A Christian-Muslim debate on the reliability of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.
Debate thesis: “Can We Trust Today’s Torah?”
Debaters: Alex Kerimli (Christian) and Sadat Anwar (Muslim)
Date: Friday April 11th, 2014
Time: 7pm
Location: Faith Baptist Church
3837 Lawrence Ave. East
Scarborough, ON, M1G 1R2, Canada
416-431-0095
Categories: MDI Canada, MDI News, Previous Events, the muslim debate initiative, Zara Faris
The Muslim Debate Initiative 
If Torah is unreliable today, the philosophy of Islam ( One Allah) will destroy itself. The Muslims believe there are 1 lac 24 thousand Prophets in the world sent by God and among them 1 lac 23099 were came from Jews. Only Muhammad was out of Jews’ line.
huh? well the one Creator His compassion is not limited to one nation . I hope that you are aware that the world is not 6000 years old or 10 00 years old and indeed Allah did sens messengers to ALL nations not only Jewish nations . 23099 Jewish prophets? haha . What about Europe were they speaking Hebrew? And what about Australia? Africa? or do you believe that all humanity whatever the time they were living in were wearing teffelin? or star of David? At least Islam teaches that to every nation a reminder is send to stay away from taghout(false gods) and worship only one creator Islam teaches that those messengers did speak to their people in THEIR language , it does not teach that to all nations there was send a messenger talking to them in Hebrew !!!
The original Torah is a holy book according to Islam .. The Original Torah did honor Noah (puh) and David(puh) (the torah given to Moses puh)
Today the books which they call Torah is not the authentic one and even if it was authentic and not touched by the scribes of the false pen then we Muslims still would follow quran because following Islam is following the Torah . Actually a Muslim is not a Muslim if he disbelieves in the Torah given to Moses (puh)
As Muslims we ask everyday Allah to send His blessing to Ibrahim(puh) and His family . Indeed Abraham is answered but before Abraham (puh) there were also many nations whom lived in this planet and Allah does not punish a group of people without sending a messenger to them .
Finally the day is here. I’m so excited. Maybe Sadat will be the first person to show us this claimed original Torah that is not the same as the present day one.
Sadly, this was not a great debate.
The Muslim (Mr. Anwar) engaged in weak, inconsistent and subjective arguments.
The Christian (Mr. Kerimli) was doing his own presentation (although meaningful) but not really engaging the issues by the Muslim. If it is not blatantly obvious by my statements above (or my name) that I side with the Christian worldview, I would have to say that Alex did make convincing arguments for the Torah.
Mr. Anwar to his credit has good rhetoric, but thats all I can say for him.
Perhaps I will be able to engage other Muslims who were at this debate.
about the torah
if this guy allows my comment to go through, i would like to ask what we know about the COPYING practices of the scribes BEFORE 1st century bce?
which ot manuscript is dated CLOSE to moses’ time?
according to bart d ehrman, emanuel tov and others , there are no manuscripts DATED 300 years after moses.
ehrman says,
Yes, the linguistic difficulties of ancient Hebrew are much more pronounced than for ancient Greek (or ancient Latin, e.g.). That’s because we have so many, many more texts in Greek (and Latin) than in Hebrew, making it possible to establish the meanings of words with fair reliability. With Hebrew it is much more difficult. Linguists who specialize in ancient Semitic languages, as a result, need to rely heavily on cognate languages to help them establish the meaning of Hebrew roots. And so a real expert will also know Ugaritic, Akkadian, Sumerian, and possibly even other languages! It’s not for the faint of heart. And it is not guess work. It is unbelievably difficult and disciplined hard-core scholarship. I’ve known some of the top scholars of ancient Semitic languages. They are quite stunning in their knowledge and abilities.
so lets see
“making it IMPOSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH THE MEANING OF WORDS WITH FAIR reliability”
due to the fact that we have few texts in hebrew.
the scholars are reconstructing the word of god from languages which share the SAME 2/3 letter roots as HEBREW.
christians don’t see that how akkadian, ugaritic and sumerian speakers used words derived from 2/3 letters roots could have used the words differently from how moses used them.
and you guys think u have the word of god?
who are you people kidding?
the funny thing is that the scholars have to be “stunning in their knowledge and abilities” to play detective work. scholars are playing detective work with the word of god.
they’re looking at OTHER languages to find out the meaning of the hebrew.
you don’t know the ancient languages and you are going to
“I will be able to engage other Muslims who were at this debate”
man, don’t you know, the meaning is unknown so thats why scholars have to LEARN other ancient languages to find out what your god meant?
I have studied manuscripts, Greek and Hebrew and the History of the Torah for over eight years now. I do not believe either Sadat or Alex are fully informed in there opposing reviews regarding the nuances of this topic. I would give Saddat an inch in his arguments but he cannot take a mile. The inch is that the Hebrew Constenants of the Manuscripts which go back to 250BC are the same as the constenants in the “Masoretic” copies of the text. The only difference in the Masoretic form is that vowel points were added to the letters to indicate how to pronounce the words. However the inch that I will give Sadat is that there seems to have been a deliberate attempt by the Masorites by the time of 1000 AD to insert missleading vowel points when it concerns the Christ. For example the Masoretic is able to change the word for pierced to lions in Psalm 22. However because the original texts from 250 BC have no vowel points it is equally conceivable that the translation at that same time 250 BC in the creation of the Septuagint gives the correct understanding of the 71 Jewish Rabbis that the words vowel point should have indicated pierced and not lion. Also at Mohammeds time there were no vowel points in the Hebrew Torah as of yet so it would have read to Mohammed as it does in the Septuagint as pierced hands and feet and not lions at the hands and feet of the Messiah. That is why there is nothing in the written record regarding conflicting meanings for this passage until after the errors of the Massorites in 1000 AD, well past Mohammeds time. However all that said. That is only an inch. A meaning of a word. The Quran takes a mile when it severly alters the entire story lines of all the biblical narative. Alterations that go far beyond a word meaning to whole missing or added passages. That mile is unacceptable. For the full version of the Debate including the slide presentations it may be viewed at my website. http://www.truthiswhatmatters.com/training/christianmuslimdebate
I cant see from the quran perspective that the torah is changed or los t etc.
I read that Allah sent them down .