I've come across many Christians on wattpad who have tried to persuade me that Christianity is the truth and that the Bible is the actual word of God. I have been told many times to just "wake up" and become a Christian instead of a Muslim.

So the following chapter is mostly a response to all those Jehovah-Witnesses of Wattpad and will serve as proof that I am more than capable of doing my own research and finding the truth for myself. Please note that the point of this chapter is not to bash Christianity or to make Christians look bad in any way, but to show that I have legitimate reasons for choosing not to become a Christian, Jew, or anyone other than a Muslim.

With that being said, here is a list of some of the main issues I have with the Christian Bible, and why I, as a Muslim, cannot accept Christianity as the truth. (I will write similar chapters for Judaism and Atheism in the future as well, so be sure to look out for those!) 

So without further ado, let's get right into it.

1) The Gospels that Christians use today aren't even from Jesus

The Gospels are the first four books of the New Testament, and they were written approximately 70 years after Jesus's death. Not only that, but the authors of those books were also anonymous, and according to historians, not a single one of them were eyewitnesses to Jesus's crucifixion. 

Logically speaking, the fact that people who never even met Jesus were the ones in charge of recording his teachings only increases the probability that they could have gotten things wrong. And according to Wiki, the four gospels were actually found to be "inconsistent in detail." For example: 

"Mark never calls Jesus "God" or claims that Jesus existed prior to his earthly life, never mentions a virgin birth....Matthew reinterprets Mark, stressing Jesus' teachings as much as his acts and making subtle changes to the narrative in order to stress his divine nature...Luke, while following Mark's plot more faithfully than does Matthew, has expanded on the source, corrected Mark's grammar and syntax, and eliminated some passages entirely, notably most of chapters 6 and 7, which he apparently felt reflected poorly on the disciples and painted Jesus too much like a magician. John, the most overtly theological, is the first to make Christological judgements outside the context of the narrative of Jesus's life."

And this is just a fraction of the information I've found. There are so many more examples. But the fact that people were making changes to Jesus's narrative since the very beginning  only strengthens my point that they could have gotten things wrong, and why take the chance of trusting a book like that?

The Quran states that Jesus himself was given a scripture to teach to the people, just like Moses and the all the prophets before him. But that Gospel is no longer around today. Instead, Christians have been relying on a book written by ordinary human beings.

With the authority of writing the Bible given to so many different people (many of whom we don't even know!), it's simply illogical to assume that the original message of God remained completely intact. 

2) The main Christian beliefs aren't even mentioned in the Bible

The majority of today's Christians believe that God exists in the form of the Trinity, that He is one "essence" but exists as three persons. However, the Bible makes no mention of this. Instead the idea of the Trinity wasn't brought up until 300 years after the Gospels were written, by the Church father Tertullian.

God never says that He was "one in three persons." Jesus never stated that he was God and told the Christians to worship him. This was literally a man-made concept, yet the majority of Christians accept this as the truth.

Islam, on the other hand, rejects this idea completely: 

"No person to whom God has given the Scripture, and wisdom, and prophethood would ever say to the people, "Be my worshipers rather than God's." Rather, "Be people of the Lord, according to the Scripture you teach, and the teachings you learn."

Furthermore, the main belief of Islam has been made pretty clear in multiple parts of the Quran: That there is only one God and Muhammad is his (final) messenger. 

^This wasn't added hundreds of years after the Quran was revealed. No one tried to alter that message or had doubts about it. The Quran had made it pretty clear. This was the Islamic belief since the very beginning, whereas the Trinity concept wasn't created until centuries later. 

3) Christians continued to add and make changes to the Bible for hundreds of years after it was first written. 

I mentioned earlier that in the early days of New Testament being written, "subtle" changes were already being made to the narrative. But what about hundreds of years afterwards? Turns out it got even worse. 

During the first hundred of years, people were making copies of the Bible by hand instead of relying on professionals, which opened the door for many errors and changes. As proof, here are some screenshots from several websites I've found.

Christians also argue that if changes were made to the Bible, those changes were only "minor" and didn't alter the meaning of the original text. However, anyone who has studied languages knows very well that a few simple words can entirely alter the meaning of a verse, and that is FAR from what we call a "minor" change.

How can a book that has had more than 40 authors and such a long history of changes made to it be the pure word of God? Just...how? 

Meanwhile try to google "changes made to the Quran" and see how many results you get.

4) There are hundreds of different versions of the Bible 

There are about 150 different versions of the Bible in the English language alone. Why on earth would you need that many? How can you be sure that ALL 150 versions don't contain any major changes or errors? (hint: you can't!) In fact, there's a huge chance that much of the original message of Jesus was lost through all those translations.

5) The Bible isn't read in its original language

The Bible, specifically the New Testament, is believed to have originally been written in Greek (Koine Greek, to be more precise), yet no copy of that manuscript can be found today. This has served as a major obstacle for scholars as they have no standard version to go off of when they're making copies or translations of the New Testament, opening yet another door for possible errors.

Meanwhile, the Quran has always been read in its primary language (Arabic). In fact, Muslims strongly believe that the only accurate, true version of the Quran is read in Arabic. They are also encouraged to memorize entire chapters of the Quran in its original language, a method that proved to be extremely effective in helping the early Muslims catch any errors in copying (and I'll talk more about that in another chapter, InshaAllah). On the other hand, the original language of the Bible was never preserved, which also strengthens my earlier point that the true message of God could have gotten lost through hundreds of different translations.

I'm going to leave it at here for now and upload Part Two of this topic later. That's right, there are  still a lot more problems with the Bible that I have yet to go over, so if you're still curious, be sure to look out for an update! In the meantime, let me know your thoughts on this chapter! I would love to hear any ideas/rebuttals/questions you may have.