carried off the New Testament with Him into heaven 1! "Hence it
logically follows," they argue, "that the Gospel which Christians now have cannot
be the original one which descended (from heaven) upon Jesus, the Son of Mary."
In reply it may be said: (1) The Qur'an nowhere states that Jesus took the Gospel up
to Heaven with Him, nor does any reliable tradition. (2) This statement therefore rests
upon nothing but your mere assertion, and as you were not present at the time you cannot
give evidence. (3) The "Gospel" that the Lord Jesus preached and taught by His
whole life was not fully written down then, just as the Qur'an was not
"collected" into a fixed form until after Muhammad's death. To say that the
Gospel was carried off to heaven is therefore absurd, just as it would be to say that the
Qur'an was. If we asserted the same fact regarding the Qur'an, you would laugh,
and confute us by producing a copy in the original Arabic. So we refute your statement by
showing you a copy in the original Greek. (I have often done so and found it quite
sufficient to settle the question, for "seeing is believing," and, on the other