Abrogation in
the Bible!
Examples
from Old Testament!
1.
Marriage between brothers and sisters was admissible in the law of the
Prophet Ibraheem (Abraham). Sarah, the wife of Prophet Ibraheem (Abraham) was
his sister according to the Bible (see Genesis 20:12 “And yet
indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter
of my mother; and she became my wife”). However, we see that later
marriage with one’s sister was absolutely prohibited making it equal to
adultery; anyone who did it accursed and liable to execution as we read in Leviticus 18:9:
The nakedness of thy
sister, the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be
born at home, or born abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover.
We
also read the following in the Leviticus 20:17-18:
The nakedness of thy sister,
the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at
home, or born abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover. And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness,
and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath
uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from
among their people.
We
further find something similar in Deuteronomy
27:22, which reads:
Cursed be he that lieth with his sister,
the daughter of his father, or the daughter of his mother. And all the people
shall say, Amen.
In view of the above statements, we are compelled to deduce that matrimonial relations between brother and sisters were admissible and practiced under the law of Adam to Abraham (PBUT), otherwise it would constitute that all human beings are bastards (illegitimate) and their parents were adulterers; making them to be cursed, and liable to be killed. Thinking this way raises a dilemma for the Bible, that a Prophet cannot be imagined of committing such shameful acts. This leaves us to admit that such marriages were permissible under the laws of earlier prophets and abrogated under the laws of the prophets who followed the former.
2. Sanction
to Eat Various Animals
We are told in Genesis 9:3 (Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things) Prophet Noah was told by God that every moving animal is Halaal (permissible). Whereas in the Law of Moses, we find the this law is abrogated as we read in
Leviticus
11:7!
And the swine, though he divide the
hoof, and be clovenfooted, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you.
Deuteronomy
14:8!
And the swine, because it divideth the
hoof, yet cheweth not the cud, it is unclean unto you: ye shall not eat of
their flesh, nor touch their dead carcase.
3.
Two sisters as Wives
Prophet Jacob was married to two sisters (Leah and Rachel)
at the same time, who were the daughters of his aunt, as we read in Genesis chapter 29:23-30.
|
029:023 |
And it came to pass in the
evening, that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to him; and he went
in unto her. |
|
029:024 |
And Laban gave unto his daughter
Leah Zilpah his maid for a handmaid. |
|
029:025 |
And it came to pass, that in
the morning, behold, it was Leah: and he said to Laban, What is this thou
hast done unto me? did not I serve with thee for Rachel? wherefore then hast
thou beguiled me? |
|
029:026 |
And Laban said, It must not
be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn. |
|
029:027 |
Fulfil her week, and we will
give thee this also for the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven
other years. |
|
029:028 |
And Jacob did so, and
fulfilled her week: and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife also. |
|
029:029 |
And Laban gave to Rachel his
daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be her maid. |
|
029:030 |
And he went in also unto
Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet
seven other years. |
Again, we find that all
such marriages have been prohibited in the Law of Moses, as we read the
following in Leviticus 18:18.
Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister,
to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her lifetime.
4. Marriage
with Father’s Sister
In Bible we read that the father
of Moses, is reported to have married Jechobed,
who was his father’s sister (his aunt), again in the Bible this law was
abrogated by the law of Moses, as we read in Leviticus
18:12 & Leviticus 20:18.
Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of
thy father's sister: she is thy father's near kinswoman.
And thou shalt not uncover the nakedness
of thy mother's sister, nor of thy father's sister: for he uncovereth his near
kin: they shall bear their iniquity.
Thus, again
we are lead to believe that such marriages were sanctioned prior to the Law of
Moses, which later abrogated that law.
5. We read in the Book of Jeremiah (31:31-32)
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031:031 |
Behold, the days come, saith
the LORD, that I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: |
|
031:032 |
Not according to the covenant
that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to
bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I
was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: |
|
008:008 |
For finding fault with them,
he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new
covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: |
|
008:009 |
Not according to the
covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the
hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my
covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. |
|
008:010 |
For this is the covenant
that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I
will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will
be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: |
|
008:011 |
And they shall not teach
every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord:
for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. |
|
008:012 |
For I will be merciful to
their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no
more. |
By
giving these five examples cited above, which are common to Jews and Christians
(out of many more), we see the presence of abrogation in the Bible. However,
there are many examples that are especially related to Christians only.
The following are some of them.
Examples
from New Testament!
1. Law of Moses allowed a man
to divorce his wife for any reason, also allowing a divorced woman to re-marry
another man as we read in Deuteronomy chapter
24, cited below.
24:1 When a man hath taken a
wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes,
because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of
divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.
24:2 And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's
wife.
24:3 And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement,
and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house; or if the latter
husband die, which took her to be his wife;
24:4 Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his
wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the LORD: and
thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an
inheritance.
