We’ve answered the supposed violence in the New Testament, but what about the Old Testament, where there seems to be quite a bit of violence? More specifically, what do we do with Joshua 6:20, or 1 Samuel 15:2-3 where God says to the Israelites that they were to ‘kill all living things’? Muslims claim these are clear examples of Genocide, which is something you won’t find in the Qur’an. In order to understand this violence, we need to look at the context behind them both. In 1 Samuel 15:2 the Amalekites waylaid the Israelites as they were coming out of Egypt, where they had been captive for 400 years. Exodus 17:8 tells us that these Canaanites attacked the Israelites, seduced them, and forced them to worship their own gods. Thus, God says that because of this, he was going to destroy them. So, 1 Samuel 15 and Joshua 6 are a fulfillment of what God had promised back in Exodus 17, resulting that they would be completely blotted out and that this would continue from generation to generation (verse 14-15). God gave clear criteria concerning how the Israelites were to go to war, stipulating in Deuteronomy 20 rules of engagement for war, delineating two kinds of people that they were to war against, those who lived near to them, and those who lived far away. Those people who lived far away were not a real concern, so the rules for war were different for them than those who were much closer and would be more of a problem. Verse 10 says that they were to first offer the enemies peace. If they accepted (verse 11) they were then to be put into forced labor. For those who did not accept (verse 12), they were to attack them. In verses 13-14 and 16-17 it is clear that they were to only kill the men and leave all others alive. In verse 17, God gives a whole different set of rules for those people who lived nearby, because they attacked them when they came up out of Egypt (Exodus 17); including the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and the Jebusites, a total of six tribes. They were to completely eradicate them in order to stop their seduction. So, what seduction is God referring to? To understand it we need to refer to Ezekiel 16. It says that God had taken the Israelites as babes, and dress them, and nurtured them. But in verses 15-24, the Israelites responded by sacrificing their children, and prostituting themselves to other gods. Whose? The Egyptians, Philistines, Assyrians, and the Babylonians (vss 26-29). Ezekiel 16 gives us a better picture concerning just how dangerous the surrounding nations were to the Israelites and proves why God wanted them eradicated, so that they would never again seduce the Israelites, who had been chosen by God to bring the Messiah to the whole world. The Israelites, having spent 400 years in c ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIfUci_7hKs

Rajiv Abraham had a good Question, asking whether there were, “Any documents from the time of Mohammed showing financial transactions in Dirham instead of Drachma?”. In other words, did the Dirham even exist during Muhammad’s lifetime? Muslims would say that the word ‘Dirham’ is nothing more an Arabic reference for the existing Byzantine ‘Drachma’ coin, so therefore the Dirham would have existed at the time of Muhammad. But this ‘begs the question’, because the coin itself, the Dirham coin, was only introduced during the time of the first Caliph Mu’awiya, from the Umayyad dynasty, who ruled from 661 AD – 280 AD. So, it was he who first minted Dirhams, but not until 661 AD onwards. Therefore, the coin itself, the Dirham, would not have existed during the time of Muhammad, because it wasn’t even created for another 30 years after his death. We do have references to transactions between Arabs and Byzantines as far back as 643 AD, including the PERF 558 (pictured on the right), which is nothing more than financial transaction, written in both Arabic and Greek. But nowhere in this document do we find mention of any Dirhams. The reason why we ask the question about Dirhams, however, has to do with Surah 12:20, which is about the story of Joseph. In verse 20 he is being sold to the Egyptians for, “A few dirhams counted out”, suggesting that they must have used coins at the time of Joseph. But Joseph lived in 1800 BC, and coins weren’t created until the 600s BC, by the Lydians, so that this reference to coins is 1200 years too early. What’s more, Dirhams weren’t introduced until 661 AD, when Mu’awiyya introduced them as the new Caliph. So, how could Muhammad have been referring to coins which would not be created or introduced for another 30 years, unless, of course, he was prophetic, or simply wrong? This suggests to me that the story of Joseph in Surah 12, and the ‘few dirhams counted out’ in verse 20, were probably included in the Qur’an at a much later date, sometime after 661 AD. But don’t we have the same problem with the Bible? Isn’t the wrong coinage, and the wrong currency found in that story in Genesis 37:28? The answer is that in the Biblical account, Joseph is sold for 20 shekels. The shekel is not a coin, but a weighted measure used for commerce in that part of the world, since the 3rd millennia. What’s more, we now know that 20 Shekels is about 0.2% of a kg of silver, and that this would be the approximate price for a slave at that time! So, while the currency used in the Qur’anic account for the story of Joseph proves to be incorrect, the currency in the Biblical account not only turns out to be the right currency, but the price used in the Bible is the correct price as well; provi ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQXhPk28x2M

