Sacred Texts Related to the Bible

The Bible is the most widely published and distributed book in human history, yet many people don't realize how it relates to other sacred texts such as the Jewish Tanakh, the Apocrypha, and the Qur'an. In this episode, Jess explores the history of the Bible, how it was compiled, and how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each understand these sacred writings. Most importantly, we examine the central purpose of Scripture and what makes the Christian message unique.

The Bible: A Brief Overview

• The Bible contains 66 books written over approximately 1,400 years.
• It begins with the Hebrew Scriptures (the Tanakh) and concludes with the New Testament.
• The New Testament was written by multiple authors between approximately A.D. 60–110.
• The biblical canon was first formally listed by Athanasius of Alexandria in A.D. 367.
• The canon was later affirmed by church councils, including the Council of Rome (A.D. 382).
• The Bible was written by many human authors but is understood by Christians to be divinely inspired.
• Ancient manuscripts, including discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, demonstrate the remarkable preservation of the biblical text across centuries.
• It remains the best-selling and most widely distributed book of all time.

One Bible, Three Major Faith Traditions

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all recognize biblical figures and stories, yet each tradition understands Scripture differently.

Judaism and the Tanakh

The Jewish Scriptures are known as the Tanakh.

The Tanakh begins with the creation of the universe and concludes with King Cyrus's decree allowing the Jewish people to return to Judea and rebuild the Temple in 539 B.C.

Compiled over several centuries by multiple writers between approximately 1000–400 B.C., the Tanakh is divided into three sections:

Torah ("The Law")

The Torah establishes God's covenant with Israel.

It presents God as the sovereign authority and records His Law, forming Israel into His covenant people.

Jewish tradition also preserves generations of commentary on the Torah known as the Talmud.

Nevi'im ("The Prophets")

The prophetic writings are divided into:

Former Prophets

• Joshua
• Judges
• Samuel
• Kings

These books tell the story from Moses through the establishment of Israel's kingdom.

Latter Prophets

• Isaiah
• Jeremiah
• Ezekiel
• The Twelve Minor Prophets

These books describe periods of national struggle as God continually calls His people back to faithfulness. The terms "major" and "minor" prophets refer to the length of their writings rather than their importance.

Ketuvim ("The Writings")

This section contains wisdom literature, poetry, and historical books, including:

• Psalms
• Proverbs
• Job
• The Five Megillot (Festival Scrolls)
• Daniel
• Ezra-Nehemiah
• Chronicles

Many of these writings reflect Israel's worship, wisdom, and experiences during and after the Babylonian exile.

Old Testament Timeline with Books aligned

https://alabasterco.com/blogs/education/tanakah-vs-christian-bible?srsltid=AfmBOor-0l9VIFlqJqvEBvn-ZsHdLAkDvKulX9dd5cpC34P0A1lOIzqN

https://jcom.de/en/blogs/news/tora

Christianity and the New Testament

The New Testament records:

• The life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ
• The birth of the early Church
• Letters written to churches for encouragement, correction, and spiritual instruction

Although the Christian Old Testament closely mirrors the Hebrew Bible, Christians read these Scriptures through the conviction that Jesus is the promised Messiah.

Where Judaism continues to await the Messiah, Christianity believes the promises of the Old Testament find their fulfillment in Jesus.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha consists primarily of books written in Greek during the approximately 400-year period between the Old and New Testaments.

These books are:

• Included in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles
• Accepted in varying degrees by some Anglican traditions
• Generally omitted from Protestant Bibles

Most Protestant traditions do not regard the Apocrypha as Scripture but value it for its historical and cultural context.

https://anglicancompass.com/apocrypha/

Why It Matters

The Apocrypha helps explain the historical world into which Jesus was born.

One important example is Hanukkah, or the Festival of Dedication, described in 1 Maccabees.

