Thinking Out Loud with Alan Shlemon - Are Muslims Correct that We’ve Lost Jesus’ Words?

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Alan answers a common Muslim challenge alleging that, because Jesus spoke in Aramaic, the Bible doesn’t contain the words of Jesus.

Muslims claim that Christians have lost the original words of Jesus in our Bibles. I want to unpack this argument and talk about whether this is a valid problem in this episode of my podcast, Thinking Out Loud with Alan Shleman. While I was visiting one of the largest mosques in the southeastern United States, in fact, it probably is the largest mosque in downtown Atlanta. A Muslim leader was speaking to our group and he made the following claim. He said that we Christians do not have the actual words of Jesus. any longer. He pointed out that Jesus probably spoke in Aramaic, that that was his native tongue,

that the Gospels are written in Greek, and that we Christians read our Bibles in English. And so therefore, yeah, we don't actually have the actual words of Jesus when we read our Bibles. And then he said, look, he goes, we Muslims don't have the same problem. You know, he says, look, the Quran is a book that exists in heaven with Allah, and it's in Arabic. And it was dictated. to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel in Arabic. Muhammad received it and memorized it in Arabic. He recited it in Arabic. Those people around him heard it in Arabic and also they themselves memorize it in Arabic.

Eventually the Quran was written down in Arabic and it is read today by Muslims in Arabic. So you see, the Muslim claimed, there's no loss of words and there's no loss of meaning. Now, this might sound like a compelling argument. but I want to point out a couple of problems with it. And first, it's this. It's actually an advantage, not a liability, that the Gospels, and generally the New Testament, was written down in Greek. Now, Muslims are correct that Jesus probably did speak Aramaic, and that probably was his sort of native tongue. I would argue he, of course, knew Hebrew as well since he was Jewish.

And most likely he also knew Greek. And that's because Greek was the lingua franca of the day, right? It was the language of trade and education and daily life, especially in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Now, by the first century, Greek actually was really the shared language of people of all different kinds of backgrounds and beliefs. And in fact, it's interesting to note that the Old Testament was eventually translated into Greek, it's called the Septuagint, in around the second and third century BC. And of course, that was to make it more widely accessible by the people of the day since Greek, as we said, was the lingua franca of the day. And so writing the New Testament and the Gospels in Greek actually was an advantage because this ensured that the message of the gospel would. be able to expand much more farther, much wider than it had been, had it been written in, for example, Aramaic, which was the native tongue of Jesus. And so this is one reason why, although we don't have

the words of Jesus in his Aramaic, it's actually not a problem, right? Like Muslims' claim, it actually is an advantage to getting the message of the gospel out. By the way, I'll just add this little comment here that it's interesting to note that Muslims will often talk about the Quran as a message, a revelation from a law that is available to the entire world. In other words, although Islam will say that the Torah is a valid, is a legitimate divine revelation from Allah and the gospel is a divine revelation from Allah, they'll say that the Torah was a divine revelation only for the Jewish people and that the gospel is a revelation only for the Christian people.

but the Quran they claim is a revelation for all people, for all people of the world. Well, that's interesting to note because the Quran is written in Arabic, which actually does not make it very conducive for all of the people of the world, since only maybe 5% of the world's population knows Arabic. And indeed, even for Muslims, only about 20% of the world's Muslims know Arabic. So the vast majority of even Muslims are not reading the Quran in their native tongue. So again, although the Quran is supposed to be this revelation that's made for everybody,

it turns out it's actually quite limited since very few people know the Arabic that it's written in. Now, second problem with the argument is that the Quran fails the Muslim's own standard when they talk about having prophets written down in their native tongues. Now, it's true that the New Testament does not record Jesus in Aramaic, although there are some passages in the New Testament that do actually have some Aramaic. Like, for example, when Jesus says, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Or when he heals the little girl, he says, little girl, you know, get up. Like there's these various phrases that are actually still in the Aramaic captured in New Testament.

But generally speaking, you're right. It's true. Jesus did not have his words recorded in Aramaic, okay? But the thing about this is that Muslims fail to realize that their own Quran doesn't meet the same standard that they're insisting the Bible meet. So take, for example, Moses, who's believed to be a prophet of a law. Well, what language did Moses speak? Most likely he spoke Hebrew. Well, what language does the Quran record Moses's words in? In Arabic.

