One of the major criticisms that Muslims have about the Bible is that it
ascribes physical features to God. They say that the Bible is flawed in this
respect since the Almighty should never be described as having human
characteristics. Many Muslims believe that the Bible insults God in this way.
Even though the Qur'an was built on the credibility of the Bible, most
Muslims attack the Scriptures by claiming that they have been altered. Some go
so far to believe that Christians must have added verses to the Old Testament in
order to make God more human. They suggest that the Christians did this to
support their “false claim” that Jesus was God incarnate and assert that the
Qur'an does not describe Allah in a physical way. This argument has three
difficulties.
It is not logical. Why would the Jews include verses invented by the
Christians into the writings of their Holy Scriptures? It is a fact that the
Jews and Christians have always revered the same “Old Testament” Scriptures.
It is not historical. Any hope that this accusation was true was put to rest
by an amazing manuscript discovery. In 1947 Bedouin shepherds in Israel found
hand written copies of Jewish Scriptures which were copied before the advent of
Christianity. They are referred to as the Dead Sea Scrolls. They had been
preserved within jars in caves to protect them from the Romans of the first
century. They offer conclusive evidence that the Christians did not alter the
Scriptures of the Old Testament.
It is not valid. The argument is built on the assumption that the Qur'an does
not ascribe human characteristics to Allah and yet this collection of
thirty-three verses demonstrates that it does. Allah is carried on a throne by
eight angels. Allah’s face and hands are mentioned as well as the use of his
senses. His activities include counting, judging and testing. He has emotions
such as his abhorrence of non-Muslims. His activities include holding the sky
from falling. Of course, Muslims would hasten to point out that these are
metaphors. Christians explain these types of references in the Bible in the same
way.
Christians have no problems with similar references in the Bible for several
additional reasons. The Good News in the Bible is that people are made in the
image of God which means that they experience similar emotions, thoughts and
desires as the Almighty, yet His ways are infinitely more exalted (Isaiah
55:8,9). The Bible proclaims that God is not a distant deity. On the contrary,
he is completely aware of all of our struggles.
The Bible reveals that God (Yahweh) came as a man in Jesus to be tempted in
every way yet remained without sin. Jesus came as the Word of God in the flesh
to save all those who believe in his cross and resurrection. Even though the
Qur'an ascribes some human characteristics to Allah, the Allah of the Qur'an
does not come close to the personal involvement that the God of the Bible has
with His creation.