However,
in Christian law a man is not allowed to
divorce his wife until she is found to have committed adultery, also, Christian
law precludes marriage with divorced women, considering it a crime equal to adultery.
Gospel according to Matthew (19:8-9) carries the following statement of Jesus that he made
while replying to the objections of Pharisees on this issue.
19:8 He saith unto them,
Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.
19:9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for
fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth
her which is put away doth commit adultery.
We now
can see that the above statement contains abrogation twice regarding
this injunction, once in the Law of Moses and once in the law of Jesus.
2. The Law of Moses
prohibited the meat of many animals, as we have read in the earlier part of
this article. However, later, Christian law abrogated this prohibition. This
is obviously espouses the doubt that Judeo-Christian god cannot make-up his
mind. According to Paul, this permission was further generalized to
include all animals. We read in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (14:14).
14:14 I know, and am
persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to
him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean.
Paul
repeated this in his Epistle to Titus 1:15!
1:15 Unto the pure all things
are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but
even their mind and conscience is defiled.
These two principles cited above,
that something should be unclean only to those who consider it unclean and that everything should be clean and permissible to the
Christians are quite strange.
The
implication is that the Israelites were not clean enough to have permission to
eat all animals, as the Christians can. It must be interesting to learn that
Paul made a conscious effort to publicize this permission to consume the meat
of all animals. Paul is reported to have said in his letter to Timothy 4:4-6!
4:4 For every creature of God
is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:
4:5 For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
4:6 If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a
good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in
the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained.
3. Precepts of the Feast and the Sabbath
Leviticus
chapter 23 contains all the injunctions
related to feast days. They were made eternal obligations for the people by the
Law of Moses. Verses 14, 21, 31 and 41 of chapter 23 of Leviticus explicitly
mention the eternal nature of this injunction, for example 23:14 says:
…it shall be a statute for
ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.
Amazingly
Paul abrogated this eternally binding statute. Also the Law of Moses made
the observance of Sabbath an eternal obligation, prohibiting from doing any
work whatsoever on the Sabbath day. Anyone deviating from this eternal law was
liable to execution. Old Testament at many places emphatically emphasized the
eternal nature of this injunction for example, see Genesis 2:3; Exodus 20:8-11, 23:12 & 34:21, 35:2-3;
Leviticus 19:3 & 23:2; Deuteronomy 5:12-15; Number15: 32-36; Jeremiah
chapter 17; Isaiah chapter 56 & 58; Nehemiah chapter 9; Ezekiel chapter 20. Following passage is from Exodus
31:13-17.
31:13 Speak thou also unto
the children of Israel, saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a
sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am
the LORD that doth sanctify you.
31:14 Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one
that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work
therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.
31:15 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh
is the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the
sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
31:16 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the
sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant.
31:17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six
days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was
refreshed.
Jews in the time of Jesus use to question and kill him for his
disregard for the Sabbath. Jews also used his disregard of Sabbath as their
justification of their disbelief in the Prophethood of Jesus, since one of
their argument was that Jesus works on the day of Sabbath, as we read the
following in John 5:16!
5:16 And therefore did the
Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things
on the sabbath day.
We also read the following in John
9:16!
9:16 Therefore said some of
the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the sabbath day.
Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a
division among them.
Readers must note that Paul abrogated all the injunctions
cited above, as we understand from Paul’s letter to Colossians (2:16).
2:16 Let no man therefore
judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new
moon, or of the sabbath days:
2:17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
Paul’s
claims that the injunctions were not
correct is not in accordance with the teachings of Torah, as the God
specified that the animals prohibited for Israelites are unclean and that:
Leviticus 11:44 For I am the LORD your God: ye shall therefore
sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye
defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that creepeth upon the
earth.
We
find further abrogation of in the Bible:
There
is much more that can be added to this issue from the Bible showing abrogation.
However, let us move to the 2nd kind of abrogation in the Bible.
2nd Kind of Abrogation in the
Bible!
1st
Example!
In the Bible God asked Abraham to slay his son and offer him a
sacrifice to his Lord, but this injunction was abrogated before being
practiced. The entire story of this event is mentioned in chapter 22 of Genesis.
2nd
Example!
Promise
of Priesthood Abrogated: In 1 Samuel 2:30, we read the
following statement of a Prophet to Eli, the Priest:
2:30 Wherefore the LORD God
of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father,
should walk before me for ever: but now the LORD saith, Be it far from me; for
them that honor me I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly
esteemed.
It
says further in verse 35:
2:35 And I will raise me up a
faithful priest, that shall do according to that which is in mine heart and in
my mind: and I will build him a sure house; and he shall walk before mine
anointed for ever.