So right there, they're not meeting the same standard. They're demanding that the Bible meet. David was also a prophet of Allah, or is a prophet of Allah in Islam. But David spoke Hebrew as well, and the Quran records his words in Arabic, right? Abraham probably spoke Acadian or some other early, Semitic language, and yet the Quran records his words in Arabic. I don't know that we have any idea of what language say Jonah, or I should say, yeah, Jonah or maybe Noah spoke, or Adam and Eve, what did they speak? I don't know, but Adam's a prophet of a law, and yet we have his words recorded

in the Quran in Arabic. And by the way, Jesus probably spoke Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, and what language does the Quran record the Prophet Jesus speaking in? In Arabic. So the Quran really has the sort of the same liability that they are claiming that the Bible has as well. And the third objection I want to raise here about this particular argument is that this objection really imposes a standard on the Bible that Christianity does not require. And really the way to understand this is to understand the difference between how the two different religions, Christianity and Islam, describe how their respective holy books have been

transmitted. Okay. So, for example, according to Islam, the Quran is believed by Muslims to be the literal words of Allah, like the literal words that Allah spoke. And so again, remember, the Quran is believed to be this book that exists in heaven with Allah for all eternity past. And the contents of the Quran has been, according to Islam, dictated word for word by the angel Gabriel to a man named Muhammad over a 22-year period. And so notice, there's no human element in there, again, according to Islam, right? There's no human element. It's the words of Allah, dictated word for sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, from Gabriel to Muhammad, he memorizes it, he eventually repeats it to other people, they memorize it, eventually they write it down in Arabic.

Okay. So again, according to their view, there's no translation going on anywhere. And in fact, if you talk to a Muslim, they will say that the Quran, if it was translated into a different language, say Russian or Spanish or Portuguese, they'll say, well, no, that is no longer Quran because you now have introduced a human element, right? Because a human Portuguese speaker or a human English speaker or a human Russian speaker has to create Portuguese or English or Russian words in order to communicate what the Quran says, but now you've introduced a human element, all right? And you are now diluting the Quran. Now, this is not at all what Christians believe about their holy book, about the Bible, right? Nor does our theology necessitate that the Bible be dictated

word for word by God, because that's not our doctrine. That's an Islamic belief. And it's an Islamic claim. In Christianity, we believe in what's called the doctrine of inspiration. We say the Bible is the inspired word of God. Now, the doctrine of inspiration is a very particular view, and it teaches that the Holy Spirit, who is God, inspired human authors to write down certain things using their own language, their own grammar, their own style, and their own personality. And in fact, Peter 121 describes it that or describes it this way. It says men were moved by the Holy Spirit, they spoke from God. As men were moved by the Holy Spirit, they spoke from God. And so in other words, what these writers wrote down using their own language and style and personality is exactly

what God intended them to write down. So notice on the doctrine of inspiration, the Bible is a joint divine and human project. Right. Now, Muslims, when they make this argument, missed the point when they fault the Bible for containing human words. And that's because our theology, our theology teaches that God intentionally used human beings, human authors, to write down scripture. No, that may not be what Islam claims about the Quran, but that's not a a thing that our theology necessitates, right? We don't have to adopt Islamic standards in order for our holy book to be legitimate. Furthermore, I'll add this, that in St. Timothy 316, the Bible teaches that the Bible, or I'm sorry, all scripture is inspired by God, or all scripture

is God-breathed. Now, the Greek word for scripture is the word grafe, which literally means writings. In other words, God inspired the words that were penned on papyrus, right, even though they may not have been necessarily the Aramaic words that Jesus spoke. Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that the words that Jesus spoke were not divine. Of course, by definition, what Jesus says is divine because he's a divine person. But I'm simply referring to now scripture, like what constitutes scripture? and scripture are the words that the Holy Spirit inspired human authors to pen down on papyrus, right? And of course, those are written in the Greek when it comes to the New Testament. And so, yes, there is a mismatch between the language Jesus spoke and the language that the

gospels are written in, but that's only a problem according to Muslims. That's not demanded by our Christian tradition, nor our Christian theology, nor the doctrine of inspiration. No match is required. Now, why am I bringing this all up? Well, it's because you have to understand that Islam is not a religion that is simply trying to happily coexist with other religions of the world. In fact, Islam is definitively an anti-Christian religion, right? Muslims are targeting Christian theology because they believe it is blasphemous. And with now, almost now five million Muslims in the United States, we are seeing an increase in the attacks at Muslims level against Christian theology, because again, they're trying to undermine

it. They're trying to convince Christians. They're mistaken. And of course, they want to bring Christians into the fold of Islam. And so I'm trying to teach you why this argument fails so that you're able to understand it. And so when it comes across your life, you're able to respond and not be sort of duped by this particular objection. All right, that's all I have for you today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you have, I encourage you to share it with a friend. And also don't forget to subscribe to my podcast so you don't miss any future episodes.

And I look forward to thinking out loud with you next time.