Addressing Muslim Polemicist Abdullah Kunde’s Biblical Distortions Pt. 1

“I will set my face against any Israelite or any foreigner residing among them who eats blood, and I will cut them off from the people. For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life. Therefore I say to the Israelites, ‘None of you may eat blood, nor may any foreigner residing among you eat blood. Any Israelite or any foreigner residing among you who hunts any animal or bird that may be eaten must drain out the blood and cover it with earth, because the life of every creature is its blood. That is why I have said to the Israelites, “You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off.’” Leviticus 17:10-14

“In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Hebrews 9:22

“The LORD detests the sacrifice of the wicked, but the prayer of the upright pleases him… The LORD is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayer of the righteous.” Proverbs 15:8, 29

“The sacrifice of the wicked is detestable—how much more so when brought with evil intent!” Proverbs 21:27

“Unless the LORD Almighty had left us some survivors, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah. Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah! ‘The multitude of your sacrifices—what are they to me?’ says the LORD. ‘I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing MEANINGLESS offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—I cannot bear your worthless assemblies. Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood! Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. Come now, let us settle the matter,’ says the LORD. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land; but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.’ For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” Isaiah 1:9-20

“There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court and detest the one who tells the truth. You levy a straw tax on the poor and impose a tax on their grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them; though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink their wine. For I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins. There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts. Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times, for the times are evil. Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph… I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel? You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of your god—which you made for yourselves. Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,’ says the LORD, whose name is God Almighty.” Amos 5:10-15, 21-27

“With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:6-8

“For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba… You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. May it please you to prosper Zion, to build up the walls of Jerusalem. THEN you will delight in the sacrifices OF THE RIGHTEOUS, in burnt offerings offered whole; then bulls will be offered on your altar.” Psalm 51:16-19

“Offer the sacrifices of the righteous and trust in the LORD.” Psalm 4:5

“I shall come into Your house with burnt offerings; I shall pay You my vows, Which my lips uttered And my mouth spoke when I was in distress. I shall offer to You burnt offerings of fat beasts, With the smoke of rams; I shall make an offering of bulls with male goats.” Selah. Psalm 66:13-15

“Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts.” Psalm 96:8

“Now King David was told, ‘The LORD has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God.’ So David went to bring up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing. When those who were carrying the ark of the LORD had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the LORD with all his might, while he and all Israel were bringing up the ark of the LORD with shouts and the sound of trumpets. As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart. They brought the ark of the LORD and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings before the LORD. After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD Almighty.” 2 Samuel 6:12-18

“So the LORD sent a plague on Israel, and seventy thousand men of Israel fell dead. And God sent an angel to destroy Jerusalem. But as the angel was doing so, the LORD saw it and relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was destroying the people, ‘Enough! Withdraw your hand.’ The angel of the LORD was then standing at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. David looked up and saw the angel of the LORD standing between heaven and earth, with a drawn sword in his hand extended over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell facedown. David said to God, ‘Was it not I who ordered the fighting men to be counted? I, the shepherd, have sinned and done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? LORD my God, let your hand fall on me and my family, but do not let this plague remain on your people.’ Then the angel of the LORD ordered Gad to tell David to go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. So David went up in obedience to the word that Gad had spoken in the name of the LORD. While Araunah was threshing wheat, he turned and saw the angel; his four sons who were with him hid themselves. Then David approached, and when Araunah looked and saw him, he left the threshing floor and bowed down before David with his face to the ground. David said to him, ‘Let me have the site of your threshing floor so I can build AN ALTAR TO THE LORD, THAT THE PLAGUE ON THE PEOPLE MAY BE STOPPED. Sell it to me at the full price.’ Araunah said to David, ‘Take it! Let my lord the king do whatever pleases him. Look, I will give the oxen for the burnt offerings, the threshing sledges for the wood, and the wheat for the grain offering. I will give all this.’ But King David replied to Araunah, ‘No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, OR SACRIFICE A BURNT OFFERING THAT COSTS ME NOTHING.’ So David paid Araunah six hundred shekels of gold for the site. David built an altar to the LORD there AND SACRIFICED BURNT OFFERINGS AND FELLOWSHIP OFFERINGS. He called on the LORD, and the LORD answered him with fire from heaven ON THE ALTAR OF BURNT OFFERING. Then the LORD spoke to the angel, and he put his sword back into its sheath. At that time, when David saw that the LORD had answered him on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, HE OFFERED SACRIFICES THERE. The tabernacle of the LORD, which Moses had made in the wilderness, and the altar of burnt offering were at that time on the high place at Gibeon. But David could not go before it to inquire of God, because he was afraid of the sword of the angel of the LORD.” 1 Chronicles 21:15-30

