
Speaker 1: but changing the words. Again, a challenge when we're told

879
00:48:48,469 --> 00:48:52,770
Speaker 1: that we have the Quran in the exact words delivered

880
00:48:53,030 --> 00:48:56,790
Speaker 1: from heaven to us. The second one is lacking a

881
00:48:56,830 --> 00:49:01,950
Speaker 1: keyword like religion itself. This is three words that are missing,

882
00:49:02,010 --> 00:49:04,410
Speaker 1: which seems to be a little bit more significant. Now,

883
00:49:04,630 --> 00:49:06,790
Speaker 1: why that's the case and what's going on, this is

884
00:49:06,850 --> 00:49:11,520
Speaker 1: where we're having guesses or maybe educated guesses. But minimally,

885
00:49:11,540 --> 00:49:13,540
Speaker 1: if we're in the middle of the eighth century, that

886
00:49:13,560 --> 00:49:16,990
Speaker 1: says we go back earlier, there are these debates about

887
00:49:17,050 --> 00:49:19,969
Speaker 1: what would be included, what wouldn't be included, how it matched.

888
00:49:20,170 --> 00:49:22,750
Speaker 1: up with Matthew 18. Like we can start to piece

889
00:49:22,790 --> 00:49:25,469
Speaker 1: together reasons why it changed. But the key is there's

890
00:49:25,570 --> 00:49:31,760
Speaker 1: three significant words that are lacking in this early mid-8th

891
00:49:31,800 --> 00:49:35,799
Speaker 1: century Quran compared to the modern-day Quran that we have.

892
00:49:36,040 --> 00:49:38,969
Speaker 2: Yes. And as far as the dating, like when the–

893
00:49:39,320 --> 00:49:42,680
Speaker 2: I mean I'm just– Yeah, sure. Guessing at the time

894
00:49:42,719 --> 00:49:45,900
Speaker 2: period of that. But before we go into the last one,

895
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:48,959
Speaker 2: I'll just mention this fact. So obviously people are seeing

896
00:49:49,000 --> 00:49:52,210
Speaker 2: my work and then responding to it. I've had a Turkish,

897
00:49:52,270 --> 00:49:54,910
Speaker 2: one of the top scholars in Turkey, produced a book

898
00:49:55,190 --> 00:49:58,469
Speaker 2: refuting my little book. A whole book. A whole book, yeah. Hardcover,

899
00:49:58,550 --> 00:50:03,230
Speaker 2: full color, in Turkish and in English, and refutation of

900
00:50:03,270 --> 00:50:06,040
Speaker 2: Daniel Allen Brubaker. And he goes through point by point

901
00:50:06,219 --> 00:50:10,380
Speaker 2: of each example of these things. Somebody else in Arabic,

902
00:50:10,480 --> 00:50:14,180
Speaker 2: I wrote a dissertation on my book as well. So

903
00:50:14,680 --> 00:50:18,570
Speaker 2: it's getting response from... That's good. Yeah, it's good. It's

904
00:50:18,590 --> 00:50:23,550
Speaker 2: a great compliment to get that. But I want viewers

905
00:50:23,610 --> 00:50:26,290
Speaker 2: to be aware that, of course, the natural answer, or

906
00:50:26,350 --> 00:50:28,029
Speaker 2: one of the natural answers to things like this is

907
00:50:28,050 --> 00:50:30,810
Speaker 2: to go, okay, do other manuscripts that are at the

908
00:50:30,830 --> 00:50:34,660
Speaker 2: time or earlier contain the expected... In other words, the

909
00:50:34,680 --> 00:50:36,640
Speaker 2: Quran that we have today, the texts that we have today.

910
00:50:37,300 --> 00:50:39,359
Speaker 2: And so what he did, which is what I would

911
00:50:39,410 --> 00:50:41,590
Speaker 2: do if I was trying to criticize me from his perspective,

912
00:50:42,410 --> 00:50:45,810
Speaker 2: is he went and found other manuscripts that indeed did

913
00:50:45,950 --> 00:50:49,930
Speaker 2: preserve the expected text. So that says something, that the

914
00:50:49,969 --> 00:50:54,890
Speaker 2: expected text did exist in many cases before. But what

915
00:50:54,910 --> 00:50:57,060
Speaker 2: it doesn't say is go all the way to say

916
00:50:57,120 --> 00:51:00,690
Speaker 2: that there was no variant tradition. You've got this sort

917
00:51:00,730 --> 00:51:03,130
Speaker 2: of complexity going on, and that's just, you know, I

918
00:51:03,170 --> 00:51:05,509
Speaker 2: know that we're kind of just hitting a surface area here,

919
00:51:05,570 --> 00:51:10,029
Speaker 2: but the main point is that there's more complexity to

920
00:51:10,070 --> 00:51:14,060
Speaker 2: these questions than most people assume, and than many Muslims assume,

921
00:51:14,080 --> 00:51:15,839
Speaker 2: and this can be very jarring for people who have

922
00:51:15,880 --> 00:51:18,820
Speaker 2: thought that there's just no question whatsoever.

923
00:51:19,440 --> 00:51:23,300
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. So he's able to find around

924
00:51:23,380 --> 00:51:27,600
Speaker 1: this time, roughly, maybe 8th century, the current reading that

925
00:51:27,660 --> 00:51:55,600
Speaker 1: we have in some early... Yeah. challenges that notion and says,

926
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:58,219
Speaker 1: how do you know that the right one was selected?

927
00:51:58,540 --> 00:52:02,080
Speaker 1: We're not even supposed to find these corrections at all

928
00:52:02,500 --> 00:52:05,000
Speaker 1: if the story we're told is true. Is that fair?

929
00:52:05,219 --> 00:52:08,270
Speaker 2: That's very fair. And what you just mentioned also raises

930
00:52:08,310 --> 00:52:13,950
Speaker 2: the question of Uthman. Was he inspired to know what

931
00:52:13,989 --> 00:52:16,810
Speaker 2: was the correct version of that? Did he pick the

932
00:52:16,850 --> 00:52:20,799
Speaker 2: right one? And nowhere do these sources suggest that he

933
00:52:20,860 --> 00:52:24,460
Speaker 2: was The initial caliphs are called the rightly guided caliphs.

934
00:52:24,480 --> 00:52:27,620
Speaker 2: So there was some sense that Allah was giving them

935
00:52:27,739 --> 00:52:30,830
Speaker 2: wisdom for the work that they were doing. But the

936
00:52:30,930 --> 00:52:33,549
Speaker 2: idea of inspiration to know what was and was not

937
00:52:33,590 --> 00:52:36,120
Speaker 2: the Quran is, you know, kind of an open question,

938
00:52:36,180 --> 00:52:36,880
Speaker 2: interesting question.