"I and the Father are one." (John 10:30)

"Something greater than the temple is here." (Matthew 12:6)

Throughout the Old Testament, numerous prophecies pointed toward the coming Messiah, including that He would:

• Be born in Bethlehem
• Be born of a virgin
• Descend from David
• Be preceded by a messenger
• Be called a Nazarene
• Bring healing
• Shine as a great light
• Become the object of rejection and murderous plots

These prophecies would have been familiar to Jewish leaders.

https://jewsforjesus.org/blog/jesus-celebration-of-hanukkah

https://jewsforjesus.org/learn/top-40-most-helpful-messianic-prophecies

Protestant Bibles omit the Apocrypha largely because the Reformers translated from the standard Hebrew canon, which did not include these Greek writings.

The Qur'an

According to Islamic tradition, the Qur'an was revealed to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel over approximately 23 years, beginning around A.D. 610.

The Qur'an references many biblical figures, including:

• Adam
• Noah
• Abraham
• Moses
• David
• Jesus

However, the narrative and theological emphasis differs significantly.

Both Christianity and Islam honor Jesus, but they reach very different conclusions.

The Bible teaches that Jesus is the divine Son of God, fully God and fully man, whose death and resurrection provide salvation.

The Qur'an honors Jesus as a prophet and messenger while rejecting His divinity, the Trinity, and the crucifixion.

Islam also teaches that God revealed the Torah and the Gospel but maintains that the Qur'an is God's final and perfectly preserved revelation.

Within Islamic tradition, the concept of abrogation teaches that certain later revelations supersede earlier ones, meaning some passages replace previous instructions as Muhammad's revelations progressed.

https://www.billygraham.ca/stories/the-quran-vs-the-bible/

https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/do-you-know-these-7-differences-between-the-bible-and-quran

The Central Message of the Bible

From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible tells one unified story pointing toward Jesus Christ.

The Old Testament anticipates the coming Messiah.

The New Testament reveals His life, death, resurrection, and the transforming power of His grace.

Christianity teaches that salvation is received as God's gift through faith because of Christ's finished work rather than earned through human effort.

Many religious traditions emphasize practices such as sacrifice, prayer, ritual, moral achievement, or other acts of devotion as essential means of obtaining salvation or divine acceptance. Christianity teaches that good works are the response to God's grace rather than the basis for earning it.

As Ephesians 2:8–9 teaches:

"For by grace you have been saved through faith... it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

Because salvation rests on God's completed work rather than human achievement, believers are free to live lives of obedience and gratitude—not to earn God's love, but in response to it.

