A Trinity of abused texts by a Tawheedist

When a Muslim goes out of his league

By Nakdimon

This is a response to Ibn Anwar’s argument “God is not a man = Jesus is not God”.¹ Ibn Anwar regularly attempts to portray himself as somebody knowledgeable in different languages by trying to comment on various linguistic issues but actually reveals his own lack of understanding of the languages he is commenting on.² This present article is no exception. Under the (second) title, “A trinity of verses deny God being a man”, Ibn Anwar tries to show from the Hebrew text that certain verses negate the possibility that God can reveal Himself to us in human form. However, before he discusses the texts from the Hebrew Bible, he first selectively quotes from the book of Acts, trying to make his point also from the New Testament that the disciples of Yeshua, particularly Peter, thought that Yeshua was only a man.

Yes, notice that Peter is the one who is speaking here. So if Peter is good enough to support Ibn Anwar’s theological position on the identity of Yeshua, then the same Peter is just as qualified to undercut his theological position. Ibn Anwar is either ignorant of Peter’s position or is blatantly distorting the view that Peter had of his Savior and Lord. Given the number of quotations in Ibn Anwar’s articles from the Scriptures and his numerous citation of passages from the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible / Old Testament) as well as the New Testament, Ibn Anwar clearly shows familiarity with the text of Scripture and so I have to conclude that Ibn Anwar is deliberately distorting what the disciples of Yeshua really thought of Him. Let’s see what Peter really says about Yeshua in his very next sentences (which Ibn Anwar conveniently left out of his article) and if this really is on par with Islamic theology as Ibn Anwar tries to portray:

Notice that Ibn Anwar, as a Muslim, cannot believe that Yeshua died and rose from the dead, since the Quran doesn’t allow him to hold that position. (That is, according to the mainstream Islamic position. I think a good case can be made for a death, resurrection and ascension on the basis of Surah 4:157, since the text of the Quran is that vague.) Yet Peter says here that Yeshua died according to God’s purpose and was raised from the dead. This poses a problem for Ibn Anwar’s position already. Either Ibn Anwar doesn’t recognize Peter as a reliable witness, and therefore his own “proof” goes out of the window, or Ibn Anwar does recognize Peter as a reliable witness and thus his position is untenable. But Peter was not done yet:

Again, Peter is declaring Yeshua to be Lord over all. We have to ask, how does this mesh with Islamic theology? Why is it “shirk” to say that “Jesus is Lord” in Islam, when Peter declares Him to be Lord, which is a claim from a valid witness, according to Ibn Anwar, since he used Peter to prove his own position. But to end all dispute let’s see what Peter says in the very next sermon that he holds:

We have to ask Ibn Anwar: Why does Peter call his Savior “the Author of life”? Who, other than the God of Heaven, is eligible to carry this title? Surely, Peter does not support the position of Ibn Anwar as far as the identity of Yeshua goes. I could quote much more of Peter’s words but I think that Ibn Anwar’s misuse of the testimony of Peter is clearly demonstrated already. For further references to the view of Peter on Yeshua the Messiah, I would like to direct the reader to an excellent article on Petrine Christology.

The way Ibn Anwar mistreats and tortures the Hebrew text in his exegesis is horrendous and if there were a law against it, he would have to go straight to prison. Before we even begin to examine his interpretation, we need to point out his utterly wrong transliteration that exposes his ignorance of the original language. The Hebrew text of Numbers 23:19 with a correct transliteration is:

לֹא  אִישׁ  אֵל  וִיכַזֵּב,  וּבֶן-אָדָם  וְיִתְנֶחָם

Lo ish El wikhazev uven-adam weyitnekham

In this very short Hebrew sentence Ibn Anwar managed to make a whopping five errors! Ibn Anwar can’t even properly read the Hebrew.

First: Every freshman student of Hebrew at least knows how to properly read, transcribe and transliterate the “waw”. This is literally lesson one of any Hebrew class, Lesson 1 being the Hebrew alphabet. The “waw” (ו) is never read or pronounced as a “b”, but as a “w” as pronounced in German “Welt”. Yet Ibn Anwar transliterates it as “b”, and that not just once but twice, showing that this is not merely a typo but genuine ignorance.