939
00:52:37,460 --> 00:52:40,680
Speaker 1: That's super interesting. Okay. Okay. Let's go to your fourth example.

940
00:52:40,920 --> 00:52:43,359
Speaker 2: This one is actually a little bit less interesting but

941
00:52:43,420 --> 00:52:47,040
Speaker 2: more dramatic and very visually obvious. And I saved it

942
00:52:47,060 --> 00:52:49,620
Speaker 2: for the last because it's not yet published. It's an

943
00:52:49,680 --> 00:52:52,110
Speaker 2: example from the new book that's coming out hopefully in November.

944
00:52:52,210 --> 00:52:56,350
Speaker 2: So this is from the Mashad Codex, which is that

945
00:52:56,430 --> 00:53:00,970
Speaker 2: one in present-day Iran. And it is an erasure between

946
00:53:01,140 --> 00:53:05,839
Speaker 2: two words that currently don't have anything in between them.

947
00:53:06,540 --> 00:53:08,440
Speaker 2: Maybe it's, I don't know the dimensions of it, but

948
00:53:08,560 --> 00:53:10,500
Speaker 2: it's maybe about an inch or an inch and a

949
00:53:10,500 --> 00:53:14,880
Speaker 2: half long. And something was clearly written there. And actually,

950
00:53:14,920 --> 00:53:17,540
Speaker 2: we think that we can make a pretty good guess

951
00:53:17,580 --> 00:53:23,850
Speaker 2: at what was there. The Arabic word is subhanahu ama yushrikun.

952
00:53:24,650 --> 00:53:29,489
Speaker 2: Glory be to him concerning that which they ascribe to him,

953
00:53:29,530 --> 00:53:32,150
Speaker 2: the partners that they ascribe to him. They're focused on,

954
00:53:32,210 --> 00:53:35,430
Speaker 2: they're talking about the oneness of Allah and You know,

955
00:53:35,710 --> 00:53:39,270
Speaker 2: far be it from him to, you know, they're expressing

956
00:53:39,330 --> 00:53:42,510
Speaker 2: a disdain that anybody would describe partners to them, by

957
00:53:42,550 --> 00:53:45,969
Speaker 2: which they mean Jesus, of course, or like that. But

958
00:53:46,030 --> 00:53:49,029
Speaker 2: in between these two words, glory be to him and

959
00:53:49,140 --> 00:53:54,540
Speaker 2: concerning that which, there is a gap. I'll show it

960
00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:56,339
Speaker 2: to you on my screen there so you can see

961
00:53:56,380 --> 00:53:57,240
Speaker 2: what we're talking about.

962
00:53:57,480 --> 00:53:57,919
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.

963
00:53:57,940 --> 00:53:59,320
Speaker 2: There's an erasure leaving a gap.

964
00:53:59,340 --> 00:53:59,500
Speaker 1: Yeah.

965
00:54:02,780 --> 00:54:04,540
Speaker 2: The reason that we have an idea of what was

966
00:54:04,600 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 2: originally written here is that elsewhere, actually, this is the

967
00:54:11,260 --> 00:54:15,020
Speaker 2: only verse in the Quran that preserves these two words

968
00:54:15,340 --> 00:54:20,360
Speaker 2: without some intervening word. And that intervening word is wa ta'ala.

969
00:54:20,880 --> 00:54:26,920
Speaker 2: And so, glory and exalted be him concerning that which

970
00:54:26,960 --> 00:54:30,750
Speaker 2: they ascribe to him. So that and exalted. is present

971
00:54:30,910 --> 00:54:33,049
Speaker 2: in this formulation. Remember at the beginning, I told you

972
00:54:33,070 --> 00:54:36,479
Speaker 2: that Quran is very formulaic. It repeats phrases all the time.

973
00:54:37,200 --> 00:54:43,700
Speaker 2: And so often you have the phrases, they're stuck in memory.

974
00:54:43,739 --> 00:54:46,350
Speaker 2: So probably what happened here, and it's, again, I admit

975
00:54:46,390 --> 00:54:47,950
Speaker 2: that it's least interesting, but I wanted you to see

976
00:54:47,969 --> 00:54:51,430
Speaker 2: a sampling of the type of things. So what we

977
00:54:51,450 --> 00:54:54,490
Speaker 2: have here is probably a scribe writing along. And writing

978
00:54:54,530 --> 00:54:57,230
Speaker 2: this first word and going, oh, yeah, this is the

979
00:54:57,290 --> 00:54:59,250
Speaker 2: word that comes after it because I remember it from

980
00:54:59,290 --> 00:55:01,730
Speaker 2: those other verses that have that word in this spot.

981
00:55:02,550 --> 00:55:05,290
Speaker 2: And then later after the manuscript has been written, realizing

982
00:55:05,950 --> 00:55:08,149
Speaker 2: or somebody realized, oh, it doesn't belong here at this

983
00:55:08,250 --> 00:55:10,410
Speaker 2: particular instance of this verse and then erasing it.

984
00:55:11,120 --> 00:55:14,800
Speaker 1: So once in the past, we have things added or missing.

985
00:55:14,940 --> 00:55:17,640
Speaker 1: Here is an example of something that seems to have

986
00:55:17,680 --> 00:55:22,140
Speaker 1: been taken out of what was originally written as best

987
00:55:22,200 --> 00:55:22,759
Speaker 1: we can tell. Yeah.

988
00:55:23,560 --> 00:55:25,620
Speaker 2: And this would be a good example of what, just

989
00:55:25,640 --> 00:55:28,970
Speaker 2: to be fair, this probably would fall in the category

990
00:55:29,010 --> 00:55:36,430
Speaker 2: of a genuine mistake, a scribal mistake. Okay. So for

991
00:55:36,469 --> 00:55:38,649
Speaker 2: the apologetics folks who are watching this and so forth,

992
00:55:39,650 --> 00:55:43,239
Speaker 2: the goal of many people who are criticizing this work

993
00:55:43,300 --> 00:55:46,239
Speaker 2: is going to be to say all these corrections are

994
00:55:46,280 --> 00:55:50,759
Speaker 2: just mistakes. That would be the default. If you can

995
00:55:50,780 --> 00:55:53,319
Speaker 2: make the case for that, then that would be the hope.

