Has Mohammed misquoted the Bible?

Prompted by a tweet promoting a book called: 'Misquoting Muhammad', I tweeted: 'Mohammed misquoted the Bible in the first place, so what is the problem?'
One dr Aman (@mnaseba) replied: 'where? when? how?'

I decided to answer her by means of a blogpost. The 140 characters of a tweet are not enough to answer her short but excellent questions in the manner they deserve. So here it comes.

Dear dr Aman,
I could just point at the numerous and well known discrepancies between the Bible and the Koran. I will address some points in detail later on but first of all I want to say this:
Pushing all religious notions aside, let us say for the sake of the argument that Mohammed is the author of the Koran.

The Bible (the Old Testament and the New Testament combined) is much older than the Koran. The Koran contains various elements clearly borrowed from the Bible. But they differ sometimes. Mohammed must have misquoted them or the people who have written the Koran years later, from memory, reciting what they have heard from Mohammed himself or from others who heard him saying it, must inadvertently have corrupted the original oral version. Let's go back to the assumption that Mohammed is the author of the Koran; isn't it logical to say that Mohammed misquoted the Bible?

For Christians and Jews the Koran is totally irrelevant. Not so for Muslims and the Bible, the Koran refers to the Bible and they have to explain the differences.

Islamic scholars have a rather strange explanation for these differences. The Jews and the Christians corrupted the Bible.

Why should they have done that? Were they aware of the future content of the Koran and therefore corrupted the Bible with the intention to disqualify the Koran even before it was written? This allegation is really absurd.

Now some discrepancies between the Bible and the Koran:

1. In Sura 3:53 The disciples of Jesus say that they are Muslims. There is no such statement in the New Testament. The word Muslim cannot be found in the Bible.
2. The Koran denies the crucifixion of Jesus (Sura 4: 157). The crucifixion is described in detail in the New Testament. The historian Flavius Josephus mentioned the crucifixion as an historical fact. He also mentions the imprisonment and death of John the Baptist.
3. In Sura 4:172 it is said that the Trinity consists of God, Jesus and Maria. Christian doctrine says that the Holy Trinity consists of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. 1 John 5:7 - 5:8, Matthew 3:16 - 3:17, John 10:30 - 10:36.
4. The birth of John the Baptist, of which Luke writes elaborately in the first chapter of his Gospel, is also mentioned in the Koran, Sura 3:38. Mohammed got it completely wrong here. For instance, the wife of Zacharias is called Elisabeth. Mohammed mixed her up with Maria, the mother of Jesus. Furthermore he adds rather mythical details not mentioned by Luke. Where did he get them from?
5. The Koran claims that Mohammed is the last prophet, Sura 33:41. The Bible doesn't mention a last prophet, on the contrary. Joel 2:28-29, Acts 2:16-18.
6. In Sura 5:117 it is said that Christians worship Maria as a deity. No such thing in the New Testament.

I use a Dutch translation of the Koran. I noticed that the numbering of the verses differs slightly from the English translation.

A final remark about the Koran. Who says the Koran is true? Mohammed does. Who says that Mohammed tells the truth? The Koran. All we have is the supposed revelation of Mohammed. Is there any evidence that Mohammed really had a revelation? In legal terms it is all hearsay.

I wrote this blogpost specially for you, to answer your questions. It is not at all my intention to insult you (assuming you are a Muslim) nor any other Muslim. I just wanted to express myself clearly.

Kind regards,

John Zuyderduyn