Second: Every beginning student of Hebrew knows that the “beth” (ב) is only read and pronounced as a “b” at the beginning of a word or a syllable. In all other instances it is read almost similar to the “waw”. This is also lesson one of any Hebrew class, and by lesson two the pronunciation of the Hebrew letters should be mastered. Somehow, Ibn Anwar apparently missed that class since he also makes this error twice.

Third: Ibn Anwar doesn’t even recognise the future tense of the verbs in the sentences, but chops the last verb up into two separate words in his transliteration. The phrase “weyitnekham” consists of the prefix “we” (pronounce: weh) and the word “yitnekham”, which is in future tense of the root “nakham”. Ibn Anwar chops the word up entirely wrong, making it into “beyit” and “nekham”. What on earth is the word “beyit”? Truth of the matter is that the verb is in the future tense of the binyan (= root form) Hitpa’el. Signifying the future tense shows that God does not lie and will not ever lie.

Now let’s examine the actual meaning of the verse. When read carefully, this verse says something that Ibn Anwar somehow doesn’t fully comprehend. Let’s look at the verse in its proper context.

When reading the text starting from verse 1, we see that its meaning is actually very clear. Balak brought Balaam for the purpose of putting a curse on the children of Israel. He made seven altars to invoke God’s favour. Balak thought that he could win God’s favour to curse Israel, since he was intimidated by Israel. But God blessed them through Balaam instead, so Balak tried again at another place, again building altars to try to win God’s favour through sacrifices. Therefore God makes it clear through Balaam, declaring that God did not lie the first time, so Balak should not try again and that Balak cannot bribe God with any amount of sacrifices to make God change His mind and retract the blessings upon Israel and curse them instead. That is what Numbers 23:19 is all about:

See what verse 20 says? God has spoken before through Balaam in verses 9-10, blessing Israel. Verse 19 makes it very clear: unlike man, God doesn’t lie and unlike the son of man, God doesn’t change His mind. When he decrees something He does it and when he has spoken it will happen! This is the true meaning of the text and any other explanation completely misses the entire purpose of it.

It does not say God is not (like) a man in any respect whatsoever. After all, man is created in the image of God (Genesis 1) and we expect God and man to be similar in many aspects. This verse does not deny that God and man are similar in many ways, it only states that God is not like men in the sense that he does not lie or change his mind.

In fact, Ibn Anwar will admit that this is the proper reading of the text as we will see below, but he will nonetheless try to twist this passage and uphold his initial claim by appealing to an analogy provided to him by his friend Gomerozdubar. But as we will see, the analogy is flawed.

Ibn Anwar then lists three potential responses to his argument and his counter rebuttals to those points:

Although I agree with the initial Christian rebuttal, I don’t think this has anything to do with the tense of the verse. Fact is that God was not saying that he could never come in the flesh in human form. That is a given, as we have just demonstrated from the exegesis above.

Quoting the Sh’ma will not help either. The word Echad says absolutely nothing about God’s nature, neither was the Sh’ma made to say anything in that regard. All it says is that God is one. It doesn’t go into specifics, saying God is one in essence, in person, in purpose, or anything like that. All it says is God is one. That can mean anything. Let me give an example of how God can be one and still pose a problem for Unitarians and no problem for Trinitarians. In Judges 13, Manoach and his wife are visited by a person that is initially identified as a Mal’ach YHWH (the Angel of YHWH) in verse 3, but then as a man in verse 6. However, when we read on, the text says the following:

Notice that Manoach knew who it was that he and his wife saw. Yet, knowing full well who he saw, he exclaims that they will die because they have seen God. The question that any Unitarian should ask himself is: Who causes men in the Bible to fear death, just by seeing Him? The only accurate answer to this question is the God of Avraham (Abraham), Yitzchaq (Isaac) and Ya’aqov (Jacob). How on earth do Unitarians reconcile this with their own position? They can’t! In order to reconcile this, they have to butcher the text to make it say something that it actually doesn’t.