996
00:55:54,550 --> 00:55:57,330
Speaker 2: My contention is, and my strong belief is, that some

997
00:55:57,350 --> 00:56:01,009
Speaker 2: of them are mistakes, obviously, because scribes are humans. But

998
00:56:01,030 --> 00:56:03,310
Speaker 2: a lot of them are clearly not mistakes. And the

999
00:56:03,450 --> 00:56:05,989
Speaker 2: page that has those two corrections in one spot and

1000
00:56:06,030 --> 00:56:08,049
Speaker 2: no correction in the other spot, I don't think that's

1001
00:56:08,090 --> 00:56:10,930
Speaker 2: a mistake. I think there's something there that somebody thought

1002
00:56:10,950 --> 00:56:11,630
Speaker 2: that that was correct.

1003
00:56:12,270 --> 00:56:16,029
Speaker 1: So it's not, okay, so there's a mistake, which is accidental,

1004
00:56:16,350 --> 00:56:21,879
Speaker 1: towards some intentional theological or other reason to change the text.

1005
00:56:22,380 --> 00:56:27,020
Speaker 1: And you think the kind of uh correction itself tells

1006
00:56:27,120 --> 00:56:28,900
Speaker 1: us something more is going on with that.

1007
00:56:28,900 --> 00:56:32,339
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah and it's case by case most of my

1008
00:56:32,940 --> 00:56:36,759
Speaker 2: energy and effort has been documenting rather than analyzing and

1009
00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:38,910
Speaker 2: there are thousands you know so it's just a matter

1010
00:56:39,090 --> 00:56:41,710
Speaker 2: of of looking at the stuff once you and sifting

1011
00:56:41,750 --> 00:56:43,290
Speaker 2: through it and making sense of it so there's a

1012
00:56:43,290 --> 00:56:44,650
Speaker 2: lot of work yet to be done but it's kind

1013
00:56:44,690 --> 00:56:46,170
Speaker 2: of exciting to exciting to be doing.

1014
00:56:46,190 --> 00:56:48,180
Speaker 1: Does that motivate you to do it? Or is it like,

1015
00:56:48,480 --> 00:56:50,819
Speaker 1: oh man, I've got another third of my life to

1016
00:56:50,860 --> 00:56:52,980
Speaker 1: go through this stuff. Like you get excited about doing that?

1017
00:56:53,580 --> 00:56:56,540
Speaker 2: I do. I know you get into, you know, in

1018
00:56:56,620 --> 00:56:58,219
Speaker 2: any work that you do, you get into sort of

1019
00:56:58,260 --> 00:57:00,290
Speaker 2: a flow of things. And, you know, when I go

1020
00:57:00,310 --> 00:57:03,290
Speaker 2: and visit these manuscripts, I hardly, I don't, I go

1021
00:57:03,330 --> 00:57:05,450
Speaker 2: to the bathroom, but I don't even take breaks for

1022
00:57:05,469 --> 00:57:08,170
Speaker 2: lunch often. I'll just work straight through all the library

1023
00:57:08,250 --> 00:57:10,529
Speaker 2: open hours because I, I want to get through all

1024
00:57:10,550 --> 00:57:13,270
Speaker 2: this material. It's really intense work sometimes, and it can

1025
00:57:13,430 --> 00:57:19,650
Speaker 2: be kind of mind-numbing, I would say, sometimes. But yeah,

1026
00:57:19,710 --> 00:57:20,450
Speaker 2: it's also exciting.

1027
00:57:22,130 --> 00:57:25,090
Speaker 1: You're a vanguard. You're a trailblazer for all this stuff,

1028
00:57:25,140 --> 00:57:27,180
Speaker 1: a pioneer, so to speak. Okay, so if I was

1029
00:57:27,200 --> 00:57:31,420
Speaker 1: to look at the New Testament, the two biggest debates

1030
00:57:31,600 --> 00:57:35,240
Speaker 1: would be John 7.53 through 8.11, woman at the well,

1031
00:57:35,940 --> 00:57:39,690
Speaker 1: and then the last verses in Mark. Yes. and the

1032
00:57:39,810 --> 00:57:43,300
Speaker 1: earliest manuscripts do not contain them. So P66, which I

1033
00:57:43,340 --> 00:57:47,320
Speaker 1: gave you, P75, doesn't have the story of John 7.53

1034
00:57:47,320 --> 00:57:49,960
Speaker 1: through 8.11. So a lot of scholars like Dan Wallace

1035
00:57:49,980 --> 00:57:52,100
Speaker 1: would say it's not in there. Now, that's not a

1036
00:57:52,520 --> 00:57:56,280
Speaker 1: problem for Christians because we believe there were mistakes made

1037
00:57:56,380 --> 00:58:02,010
Speaker 1: by certain scribes, some maybe intentional, maybe some accidental, but

1038
00:58:02,050 --> 00:58:04,750
Speaker 1: we have so many manuscripts, we compare them and try

1039
00:58:04,770 --> 00:58:07,880
Speaker 1: to get back to the original scriptures which is that

1040
00:58:07,960 --> 00:58:11,470
Speaker 1: which is the one that's inspired, so to speak.

1041
00:58:11,490 --> 00:58:11,850
Speaker 2: Correct.

1042
00:58:12,150 --> 00:58:14,770
Speaker 1: Explain one more time for people, now that we've come

1043
00:58:14,790 --> 00:58:19,290
Speaker 1: full circle, why are these corrections different for Islam and

1044
00:58:19,330 --> 00:58:22,930
Speaker 1: why are they more significant than the kind of differences

1045
00:58:22,970 --> 00:58:24,330
Speaker 1: we talk about with the New Testament?

1046
00:58:25,750 --> 00:58:30,460
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that it's just the fact that, well,

1047
00:58:33,450 --> 00:58:36,180
Speaker 2: There's so much about the early period of Islam that

1048
00:58:36,220 --> 00:58:40,560
Speaker 2: we don't know. So the early historiography people, there's a

1049
00:58:40,600 --> 00:58:44,380
Speaker 2: traditional story of the Quran, but we really don't have

1050
00:58:44,420 --> 00:58:49,610
Speaker 2: those sources written down until later. But why is it,

1051
00:58:51,950 --> 00:58:54,430
Speaker 2: why are these a problem? They're a problem because there's

1052
00:58:54,490 --> 00:59:02,340
Speaker 2: this sense that, sorry, I know that there's, I don't

1053
00:59:02,360 --> 00:59:04,730
Speaker 2: want to overcomplicate things. There are a couple different things

1054
00:59:04,770 --> 00:59:09,140
Speaker 2: going on. There's the theological idea that the Quran is

1055
00:59:09,180 --> 00:59:12,880
Speaker 2: perfectly preserved on the one hand. But then there's the

1056
00:59:12,940 --> 00:59:18,820
Speaker 2: whole entirely unexamined question of the Quran's origin to begin with.