If this episode encouraged you or sparked your curiosity, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss upcoming deep dives into Genesis, the Flood, the Exodus, and more - with scientific and archaeological insight every step of the way.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Welcome to Understanding.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Alright, so today we're gonna have a little bit of a step away from the scriptural text. We're gonna look instead at um I what I mean is just like we've we've we've studied Genesis 1 through 11, we've covered a lot of scriptural ground, um, also uh historical ground. And so what we're gonna look at today is like um all of the the religions and texts that actually use the Bible as a foundation, uh as a sacred foundation for the basis of their faith. Um so I'm speaking specifically about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And the reason I'm doing that is because we're about to break into a little bit of a segue into different faiths, um uh breaking off from um the basis of Judaism versus the basis of uh Islam, and that's through um the father of Abraham. When we get into Abraham, uh we'll actually look at where the two um religions actually sect uh away from each other. They did they they um they diverge. There's some divergence that takes place. So it's pretty um confusing sometimes when you hear these words like Talmud and Quran and um um you know, Torah, things like that. Those are words that get kind of passed around in the different um religions, and it just helps to kind of sit and understand what those are and what they're referring to before we really dive into uh the Bible as scripture from this point on. Uh so so we do have um the Bible. You know, the Bible is what we call the um the basis of Christian uh thought and sacred text, and we have so the Bible uh contains 66 books, the canonized Bible contains 66 books, and it was written over approximately 1400 years. Uh, it begins with the Hebrew scriptures, that's the Old Testament, but it also includes the New Testament and um the canon. So, what what do I mean when the can I mean the canon? Uh the canon is actually all of the verses that have to deal with um Jesus Christ and the Messiah and who we he is and what he did on the cross, and there, you know, all that um what he did on the cross and afterwards the the establishment of the early church. And so that's that's what I taught I mean when I say the but the biblical canon. So there was a couple of um different uh committees that met uh in the around 367 to 390 AD, uh they met and they actually took all of the the scrolls and the the documents and the text that had been um uh you know correlated as Bible or as scripture, and they went through all of it and they said, okay, these are the these are the books that deal with the coming Messiah and or the message of Jesus Christ and human humanity's need for a savior. And then these are all the books that talk about Jesus Christ as the Messiah and also the New Testament letters um about the establishment of the Christian church. And so that is the Bible that we have in our Protestant religion. So think Baptist, Methodist, uh, Evangelical, Assembly of God, all of those, you know, those have the 66 books of the Bible. Now there are other books that were considered um scripture or kind of superscripture. They were like supportive scripture that exist. And uh you may know that the Catholic Bible is actually has more books in it, um, with books called the Apocrypha included. Um, and I'll get into that later on. But uh that that's essentially the difference between the two Bibles is some of the books don't actually talk about Messiah and they don't talk about the coming Messiah, or they don't talk about Jesus as the Messiah. And so they were kind of put to the side uh and said, okay, so these books are valuable, but they're not scripture, they're not God um inspired. So I do want to just use um 2 Timothy 3. This is this is what the Christian church believes. It says all scripture is given by the inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. So essentially what we believe as Christians is that all of Scripture, including the Old and New Testament, was given as God-inspired ideas. It was written by many authors, uh, which actually leads to its credibility because the Bible does not contradict itself. It actually, you know, the early authors and the subsequent authors actually support each other. The context supports each other. You might hear sometimes that um the Bible contradicts itself, but when you look at the message that the people are are stating, it actually is when verses are taken out of context. Uh, and but the Bible actually supports its own scriptures universally, and and this has been proven multiple times. Also, the Bible is the best-selling and most widely distributed book of all time. If the Bible could be disproven, it would have been by this point. There has been so much agenda to discredit the Bible in human history because of its message that we need a savior, that if this was possible, it would have been done. And so um, we believe that the Bible is true in its completeness and that it is divinely inspired as uh God put the words in human hands and and they wrote it. Um, also, the Bible is one of the most well-documented and um well maintained book. It's actually the most maintained book of all times. The reason why we know this is because we have ancient manuscripts and then we also have recent