License to sin: Does the Bible Command Women to Wear a Veil? *

"The Bible commands women to cover their heads with veil like Muslims do!  Why don't your Christian women not cover themselves?"

Sometimes, Muslims will say that Paul did away with the law to make Christianity more appealing to on-Jews, but other times they find Paul making rules that are not found in the Gospels or the Old Testament.

One popular polemic for Muslims is to accuse Christian women of disregarding the Bible for not wearing head coverings as Paul commanded:

For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered.
--1 Cor 11:6 (KJV)

Why does Paul tell the Corinthian women to cover their head?

Here is the answer:  In Corinth at that time, the female temple prostitutes had short hair, and the male temple prostitutes had long hair.  If you don't know that, this chapter has no reasonable meaning.

Paul gives reasons why women should be covered, but he finally concludes:

Judge for yourselves. Is it appropriate that a woman pray to God unveiled?

-- 1 Corinthians 11:13

Since in our culture female temple prostitutes don't have short hair, it is fine for women to not be veiled.

Also I should point out that we have the story in Genesis 38, where  Judah saw a woman but did not recognize her as Tamar because of the veil she wore over her face. Thinking she was a prostitute, he requested her services.

One difference you will notice between the Quran and the Bible is that Paul tries to appeal to reason whenever possible, while the Quran often simply threatens the disobedient with hellfire.  Normally, Paul starts with what his audience already knows and draws a conclusion.

Was Abraham a Christian or a Jew?

Or do you say that Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Descendants were Jews or Christians? Say, "Are you more knowing or is Allah ?.. "
--Quran 2:140

At first glance it appears the Quran is is making a powerful argument.  Abraham could not have been a Jew as Moses came much later, and could not have been Christian as Christ was even later. So he was obviously Muslim, right?

And yet how could he have been Muslim?  Mohammed was even later than both of these.  This is an example Muslim's common trick of equating belief in God with Mohammed-ism.  In fact it shows to the contrary that you don't need Mohammed to be in good standing with God.

What is worse it appears that the author of the Quran was ignorant of the discussion of Melchizedek in Hebrews chapter 7.
Notice his titles:


Even Abraham the patriarch gave him a tenth of his spoils.
A priest.
King of Salem (meaning King of Peace).
No end of life recorded, as someone whose ministry remains forever.
So he is an Old Testament "type of Christ"

 Hebrews argues that Jesus could be a priest without the important Levitical ancestry because Christ is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, and that priesthood is more fundamental than the Levitical one.

I used to hear Muslims ask about how someone else other than Christ could have no father, referring to Melchizedek:

 ...without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life
--Heb 7:3

The Jews were very strict about being able to prove what tribe that priests belonged to, but Melchizedek was a priest whose ancestry was not mentioned.


I think that if the Quran really came from Allah that there would be a reasonable expectancy of more persuasive arguments than this.  The discussion should have started where Hebrews 7 left off, otherwise we may conclude the Quran is the result of a human effort without special insights.

Is The Quran The Best Poetry?

Muslims sometimes point to the literary quality of the Quran of proof it is from Allah.

There are about 6000 languages in the world, and Arabic falls in order of popularity after 
Mandarin,
Spanish,
English and
Portuguese.

So if the proof of the Quran is in its Arabic poetry then it can't claim to be a universal religion.

You: The Bible can be translated into any language while preserving its message.

What Language Did Jesus speak in: (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek or Latin)? +

Muslims sometimes claim the Gospels are translations of his words from Aramaic to Greek, which would introduce inaccuracies.

Let me show a Muslim posting to show how this can be useful:

Your cliam that Jesus (pbuh) was reffering to the Holy Spirit is simply wrong. According to the Aramaic Bible Society, the word "Paraclete" back then meant the "Praised One". Muhammad's name was "Ahmed". Both Muhammad and Ahmed in Arabic mean "The Honored One" or the "Praised One".

Also, there is a claim that the Bible is a "translation of a translation of a translation".  Something along the lines of Aramaic to Greek to the Latin Vulgate to English.  Of course, the Vulgate has nothing to do with modern translations, but some Christians don't know this, and most importantly this sounds impressive to Muslims.

Response:

You do not have to concede this Muslim claim.

We know that Jesus and his disciples lived in a multilingual world:
“And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew.”
--Luke 23:38

Also, there are a few short phrases in the Gospels that record Jesus speaking Aramaic, but always accompanied by a translation into Greek.  This would indicate that these were the exception rather than the rule.


Furthermore in John's revelation 22:13 Jesus describes himself as the "Alpha and Omega".  These are distinctly Greek words, and no translation is supplied.
Also the "Old Testament" that was in common use in Jesus' day was the  "Septuagint", was written in Greek.

This makes it likely that religious discussions would more than likely have taken place in Greek.

A modern equivalent of this would be that when computer technology is being discussed by people who speak English as a second language, the conversation will quickly turn into English.