To clarify: the Hebrew here says that they saw “Elohim” and according to Unitarians that word doesn't have to refer to the God of Israel, since it is also used for Moses and angels or mighty men. It should be pointed out that this Elohim is not like Moses or the angels. This Elohim is like YHWH, the God of Israel, Whom man fear to see, lest they die. Since that is also the case with this Elohim, the only conclusion is that this Elohim is put in the same league as the God of Israel. What other Elohim did the people in the Scripture fear but the Elohim of Israel? None! This, therefore, poses a problem for Unitarians, since this cannot be reconciled from their theological standpoint using the testimony of the Hebrew Bible. They often try to reconcile this problem by appealing to law of agency. But that law doesn’t work here. If I speak on behalf of the king, I bare his authority. However, I don’t bare the king’s image. Seeing Moses, who was called "elohim" did not cause men to fear death. Nor did seeing any angel cause men to react with fear of death.

I have been asking orthodox Jews to address this text as it stands and they cannot do so. The only other options you have are that Manoach was actually mistaken or that he lied. But the text doesn’t leave that possibility to the reader and that is going, again, outside of the meaning of the text to force your theological position on Manoach.

And this brings me to another point. Why on earth does Manoach by seeing a man, come to the realisation that this is the Mal’ach YHWH and then concludes that this is YHWH? What man would draw that conclusion after having seen any form, especially the form of… a man! There is no orthodox Jew, with the theological stance that the orthodox Jewish community takes now on the Person of God, who will come to the conclusion that Manoach came to after seeing any form. Yet Manoach did come to that conclusion. This means only one thing: Manoach had different theological view of God than the Unitarians in general and both the orthodox Jewish and the Muslim community have now. This also can be said for Jacob, Moses, Gideon and… Abraham!

First of all, I want to direct the readers to my rebuttal³ to all the feeble points that Sami Zaatari raised in his debate with Dr James R. White, the nonsensical argument about God’s supposed “nature change” has been addressed and refuted by myself on YouTube, in a series where I completely undercut each and every objection that Sami Zaatari raised in his debate with Dr. James R. White and some insane arguments he used in his debate with Nabeel Qureshi as well. The argument actually doesn’t exist and therefore isn’t even an argument against our position.

Second, notice how Ibn Anwar keeps holding on to his flawed premise that Numbers 23:19 says that God cannot become a man. We have already shown how this reading of that passage is flawed and itself holds no water in contrast to the “excuse produced by apologists like VenomFangX”.

Lastly, when John says Yeshua became flesh, he goes on to say how he became flesh: He pitched his tent among us. He dwelt among us in bodily form. For some reason Muslims keep thinking that Yeshua existed as man and was subsequently made God. This is not what we believe. God came down and reached out to us. So when the Son of God died, meaning his body died, He Himself didn’t cease to exist. If Muhammadans would just make that distinction consistently, since they themselves don’t believe that when one dies, one ceases to exist, but that only the body dies. If God, Who has always existed without flesh, comes down and takes on flesh and then the flesh dies, why do they ask “who controlled the world”? That is a non-argument even from your own position! Because you are not merely flesh, you are a living soul that dwells in a body of flesh. When a person named “Jack” dies no one will say “Jack’s body died” (although that is the reality), they will say “Jack died”. Likewise, why should it be any different with the Son of God who took upon Himself human flesh and lived among us? Isn’t it accurate to likewise say that “the Son of God died”? I do not see how the objection of the Muhammadans is either a refutation of our theology or a support for their “Tawheedic” position.

Then in his counter rebuttal to Christian Rebuttal 3, Ibn Anwar actually agrees with my explanation of the verse in his counter rebuttal 1, as seen above, but still puts up a fight in an attempt to find support for his position.

There is a difference between “erring” and “changing one’s mind”. The omniscience of God implies that he does not err since error presupposes ignorance. But the point in the story of Balaam is that God will not change his mind and cannot be persuaded to change his mind by bringing even more sacrifices and efforts.