discoveries of preserved ancient manuscripts. Um, example is the Dead Sea Scrolls that were found in the 1940s. Also, we found scriptures in crocodile mouths in Egypt. Um, and they say they repeat word for word what our Bible says now. So we know that it has had remarkable preservation across centuries, which there's no other historical book or text that has this kind of authentication and and um authority. So uh again, multiple groups have tried to discredit the Bible and they just they can't. Uh so so the Bible is a powerful tool, uh, and it and it's used in three major world religions, um Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. So I'm gonna start with Judaism because that's the first, that's the most ancient uh use of the Bible, and we have, you know, the Old Testament are what we know as the Jewish scriptures. Um, the Jewish scriptures are called the Tanakh. Uh, this begins with the creation of the universe and it concludes with King Cirus's decree that allowed the Jewish people to return to Judea and build the temple in 539 BC. This is after the captivity of um Jerusalem in Babylon. And so multiple centuries of time uh here. It was compiled over several centuries by multiple writers between 1000 and 400 BC. So, you know, these people did not necessarily know each other as they were writing. Um, but again, because it was God-inspired, they actually were in agreement with each other and they wrote about things not only in the past, but things in the future. So there's a prophetic word that took place here as well, specifically talking about that coming Messiah, but also the end of days. So the first um five books are the Torah, and this is called The Law, and this is probably one you're more familiar with. This is the Torah that's referred to in some of these more modern um, you know, uh cinemizations of the Word of God. I'm thinking of the series called The Chosen, uh, which is a very popular TV series right now that's been written uh and created uh to demonstrate what the Twelve Disciples' lives were like uh before Jesus and then during the time of Jesus and then after the time of Jesus. And the Torah is what they were referring to when they referred to Scripture. And so the Torah establishes God's covenant with Israel. Uh they would have had this in scrolls, they would have read to writ from separate scrolls. Not every place had the whole version of the Torah. Maybe schools of you know, rabbinical schools did. Uh, but most places like tabernacles or temples would have had just, you know, specific scrolls. And um, so you know, they they would have had not different versions, but they wouldn't have had a complete set. But this is the Torah and it establishes God's covenant with Israel. So God, you know, uh in future, yeah, as we set out now in Genesis 12 and on, it's gonna talk specifically about God's relationship with the people of Israel, because that's the group that he calls or he names as his chosen people. And he kind of puts his mantle over. Um, it presents God as a sovereign authority, as the sovereign authority, and it records his law that forms his covenant with the people of Israel. Uh, it also includes, so in not included in Torah, but there's there's this extra part called the Talmud. And the Talmud is ancient generations of rabbis and Levitical priests commentary on the Torah. So when you look at a picture of the Talmud, it actually has the Torah, like a like a small passage of Torah in the middle, and then it will have all these like passages around it and writings around it in like concentric rings, which is multiple generations of commentary on that passage of Torah. And so there's just there's so much interpretation that the the Jewish tradition has taken from it. Um, they they they actually, I think at the time of Jesus there was something like 3,000 laws, rules that they had to keep up with as a result of Torah. Where you know, the the Torah itself, the while we had do have Leviticus and Deuteronomy uh with multiple rules and and law that the that God passed handed down, uh he didn't give them that many laws. But so, you know, during the time of Jesus, one of the things that he was famous for was talking to the um rabbis uh and Levitical priests as if they are, he calls them whitewashed tombs, and it's because they have all these rules that they're following, and they kind of lord it over everybody else that they're following these rules so well, but in reality, Jesus didn't give them all, or God did not give them all that those rules. So that's you know, that's where those rules really come from, is this interpretation of Torah through the Talmud. The Talmud is not scripture, it is man's interpretation of the law, and that's where that comes from. So after the book of Numbers, we have um, or Leviticus, we have the Neveam. So this is the prophets, and these are the prophetic writings. So they're Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. And then we also have Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and then there's 12 minor prophets. So these all deal with future um kingdoms. Um the they tell the story from Moses through to the establishment of the kingdom of Israel and nation of Israel before it was kind of dissembled and gone into exile and captivity. And it describes um, it describes first it talks about the establishment of the nations through Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and kings. All right, and then later on it talks about God continually calling his people back to their