Evaluating Biblical Preservation Through the Lens of Hadith Science

One of the things we wanted to do was evaluate the Bible in accordance with the principles that we would use to judge Hadith. Why? Because the Quran is so well preserved—through memorization, manuscripts, and from the earliest generations, dating back to the time of the Prophet, peace be upon him. For example, the Birmingham Quran is a manuscript that can be carbon-dated to the life of the Prophet, and it matches what we have today. The same can be said for the S manuscript and those people who memorized every letter and sound of the Quran from the time of the Prophet, with chains of narrators all the way to our time.

There is no doubt that the Quran is preserved without any doubt. However, in Hadith, we do encounter weak narrations, fabricated narrations, and authentic narrations. So, how do we judge them? There’s an entire science behind it, but in essence, we look at five things:

1. The chain is being connected.
2. The moral character of the reporters.
3. The memory of the reporters.
4. Whether there are any textual defects.
5. Whether there are any contradictions in the text.
6. When we examine these five aspects, we can judge the basics of Hadith.

Now, let’s take a journey through reviewing the Bible according to the science of Hadith to see if it can compare to an authentic Hadith. For this to be fair, I will not use any Muslim sources, nor will I reference atheists or agnostics like Dr. Bart Ehrman. Instead, I will focus on practicing Christians—pastors and PhDs, and professors of Christianity—who believe in Christianity and can tell us about the manuscripts and the preservation of the Bible.

We have Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, a senior research professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He is a professor, a PhD, and a practicing Christian who has debated others to defend the Bible. What does he say about the Bible?

“We don’t have the original manuscripts of the New Testament; they all disappeared within a century. I’m pretty convinced. So we don’t have the originals; they disappeared, and all the copies we have disagree with each other at some point—sometimes quite a few disagreements. We have hundreds of thousands of textual variants among our manuscripts.”

A question to ask here is: How badly did the scribes corrupt the New Testament? It is absolutely proven that they did; no two manuscripts are alike. Unless one of them is pristine, every single scribe made mistakes. When you look at the number of textual variants—there are hundreds of thousands of them—there are more textual variants than there are words in the original Testament. There are approximately 400,000 textual variants in the body of New Testament manuscripts. This means that for every word in the New Testament, there are nearly three variants.

Now, if you have more contradictions than words and more errors in the manuscript than words in the Bible, then we definitely cannot accept this as authentic and preserved like Hadith. For example, when you look at the issue of contradictions, this alone indicates a weakness.

Now, let’s consider it from a manuscript preservation perspective. Keith Long, who holds a Master of Divinity degree and is a Christian pastor and author, states, “The Old Testament is far older and more expansive in scope than the New Testament, but unfortunately, no original copies of either are available—only copies of copies of copies.”

What does that tell you? We have a break in the chain. Remember, one of the things we look at is the connectivity in the chain. We have no originals. But do we have those who originally heard this from Jesus, peace and blessings be upon him? When we talk about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—were they the disciples who firsthand received that information?

The same author writes that most scholars conclude that those names are merely placeholder synonyms, meaning that the Gospels were written anonymously. These were not written by eyewitness accounts. He writes, “The ugly truth is that from the Gospels to the so-called 13 letters of Apostle Paul, most of the New Testament authorship is a mystery at best and deceitful at worst.”

He concludes by stating, “The question of who wrote the New Testament can be summed up as Paul and some unknown authors.”

In the science of Hadith, when you have somebody who is unknown, we call this “majhul” (unknown), which presents a problem. First, we have an issue with the connectivity in the chain. The second issue is the contradictions, which signify weakness.

When we look at the reliability of the narrators’ reporting and their moral character, if we don’t know who they are—if they are anonymous—we cannot judge that. This is majhul, and it represents a weakness. When we examine the chain of narrators and find it broken, such a large break is referred to in Hadith science, and these would be rejected.

What about Paul? Is Paul a firsthand reporter of the works of Jesus? Paul never met Jesus; peace and blessings be upon him. According to Christian doctrine, he had never met Jesus before the Crucifixion. He may have had a vision, but that is not an actual meeting. Again, you have an issue with the break in the chain.

But can Paul be a reliable reporter based on his moral character? According to 2 Corinthians 11:8, Paul himself admits that he robbed churches. He says, “I robbed other churches, taking wages from them to minister to you.” For someone who would rob one church to go to another, this clearly indicates a moral flaw.

In fact, according to 1 Corinthians 9:20, he states, “To the Jews, I became a Jew, pretending to be one, so that I might gain Jews.” He lied because he himself says, “though not being under the law myself.” He deceived them to gain followers.

Thus, we call him a “kadab,” someone who lies, and someone who has documentedly lied and robbed would never be acceptable in Hadith. We would consider that a fabrication.

Ultimately, we do not accept the Bible, even according to biblical standards, in comparison to Hadith sciences, let alone trying to compare it to the Quran. If the Bible were judged by the science that we apply to Hadith, it would not be authentic. It would not be “hasan” (good), it would not be reliable; it would be classified as a fabrication, with so many weaknesses that we would classify it as a lie.