The Mormon Question *

Just claiming that an angel revealed something to you does not make it true.  After all, the Book of Mormon was also revealed by an angel (according to the Mormons).  Islam and the Mormon revelations both claim to be a correction of the Bible, but only Mormonism uses the Bible.

At the same time both religions suffer from an embarrassing issue.  Paul wrote:

But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you any “good news” other than that which we preached to you, let him be cursed.
--Gal 1:8

According to this verse, there is no need for a different gospel, and we should be  especially suspicious of  one that has been brought by an angel.  Neither the Quran nor the Mormon scriptures interact with this verse.  By this I mean, there is no verse that explains why we can now disregard the verse in Gal 1:8.  Any explaining is done by the the Mormons/Muslims themselves.

How did we get from Jesus teaching the Injeel to the Resurrection of Jesus? -

Here is some of what Muslims believe about Jesus, whom they call Isa:

He was Born of the virgin Mary.

As a  baby, he said: "I am indeed a servant of God: He hath given me revelation and made me a prophet."

He had disciples.

Allah gave miracles to him.

He was not crucified, but it just appeared so.  Thus the entire Quran answers the claim of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus with just 40 Arabic words:

They said (in their boast), "We killed the Messiah Isa (Jesus) son of Maryam (Mary), The Messenger of Allah"- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety They killed him not-Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise- Quran 4:157-158.

Every Muslim is free to interpret these words how they want.  There is no certain knowledge as to what they mean, but only conjecture.  Most Muslims will say that it was Judas who was made to take the place of Jesus on the cross.  Josh McDowell, in his debate with Ahmed Deedat, lists many of the interpretations of this verse.
Here is the link:

https://youtu.be/cgUnalaJoTs

Christianity exists because those who came before us saw Jesus crucified and raised from the dead.  We simply go what we see.  We believe those who were there and who wrote about it.


To associate partners with Allah is the worst sin of all. That is called shirk and Christians are the poster-child of it because we consider Jesus the son of God.  In Islam that is a sure ticket to hellfire.

Here is the question that Muslims cannot answer: what events took place between what appeared to be the crucifixion of Jesus [whatever happened] to cause the belief in the death, burial, and resurrection to become the prevailing view that emerged from the first century?

Were his disciples Muslims or not?

Every church with a cross on top of it attest to the fact that somehow some people were able to overwrite what Jesus openly taught with shirk beliefs.

Christians have been celebrating communion for as long as there was Christianity.  How did this get started?  Can you imagine you getting your friends together and you telling them to eat this bread and drink this wine and to pretend it is the body of Jesus?

At face value, every New Testament author was more qualified than Mohammed to write about Jesus.

What does the Quran supply to lead us to believe that he had more insight into Jesus than what we see in the New Testament?

Is there Only One God?

One time a Muslim told me he had a proof that there is just one god.
He said that if there were more than one god then they would be fighting each other and not able to come up with a unified creation.

I said, by your reasoning, only one person created my computer.  He did not reply.

An interesting and related question is "Can God lie?"

How can you know which Religion is True? -

Most people have the mindset that God is unknowable, sort of like this conversation:

Person A: "I believe the moon is made of cheese."
Person B: "I believe the moon is made of rock."
Person A: (shrugs shoulders).
Person A: "You have your belief, I have mine."

This is the sentiment of Surah 109.

And yet there is a lot you can know about God just with your hands in your pockets, and once you bring in religious texts you can know a lot more.

For example there are many lines of reasoning to show that God exists.  Basically with the discovery of the 'Big Bang' we know the universe is not in a steady state, but rather had a beginning.  Nobody has been able to explain how we got something from nothing.  This makes atheism as much of a religion as believing in God, and so it is just as plausible or implausible.

Since the fact the universe appeared out of nothing, (no explanation has yet been found for it within science), it is plausible that God created the universe. Now, what about life?

No people-group has ever been found that did not have significant religious beliefs.  So here we are, intelligent, self-aware, all God-seeking, and not finding.

Notice how we, have gone from knowing nothing to seeking an explanation for an apparent God-forsaken humanity situation.

What sort of religion could possibly explain how God created humans God-aware but not knowing who that God is who created them is?

Please understand this point: We know a lot about who God is from the fact that God is not openly revealed to us.  If you wanted to invent a new religion, the first thing you would have to do is think of why we should worship an unseen God.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were a religion that would start out explain what is going on, for example by chapter 3?

Was Muhammad was the Prophet like Moses?

I will raise them up a prophet from among their brothers, like you [you=Moses in context]; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him.

--Deuteronomy 18:18

Muslims often claim this refers to their prophet.

This  argument is actually self-defeating. 

Mohammed is so un-like Moses that they do not read from the looks of Moses in their mosques, except to pick-and-choose verses that help their case.

Muslims may reply that the Bible is corrupt.  But do modern textual critics find the Quran a helpful source of answers for their investigations?  More likely the Quran is just different.