faithfulness in him, uh, and the national period, the periods of national struggle uh based on the the kings of Israel, kind of like you know, it it it got kind of goes through at one at some time there's a king that follows God, and then it will say there's a king that did not follow God. And then there will be king that does follow God and the king that does not follow God, and it's just back and forth of constant like faithfulness and rejection of God and who he is um as the king of or as the true the God of Israel. And so this is the prophets talking about God um calling them back through through their actions. So that is then the V. And then we have the last part of um the Tanakh, the Judy, Jude, the Hebrew Bible, is the Ketuvim. So these are called the writings, these are the books that contain wisdom, literature, poetry, and they also have some historical books. So there's the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Daniel, Ezra Nehemiah, and Chronicles. And then there's also something called the Five Megalot, which is the festival scrolls. So these are like the holidays, the Jewish holiday scrolls. And these writings actually reflect Israel's worship, its wisdom, and experiences during and after the Babylonian exile. So while the Latter prophets kind of ends with the um the nation of Israel going off into Babylonian captivity, the writings kind of are kind of interspersed throughout the Old Testament, and it it that's where it talks about the experiences during the Babylonian exile. So when you read the Old Testament, what you end up doing, and if you don't realize this, uh, is you'll read, like let's say you read Joshua Judges, and that talks about things that take place, or Joshua Judges and Samuel and Kings. You know that that will talk about things that will take place. And then you'll read Chronicles, and Chronicles is actually a historical book, but it talks about a completely different time uh in the Israel nation. And you'll kind of wonder, wait, where am I? What am I talking about? And that's because it takes place during a different time of Jewish history, but it's included in a strange order in the Old Testament. And so understanding that when you're sometimes the books are actually written from different perspectives, some of them are prophetic, some of them are historical. And so what you'll realize is that you're actually reading, it's kind of redundant, and you'll you can make connections between the two um different books based on where they are in history. So understanding where they are in history is really helpful uh when they take place. Um and I'll put in um the show notes uh like a kind of like a timeline of where these different books take place. So when you read them, you can realize, oh, that's happening during this time, whereas, you know, during the Babylonian captivity, whereas the other thing is happening during the establishment of the nation of Israel or during the um you know the back and forth of the faithfulness to God of the Jewish people. And that is the Jewish, um, the Hebrew Bible is is those three things, and it makes up what's called the Tanakh. Okay, so it ends there, and that's because the Jewish people are still waiting for the coming Messiah. They're still looking for that person that's going to save them from you know the occupation and uh the oppression of the rest of the world around them. So Christianity has a New Testament, and that's because as Christians, we believe that Jesus is the promised Messiah that was promised through the Old Testament. So our Old Testament closely mirrors the Hebrew Bible, but we look at it through a different lens. We actually look at it through the person of Jesus as fulfillment of those prophecies about the coming Messiah, all the way from Genesis 3 through to the Babylonian exile. Uh and and so and then the following letters um in the New Testament after Jesus rises again are written to the churches for encouragement, correction, and spiritual instruction. So when as Christians, we look to not only the tradition, like so Jesus came and he came to fulfill the law, which is uh the Torah, but he also came um uh to offer grace. So so grace actually it kind of replaces the law. Like we we have the law and we we we seek to follow the law, but now we do it as a as a desire to love God and love Jesus based on the grace that he gives us and the the the fact that he saved us from our sins because we realize that we cannot live up to the the law, we always make human error and mistakes. And so as a result, um by grace we are saved through faith, not that any man can boast through their good works. And so, you know, the Jewish people, they're trying to follow the law the best that they can, whereas uh the Christians as Christians we realize that we can never fulfill the law. So Jesus came and he fulfilled the law for us, and then because we call on his name as Lord and believe on him, we are saved through grace. And so any good works that we do are actually as a form of gratefulness to the saving grace that Jesus has done for us as the Messiah. And that's the major difference between the two religions. