God Arises
The Challenge of The Qur’an
~ 320 ~
be of divine origin, and was prepared to exclude
from all the sacred texts anything that appeared to
him to merit exclusion on these grounds.
‘Later, at a time when the incompatability of certain
passages of the Bible with modern knowledge has
been realized, the same attitude has not been
followed. This refusal has been so insistent that a
whole literature has sprung up, aimed at justifying
the fact that, in the face of all opposition, texts have
been retained in the Bible that have no reason to be
there.’
This certainly can never be said of the Quran. In the
more ancient scriptures we find only glimpses of
the truth, whereas in the Quran the truth is
enshrined in all its original glory. Had the Quran
been the work of man, and not of God, its assertions
would certainly have been proved wrong, or
irrelevant, in the light of modern scientific
discoveries.
Professor Arberry has translated the Arabic word
‘ikhtilaf’
as ‘inconsistency’. Other renderings of the
word include contradiction, disparity and
difference.