1057
00:59:18,940 --> 00:59:22,660
Speaker 2: Was Muhammad even a prophet? And so forth. So those

1058
00:59:22,700 --> 00:59:26,670
Speaker 2: are two separate questions. But for the regular Muslim that

1059
00:59:26,690 --> 00:59:30,130
Speaker 2: you're going to be encountering and talking to, they very

1060
00:59:30,210 --> 00:59:35,270
Speaker 2: likely believe that Allah has preserved his word. And when

1061
00:59:35,470 --> 00:59:38,110
Speaker 2: it has not, when you see evidence that it has

1062
00:59:38,220 --> 00:59:43,040
Speaker 2: possibly not been preserved as it was first delivered, like

1063
00:59:43,060 --> 00:59:44,840
Speaker 2: we've already addressed the question of we don't even know

1064
00:59:44,880 --> 00:59:48,060
Speaker 2: if what the Quran is today is, you know, was

1065
00:59:48,080 --> 00:59:51,780
Speaker 2: Uthman inspired? Were the various steps along the way, do

1066
00:59:51,820 --> 00:59:54,380
Speaker 2: we know that what it was, what it is that

1067
00:59:54,420 --> 00:59:57,720
Speaker 2: we have is what they had back then? That's a

1068
00:59:57,720 --> 01:00:03,040
Speaker 2: big question in itself. But it can be very, very

1069
01:00:03,080 --> 01:00:06,120
Speaker 2: jarring for your Muslim friend to learn that these exist,

1070
01:00:06,200 --> 01:00:08,420
Speaker 2: even seeing the pictures or whatever. And I know of

1071
01:00:09,280 --> 01:00:14,440
Speaker 2: a number of people who have left Islam from having seen,

1072
01:00:14,460 --> 01:00:16,640
Speaker 2: have been contacted by people who have.

1073
01:00:19,160 --> 01:00:19,430
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1074
01:00:20,360 --> 01:00:24,870
Speaker 2: So that's the level of weight that this sense has now.

1075
01:00:25,660 --> 01:00:27,440
Speaker 2: I will say that I think in the next generation

1076
01:00:27,480 --> 01:00:29,720
Speaker 2: or so, now that this is becoming more public, that

1077
01:00:30,160 --> 01:00:35,130
Speaker 2: Islam is going to be kind of retooling and refining

1078
01:00:35,290 --> 01:00:40,990
Speaker 2: what the imams tell people because you don't want to

1079
01:00:41,390 --> 01:00:46,670
Speaker 2: be experiencing this exodus because you've just given them false information.

1080
01:00:47,370 --> 01:00:51,430
Speaker 1: So one response would be to say, you're mistaken. There

1081
01:00:51,690 --> 01:00:55,230
Speaker 1: are no corrections to the Quran, but that seems... Duly

1082
01:00:55,330 --> 01:00:58,350
Speaker 1: impossible since you've documented 20, 200 coming out.

1083
01:00:58,530 --> 01:00:58,710
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1084
01:00:58,850 --> 01:01:02,020
Speaker 1: Thousands are out. You can physically see them. The other

1085
01:01:02,040 --> 01:01:07,120
Speaker 1: would be to change the narrative about its perfect preservation. Yeah.

1086
01:01:07,420 --> 01:01:09,600
Speaker 1: And that's what's different when it comes to New Testament.

1087
01:01:09,980 --> 01:01:13,160
Speaker 1: We don't believe that the Quran floated down. I'm sorry,

1088
01:01:13,200 --> 01:01:15,770
Speaker 1: that the Bible floated down from heaven or existed in

1089
01:01:15,850 --> 01:01:19,410
Speaker 1: heaven before. And we have exactly what was written down.

1090
01:01:19,910 --> 01:01:22,690
Speaker 1: We believe that we have very close because the number

1091
01:01:22,710 --> 01:01:26,120
Speaker 1: of copies is the comparison of copies, how early they are.

1092
01:01:26,140 --> 01:01:28,100
Speaker 1: Then when it comes to the New Testament, we have

1093
01:01:28,140 --> 01:01:31,120
Speaker 1: a high degree of accuracy. We can hold its hand.

1094
01:01:31,620 --> 01:01:34,550
Speaker 1: But there's not a doctrine of perfect preservation that I

1095
01:01:34,610 --> 01:01:36,950
Speaker 1: think you're going to make from the scriptures. But there

1096
01:01:37,190 --> 01:01:39,250
Speaker 1: is in the Quran. So they're going to have to

1097
01:01:39,350 --> 01:01:43,250
Speaker 1: change that doctrine and admit some of these corrections moving forward.

1098
01:01:44,030 --> 01:01:46,709
Speaker 1: Seems like the response they're going to have to give

1099
01:01:46,790 --> 01:01:47,070
Speaker 1: to me.

1100
01:01:48,250 --> 01:01:51,110
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be, you're going to either find a

1101
01:01:51,150 --> 01:01:54,680
Speaker 2: way to say, What do we do with this? Or

1102
01:01:55,200 --> 01:01:58,860
Speaker 2: question again whether what we have is worthy of our faith.

1103
01:01:59,140 --> 01:02:02,500
Speaker 2: And I think that's a good question to be asking.

1104
01:02:02,920 --> 01:02:05,340
Speaker 1: So when people contact you, tell me what they say.

1105
01:02:06,020 --> 01:02:10,230
Speaker 1: What's the common email or phone call or in person?

1106
01:02:10,450 --> 01:02:13,410
Speaker 1: How does this sound from somebody who has a former Muslim?

1107
01:02:13,710 --> 01:02:17,510
Speaker 2: I see comments on my YouTube channel from different people.

1108
01:02:17,550 --> 01:02:21,910
Speaker 2: But there was one incident several years back. gentleman in

1109
01:02:22,110 --> 01:02:25,850
Speaker 2: London who sent me a message on Facebook and he said,

1110
01:02:25,870 --> 01:02:29,350
Speaker 2: thank you. I don't remember the exact wording, but he said,

1111
01:02:29,370 --> 01:02:31,890
Speaker 2: thank you for your book. He said, I was, he

1112
01:02:31,930 --> 01:02:35,530
Speaker 2: was already having doubts about Islam and he felt bad

1113
01:02:35,550 --> 01:02:37,170
Speaker 2: about that, but he knew he sensed that there was

1114
01:02:37,210 --> 01:02:39,169
Speaker 2: something wrong. And he said, and I saw your book

1115
01:02:39,230 --> 01:02:41,010
Speaker 2: and I, and I, and there it was in the

1116
01:02:41,050 --> 01:02:42,780
Speaker 2: pictures right in front of my face. And he said,

1117
01:02:42,820 --> 01:02:45,560
Speaker 2: I finally had what I needed to leave this. I

1118
01:02:45,600 --> 01:02:49,280
Speaker 2: forget what he said, but this wretched religion behind or

1119
01:02:49,320 --> 01:02:52,620
Speaker 2: something like that. And he left Islam. We started praying

1120
01:02:52,680 --> 01:02:55,540
Speaker 2: for him at the time and I maintained communication with him.

