Disclaimer: I am Christian, but I am not a scholar in the slightest sense. And for reference’s sake, I am not and never have been a Muslim nor do I claim to be a particularly certified source on the claims of Islam, but what I intend to do in the following is simply present the Christian side, a defense, of the seemingly common misconception of some of my Muslim friends.
Argument the Second: Translations of the Bible are all inherently incorrect since they are never the original words of God.
This one I’ve heard time and time again from Muslims, be it friends or scholars who publish articles and videos. There are simply too many examples and instances of this for me to quote any specific example. Basically, the Bible’s original words were God breathed (since the Qur’an affirms that the scriptures to appear before it, including the Bible, are also from God) but because we Christians use translated versions of it, we no longer follow the words of God, but a “corrupted” version.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Bible’s contents do undergo quite a bit of modification and adaptation when translated sometimes. Case in point: The Message translation. I simply abhor then entire idea behind this translation of the Bible–it is basically a contemporary paraphrasing of the Bible geared towards communicating the gist of things as opposed to an accurate port of the original manuscripts into English. Translations like The Message are more or less laughable for its very real lack of accuracy and non-resemblance to what was penned thousands of years ago.
And yet, the Bible as we know it today simply cannot undergo that much change when translating. For one thing, the Old Testament has been around since long before the times of Jesus, dating back to at least Moses. The Jews are a studious bunch, to say the least, and made it a crucial point that the words of the LORD be preserved exactly as is/was. For instance, their boys memorize entire books of scripture starting at the age when you and I were probably still coloring books and walls. The Jewish people were devoted to their faith and preserving their Holy Scriptures like nobody’s business, so I’d think it quite an insult to their incredible diligence over centuries to claim that Old Testament were somehow fatally screwed up somewhere due to negligence.
And then we’ve got the much more recent New Testament. Simply put, the original manuscripts and circulated copies of letters are still around, and in large enough quantities to allow for profuse cross-referencing and comparison. Regardless of what anyone wants to say about the English translations of the accounts of Jesus’ life and how they are not faithful the originals, one need only take a gander at the original letters and manuscripts to see that, no jokes, Jesus totally did die and come back.
Purposely or accidentally mistranslating the Bible from the original texts (and I repeat, they are all still around in libraries, collections, museums, etc… for anyone who is willing to justify their own suspicions) into English and not having anyone in the scholarly community notice would be quite a feat. First, you’ve got to earn enough qualifications to have a translation done by yourself to even be considered viable. This entails becoming an expert on Greek (since the New Testament is written mostly in Greek) and understanding the historical context of its authors. Then, you’ve got to find a whole committee of others as qualified as yourself who agree with this mission statement of perverting what it actually says in the Scriptures to help you write this out. Finally, you’ve got to do all this without anyone else who is equally qualified as yourself (some probably even more so) noticing the glaring differences. Essentially, purposely mistranslating the Bible for whatever reason is tantamount to pulling a fast one on an entire community of incredibly well-read and knowledgeable people without anyone noticing.
What I’m trying to get at here is the impracticality of mistranslating. It’s impossibly difficult to start, to carry out, and to finish without anyone noticing. It’s even more difficult to maintain when the originals are still around and anyone who is literal does side-by-side comparisons of your Bible and the original Bible. Granted, small errors and differences probably do exist between my ESV or NIV Bibles and the original texts (there’s no way to translate without taking what is God-inspired and adapting to another form), but as for monumental truth claims (such as “Jesus came back”), you just can’t change those to the opposite without anyone noticing. Yes, no English Bible uses the original Greek or Hebrew words of the original letters and books, but they do not need to in order to convey the same, essential message of the Gospel: there is such a problem as sin, and Jesus came to solve that problem.