Explore a thought-pro­vok­ing dis­cus­sion by Shaykh Khalid Yasin as he ques­tions the legit­i­ma­cy and his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy of the New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers. Dive into this riv­et­ing dia­logue and form your own per­spec­tives. Delve deep­er into the world of Bib­li­cal crit­i­cism with Khalid Yasin.

While Chris­tians would pre­fer to allude to the notion that Paul, the self-acclaimed ​“apos­tle” of Jesus, was ​“inspired” when he wrote his epis­tles, the evi­dences we have researched states oth­er­wise. We have seen how Paul had cit­ed a verse from the ​“apoc­ryphal books of Eli­jah” but claimed that he was cit­ing from the book of Isa­iah. Appa­rant­ly this cit­ing of quo­ta­tions from apoc­ryphal or Rab­binic writ­ings was not alien to Paul, for in the epis­tles of Paul, there are abun­dant signs that he was extreme­ly famil­iar with Rab­ban­ic mate­r­i­al and con­stant­ly refers to them. This is not sur­pris­ing since Paul him­self had admit­ted to famil­iar­i­ty with Jew­ish tra­di­tions under the tute­lage of Gamaliel (Acts 22:3).

In his First Epis­tle to the Corinthi­ans, Paul says that

“How­ev­er, as it is writ­ten : ​‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has con­ceived what God has pre­pared for those who love him.’ ” (1 Corinthi­ans 2:9)

It is claimed that Paul had para­phrase the above cita­tion from Isaiah :

“Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has per­ceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.” (Isa­iah 64:4)

This is actu­al­ly inac­cu­rate, as Paul had actu­al­ly quot­ed the above from the ​‘apoc­ryphal books of Eli­jah’ and not Isa­iah 64:4. Apos­tolic Chris­tians such as Ori­gen and Jerome had con­firmed the fol­low­ing about the source of Paul’s quote.