Is this a……joke? Jay Smith is most certainly not a professor at any academic institution. He is the only person I know to have been attempting a PhD for 16 years and to date has no original research to show for it. Now he’s parading himself as a Professor. Increasingly I cannot find myself able to distinguish between him and Ergun Caner.

During the first few minutes of his presentation he holds two books in his hand. The Bible and the Qur’an. He held up the Qur’an and said that Muslims can only read the Qur’an in Arabic therefore it tells him that the God of the Qur’an can only speak Arabic. Then, he held up the Bible and said you can read it in all languages, so this tells him that the God of the Bible can speak all languages. He then called upon the audience to challenge Muslims with this argument to demonstrate that the Christian God is greater than the Islamic God. To my surprise, the audience erupted with cheering! There is no way a sane person would cheer something so insipid and inane, I felt embarrassed that someone can possibly utter such statements in front of an audience.

To clarify why this is a bad argument, both Muslims and Christians agree that the primary text is the most accurate text. All languages have language devices. For example, Arabic has a syntax construct called the dual. There are singular nouns, dual nouns and then plural nouns. The English language only has the singular and plural nouns. Therefore the dual nouns are lost somewhere in translation between the two languages. Muslims therefore only consider the primary revelation to be the word of God, translations are representative of the word of God, but they are not wholly complete given the language device differences. This is why Muslims adhere to the primary text and strive to study it in its original language. Christians also, extract their exegeses and lectionaries from the Greek Critical texts of the New Testament. However, this is done by their scholars who invest in learning the Greek language of the New Testament.

What this means, is that while Muslims place greater importance on learning and interacting with their scripture in its primary form, this is only relegated for the scholars of the Christ religion, thus their is a schism, a demarcation, a disparity between the scripture and the Christian lay man, while the Muslim has no such disconnect from God’s word. Thus, this is not only a poor argument to use, it’s as if you’re saying your scripture is not important enough to be studied in its primary language and as such, you are comfortable with excluding yourself from having the ability to interact with the scripture in the language it was written in. Muslims do not want to exclude themselves from God’s word, but apparently Jay Smith is comfortable with this and so are the Christians at Veritas Apologetics University. Muslims value their word from God, Christians, do not.

and God knows best!