'Simple' is relative. Yes, I've read it from cover to cover and no, I don't read it. It happens I look up passages due to my interest in religiousity rather than in the religions it serves, but I don't read it as a religious person does.
Thats interesting FW, I've read it about 4 to 5 times from cover to cover...I read it because of its historic references at first...not as a religious reader. I find that if you only read parts of it due to your interest then you loose track of the historical timeline And then it becomes out of context. it's like reading any book.
I have already come across some of the contradictions between scripture and science regarding the creation of the universe. I stressed the perfect agreement between modern knowledge and verses in the Qur'an, and that the Biblical narration contained statements that were scientifically unacceptable. This is hardly surprising if we are aware that the narration of the creation contained in the Bible was the work of priests living in the sixth century BC, hence the term ‘sacerdotal' ( priestly ) narration is officially used to refer to it. The narration seems to have been conceived as the theme of a sermon designed to exhort people to observe the Sabbath. The narration was constructed with a definite end in view, and as Father de Vaux (a former head of the Biblical School of Jerusalem) has noted, this end was essentially legalist in character. The Bible also contains a much shorter and older narration of Creation, the so-called ‘Yahvist' version, which approaches the subject from a completely different angle. They are both taken from Genesis, the first book of the Pentateuch or Torah. Moses is supposed to have been its author, but the text we have today has undergone many changes. The sacerdotal narration of Genesis is famous for its whimsical genealogies, that go back to Adam, and which nobody takes very seriously. Nevertheless, such Gospel authors as Matthew and Luke have reproduced them, more or less wordfor- word, in their genealogies of Jesus. Matthew goes back as far as Abraham, and Luke to Adam. These writings are scientifically unacceptable, because they set a date for the age of the world and the time humans appeared on Earth, which most definitely contradicts what modern science has firmly established. The Qur'an, on the other hand, is completely free of dates of this kind. Qur'an agrees with modern ideas on the formation of the Universe. On the other hand, the Biblical narration of primordial waters is hardly, nor is the creation of light on the first day before the creation of the stars which produce this light; the existence of an evening and a morning before the creation of the earth; the creation of the earth on the third day before that of the sun on the fourth; the appearance of beasts of the earth on the sixth day after the appearance of the birds of the air on the fifth day, although the former came first. All these statements are the result of beliefs prevalent at the time this text was written and do not have any other meaning. Such facts as I have had the pleasure of exposing to you here The Bible, The Qur'an and Science , appear to represent a genuine challenge to human explanation leaving only one alternative: the Qur'an is undoubtedly a revelation from God. http://www.islam-guide.com/bqs/index.htm [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suseKsLEWKo&feature=related"]Who Wrote The Bible? (1/12) - YouTube[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPlaS_wGzx8&feature=related"]Science and Islam: Part 1: The Language of Science - YouTube[/ame]