In above verses we learn that the God made promise that the
priesthood would remain in the family of Eli the Priest, but in the
latter statement God transferred the priesthood to a new priest. That is an
outright abrogation. In fact, God abrogated the injunction promising the
priesthood to Eli and his family. The
Priesthood was then given to Eleazar the elder son of Aaron. Then it was given
to Tamar, the younger son of Aaron.
This proves that the above promise of Priesthood was abrogated twice in the Law
of Moses, and then latter it was abrogated third time with the coming of the
law of Jesus. The promise made to Eleazar is described in the Book of Number 25:12-13!
25:12 Wherefore say, Behold,
I give unto him my covenant of peace:
25:13 And he shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an
everlasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement
for the children of Israel.
Readers
might find it to be very astonishing, but according to Judeo-Christian thought,
God may go against his everlasting promise. The
books of Old Testament contain statements claiming that God repents and regret
after having done a certain thing. For example Psalm
89:38 contains David’s address to God in these
words:
89:39 Thou hast made void the covenant of thy servant: thou hast
profaned his crown by casting it to the ground.
6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the
earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
6:7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of
the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the
air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
Verse six above and the last phrase of verse 7, “It
repenteth me…” are clear in implying that God is regretful about what He has
done. Psalm 106:44-45 contains the following words:
106:44 Nevertheless he
regarded their affliction, when he heard their cry:
106:45 And he remembered for them his covenant, and repented according to the
multitude of his mercies.
God’s
statement in 1 Samuel 15:11 reads as follows:
15:11 It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king:
for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my
commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the LORD all night.
Further
in verse 35 of
the same chapter we find:
15:35 And Samuel came no more
to see Saul until the day of his death: nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul:
and the LORD repented that he had made
Saul king over Israel.
In the
light of above statements containing “God’s repentance” and “his regret” about
creating man and making Saul the king of Israelites, the possibility of “God’s
repentance” on making Jesus a Prophet cannot be ruled out as Jesus’ “claim of
being God incarnate” is a greater sin than the disobedience of Saul. God,
according to the above statement, did not know that Saul would not perform his
commandments, similarly
it makes it possible that God might have not known that Jesus would “claim to
be God” after becoming a Prophet. Muslims
neither believe in the possibility of God’s repentance nor do Muslims accept
that Jesus made any claim to godhood. Muslims believe that God is absolutely
free from such imperfections and Jesus is far from making such false claims of
his godhood. There are dozens of more such
examples in the Bible, but I will stop here, since I believe that I have proved
my point.
Conclusion!
Any thinking reader of the
above examples and/or statements will inevitably come to the following
conclusions:
وَمَنْ
يَبْتَغِ غَيْرَ
الْإِسْلَامِ
دِينًا فَلَنْ
يُقْبَلَ مِنْهُ
وَهُوَ فِي الْآخِرَةِ
مِنَ الْخَاسِرِينَ
And whoever seeks a religion other than Islâm, it will never be accepted of him, and in the Hereafter he will be one of the losers (Glorious Qur’aan V.3: 85).
Readers to note that Paul and other exegetes, in spite of their
admission that the injunctions of the Torah were ordained by God, used
discourteous and improper words to them.
According
to Islaamic definition of Naskh
(abrogation) there is nothing wrong and/or objectionable about the injunctions
of the Torah being abrogated, since Islaam has by default abrogated all
religions including Judaism and Christianity. However, the statement indicating
eternality and insisting that they should be enforced through generations put
some injunctions beyond the scope of abrogation and make their abrogation
objectionable. Muslims’ are free from this objection because, (a) we do not believe that
present Pentateuch to be the “Tawrat” and/or original and literal word of God given to Moses. (b) As countless people have
proved and Judeo-Christian scholars agree that present Bible including
Pentateuch has been subject of great adulteration and/or distortion. (c) According to Christian’s
belief, God may regret and be ashamed of some of his acts and feel regretful
about some of his previous orders, causing him to change them afterwards.
Similarly he is imputed with making everlasting promises and then not
fulfilling them as is asserted by some of the books of Old
Testament. We, the Muslims are absolutely free from such impure and
polluted thought. As far as their interpretations
with regard to the words of “eternality” are concerned, they cannot be
justified and accepted for the obvious reason that the words must be taken to
mean what they say. Since Christians usually contend that the injunctions
containing the words ‘ever’ and ‘always’ etc. signify up to the end of the
period of Old Testament. It may be noted that at many places in the Pentateuch
the words ‘through generations’ or other expressions to the same effect have
been used to indicate eternality, for instance see Genesis 17:12 and Exodus 12:12.
17:12 And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised
among you, every man child in your generations,
he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is
not of thy seed.
12:12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will
smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against
all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.
Also read:
Abrogation in the Glorious Qur’aan.
Glorious Qur’aan has abrogated the Bible.