Answering Objections to Islam · Qur'anic Transmission
Qur'anic and Biblical Transmission Compared
Handle with care. Avoid the slogan "not a single letter has ever changed". The and companion codices are recorded in our own sources, and an informed interlocutor will produce them.
In short
- 1.More manuscripts means more variants: roughly 400,000 among New Testament witnesses.
- 2.Qur'anic transmission is dual — written rasm plus a continuous licensed oral chain.
- 3.No Qur'anic passage's authenticity is disputed the way Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11 are.
The claim being examined
Christian apologists argue the New Testament's 5,800 Greek manuscripts give it superior attestation to the Qur'an.
The Islamic position
Manuscript count measures copying volume, not fidelity. The relevant question is whether the tradition preserves a single archetype and whether variation is authorised — and on both measures the two traditions differ in kind.
Analysis
Bart Ehrman points out there are more differences between New Testament manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament — though the vast majority are tiny, like spelling. The real difference is *how* each book travelled. The Qur'an was carried by mass memorisation, with teachers certifying students, alongside the written copies. The New Testament had no equivalent memorisation chain. And the two best-known disputed passages in the New Testament — the long ending of Mark and the story of the woman caught in adultery — are missing from the earliest manuscripts, which is why modern Bibles print them inside brackets or with a footnote. The Qur'anic tradition has nothing of that kind.
From the Qur'an
إِنَّا نَحْنُ نَزَّلْنَا ٱلذِّكْرَ وَإِنَّا لَهُۥ لَحَـٰفِظُونَ
innā naḥnu nazzalnā l-dhik'ra wa-innā lahu laḥāfiẓūna
Indeed, it is We who sent down the Reminder, and indeed, We will be its guardian.
From the Bible
Greek
Absent from Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus; bracketed in modern critical editions.
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