However, let’s follow Ibn Anwar’s “definition” about one not being able to be God because one lies and repents. Let’s see what happens if we follow the argument of Ibn Anwar to its logical conclusion. If we find Allah lying and changing his mind, i.e. not executing what he has said for no reason whatsoever, then we must conclude, based on Ibn Anwar’s own criterion, that Allah cannot be God. And indeed, we find Allah lying and changing his mind in the Quran by abrogation and not following through on his promises. As to Allah lying, we see Allah claiming the following in the Quran:

This is simply not true. Allah never revealed this so the children of Israel. This teaching came from the mind of a rabbi in the Talmud, Midrash Sanhedrin 4.5. Allah doesn’t even know what he revealed to others, but instead Allah borrows from uninspired sources. Another lie is the fact that Jews believe in Ezra as the Son of God:

Here Allah talks about truth, but Allah himself lies. Never, in the history of the Jewish people, have we believed that Ezra is the Son of God or anything similar. Ezra has never had this lofty position in the Jewish minds. Yet Allah claims that we believe this. There is no proof whatsoever that we believed this, because this was never our position.

As for Allah changing his mind for no reason and abrogating verses:

So Allah made the scales for Muslim fighters at a 1 to 10 ratio at first, then he lowered the bar by a significant amount to a 1 to 2 ratio. Why did Allah do that? Well, the Muslim expositors tell us exactly why. Ibn Kathir informs us in his explanation on Surah 8:65-66:

So Muslims start getting cold feet and Allah simply caters to their wishes instead of standing behind his own promises. The Tafsir Al Jalalayn puts it even clearer. In this commentary, one can’t help to observe the total helplessness of Allah, as he changed his mind as soon as the numbers of the infidels increased:

Isn’t Allah just a nice compromising god? He promises to aid people and puts the odds at one Muslim against ten infidels and when Muslims get cold feet, Allah fails to aid and strengthen them but, instead, drops the bar like you wouldn’t believe to one Muslim against two infidels and “makes it easy” for the Muslims. This means nothing other than that Allah was incapable to aid the Muslims since, according to the Quran, it is lighter for Muslims to fight one against two than it would be for them to fight one against ten WITH Allah’s aid! Compare this cowardice and capricious attitude of Allah to the truthfulness of YHWH and to His promise in Judges 7 and 8. After God had promised Gideon that He would deliver Israel out of the hands of the Midianites we read in Judges 7:

Reading on, God smashes the Midianites and liberates His people. We find the similar examples in Deuteronomy 20, Isaiah 10 and 37. Instead of the true God, YHWH of hosts, catering to the wishes and demands of His people, He chooses to glorify Himself in the weakness of His vessels. The initial 32.000 men were decreased to a mere 300 and Midian was crushed. This way, we know for a fact that He is the one that gave His servants victory over their enemies as He promised. YHWH remains true to His words! What a contrast with the Allah of the Quran! Therefore we have to conclude that Allah is NOT the true God of the Bible, per Ibn Anwar’s own criterion.

Moreover, the Allah of the Qur’an even boast to be the best deceiver (i.e. liar) and therefore does not satisfy Ibn Anwar’s criterion that whoever lies cannot be God, see the various articles listed under the entry Deception in our Index to Islam.

Ibn Anwar continues:

My experience with Muslims and analogies is that when Muslims try to use analogies, they use flawed logic in order to dupe the gullible into thinking that their arguments are intellectually sound. This case is no exception. In this instance, Ibn Anwar had help from Gomerozdubar, a Muslim that I am familiar with via the Paltalk chat rooms, where he is hailed as one of the most intellectual Muslims present on Paltalk. Let’s see where the analogy fails.