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about works as we get towards the end because that's a very common theme between Christianity and pretty much every other world religion that's out there. Um, so in between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament is something, there's a 400-year period. Uh, and there's there's in in the Protestant Bible, there's no um there's no information during that time. However, uh there were things that were written in um, they're written in Greek during that period, and this is something called the Apocrypha. So the Apocrypha is included in Bibles that were translated from the Greek. Um, so we're thinking Roman Catholic Bibles, Orthodox Greek Bibles, they're going to include these books, and that's why the Catholic Bible is larger than the Protestant Bible. The Protestant Bible was actually translated directly from the Hebrew Bible, and the Hebrew Bible does not include the Apocrypha. And so that's why the Protestant Bible does not include these books. Now, growing up uh in a Baptist church, you know, you would hear about these books, and there was kind of like this um kind of like this, I don't know, contention about these books that they might be dangerous. Uh, and so so it was almost like don't read those books because they they're gonna sway you or something. Well, that is not the case at all. Uh, and actually, there's there's one denomination of Protestant, um, the Protestant religion that actually, or Protestant Christianity, it's not a separate religion really, but um, because Catholics are Christians as well. But they the Anglicans actually recognize the the Protestant Bible, but they also see the Apocrypha as helpful um supporting books to understanding scripture. And actually, when we look at the life of Jesus and the apostles. They also referenced these books as supporting texts in light of scripture. And so it's actually useful to read these books. And it's because they take place during this 400-year period between the Old and New Testaments. They have a lot of historical information involved in them as well. But they just help us understand Scripture based on its historical and cultural context. They help us understand Jesus as a Jewish person during this time. And they also understand the Jews of Jesus' time and what their perspective was going to be. So one specific example of this is in 1 Maccabees, and it's where we uh the Jewish people get their holiday of Hanukkah or the festival of dedication. We're all pretty familiar with Hanukkah. You know, it's got an eight uh candle menorah, and then uh we've got um, you know, they set have a celebration. Sometimes you've heard it called the festival of lights. And the what it comes from is it comes from this miraculous preservation that took place in first, it's recorded in 1 Maccabees. Essentially, um the Maccabean revolt was against this uh guy, Antiochus IV of Epiphanes. And what he had done is he had gone in and desecrated the temple, and the Jewish people actually were able to revolt against him. A very small band of of um Jewish people revolted against him and they rededicated the temple. So a miraculous, amazing preservation there. And then so they get into the temple, and according to tradition, there's only enough consecrated oil remained to keep the temple lamp burning for one day. And so it took a it took eight days to consecrate oil and to prepare it for temple lamp burning based on the law, based on the Torah. And so instead of, you know, these these the small rebellion, they actually miraculously were able to regain access to the temple and re-desedicate it. And they wanted to rededicate it, you know, immediately. They want to wait eight days. And so they said, well, we're gonna take this oil and we're gonna light this oil and we're gonna trust God for the rest of it. And in the meantime, we're going to prepare uh to consecrate more oil, but it's gonna take eight days for it to be consecrated. Well, the tradition is that the oil lasted all eight days. Every time they went to relight um a new uh lamp, it would it would have enough oil there. And so amazing um miracle of preservation. And this is called the festival of dedication of the temple. All right, so then let's look at John 10. In light of this festival of dedication, so Jesus enters the temple during the festival of dedication, during the celebration of what we would know as Hanukkah, right? And so he enters the temple while many Jews once again are longing for God to preserve their people. At this time, it's from the Roman occupation during the time of Jesus. And Jesus comes into the temple and he declares to everyone there, I and the Father are one. Well, this was this was revolutionary because umbody could say that they were on the same plane as God, right? Uh so those listening, the temple represented God's dwelling among his own people. The temple would have been the most sacred place in every Jewish person's mind. And yet Jesus was essentially declaring that he is as sacred as the temple, right? And in Matthew 12, 6, which is about kind of the same time, Jesus actually says something greater than the temple is here. So he's talking to the Jewish people, and he's telling them that their temple is not the most sacred thing. Their temple is not the greatest place for God. The temple actually, or God actually dwells in the person of Jesus. He is telling them that he is the coming Messiah. And and numerous prophecies pointed toward a coming Messiah that the Jewish people, especially the Levitical priests, would have been very familiar with. Um, this was all in the Tanakh, which is that Jesus or the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. He would be born of a virgin, he would descend from the line of David, he would be preceded by messengers, uh, he would be called a Nazarene, he would bring lots of healing to people around him. It says