The Prophet and the Prophets - Appendix I

The following is an appendix to the below series of articles on Deuteronomy 18:

Do Not Be Afraid of Him - Part I
Do Not Be Afraid of Him - Part II
--------------------

Appendix I: The Prophet and the Prophets

In its grammatical-historical context, Deuteronomy 18 doesn’t directly predict the coming of one specific individual, at least not in the way that many people surmise.

Whereas Deuteronomy 18 speaks of a “prophet”, singular, the grammatical-contextual usage, in full harmony with the exigencies of Israel’s historical situation, indicates that the word is being used in a collective or distributive rather than in a simple sense, and therefore points not to just one person but to many prophets or an entire order of prophets. In other words, the prophecy/promise of Deuteronomy 18 is about the prophetic office, and is, at least initially, as will be shown, fulfilled in the case of Joshua, Moses’ immediate successor, as well as the long train of Hebrew prophets that God would raise up after him, from Samuel to John the Baptist.

---------------------

The rest of this article can be read here at Answering Islam. Comments on the article may be left in the comments section of this blog.

Help Get Sam Shamoun a Laptop

Please help get Sam a laptop for Christmas. For more information on this, go here.

Silencing A Muslim Dawagandist

Here is another reply that just went up at Answering Islam, this one in response to an attack against the resurrection of the Lord Jesus by Sami Zaatari.

-----------------

Anyone familiar with Zaatari's method of reasoning knows that his arguments against Christianity are often false just on their face (and for that reason have a face only someone like Zaatari could love), and thus any analysis expended on them is bound to be a case of overkill. What is generally true turns out to be no less the case when it comes to one of Zaatari’s latest reckless attacks on Christ and Christianity, which centers on Isaiah 53, a passage he believes refutes the Lord’s resurrection, a doctrine that is admittedly central and indispensable to the Christian faith. (Zaatari’s article can be found here.)

--------------

After reading the rest of this article, which can be found here, please return and leave your comments.

A Lie Upon God

I have a new article up at Answering Islam, which is a response to Ibn Anwar, a pronounced Muslim and anti-Trinitarian.

---------------------

In a recycled article that now appears on the Muslim Responses website, a Muslim dawagandist named Ibn Anwar attempted to refute the Trinity and prove Islam’s peculiar brand of monotheism from the Holy Scriptures, specifically from a passage found in Mark’s account of the Gospel. This article constitutes a rebuttal.

In the opening paragraph Mr. Anwar provides the following explanation of his thesis:

“There are quite a number of verses and passages throughout the New Testament that teach and propagate the absolute Oneness of God the Creator and Jesus' subservience to Him as a servant and worshipper. We will not be scrutinising [sic] all those verses here. What we will do is focus on just one passage which to my understanding as I will prove in due course succinctly refutes the Trinity and shows Jesus' admission to absolute numerical monotheism. Before we proceed it is noteworthy that Muslim apologists in general like to quote Mark 12:29 in particular whenever arguing for Jesus' monotheistic belief, but, they almost never discuss the immediate verses that follow that would indeed strengthen their case further as we shall see…”

---------------------

To read the rest of this article, go here. As always, you are invited to return here and leave your comments after reading the article.

The Plural of Majesty: Allah is Neither Plural Nor Majestic; or, How Modern Muslims Have One-Upped Muhammad

Silence and Propaganda Are the Best Policy

In a lengthy paper entitled Let Us Make Man: A Trinitarian Interpretation of Genesis 1:26 (and Related Passages), I argued, in a long train of others before and since, on prima facie, exegetical, systematic and historical grounds that the plural pronouns used by Yahweh, the one true God, in places like Genesis 1:26, 3:22, 11:7 and Isaiah 6:8, are only properly understood in light of the rich Trinitarianism of Biblical revelation rather than in terms of any kind of impoverished or sterile unitarianism (not to mention polytheism). Space was also devoted in the paper to refuting some of the more popular alternative approaches, including the old canard that the phenomenon found in these passages are only instances of some kind of literary plural or figure of speech – such as the plural of majesty, the plural of respect, the plural of deliberation, and the editorial “we”.

To date, no Muslim has refuted the kind of positive evidence I (and others) have provided, apparently going with the motto that silence on this score is the best policy, and no Muslim has thought it meet to address the problems with the alternative views that I (and others) have enumerated, but for all that Muslim dawagandists have not stopped repeating the idea that a literary plural – specifically, the plural of majesty – is in view, a tactic that amounts to nothing more than propaganda.1 In light of this, it seems to me that it is high time to once again explain the problem this view has, and add to the list of problems certain considerations that show that this way of explaining the passages is illicit, given what Muslim sources themselves tell us, and incongruous, given the Islamic view of God.

