The Question:

You have acknowledged that there are "scrible (sp) errors" in the Bible. What makes you think these errors do not occur in passages that you base your entire worldview upon?

(An) Answer:

Let me use the very spelling error you make in your question to explain this matter. It is not "scribble errors" it is "scribal errors". It comes from the word "scribe" which is the name of the persons who were copying the texts and teaching them. Among the Jews the scribes usually were also the teachers of the Law, in the NT period scribes often were professional copyist and might not have understood all they copied and this fact accounts for a number of the errors they made. [But it also shows that there was no deliberate distortion. In order to distort deliberately you have to know what you are writing.]

We have thousands of manuscripts and the errors can be detected by comparing the manuscripts because not everybody makes the same error at the same place.

Let us suppose we have 5 manuscripts and they read in a particular sentence:

Several of the copyist of the text make some scribal errors.
Several of the copist of the text made some scribal errors.
Several of the copyist of the text made some scribal errors.
Several of the copyist of the text made some scribble errors.
Several of the copyist of the text made some scrible errors.

What would you conclude is the true text?

Well, to any reasonable person it would be clear that the copyist is original and "copist" is a copy-error / misspelling. Furthermore, the their activity was not "scribbling" but copying and the adjective to 'scribe' (the name of their profession) is 'scribal', so 'scribal' was original and the one who wrote "scribble" was only seeing the 'scrible', recognized it was wrong and thought it was a copy error of the word 'scribble' instead of 'scribal'. Because he misunderstood where the mistake came from he made an wrong 'correction'. The context will make clear that we are talking about a past action, so it is 'made' instead of 'make'.

And even though only the third line [of five versions] is error free, we can with absolute confidence conclude what the original correct text was.

And because we usually do have several hundred handwritten old copies we have many with the correct version and also many with errors but the textual critics can trace the errors pretty well and with very high confidence establish the original text. And the above example also shows, that even with the lines containing the error, the message was clear and the same in all of them.

BECAUSE the Christians didn't burn their books therefore we can restore the original text even from "corrupted" manuscripts. That is an important difference between Bible and Qur'an.

I venture to say: There is NO handwritten copy of the Qur'an which doesn't have such errors too.

BUT: For Muslims it is impossible to establish the original text because all the variants were burned under Uthman and Muslim scholars are stuck with the scribal errors made by Zaid. Muslims don't have anything to compare this version of the text with to find what might have been a scribal error. It is virtually impossible to write several hundred pages by hand and NOT make any copy errors.

Out of over 15,000 lines in the New Testament only 40 are in some doubt. All others are established above all reasonable doubt. And no Christian doctrine depends on any of the doubtful lines. Christian scholars honestly admit that there are some doubts about the text of the New Testament. That is then seized by the Muslims in order to doubt the whole text and message. But taking a fair view at the data we have, it is clear that the massive information from the many manuscripts of the New Testament is a far more reliable witness to the faithful transmission of our scripture than anything Muslims can show for their book. And especially since the Qur'anic variants were burned you will have to live with the nagging question that the others might have been indeed quite a bit different. And many of the variants can actually be found still today in the commentaries of the early Muslim scholars who still knew the other codices before they were burned.

Overview on the questions
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