The Qur'an and the Cross

Nothing in the Qur'an suggests its author had even the slightest knowledge of the New Testament centrality of God's redeeming act in Christ on the cross. The author knew nothing of Paul's epistle to the Romans or the book of Hebrews and their in-depth case for and teaching about the Messiah's redeeming death. The author seems blissfully unaware of the evidentiary mountain that substantiates the crucifixion. And yet with a fee seconds of oral recitation, the Qur'an places itself, and all who would believe in it, in the direct opposition not only to the Injil (Gospel) but also everything history says on the subject. The question must be asked: Who, truly, is following mere conjecture here? Those who were eyewitnesses on the Hill of the Skull outside Jerusalem? Or the author of the Qur'an, more than half a millennium later?

Why not the Qur'an

When we encounter unclear and uncertain Qur'anic texts, we often can turn to the hadith for at least the interpretation ascribed to the first few generations after Muhammad. As far as we can tell, for at least two hundred years after Muhammad, no Muslim could  anything he ever said or did that was relevant to Surah 4:157. It has no meaningful presence in the hadith. On other texts where the Qur'an an directly contradicts the Bible, we can find lots of commentary in that literature, but for this key and central ayah we find nothing. It is as if this ayah appeared out of nowhere and plopped itself down in the middle of this Surah and made itself at home.

What about our New Testament? First, the Byzantine text is not that bad, and what we have in medieval MSS in general adds material to what we already have in the Alexandrian witnesses. The autographic wording can still usually be found in it. Further, out of the 400,000 or so variants we have among the Greek witnesses, the standard Byzantine text disagrees with the Nestle text in only 6577 places. Second, although many of the variants here are very important, not one changes any cardinal belief if the Christian faith. Third, we have many early MSS. For example we have three times more NT MSS within the first 200 years than we have in 2000 years for the average classical author. Further, we have more than 100 MSS of the NT within 300 years of its completion, while the average classical author has none within 300 years.

Isolation

A second position, extremely popular among theologians and scientists for much of the twentieth century, conceives of the proper (if not actual) relationship of science to religion as one of isolation. According to this view, science and religion never conflict so long as each is properly conducted. Of course, any conception of science and religion that effectively makes conflict impossible will in all likelihood preclude fruitful interaction as well, hence the appropriateness of the term "isolation" as a name for this view.