that he would shine as a great light and that he would become the object of rejection and murderous plots. Now, there's lots of prophecies around Jesus that Jesus fulfilled, especially in his death and resurrection. I specifically listed things that Jesus had already done before he entered the temple because he's not at the end of his life, right? But these are things that had already taken place that the Levitical priests would be aware of and would also be able to connect the dots to the prophecies for the coming Messiah. So all these prophecies would have been very familiar to the Jewish leaders because they have to study um the works and the Torah in order to and the prophets to know this. So what Jesus does, and because of our understanding of the Apocrypha from what happened during the Maccabean revolt, Jesus timed his coming into the temple and saying what he said about being greater than the temple during the Feast of Dedication. It actually gives us an even more enriched idea of what Jesus was trying to tell his culture and his people. Rather than making a political claim over the temple, he actually was revealing himself as the fulfillment of God's promise and the his true place of God among his people. It was he was a living uh fulfillment of God's promise instead of a brick and mortar uh building that can be destroyed, right? Now, for a lot of the Jews, this was scary because once again their temple was under threat, and here comes another person saying, Um, this temple is not is is not yours. And and so that it became a moment of fear, but really what it was meant to be was a really beautiful moment where where Jesus revealed himself in a in another level of depth to the people that you're you know there was this temporary preservation that took place during the festival of dedication during the Maccabean Revolt, and that would have been fairly fresh in the Jewish people's minds. That happened fairly recently in history from their perspective. And and he's saying, But I have I've come to give you full preservation, like eternal preservation, because no longer is God going to live in a very temporary dwelling. He's going to live in us, and we are eternal beings. And so it should have been, and it probably was for a fair amount of the Jew Jewish people during that time, um, a really beautiful moment of understanding based on historical and cultural context. But unfortunately, it also became a point of fear, uh, specifically for the Levitical priests, because they saw it as undermining uh their authority as the priests over the temple. So um, so that's you know, in a nutshell, the the Hebrew Bible, the Apocrypha, and then the Christian New Testament and Bible. And so those are read with different perspectives, mainly the Messiah coming versus the Messiah has already come in the person of Jesus Christ. So we do have another religion that uses the Bible as a sacred text, um, and that is Islam. So according to Islamic tradition, tradition, the Quran was revealed to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel over approximately 23 years, beginning around 610 AD. So this is 600 years after Jesus' death and resurrection on the cross. It's after the Bible has been um canonized and written. And the Quran actually references many biblical figures, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus. So it actually confers that a lot of those figures uh existed and were powerful players. Specifically, Abraham. Abraham is seen as the father of Islam through the son Ishmael, right? So they they just follow the line of Ishmael as opposed to the line of Isaac. And we'll get into that more in future podcasts because we'll talk about Abraham and where he was and things like that. Um, this is really helpful because for a long time, uh Anthra, our archaeologists denied the possibility that David existed because they hadn't found archaeological evidence for David. However, the Quran said that David existed, and um, and so that's another textual proof. But also since then, archaeology has determined that David did exist and they found him, not him, but they found uh articles that have mentioned him, they found um places that he would have been and left a mark on. Um, so the Quran recognizes these major players in their religion. However, the narrative and theological emphasis differs significantly. All right. So while both Christianity and Islam honor Jesus, they reach very different conclusions about who he was. So while the Bible teaches that Jesus is the divine Son of God, fully God and fully man, whose death and resurrection provide salvation, the Quran honors Jesus as a prophet and a messenger while rejecting his divinity, the Trinity, and the crucifixion. So the Quran re denies that Jesus rose again. And as a result, that makes Jesus just a really great teacher in their minds, but not the only teacher. And so um essentially what that means is that they they see Muhammad as the last and greatest prophet that Jesus inspired with sacred text. Um they do teach that God revealed the Torah and the gospel uh to the many authors over time, but that the Quran is God's final and perfectly perverse preserved revelation to the person of Muhammad. So a little bit of an issue with the writings of Muhammad is that over the course of 23 years, he would actually go through and cross out uh previous versions of his teaching or what he wrote down. So the concept, it's called the concept of abrogation. And it just what it means is that later revelations superseded the