“Then David said to Nathan, ‘I have sinned against the LORD.’ Nathan replied, ‘The LORD has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the LORD, the son born to you will die.’ After Nathan had gone home, the LORD struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and he became ill. David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and spent the nights lying in sackcloth on the ground. The elders of his household stood beside him to get him up from the ground, but he refused, and he would not eat any food with them. On the seventh day the child died. David’s attendants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they thought, ‘While the child was still living, he wouldn’t listen to us when we spoke to him. How can we now tell him the child is dead? He may do something desperate.’ David noticed that his attendants were whispering among themselves, and he realized the child was dead. ‘Is the child dead?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ they replied, ‘he is dead.’ Then David got up from the ground. After he had washed, put on lotions and changed his clothes, he went into the house of the LORD and worshiped. Then he went to his own house, and at his request they served him food, and he ate. His attendants asked him, ‘Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!’ He answered, ‘While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The LORD may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But now that he is dead, why should I go on fasting? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.’” 2 Samuel 12:14-23

“In terms of the Psalms, I was quite interested to see that you actually used the translation of the King James Bible, speaking about piercing ‘my hands and feet.’ But even someone with a rudimentary understanding of Hebrew knows that this is an incorrect translation. It’s almost certainly an intentional incorrect translation; misappropriation of the word ka’ari, which means like a lion, to ka’ru, which means piercing. It’s completely different and I was astounded that you actually used that quote given the work that you have done the King James text and translation.” (White vs. Kunde, “The New Testament or the Qur'an?”)

“Examples of misreading similar letters abound 1QIsa. In Isaiah 33:13 reads yd‘w (‘let me know’) rather than the MT’s wd‘w (‘and know ye’). More significantly we find in the MT of Psalm 22:17 (16 Eng.) the strange phrase ‘like the lion my hands and my feet’ (ka^ari yaday w^e raglay) in a context that reads ‘dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men have encircled me–like the lion my hands and my feet!’ This really makes no sense, for lions do not surround the feet of their victims. Rather, they pounce on them and bite them through with their teeth. Furthermore, this spelling of the word ‘lion’ (^ari) is rendered more doubtful by the fact that in v.13 (14MT) the word ‘lion’ appears in the normal way 'aryeh. It is most unlikely that the author would have used two different spellings of the same word within three verses of each other. Far more likely is the reading supported by most of the versions: ka'ru (‘They [i.e. the dogs or evildoers] have pierced’ my hands and my feet). This involves merely reading the final letter yodh as a waw, which would make it the past tense of a third person plural verb. This is apparently what the LXX read, for oryxan (‘they have bored through’) reflects a karu from the verb kur (‘pierce, dig through’). The Vulgate conforms to this with foderunt (‘They have dug through’). The Syriac Peshitta has baz'w, which means ‘they have pierced/penetrated.’ Probably the ’ (aleph) in ka'ru represents a mere vowel lengthener that occasionally appears in the Hasmonean manuscripts such as 1QIsa and the sectarian literature of the second century B.C.” (Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties [Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, MI 1982], Introduction, p. 37)

Canon 4. The reading that best explains all the variants is most likely the original one. An excellent example of this was discussed above in connection with Psalm 22:16 (17 Eng.), where we saw that a ka’ru (“they have pierced”) misread as ka’^ari (at a time when the waw and yodh greatly resembled each other) most satisfactorily accounted for the MT reading; whereas it would be far less likely that “like the lion” would have been the original lying behind a ka’ru, which makes perfect sense in the context. (Ibid., p. 43)

Psalm 22 is a favorite among Christians since it is often linked in the New Testament with the suffering and death of Jesus. A well-known and controversial reading is found in verse 16, where the Masoretic Text reads “Like a lion are my hands and feet,” whereas the Septuagint has “They have pierced my hands and feet.” Among the scrolls the reading in question is found only in the Psalms scroll found at Nahal Hever (abbreviated 5/6HevPs), which reads “They have pierced my hands and my feet”! (The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The Oldest Known Bible Translated for the First Time into English, by Martin G. Abegg, Peter Flint, and Eugene Ulrich [Harper Collins Publishers, San Francisco: Paperback 2002), pp. 518-519)

14 [I have been] poured out [like water, and all] my bon[es are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has mel]ted away in my breast. 15 [My strength is dried up like a potsherd], and my tongue melts [in mouth. They] have placed [me] as the dust of death. 16 For dogs [are all around me]; a gang of evil[doers] encircles me. They have pierced my hands and my feet. 17 [I can count all of my bones; people stare and gloat over me. 18 They divide my garments among themselves, and they cast lots for my] clothes. (Ibid., p. 519; bold emphasis ours)

“Pierced Reading in Psalm 22: Psalm 22 is well known to the Christians, for while suffering on the cross, Jesus quoted its opening verse, ‘My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?’ (Ps 22:1; cf. Mark 15:34). Other parts of this psalm are quoted or alluded to here and there in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ suffering and death. One of them is Psalm 22:16, which says, ‘They pierced my hands and my feet.’ This is quoted in John 19:37 [sic], as a fulfillment of Jesus’ being pierced in the side.