To read the rest of this article, go here. As always, after finishing the article you may return here and leave your comments in the provided combox.

The True Shahada: Defended - Part III

This is the third installment of my response to an anonymous Muslim’s critique of my article, the True Shahada. Picking up Anonymous’ critique where I left off in part two, the following will show that John 17:3 supports the undiminished deity of Christ contrary to Mr. Anonymous’ self-styled rebuttal and contrary to Islam’s Shahada. Thus it will be demonstrated once again that this passage is of no help to Muslims no matter how anxious they are to establish some kind of revelatory precedent for their religion, one that goes back beyond a mottled version of seventh century paganism, sectarian, apocryphal, and Gnostic “Christianities”, and post-messianic Talmudic Judaism, to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

To read the rest of this artice, please go here. As always, you may return to the comments section provided on this page and leave your remarks.

Do Not Be Afraid of Him - Part II

Yes, after retrieving an unfinished draft from my old broken laptop, I have finally finished the long promised article on Deuteronomy 18. Enjoy.

----------------------------------

Having shown in Part One that the prophecy of Deuteronomy 18 was not and could not have been speaking of Muhammad, it remains only to show who the ultimate fulfillment of the passage really is. Although the previous article was dispatched in short order, focused as it was on Muhammad, about whom the passage has nothing positive to say, the present paper will naturally be somewhat longer since the focus is now on “…the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” (John 1:45)

The rest of this article can be read on Answering Islam at the following link: see Do Not Be Afraid of Him - Part II. As always, after reading the article you may return here and leave your comments and/or ask questions in the provided combox. May the Name of the Lord be praised.

Rashad Khalifa's Killer Finally Found

The murderer of Rashad Khalifa has finally been found and apprehended. Not surprisingly Khalifah's murderer turned out to be a Muslim who didn't appreciate Khalifa claiming to be a prophet after Muhammad (not to mention a number of other things); after all, like all Muslims this murderer believes Muhammad was the greatest guy who ever lived, and since Muhammad's peerless example included killing people who didn't think as highly of him as he thought of himself, well....

Here is a link: Finding Rashad Khalifa's Killer

Oh yeah, it so happens that it has been nineteen years since the dirty deed was perpetrated; no doubt the Submitters are all abuzz over this. (For those who aren't in the know, the number "19" was a basis for much speculation on Khalifah's part.)

An Open Blog Post To Sami Zaatari: On Genesis 1:26

Sami, your most recent article on Genesis 1:26, which you wrote to attack the Trinity, is so incredibly bad I am beside myself. I would write a response, but your article doesn't come close to tackling what I have already said on the matter here.

In fact, though there is nothing in your article I haven't already responded to in the paper linked above, I have been meaning to add something else to the section of that article dealing with the Muslim objection for quite some time. Thanks for stirring the pot; I will get right on it.

Update (8/24/09): Instead of adding to my original article, I decided to write an entirely different one dedicated to debunking the "Plural of Majesty" explanation. It includes specific material relevant to showing that such an explanation is not at all available to Muslims. That means it is back to the drawing board for dawagandists like Zaatari. It can be found through the following link: here.

The Logical Precision of the Qur'an: Not!

“And there are among them illiterates who know not the Book but only lies, and they do but conjecture.” (Shakir, S. 2:78)

This leads to problems like the following:

(1) If such people knew/know that 2+4+2=8, then according to the Qur’an it would be/is a lie, which is absurd. (This might help Muhammad and his followers out of a bind (q.v. Surah 41:9-12), but it would lead to an untold number of other problems.)

(2) If it is true that such people knew/know only lies, then they wouldn't have known/know that they existed/exist. If they did/do know that they existed/exist, then it would have been/is a “lie”, but if their existence was/is a lie, then how did/do they know it since non-existent persons can’t know anything?

(3) It is not possible to “know” only lies, for in the nature of the case a lie can be believed but it cannot be known.

These problems don’t go away even if one tries to restrict the lies “known” by Scriptural illiterates to that which regards “the book”, for once again, it is not possible to know any lies, whether they are about the book or something other than the book. Lies cannot be known. Period. The tenacity of this point also doesn’t go away if one resorts to other translations, for they all yield a similar set of problems.

****Many thanks to PM for alerting me to this****