1121
01:02:55,600 --> 01:02:57,980
Speaker 2: And about a month and a half later, he became

1122
01:02:58,000 --> 01:02:58,880
Speaker 2: a Christian.

1123
01:02:59,400 --> 01:02:59,740
Speaker 1: Oh, wow.

1124
01:02:59,820 --> 01:03:02,459
Speaker 2: A lot of times people will leave Islam and become

1125
01:03:02,520 --> 01:03:04,420
Speaker 2: atheists or something. They're so disillusioned.

1126
01:03:04,440 --> 01:03:06,220
Speaker 1: It's true with Mormonism and other faiths too.

1127
01:03:06,780 --> 01:03:10,530
Speaker 2: So don't take for granted, you know, is the latter

1128
01:03:10,590 --> 01:03:14,450
Speaker 2: situation better than the former? You know, I think it's

1129
01:03:14,490 --> 01:03:18,110
Speaker 2: important to make available to people the truth of the

1130
01:03:18,150 --> 01:03:26,520
Speaker 2: gospel along the way. But the great thing about this

1131
01:03:26,540 --> 01:03:28,780
Speaker 2: situation is that it can just open that door for

1132
01:03:28,800 --> 01:03:29,600
Speaker 2: that conversation.

1133
01:03:30,400 --> 01:03:31,980
Speaker 1: I love that. By the way, if you're watching and

1134
01:03:32,040 --> 01:03:36,440
Speaker 1: you are a young aspiring apologist or scholar, Here's an

1135
01:03:36,600 --> 01:03:41,110
Speaker 1: area where we need people to step up, learn Arabic,

1136
01:03:41,250 --> 01:03:45,090
Speaker 1: learn manuscripts. This is a long road, but a meaningful,

1137
01:03:45,210 --> 01:03:49,830
Speaker 1: significant contribution, just to truth in general, but also to

1138
01:03:50,330 --> 01:03:52,780
Speaker 1: a way of serving the Lord. When you get towards

1139
01:03:52,800 --> 01:03:54,600
Speaker 1: the end, you have a conclusion, and you may have

1140
01:03:54,620 --> 01:03:56,580
Speaker 1: already answered this, so you can just say, I answer this,

1141
01:03:56,620 --> 01:03:58,800
Speaker 1: or repeat yourself, or add anything. But you say, what

1142
01:03:58,820 --> 01:04:03,670
Speaker 1: does the existence of these corrections mean? what do they mean?

1143
01:04:03,730 --> 01:04:05,450
Speaker 1: Last thing you consider in your book, did I, did

1144
01:04:05,470 --> 01:04:07,180
Speaker 1: we miss anything about what they mean?

1145
01:04:07,680 --> 01:04:11,360
Speaker 2: What did the, well, the existence of the corrections means that, um,

1146
01:04:13,400 --> 01:04:16,160
Speaker 2: that the, well, I don't know. I mean, I, I

1147
01:04:16,200 --> 01:04:20,230
Speaker 2: think the obvious thing is that it was, shouldn't be surprising,

1148
01:04:20,270 --> 01:04:24,330
Speaker 2: but it's human. They were transmitted humanly by, by human beings. What,

1149
01:04:24,390 --> 01:04:27,230
Speaker 2: what a surprise to describe would be a human being. Sure. Um,

1150
01:04:27,410 --> 01:04:33,740
Speaker 2: so there's, um, there's that, um, that the history of

1151
01:04:33,800 --> 01:04:38,040
Speaker 2: the Quran has a text, has a physical object, which

1152
01:04:39,700 --> 01:04:42,040
Speaker 2: Muslims will sometimes counter this by saying, oh, it was

1153
01:04:42,260 --> 01:04:45,620
Speaker 2: orally transmitted perfectly alongside this, so this doesn't even matter.

1154
01:04:45,840 --> 01:04:47,600
Speaker 2: That's one other way that you can try to get

1155
01:04:47,640 --> 01:04:52,880
Speaker 2: around it. If you encounter that objection, I would just say, well,

1156
01:04:53,140 --> 01:04:55,280
Speaker 2: how do we know what was orally transmitted apart from

1157
01:04:55,320 --> 01:04:59,000
Speaker 2: what was written down? So this is our, we don't have,

1158
01:04:59,320 --> 01:05:04,670
Speaker 2: you know... Audio recordings or vinyl of anybody reciting the Quran,

1159
01:05:04,690 --> 01:05:06,730
Speaker 2: what we do have are manuscripts, so that's our evidence.

1160
01:05:08,550 --> 01:05:10,350
Speaker 2: So yeah, it just means that the history of the

1161
01:05:10,370 --> 01:05:13,720
Speaker 2: Quran is a little bit more complex. Alongside that are

1162
01:05:14,340 --> 01:05:17,620
Speaker 2: all the theological questions. Sean, if I can just mention,

1163
01:05:17,680 --> 01:05:19,840
Speaker 2: it's theological, but there are two things that I've been

1164
01:05:19,880 --> 01:05:22,780
Speaker 2: thinking about a lot is, did you know that the

1165
01:05:22,820 --> 01:05:27,910
Speaker 2: name of God, Yahweh, exists in the Bible in all

1166
01:05:27,950 --> 01:05:28,990
Speaker 2: the books except Esther?

1167
01:05:29,010 --> 01:05:29,770
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

1168
01:05:30,500 --> 01:05:32,620
Speaker 2: It was revealed to Moses at the burning bush. He says,

1169
01:05:32,680 --> 01:05:36,930
Speaker 2: this is my name forever, Yahweh. 68, more than 6,800

1170
01:05:36,930 --> 01:05:43,590
Speaker 2: times in the Old Testament. But that's God's personal name. Now,

1171
01:05:43,790 --> 01:05:47,930
Speaker 2: if God has a personal name, he reveals it 6,800

1172
01:05:47,930 --> 01:05:53,030
Speaker 2: some times in the Bible. And then he sends another prophet.

1173
01:05:55,780 --> 01:05:57,480
Speaker 2: How many times do you think that name occurs in

1174
01:05:57,500 --> 01:05:57,800
Speaker 2: the Qur'an?

1175
01:05:59,950 --> 01:06:01,910
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a good question. I'm not even going to guess,

1176
01:06:01,950 --> 01:06:04,350
Speaker 1: but tell me. Zero. Not once.

