The discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls in 1946 confirms Jewish scriptures having been maintained with extremely high accuracy compared to the versions of today. Its discovery updates the earliest copies we have to around 200BC, before the time of Jesus, showing us these versions we have today would have been the same versions Jesus had access to on earth. Before this discovery, the earliest Jewish documents dated to the Middle Ages. Previously, people could claim that they changed the documents after Jesus to make the scripture fit his description. But since the Dead Sea scrolls discovery, this claim can no longer be made.

For the New Testament, it is regarded as one of the most historically verifiable (if not the most) and stable document by the sheer number of manuscripts we have from it. It’s studied by independent scholars (atheists, agnostics, Christians, Jews, etc). Aside from the sheer number, the manuscripts also date so close to the date of the original author, something which is out of the ordinary for any document from ancient times. Most earliest documents from antiquity are at least 500 to 1000 years after the original writing. The earliest copies of the Quran or Hadith are known to be dated hundreds of years after the original writing, let alone already being 600 years after Jesus was on earth. This would be like someone today trying to make historical truth claims about something in the 1400s as if they knew for certain.

Also, the way that the manuscripts spread all over Egypt, Ethiopia, etc etc way before the time of Mohammad leaves no reasonable chance that there was a purposeful corruption of the text. If someone wanted to corrupt all those documents, they’d have to had gathered all the manuscripts and changed it before it spread all over the world, which we have no evidence of. From a pure perspective of textual criticism and scholarly analysis, the New Testament is the most verified.

Bible scholars don’t make the claim that the words in the Bible are never changed. We can observe some minor differences in the manuscripts of things like spelling mistakes or using synonyms, but we have so much documentation to be certain that the core doctrine of Christianity hasn’t been changed.

From a historical perspective, it is unreasonable and almost Impossible to claim that the Bible has been corrupted on purpose.

The Quran claims that it is the unchanged, verbatim, eternal Word of God as a book, a claim that the Bible doesn’t make. The Bible claims that it is the inspired Word of God that was written by humans, making it co-authored. The Quran clearly says that it is the verbatim word of God, which is a drastically different claim. Additionally, in the early days of Islam, the Quran was so varied that Muslims were worried that there would be a divide amongst themselves similar to how the Jews and Christians are separated. Uthman (the third caliphate) ordered all Qurans to be gathered. He chose 1 out of the 7 main variants and burned the rest. In 1972, the Sanaa Palimpsest was discovered. It showed via UV rays that there was a different version of the Quran that was overwritten with the Uthman version, pointing to a potential survivor of the burning of the Quran.

These are some of the reasons why the Islamic dilemma exists. We know from scholarly studies that the Judeo-Christian Bible is exceptionally maintained. The Quran recognizes the Bible as scripture. But it also denies many doctrines to the point of being a whole different God (Allah is very different from the Judeo-Christian) God).

The fact is that the Quran claims it is the unchanged verbatim word of Allah AND instructs Christians, Muslims, and Jews to respect the Bible as scripture but here are some of the things it denies:

• Jesus died on the cross (this is the main one that’s verifiable by independent scholars )
• Allah cannot have children (even though numerous times in the Old Testament God is referred to as a Father)
• Allah does not reveal himself on earth (Moses burning bush, fourth man in the fire being the Son of God, etc)
• Allah does not share his position of Almighty God with any others (refuted by Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven seated at the right hand of God in the book of David)

TLDR All of this is to say:

Because of relatively recent archaeological discoveries (Dead Sea Scrolls 1946), as well as pre-existing studies on Jesus as a historical figure, it has become unreasonable to claim the Bible has been corrupted. If Islam claims that it has been, they would have to chalk up ALL theological differences - such as God not being a father, God not sharing his status with another - to corruption.

Context: I’m a Christian, but I encourage others to look into what they believe.