1. James and Peter are swimming
2. James is teaching Peter how to swim in the pool
3. James is swimming with Peter trying to teach Peter how to swim

These kinds of analogies work like this: you start with a series of premises and end with a conclusion based on those premises (premise a; premise b; conclusion c). Since the above analogy “a” already establishes that James is swimming, and there is nothing in “b” that denies what has already been said in “a” the logical conclusion is “c”, namely James is also swimming. In the analogy James is already said to be swimming with Peter, therefore to even question if James is swimming is to not pay attention to what is being said about James. What Ibn Anwar is trying to have us believe about Numbers 23:19 is something like this:

1. God is not someone who lies
2. God is not someone who repents
3. Therefore God cannot be someone or a “someone”

There is no serious person that will vouch for this conclusion. It simply doesn’t follow! Yet this is exactly what Ibn Anwar is trying to squeeze into the text of Scripture. So the analogy that Ibn Anwar, with courtesy of Gomerozdubar, offers to support his argument is nothing like Numbers 23:19:

1. God is not a man, that he should lie;
2. God is not the son of man, that he should repent
3. God does not lie and repent

We are not told here that God cannot become man or that God cannot appear in human form because He doesn’t lie. As we have already seen from the Tanakh  in Judges 13, the very opposite is true. The verse clearly says that God is not like man because He doesn’t lie. Therefore this verse is not designed to proclaim that God cannot become a man and walk among us, but rather to give us the distinction between God and man in character and trustworthiness: God is faithful, man is not. Which brings us to the following part of Ibn Anwar:

Correction: it is the tendency of fallen man to lie and to repent! Yeshua was not a fallen man. He was sinless, born without the stain and continued effect of the sin of Adam that has it’s outworking on every descendant of Adam. God created man in Genesis 1 and saw that it was good. God didn’t make man sinful or with an inclination to sin. Therefore, Yeshua was not sinful as us, who seek to satisfy the lusts of the flesh (as is exactly the case with Muslims as apparent from their views on the Islamic Paradise), nor had He the inclination to sin. Therefore, to say that God cannot be a man because man is prone to sin and God is not completely misses the mark. In fact, even in Islam Yeshua is blameless before Allah. Therefore, being without sin, He is completely trustworthy and shows none of the characteristics of man mentioned in Numbers 23:19 and which Ibn Anwar tries to ascribe to Yeshua.

Ibn Anwar’s point has been shown to be moot. There is no other reason to read it any different as we have analysed the verse. 1 Samuel 15:29 makes the same argument as Numbers 23:19 so there is no need of going over it again. Ibn Anwar’s repetition of the same flawed argument like a broken record doesn’t establish his case.

Wow! Talking about prooftexting. What on earth does Genesis 17 have to do with Hoshea 11:9? Again, I point you to what God is trying to say here: God has promised to save Israel in spite of their evil acts with which they denied Him. God will not destroy Israel for their evil acts, but He will have mercy on them and save them instead. God has spoken and it will be done. He is God, Who keeps His word, not man, that says one thing now and then turns around and denies what he has said before:

Even if God is angry with them, His compassion will prevail over His anger. This passage is again contrasting the goodness of God to the wickedness of man. So, again, Ibn Anwar’s argument is based on the same flaw that we have seen him make in the two other instances. In addition, it amazes me to see how Muslims will claim that the Bible cannot be trusted but then quote from it as if it can be trusted in order to support this case. In this instance, this Muslim will quote a verse to prove his position on God’s essence, while that very verse, and the immediate context of that verse, condemns Islam as a false and illegitimate religion. God says He will preserve His people and tells them He would not wipe them away. Allah, on the other hand, doesn’t  promise Jews preservation but destruction. Plus Muhammad said that the last day would not come unless Muslims fight Jews and kill them all. This is yet another illustration how Allah is the polar opposite of YHWH, the God of Avraham, Yitzchaq and Ya’aqov.

Conclusion

Since Ibn Anwar’s arguments are all based on a flawed (method of) analysis, which have been clearly pointed out, there is no reason to accept the conclusion of his paper. There is no way that Numbers 23:19, 1 Samuel 15:29 and Hosea 11:9 say that God cannot, will not and is not able to come down in human form. They all speak of the trustworthiness of God and His loyalty to His word contrasted to the untrustworthiness of man and his disloyalty to his words. Let’s hope that Muslims like Ibn Anwar are provoked to look into the Message of the Messiah in an unbiased way and see the beauty of the Salvation in the Son of the God of Israel.

In Messiah’s grace,

Nakdimon