Arthur Jeffery was a Professor of Semitic Languages at Columbia
University, and an Adjunct Professor at Union Theological Seminary.
He was a Scholar of world-renown, who fluently spoke and wrote the
language of its origin, and who devoted a lifetime to its study. His
writings show that, contrary to popular Islam understanding, the
Quran's history is one of additions, deletions and alterations-
evidently done by Mohammed's followers in an attempt to update the
Quran as the knowledge uncovered by later generations began to
conflict with its content, and illuminate the errors it contained.

During his many years as an Arabic Scholar, Arthur Jeffery collected
and documented an abundance of divergent and variant readings of the
Quran. Notwithstanding wide acceptance of the Quran throughout the
Mid-East as a collection of sacred writings from "Allah", these
readings confirm beyond all reasonable doubt that the Quran is, to the
contrary, a hodge-podge of additions, corrections, changes and
deletions, and that their broad acceptance as a revelation from God is
based on tradition rather than fact.

The underlying problem of the Quran is not unlike that of other
counterfeit writings in religion: Simply stated, except that a writing
actually issue from God, its content will contain errors. These errors
avoid detection until such time when new knowledge shows them to be
false. When this occurs, there are two options: One is to discard the
writings, and the other is to change them. In the case of the Quran,
social imperatives forced the latter-- a practice that has evidently
continued for centuries. To better understand why this occurred, we
need to revisit its origin.

Mohammed was born in the time period 570 - 580 AD in humble
circumstances. His father died before he was born, and his mother died
when he was age six. He was raised an orphan and later worked for a
wealthy woman fifteen years his senior whom he later married at age
twenty-five. She died about 620 AD and he then remarried an increasing
number of women, stopping at about twelve wives. Wealth acquired from
his first marriage permitted him to pursue his own tastes.

As he traveled, he noticed two things about the Jews and Christians
that he met: They were prosperous, and they had a sacred Book
(Scripture). He also noticed two things about his own people: They
were impoverished, and they had no sacred book. Thus was born the
sincere, albeit exaggerated utterances of a man who believed that he
had a divine message, and a divine warrant for its delivery.

Mohammed penned the Quran about 640 AD i.e. about five hundred years
*after* Bible manuscripts were in circulation-- and Mohammed borrowed
heavily from them.

Examples of biblical doctrines that are found in the Quran are:

* Anti-Christ
* Anti-Christ slain by Christ
* Period of tranquility (Millennium) between man and beasts
* Doctrine of the Elect
* Gog and Magog
* Day of Judgment
* Creation Days (plus a seventh on which God does not rest)
* Fallen angel (who presides over hell)

Mohammed also borrowed a number of teachings from the Bible. These include:

* Humility
* Truth
* Justice
* Love (as Charity)
* March on Jerusalem
* Brotherhood of Believers
* Call for children to obey their parents.

By infusing his "book" with portions of the timeless truths of
Scripture, Mohammed unwittingly guaranteed that its human content
would be changed to realign with future knowledge as the compelling
alternative to discarding its (albeit incomplete) Bible truths.

But these revisions were also forced by the need to preserve the
promise of a future life that it gave to the impoverished masses.
Since its populace was largely destitute and without education, each
version of the ever-changing Quran was uncritically accepted as though
it was the original document penned by Mohammed. These abundant,
divergent and variant readings of the Quran are documented in several
of Arthur Jeffrey's texts.

One reference is:

The Quran as Scripture, Russell F. Moore Company, Inc., New York (1952)

Another reference (edited by Dr. Jeffrey's) is:

Materials for the History of the Text of the Quran: The Old Codices
Printed for the Trustees of the "De Goeje Fund" No. XI, Leiden,
E.J. Brill (1937)

Additional references that highlight Dr. Jeffrey's scholarship in
documenting the Quran's many variant and divergent readings is
provided in the Appendix.

The alterations in the documents that comprise the Quran are well
documented by these and other scholarly works, and stand in sharp
contrast to the timeless and invariant character of the Bible. Indeed,
if the Quran can be said to have an enduring quality, it is in the
supernatural content of the Bible texts that influenced Mohammed when
he penned his manuscripts. For example, the Bible contains Old
Testament Mosaic Law that is woven into the legal fabric of virtually
every government on earth, and the Words of Jesus Christ as recorded
in the New Testament Sermon on the Mount have literally transfigured
the world.

Moreover, whereas the Quran- although penned by one man, is replete
with divergent and variant readings, the Holy Bible presents an
inexplicable coherence even though numerous writers penned it, and
over times that embraced centuries. These scribes were born on
different continents, lived in different ages, emerged from divergent
economic strata, came from widely varying social settings, and had
different occupational and educational backgrounds. Moreover they
wrote under a variety of adverse personal circumstances, and under
conflicting political systems.

Yet, cover to cover, the Bible's central focus is God's provision for
sin in Christ. In particular, The Old Testament proclaims His Coming,
the Gospels herald His arrival, and the Epistles promise His Return.
In addition archeological evidences confirm Bible historical
prophecies, and historical evidences confirm its Messianic prophecies.

Consider the Creation account found in the Holy Bible versus the
Quran: The opening three words of every Bible: "In the beginning" are
affirmed by astrophysicists and cosmologists all over the world. By
way of contrast, the Quran has our world on the angel Malak's
shoulders as he stands on a ruby held by the horns of a bull that
stands on Bahamout fish swimming in waters whose waves wash the shores
of eternity. This child-like rhetoric conjoined with the Quran's
rhapsodic tone has fueled speculation that some of Mohammed's writings
may be the product of epileptic fits and cataleptic trances.

Well over one-billion people today accept the Quran as a sacred
writing from Allah in a religious faith known as Islam. The symbol of
Islam is the crescent, which traces back to Abraham's day when a moon
god was worshipped. He was the supreme deity of "OR" of the Chaldees.
This same god was worshipped in prehistoric times in Mecca where he
was phonetically called, "Al Eel La." In 640 AD Mohammed added this
deity to his religion, and today he is referred to as "Allah."

Regardless of how one chooses to view the Quran, a lifetime of work by
Arthur Jeffery has clearly established that its content is a
hodge-podge of additions, deletions and alterations. Its divergent and
variant readings attest to centuries of corrections and changes in a
systematic effort to align its content with new and changing knowledge.

Yet although the Quran has changed, the vast majority of its followers
have not. They remain a good and moral people. However unlike the
Quran, the Bible remains unchanged, and Christians who confess faith
in Christ and practice His teachings are likewise good and moral
people. But because Christ's bodily resurrection is as secure as
history can make it, they accept His bodily resurrection as proof that
God speaks through the Holy Bible, and thus believe that their moral
practices come from God, rather than man.

Beyond this, Christians look to Christ as God's provision for their
sins. Except for Christ (Who is revealed in the Bible as God incarnate
in human form), the provision for sin is neither found in, nor offered
by any other faith or religion on earth (see The Claims of Christ that
is available for download from this website).
 
 

A P P E N D I X
---------------
Publications by Dr. Arthur Jeffrey

* Foreign Vocabulary of the Quran (1938)

* Islam - Mohammed & his Religion (1958)

* Materials for the History of the Text of the Quran (1937)
(published by Brill, Leiden, Holland - 1937)

* Muquaddimatan Fi 'Ulumal - Quran

* The Quran as Scripture (1952)
(published by Moore, New York)

* A Reader on Islam