1177
01:06:04,370 --> 01:06:07,610
Speaker 2: Not once. And it would be entirely possible to represent

1178
01:06:07,650 --> 01:06:14,330
Speaker 2: that in Arabic. So you have these internal evidences. Isn't

1179
01:06:14,350 --> 01:06:16,470
Speaker 2: that a little bit odd that you have somebody who's

1180
01:06:16,510 --> 01:06:18,770
Speaker 2: asserted to be the same author who doesn't even know

1181
01:06:19,110 --> 01:06:22,390
Speaker 2: or doesn't even mention his own name? There's another thing

1182
01:06:22,410 --> 01:06:24,970
Speaker 2: that doesn't occur in the Quran, and that is the

1183
01:06:26,410 --> 01:06:30,080
Speaker 2: idea of atonement. Would you say that's a central doctrine

1184
01:06:30,100 --> 01:06:30,500
Speaker 2: of the Bible?

1185
01:06:30,760 --> 01:06:33,140
Speaker 1: I would say that is one of the central, most

1186
01:06:33,200 --> 01:06:33,800
Speaker 1: important ones.

1187
01:06:33,820 --> 01:06:37,770
Speaker 2: From the very beginning, from the Passover through everything through

1188
01:06:37,810 --> 01:06:43,210
Speaker 2: Jesus and the whole thing. And the Quran is very

1189
01:06:43,430 --> 01:06:46,610
Speaker 2: emphatic in its rejection of that. No one shall bear

1190
01:06:46,650 --> 01:06:51,160
Speaker 2: the burden of another in the Quran. So these are

1191
01:06:51,200 --> 01:06:53,910
Speaker 2: just I know it's not the topic that we came

1192
01:06:53,950 --> 01:06:56,070
Speaker 2: to talk about, but these are just internal things all

1193
01:06:56,110 --> 01:06:58,810
Speaker 2: working together to give you, I think they're pieces of

1194
01:06:58,870 --> 01:07:01,710
Speaker 2: evidence that you can take and go, okay, does it

1195
01:07:01,750 --> 01:07:07,390
Speaker 2: make sense? Many Muslims automatically believe that Muhammad was the successor,

1196
01:07:07,410 --> 01:07:09,390
Speaker 2: that he is a prophet of Allah because it's just

1197
01:07:09,530 --> 01:07:13,490
Speaker 2: the central tenet of Islam. But, you know, raise that

1198
01:07:13,610 --> 01:07:14,130
Speaker 2: and test it.

1199
01:07:15,410 --> 01:07:18,190
Speaker 1: I love that. And what's interesting about the name Yahweh,

1200
01:07:18,230 --> 01:07:21,820
Speaker 1: of course, revealed in Exodus 3, I am... who I

1201
01:07:22,000 --> 01:07:26,540
Speaker 1: am 6,800 times in the old Testament, new Testament writers

1202
01:07:27,220 --> 01:07:28,960
Speaker 1: apply that name to Jesus.

1203
01:07:28,980 --> 01:07:31,610
Speaker 2: Now, of course, he applied it to himself.

1204
01:07:31,780 --> 01:07:34,430
Speaker 1: And he applies it to himself. Yeah, exactly. At least

1205
01:07:35,350 --> 01:07:39,090
Speaker 1: probably seven times directly in the gospel. John, most clearly

1206
01:07:39,130 --> 01:07:43,310
Speaker 1: in John eight 58, I am who I am. But

1207
01:07:43,330 --> 01:07:46,520
Speaker 1: then Paul does the same thing in Romans 10, nine.

1208
01:07:46,540 --> 01:07:50,900
Speaker 1: He says, you've confessed your mouth that Jesus is Lord. Mm-hmm. Kyrios,

1209
01:07:51,080 --> 01:07:54,030
Speaker 1: the Greek for Yahweh, believe in your heart that God,

1210
01:07:54,090 --> 01:07:57,370
Speaker 1: he's referring to Father raised from the dead, you will

1211
01:07:57,450 --> 01:08:01,350
Speaker 1: be saved. So the earliest documents we have, that I

1212
01:08:01,390 --> 01:08:03,610
Speaker 1: would argue we haven't done that here, are far more

1213
01:08:03,730 --> 01:08:10,100
Speaker 1: historically accurate and reliable than the Quranic account applies that

1214
01:08:10,240 --> 01:08:16,340
Speaker 1: name Yahweh to Jesus, and yet distinguishes him from the Father.

1215
01:08:17,140 --> 01:08:20,300
Speaker 1: That's a powerful thing. So that's That's partly why I

1216
01:08:20,360 --> 01:08:23,160
Speaker 1: wanted you to have the P66, because it comes back

1217
01:08:23,200 --> 01:08:26,240
Speaker 1: to the identity of who is Jesus? Is he God?

1218
01:08:26,600 --> 01:08:30,960
Speaker 1: What do the earliest manuscripts tell us about him? And

1219
01:08:31,000 --> 01:08:35,360
Speaker 1: that P66 from John chapter 1, if that's 8200, I mean,

1220
01:08:35,840 --> 01:08:39,139
Speaker 1: that's minimally four and a half centuries, if not five

1221
01:08:39,180 --> 01:08:43,820
Speaker 1: and a half centuries before we have any manuscripts of

1222
01:08:44,350 --> 01:08:47,270
Speaker 1: The Koran telling the different story about the identity of Jesus.

1223
01:08:47,330 --> 01:08:51,190
Speaker 1: So just historically speaking, it should be clear unless you

1224
01:08:51,229 --> 01:08:54,070
Speaker 1: begin with the assumption that the Quran is the word

1225
01:08:54,090 --> 01:08:57,230
Speaker 1: of God. Uh, what surprised you most in your research?

1226
01:09:02,660 --> 01:09:05,219
Speaker 2: I think that that initial surprise of how many, well,

1227
01:09:05,340 --> 01:09:08,200
Speaker 2: actually after taking that risk and making this my topic

1228
01:09:08,280 --> 01:09:11,660
Speaker 2: of finding so many corrections, it was surprising to me

1229
01:09:11,760 --> 01:09:16,050
Speaker 2: initially to see those big corrections in the, on those pages. Um,

1230
01:09:18,770 --> 01:09:21,650
Speaker 2: A couple of other surprises were how open and how

1231
01:09:22,330 --> 01:09:24,970
Speaker 2: welcomed I was in many of these institutions when I

1232
01:09:25,010 --> 01:09:26,990
Speaker 2: went around to do the work. That's great. Maybe that

1233
01:09:27,030 --> 01:09:29,690
Speaker 2: was just God opening the doors for me and making

1234
01:09:29,710 --> 01:09:33,120
Speaker 2: the way. But it has been, you know, you never

1235
01:09:33,160 --> 01:09:35,019
Speaker 2: know what's around the corner and you just kind of

1236
01:09:35,060 --> 01:09:38,140
Speaker 2: take that next step along the way. And it's been

1237
01:09:38,200 --> 01:09:39,920
Speaker 2: a fun trip.