The question is often asked concerning why there is so much violence in the Old Testament, yet in the New Testament, we find only peace, with Christ stating clearly that we are not to use the sword, saying "for he who lives by the sword must die by the sword" (Matthew 26:52). Doesn't this suggest that either God changed his mind, or is confused, or that we have two different gods? Not at all, for it is not God who changed between the Old and New Testament, but the children of Israel. As an example, take for instance Jay's 3 sons; who, at one time were 6 yrs. old, 12 yrs. old, and 16 yrs. old. Jay had one set of laws for his 6-year-old, not allowing him to go outside the house by himself, while his 12-year-old could go all over London alone; and his 16 year old could travel around the world by himself. So, at one time Jay had three different laws for his three different sons, yet he was the same father for all three. He hadn't changed, nor was he contradictory, nor was he two different fathers. He contextualized his laws depending on the needs for all three of his sons who were at different stages of maturity. Likewise, God does the same for us, his children. He had a strict and all-encompassing set of laws for the children of Israel in 1400 BC (called Mosaic Law), similar to Jay's restrictive laws for his 6-year-old, but in the 1st century AD God had a completely new set of laws, introduced by Jesus Christ, which we call the New Testament. They are much more freeing, but entail a lot more responsibility, much like the laws Jay reserved for his 12-year-old son. But what about Jay's 3rd son? We are told that 600 years after Christ initiated his new law (his New Testament), another supposed prophet called Muhammad came who introduced yet another set of new laws called 'Shariah Law'. Yet, they are similar to the old Mosaic Laws introduced at the time of Moses, restrictive and violent, regressing believers back to Mosaic times. Can you imagine Jay imposing the laws of his 6-year-old onto his 16-year-old, regressing him back to his childhood? He would never do that. Yet, that is what Islam tells us Allah has done to Muslims, regressing them back to the Law God imposed on Moses in 1400 BC. Jay as a father hasn't changed, but his three sons have. In the same way our God between 1400 BC and today hasn't changed, nor is he confused, nor contradictory, nor is he two separate Gods. He hasn't changed at all. It is we who have changed. © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2019 (22,050) ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVPPGBsaaEs

Al Fadi and Jay Smith finally decide to debate the merit of 'oral tradition' concerning the historical sources for Islam's origins. Jay takes the side of Islam, while Al Fadi takes the side of Christianity, confronting the lack of evidence for any 7th century sources for Islam's prophet Muhammad, or for their book the Qur'an, or for their city Mecca. Jay's response was to simply say that everything that Al Fadi had to point out against the sources for Islam's origins was based on silence, and "the absence of evidence does not necessarily prove the evidence of absence", suggesting that just because there was no evidence from the seventh century, this didn't necessarily prove anything, because in time that evidence would emerge; we just needed to be patient. Al Fadi's comeback was to remind Jay that the only evidence he had as a Muslim was based on writings that were 200 to 300 years too late, proving that everything Muslims had to support their book, their man, and their place, came from oral tradition; which is the weakest form of authority. And the reason is that oral tradition is like a children's game called "Chinese whispers", where one child tells the next child a secret, which was then told to the next child, and so on, until the last child says what he or she has heard, and the group compares the first statement with the last statement, which is always very different. If these kinds of differences occur in just a period of 15 minutes, imagine how they would change over a period of 200 to 300 years, amongst people who had an enormous incentive to either create or embellish everything they heard from the previous orator, because it had to do with the man who created their religion, and who was their paradigm, or their model. They would only pass on what they felt would help their cause, and filter out anything that was damaging or embarrassing. But no one would know because there was no "paper trail", since none of it was written down to incriminate them. Jay tried to respond by saying it didn't really matter, because we could trust the list of 'isnads' (i.e. the list of names of those who orated each statement, known as 'matn'), since every one of those names were men of good repute. Al Fadi's response was to point out that, regardless of how authoritative or moral any of the list of names were, no one knew what any of those men actually said, because they never wrote anything down. All we have today is what people like Ibn Hisham and Al Bukhari wrote down, believing that what they wrote came from those men, though they had not themselves met or heard any of these men. What's more, there was no reason to depend on oral traditions, because writing was quite common at that time. We have a myriad of examples of writings from that time period, and from that territory, proving that Muslims should possess these written documents. Thus, they can no longer hide behiind oral tradition as an excuse. By the end of the debate, it was clear that Al Fadi had won the debate, as Jay really had no responses to these accusations. In conclusion we find that these much later Islamic sources are extremely problematic for the authenticity of the religion of Islam as a whole to stand on; yet as Al Fadi has revealed in this episode and with this debate, Islam is built on nothing more than a foundation of sand. Because the sources originate far too late after the life of Muhammad, and come from much too far to the north - away from where all these events supposedly took place, should anyone place their faith and salvation in a religion that contains such a lack of evidence? © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2022 (69,390) Music: "Joy at Work" by Musiclfiles, from filmmusic-io ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR381hgZu3I