Dear friends,
First of all I noticed that a lot don't understand how the bible evolved through time. How the Torah was first established then came the Prophets and the Writings. All that matters. Modern scholars can not prove that the bible does not have any contradictions. In fact it's just a waste of time to try to. Numbers in the OT are extremely inaccurate. No one can deny the scientific errors in the bible. A list so long it might take more than a whole page can be demonstrated to show how such contradictions exist in both the NT and the OT. However, what matters most is faith. I would also like to note to my fellow Muslims that if you want to understand the bible especially the OT, read how Jewish scholars interpret the OT. You will see that all those threads in the NT referring to Jesus are not even close to referring to him. I will demonstrate this in later posts.
For you to understand the bible you have to understand the language in which it was written with.
Let me demonstrate my point here: A lot of people claim that Moses worte the Torah which includes, Gen, Exo,Levi, Num, and Deut. Also, many people wonder how Deut would include events that could not possibly be predicted by Moses himself. A reasonable answer would be that GOD told Moses what to write because GOD knows all. Well, that's not the real case, Anyone who knows Greece or Hebrew would easily realize that Deut language style is not similar at all to Gen, Exo, Levi, and Num. and would easily find that Deut has the same language style as Kings I, Kings II, and the books that dealt with that period of time.
Also, one should notice that THE PROPHETS would have never been added to the canon if it wasn't for Antiochus Epiphanes who persecuted Jews and didn't allow them to read the Torah in which Jews were forced to read from the Prophets(which were not part of the canon yet). After Antiochus Epiphanes Rabbi-s argued to add these books to the canon and there were differences on which books to add and which ones to exclude.
The point I'm trying to make here is this: understand why the Quran said that those people wrote some of those books with their hands and claimed it to be from God. This explains a lot of the variations in the OT also especially in the ones found near the dead sea or the dead see scrolls.
All of this can not be denied and is documented in many research papers and books.
Basically, the OT and the NT is not from the holy spirit and can not be from the holly spirit because if it was from the holy spirit, no contradictions would be found. I understand that all of these books were written by different people in which variations need to exist, but it shouldn't exist to the point where they contradict each other. ( I will demonstrate this in future posts also)
What does it mean to "OBSERVE THE TORAH". The Torah has five meanings:
1) Pentateuch
2) individual legal statue
3) sometimes refer to the entire bible including Pentateuch, Prophets, and Writings.
4) Wisdom
5) through prayer and study one could achieve a life of Torah or a way of life
This is what the Torah meant to Jews all along and obviously Paul who was claimed to be a Jew failed to understand those meanings of the Torah and only saw it as restricting laws.
Salam.