1238
01:09:40,400 --> 01:09:43,100
Speaker 1: Oh, it's unbelievable. So last question. It kind of gives

1239
01:09:43,180 --> 01:09:45,160
Speaker 1: a sense of where your research is headed. You're going

1240
01:09:45,180 --> 01:09:48,240
Speaker 1: to keep studying these and document more and more. Do

1241
01:09:48,260 --> 01:09:50,500
Speaker 1: you have any sense of, is your research going to

1242
01:09:50,600 --> 01:09:52,460
Speaker 1: shift in any way? What might it look like over

1243
01:09:52,479 --> 01:09:54,760
Speaker 1: the next five, ten years? And is there any other

1244
01:09:54,820 --> 01:09:58,310
Speaker 1: research on the Quran you're aware of that my audience

1245
01:09:58,320 --> 01:09:59,470
Speaker 1: would be interested to know?

1246
01:09:59,790 --> 01:10:07,170
Speaker 2: Oh, interesting. Yeah, there's a lot. Well, okay, let me

1247
01:10:07,210 --> 01:10:12,250
Speaker 2: talk about the shift. So the work with the manuscripts

1248
01:10:12,370 --> 01:10:18,350
Speaker 2: is very important. The major intersection between Islam and biblical

1249
01:10:18,450 --> 01:10:21,860
Speaker 2: Christianity that I think is going to be the focal

1250
01:10:21,900 --> 01:10:24,700
Speaker 2: point of the next 40 years or more is who

1251
01:10:24,760 --> 01:10:28,939
Speaker 2: Jesus is. And so I was encouraged by our mutual

1252
01:10:28,979 --> 01:10:32,880
Speaker 2: friend to consider going and doing a second PhD in

1253
01:10:32,900 --> 01:10:35,330
Speaker 2: the area of Christology. So I contacted some of the

1254
01:10:35,390 --> 01:10:38,549
Speaker 2: high Christology people that I know, and I've been thinking

1255
01:10:38,610 --> 01:10:42,809
Speaker 2: about possibly doing that because If you really want to

1256
01:10:42,850 --> 01:10:48,750
Speaker 2: deal with the issues that the Quran raises at this intersection,

1257
01:10:49,229 --> 01:10:51,680
Speaker 2: it's really important to know who Jesus is, who he

1258
01:10:51,740 --> 01:10:55,580
Speaker 2: said he was in the Bible, who the Bible says

1259
01:10:55,620 --> 01:10:58,420
Speaker 2: he was in the Old Testament and so forth. A

1260
01:10:58,960 --> 01:11:02,240
Speaker 2: lot of us, we say these words, but to have

1261
01:11:02,280 --> 01:11:06,190
Speaker 2: a really solid foundation in understanding what that is. So

1262
01:11:07,270 --> 01:11:11,250
Speaker 2: Christology is going to be one of my... areas of

1263
01:11:11,290 --> 01:11:14,550
Speaker 2: attention in coming years in addition to this work. What

1264
01:11:14,590 --> 01:11:17,189
Speaker 2: can people be doing who may be interested in getting

1265
01:11:17,229 --> 01:11:20,780
Speaker 2: into this work? There is a lot of interesting stuff,

1266
01:11:20,860 --> 01:11:26,939
Speaker 2: not just in the manuscript corrections, textual criticism more generally,

1267
01:11:27,200 --> 01:11:31,310
Speaker 2: but there's also a lot of interesting theorizing going on

1268
01:11:31,530 --> 01:11:37,309
Speaker 2: as to whether Muhammad existed. There's a lot of intertextuality

1269
01:11:37,350 --> 01:11:44,320
Speaker 2: between the Quran and earlier rabbinic materials, Syriac Christian materials.

1270
01:11:44,620 --> 01:11:49,200
Speaker 2: In some cases, it looks like almost like one was

1271
01:11:49,240 --> 01:11:53,059
Speaker 2: copied from the other. And so, but of course, this

1272
01:11:53,100 --> 01:11:57,179
Speaker 2: stuff takes looking through patients and same kind of patients

1273
01:11:57,220 --> 01:11:59,310
Speaker 2: to go and look through these materials and go, okay,

1274
01:11:59,820 --> 01:12:02,229
Speaker 2: I see the connection here. And so I know of

1275
01:12:02,270 --> 01:12:04,290
Speaker 2: some people who are doing that. It's very, very interesting.

1276
01:12:05,630 --> 01:12:09,350
Speaker 2: And there's linguistic stuff between Syriac and Arabic, and so

1277
01:12:09,370 --> 01:12:12,030
Speaker 2: to become a linguist who's competent and able to work

1278
01:12:12,070 --> 01:12:14,310
Speaker 2: in that area. In other words, there are several different

1279
01:12:14,350 --> 01:12:16,800
Speaker 2: areas that if people are interested in getting into this,

1280
01:12:16,939 --> 01:12:18,200
Speaker 2: there's room to do that.

1281
01:12:18,340 --> 01:12:20,260
Speaker 1: It sounds like there's not only a need for this,

1282
01:12:20,460 --> 01:12:23,820
Speaker 1: but there's an opportunity right now where clearly Islam is

1283
01:12:23,860 --> 01:12:26,460
Speaker 1: going to be an apologetic issue at least the next

1284
01:12:26,540 --> 01:12:30,420
Speaker 1: half century, probably beyond Islam. one of the most important

1285
01:12:30,600 --> 01:12:31,720
Speaker 1: apologetic issues.

1286
01:12:31,900 --> 01:12:33,040
Speaker 2: Two billion people in the world.

1287
01:12:33,280 --> 01:12:35,920
Speaker 1: Some of the Pew Research, whether this happens or not

1288
01:12:35,979 --> 01:12:38,780
Speaker 1: is a separate issue, but they argue by 2050 or 2070,

1289
01:12:38,780 --> 01:12:41,240
Speaker 1: it might become the largest religion in the world. Maybe

1290
01:12:41,300 --> 01:12:44,229
Speaker 1: if birth rates continue, there's a lot of factors. So

1291
01:12:44,270 --> 01:12:46,929
Speaker 1: on my list of like the top apologetic issues, clearly

1292
01:12:46,970 --> 01:12:51,070
Speaker 1: issues of like AI are prevalent. Sexuality will always be there.