“Some scholars have suggested that ‘they pierced my hands and feet’ is a misreading of the Hebrew text and that as given in the traditional Hebrew Bible (the MT) it should be, ‘Like a lion are my hands and feet.’ Of course, this reading hardly makes sense in the context of Psalm 22, much less the Gospels. In any case, a Psalms Scroll found at Nahal Hever in the Dead Sea region clearly reads, ‘They have pierced my hands and feet.’ This is important evidence supporting the rendering found in the Gospels.” (Craig A. Evans, Holman QuickSource Guide To The Dead Sea Scrolls [B&H Publishing Group, 2010], p. 274; bold emphasis ours)

“Psalm 22 begins as follows: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?’ This familiar piece has proved significant in both Jewish and Christian exegesis, and is quoted by Jesus as he suffers on the cross (Mark 15:34; Matt 27:64). When we turn to v. 16 (Heb. V. 17) in the Masoretic Text, however, a difficult and puzzling reading is found…

“The different reading in v.16 depends on a single word: k'ry (כארי), which means like a lion. The Gospel writers quote from the Greek Bible, which reads; ‘They have pierced my hands and feet.’ Some scholars have suggested that the Septuagint represents a modification of the Hebrew like a lion, perhaps because it was difficult to make sense of the Hebrew. Another suggestion is that early Christian editors changed the Greek text in order to find evidence of Jesus' crucifixion in the Hebrew Bible.

“Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the reading in question is not preserved at Qumran, but in the Psalms scroll from Nahal Hever (5/6HevPs), which is textually very close to the Masoretic Text. In line 12 of column 10 we read: ‘They have pierced my hands and feet’! For the crucial word (כארו) the Hebrew form is grammatically difficult; but it is clearly a verb, not a noun and means they have bored or they have dug or they have pierced.” (The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls, James VanderKam & Peter Flint [HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., San Francisco 2002], The Dead Sea Scrolls and Scripture, 6. The Biblical Scrolls and the Text of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, pp. 124-125; bold emphasis ours)

(In this passage we must also note John 19:37 and Zechariah 12:10. There was a controversy concerning Psalm 22:16. The Hebrew Masoretic text reads “Like a lion are my hands and my feet”. Jews accused Christians of altering the text. In Christian versions the verse reads, “They have pierced my hands and feet” but Jewish versions of this verse instead had “Like a lion, my hands and feet”. This reading really doesn’t make sense. Christians and Jews debated this passage for over a thousand years. Who changed it, did the Christians or the Jews, and what did the original actually say? Since the original manuscripts of the Bible have disappeared it was difficult to know for certain. Finally, in 1948 a version of the Bible was discovered that predated both Christianity and Judaism. The religion we know as Judaism was founded after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD. The true culprits who altered the text were exposed by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Here the original reading of “They have pierced my hands and my feet” has been preserved… So it was the Christians who preserved the original reading of this passage of scripture.) (Stephen Andrew Missick, The Words of Jesus in the Original Aramaic: Discovering the Semitic Roots of Christianity [Xulon Press, 2006], pp. 77-78; bold emphasis ours)

“As for Psalm 22:16[17], almost all of the standard medieval Hebrew manuscripts (known as Masoretic) read ka'ari, followed by the words ‘my hands and my feet.’ According to Rashi, the meaning is ‘as though they are crushed in a lion's mouth,’ while the commentary of Metsudat David states, ‘They crush my hands and my feet as the lion which crushed the bones of the prey in its mouth.’ Thus, the imagery is clear: These lions are not licking the psalmist's feet! They are tearing and ripping at them. Given the metaphorical language of the surrounding verses (cf. cc. 12-21[13-22]), this vivid image of mauling lions graphically conveys the great physical agony of the sufferer. Would this in any way contradict the picture of a crucified victim, his bones out of joint, mockers surrounding him and jeering at him, his garments stripped off of him and divided among his enemies, his feet and hands torn with nails, and his body hung on pieces of wood?

“‘But you’re avoiding something here,’ you argue. ‘Where did the King James translators come with this idea of “piercing” of the hands and feet? That’s not what the Hebrew says.’

“Actually, the Septuagint, the oldest existing Jewish translation of the Tanakh, was the first to translate the Hebrew as ‘they pierced my hands and feet’ (using the verb oruxan in Greek), followed by the Syriac Peshitta version two or three centuries later (rendering with baz'u). Not only so, but the oldest Hebrew copy of the Psalms we possess (from the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating to the century before Yeshua) reads the verb in this verse as ka'aru (not ka'ari, ‘like a lion’), a reading also found in about a dozen medieval Masoretic manuscripts–recognized as the authoritative texts in traditional Jewish thought–where instead of ka'ari (found in almost all other Masoretic manuscripts) the texts say either ka'aru or karu. (Hebrew scholars believe this comes from a root meaning ‘to dig out" or "to bore through.’)

“So, the oldest Jewish translation (The Septuagint) translates ‘they pierced’; the oldest Jewish manuscript (from the Dead Sea Scrolls) reads ka'aru, not ka'ari; and several Masoretic manuscripts read ka'aru or karu rather than ka'ari. This is not a Christian fabrication. I have copies of the manuscript evidence in front of my eyes as I write these words.” (Dr. Michael L. Brown, Answering Jewish objections to Jesus – Messianic Prophecy Objections [Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI 2003], Volume Three, 4.25, pp. 125-126; bold emphasis ours)