earlier ones. So some passages are replaced. Um, even though Muhammad wrote all of them, some passages disagree with each other and were replaced. Well, during the course of 23 years, Muhammad made copies and published his writings, and so as a result, the Quran is not identical among its many versions. And so there are versions of Islam that follow an older version of Muhammad's writings, and there are versions of Islam that follow a newer version of Muhammad's writings, and that is what leads to the multiple factions of Islam tradition and sex that we have today, and why you can have a very peaceful version of Islam versus a very violent version of Islam. And so that's the main problem with the Quran is that um it's written by one person, and so whereas the Bible has many authors and they don't contradict each other, the Quran is written by one person, and multiple times it it contradicts each other. Uh, and that's because he would cross parts out and say, No, there's a new, a newer version to this, but not everybody got that message. And so that's that's the Quran. So let's talk about the Bible and the message of who Christ is in light of all other religions, because this is this is one of how do you like the purpose of this is understanding this is how do we talk to people that come from other religions about who Jesus is and why, why would they want to follow Christianity and leave their other religion? Because people do do this, they will they will understand who Jesus is and they will deny their their religion of their childhood, and and actually it will cause a lot of turmoil in their lives, and yet they still do it. So there's got to be a reason why the message of Christ is so powerful, okay? And this has to do in the person of who Christ is as the fulfillment of the coming Messiah. Um, so I I said this earlier. Um, Ephesians 2, 8 through 9. It teaches that for by grace you have been saved through faith. It's the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Essentially, Christians are not responsible for their salvation. God is. And what that what we mean is that the must if you read through the Old Testament, all the way from Genesis 3 on, there is absolutely nothing humans can do to make themselves like God. We try, we try really hard. And like literally, the Old Testament is full of that. Uh, humans trying to make themselves as good as or like God, and we fail miserably. And it's because we can't. We mistake the I mean, the the quote is to be human is to err, right? No matter how hard we try, we're gonna screw it up. And and that's and that another one, the the road to hell is paved with good intentions. That's another great quote. And the truth is, it doesn't matter how much good stuff you do, you will always wonder if you've done enough, or of course, you will always also do not good things, and that will cause you to be um not able to be saved. And so the Hebrews, you know, they look at the law and they look at these rituals and sacrifices and all these things they have to do, these rituals they have to follow in order to follow God's law, but inevitably they're not gonna do everything perfectly. Um, other religions, I mean, every other, I just got back from a trip to Japan, and there's Shintoism and there's Buddhism, and then, you know, they have to like burn incense, they have to pray, they have to do all these things, right? Um, in Hinduism, there's all these things they have to do. In in Islam, they have to pray five times a day, facing a certain way. There's they have to eat certain ways. All these world religions rely on humans doing ther certain things based on some written air text somewhere to try to earn their salvation. But Christianity is the only religion that teaches it's by faith that you've been saved. God sent Christ down, lived a perfect life, did not break any laws, and he did that so that you could then trust in him. He died and he rose again. So he conquered death because essentially what we all deserve is to die because we're not like God. And so he conquered death and then said, I'll took the sins of the world on me, I conquered it, now you can trust in me and have eternal life. He put the effort on himself. And it's a gift. God gives that to us as a free gift. And so we get to say, I trust God as that Jesus is Lord, I trust that he died on the cross and rose again, and I ask him to forgive me of my sins through his death and resurrection. And as a result, I mean, it's it's actually realizing that there's nothing we can do to save ourselves, that it's only God who can save us. And so as a result, we're able to relax about that. And what we can do instead is every good thing that we do, we do in light of the fact that we've already been saved. And so we get to just enjoy serving God instead of doing it out of a I have to do this, a duty-bound, oh, I need to get my salvation. I haven't, you know, done this, this, that, and the other today. Instead of looking at through that, we can look at it through, oh God, thank you so much that I woke up today and I still get to live on this earth. Help me help others. Help me love others, help me see others the way you see them, and and then treat them that way. And that is the beauty of the gospel of Christianity.

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I hope today's show has enriched your life with the mud. I know I'm always amazed at all of the new and interesting things that I find every time I open the Bible. Until next time, grow deep in God's word as you fumble the