1293
01:12:51,430 --> 01:12:54,530
Speaker 1: Islam is a huge issue. So for those young people

1294
01:12:54,570 --> 01:12:56,870
Speaker 1: watching this saying, I want to make a contribution to

1295
01:12:56,890 --> 01:12:59,720
Speaker 1: the kingdom, There's huge work that needs to be done

1296
01:12:59,760 --> 01:13:02,299
Speaker 1: on this. But it also sounds like maybe where biblical

1297
01:13:02,360 --> 01:13:06,120
Speaker 1: scholarship was a few decades ago, like I did a

1298
01:13:06,160 --> 01:13:09,360
Speaker 1: recent interview with Michael Kruger and talked about how some

1299
01:13:09,380 --> 01:13:13,960
Speaker 1: of Bart Ehrman's work early in the 2000s really challenged

1300
01:13:14,000 --> 01:13:15,680
Speaker 1: Christians to say, wait a minute, we got to get

1301
01:13:16,000 --> 01:13:19,060
Speaker 1: into textual criticism and do this. And they've stepped in

1302
01:13:19,160 --> 01:13:22,640
Speaker 1: and done good work. We need people to step into

1303
01:13:22,680 --> 01:13:25,540
Speaker 1: this area. There's huge amount of work to do, huge

1304
01:13:25,640 --> 01:13:29,230
Speaker 1: opportunity there. And so Lord, Lord bless you. I mean,

1305
01:13:29,270 --> 01:13:31,530
Speaker 1: I love what I do. There's nothing I would rather do.

1306
01:13:31,550 --> 01:13:34,010
Speaker 1: I got tenure recently and I told my boss to

1307
01:13:34,050 --> 01:13:36,390
Speaker 1: say the only different job I would do is if

1308
01:13:36,430 --> 01:13:39,110
Speaker 1: the Spurs called and need a point guard. And that

1309
01:13:39,189 --> 01:13:42,310
Speaker 1: is not going to happen for me for a whole

1310
01:13:42,390 --> 01:13:46,229
Speaker 1: lot of reasons, but I love it. But there's, you know,

1311
01:13:46,300 --> 01:13:49,020
Speaker 1: and sometimes I get to have a platform, which I appreciate.

1312
01:13:49,080 --> 01:13:51,680
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's a weight that comes to that, but you're

1313
01:13:51,720 --> 01:13:55,939
Speaker 1: just doing the work. honorably and quietly and behind the

1314
01:13:56,020 --> 01:13:59,599
Speaker 1: scenes and just providing such a resource for the church.

1315
01:13:59,660 --> 01:14:01,940
Speaker 1: So I just want to encourage you and tell folks

1316
01:14:01,979 --> 01:14:05,300
Speaker 1: to pick up corrections in early Quran manuscripts. You can

1317
01:14:05,340 --> 01:14:08,820
Speaker 1: see 20 examples. You can see the images here. It's readable.

1318
01:14:09,020 --> 01:14:10,760
Speaker 1: You know, some of the details you get into some

1319
01:14:10,780 --> 01:14:13,310
Speaker 1: of the particulars, but it's a readable book that makes sense.

1320
01:14:13,860 --> 01:14:16,810
Speaker 1: And again, it's not an apologetic book. You're just approaching

1321
01:14:16,830 --> 01:14:19,050
Speaker 1: this as a scholar saying, here's what I see. And

1322
01:14:19,550 --> 01:14:22,599
Speaker 1: then at the end, it's like, okay, what follows from this? Well,

1323
01:14:22,640 --> 01:14:26,059
Speaker 1: very significant things fall from this. So please keep us

1324
01:14:26,120 --> 01:14:29,080
Speaker 1: posted on your book coming out in November, the work

1325
01:14:29,100 --> 01:14:32,360
Speaker 1: you're doing on Christology. Folks, if you're listening, you're watching this,

1326
01:14:32,439 --> 01:14:34,650
Speaker 1: let us know what other areas in Islam would be

1327
01:14:34,740 --> 01:14:37,809
Speaker 1: helpful for us to explore. Anything said today and you go,

1328
01:14:37,950 --> 01:14:41,370
Speaker 1: wait a minute, go down that rabbit trail with Dr. Brubaker,

1329
01:14:41,910 --> 01:14:43,390
Speaker 1: let us know and we'll take a look and maybe

1330
01:14:43,410 --> 01:14:47,110
Speaker 1: explore it. And if you want a copy of P66,

1331
01:14:47,410 --> 01:14:50,710
Speaker 1: a replica, there's information below in the description below. I

1332
01:14:50,810 --> 01:14:56,750
Speaker 1: love working with manuscriptshop.com. It's one of two sponsors that

1333
01:14:56,790 --> 01:14:59,510
Speaker 1: I have here, as well as Logos, because they're two

1334
01:14:59,570 --> 01:15:01,680
Speaker 1: resources I use and I love and I think will

1335
01:15:01,720 --> 01:15:04,660
Speaker 1: benefit my audience a ton. Make sure you hit subscribe.

1336
01:15:04,680 --> 01:15:07,720
Speaker 1: We've got some other topics coming up on manuscripts. We're

1337
01:15:07,740 --> 01:15:10,700
Speaker 1: going to revisit Islam, that's for sure. We've got more

1338
01:15:10,760 --> 01:15:15,350
Speaker 1: coming up on near-death experiences. I have some interesting conversations

1339
01:15:15,520 --> 01:15:18,710
Speaker 1: with people you will not want to miss on and

1340
01:15:18,729 --> 01:15:21,170
Speaker 1: I'm tempted to give details and leak you right now, Dan,

1341
01:15:21,210 --> 01:15:23,070
Speaker 1: but I won't. But I promise you some videos are

1342
01:15:23,110 --> 01:15:25,250
Speaker 1: coming up. You're going to stop and go, oh my goodness,

1343
01:15:25,310 --> 01:15:27,510
Speaker 1: I did not see this one coming. So make sure

1344
01:15:27,530 --> 01:15:29,170
Speaker 1: you hit subscribe, don't miss it. If you thought about

1345
01:15:29,189 --> 01:15:31,350
Speaker 1: studying apologetics, we have full classes on the Bible. We

1346
01:15:31,810 --> 01:15:34,790
Speaker 1: have full classes on Islam that we offer here in

1347
01:15:34,850 --> 01:15:38,650
Speaker 1: person or distance. There's information below. Dan, you're amazing. This

1348
01:15:38,689 --> 01:15:42,530
Speaker 1: has been a wonderful conversation. Appreciate you. Appreciate your work

1349
01:15:42,570 --> 01:15:44,009
Speaker 1: and appreciate you coming into the studio.

1350
01:15:44,210 --> 01:15:45,519
Speaker 2: Thank you, Sean. Really appreciate it.

1351
01:15:45,689 --> 01:15:46,090
Speaker 1: My pleasure.