Let us first look at (a), (d), and (e) together because they are all what you would call miracles. These are certainly not normal events, especially a talking ass (donkey). (d) and (e) are not so much impossible but more a case of being difficult – it may be possible to kill a man with a jaw bone of a donkey but to kill a thousand fighting men would be more of a challenge. Deedat is being deliberately obtuse here. If he believes in the existence of a mighty God then he should have no problem believing God can perform miracles. He may want to say that these are absurd examples but he knows that his Quran and Hadith have even stranger examples with talking ants, a flying horse for a night journey to a mosque (that didn’t exist at that time) in Jerusalem and flying carpets to name just a few.

 

(b) is interesting but not in the way that Deedat hoped. Firstly the word fowl that is used in the King James Version (KJV) is a poor translation from the original Hebrew. I am sure Deedat knew this but as seems to be his habit, he does not to seek to be honest about it. The verse in Leviticus 11:20 should read as follows:

“All flying insects that walk on all fours are to be regarded as unclean by you.”

Now you may be thinking that insects have six legs and of course you would be correct but I will come to that shortly. The strange thing is, why didn’t Deedat go down that route to attack the Bible. As it stands, I have easily dealt with his challenge. The four legged insect would have been a much stronger challenge.

Just an aside here. Deedat seems to be unable to recognise that the KJV and all other versions of the Bible in English are just translations. It is the original Hebrew (and Greek and Aramaic where applicable) that matters. It may be true that errors can occur when translating but translators do generally try their best and to be fair to the KJV, it was translated in 1611. For all I know the word fowl may have had a wider use back then to refer to any winged animal. There are plenty of examples of word meaning changing from that time to this time. This is one of the reasons we have modern translation. I have seen YouTube videos of Deedat holding up different translations of the Bible and trying to claim that we have many different versions of the Bible. Rather dishonest – I wouldn’t dream of doing the same with the English translations of the Quran, (although I could point to the different versions of the Quran in Arabic - but that is a different scenario to that of translations).

 

Now to the question of four legged insects. Though it is outside the scope of this document, you may be intrigued to know what the Bible meant by this description. The answer lies in the full context of the passage. If we include the following three verses as well “‘All flying insects that walk on all fours are to be regarded as unclean by you. There are, however, some flying insects that walk on all fours that you may eat: those that have jointed legs for hopping on the ground. Of these you may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper. But all other flying insects that have four legs you are to regard as unclean.”

The fuller context to these passages is on the subject of what foods are clean for the Jews to eat and which are not. The verses go on to explain that there is a list of six legged insects that walk on four legs and that the remaining legs are used for hopping. These can be eaten, but any flying insects that don’t hop are unclean. Trying to picture a Locust walking on only its front four legs in your mind may seem difficult but here is a video of a locust doing exactly that,

https://youtu.be/6zwf2zv7ctw

 

(c) Birth of a female having a double pollution.

I have looked into this I don’t really have a reason why the waiting time is twice as long for having a girl as a boy. This might be one of those times when we just have to trust God and wait for when we get to glory to have the full meaning of why. I found this possible explanation on a website by a Katie McCoy which is worth quoting ^[2];

“But there’s one more theory: What if this Law was for the woman’s benefit?

 

A pharmacology professor at Johns Hopkins University named David Macht set out to find out. Here’s where this gets a little technical. Macht examined the post-partum discharge of women who had given birth to a baby boy six weeks prior and women who had given birth to a baby girl six weeks prior.

 

“What if this Law was for the woman’s benefit?”

What he discovered was illuminating: Among the women who had given birth to a girl, their post-partum discharge contained a higher level of toxins. In other words, their bodies were still regulating and recovering from labor. The higher level of toxicity was, according to Macht, too great to be a coincidence.

 

From this, he concluded that biblical law likely protected the people of Israel from the spread of bacteria and disease that would have occurred with sexual intercourse and with the absence of antibiotics. The additional forty days would have allowed the woman’s reproductive system to recover fully and provided an extended time of rest.”

 

One thing for sure is that in the Bible women are not inferior to men and that is most likely what Deedat is getting at. He knows that in the Quran women are treated as inferior beings and by trying to say that the Bible says the same is to him a justification of the Quran’s position.

 

(f) Seven headed leopard?

Another of Deedat’s “Nothing to see here – move along” moments. The passage is not talking about about a literal seven headed leopard but is referring to the coming anti-christ and false prophet and its government system. It is also found in the book of Daniel in chapter seven. A quick reading of the passages soon reveals this.

 

In (f) and (g) we find Deedat being dishonest again. Neither passage is advocating the doing of these deeds but is a warning to the Jews. The first is a threat from the Assyrian army it they don’t surrender and the second is what will befall them if the Jews continue to commit idolatry. Again a quick read of context settles this.

 

With (i) we again find Deedat being dishonest with the facts. Ezekiel is not been told to eat excrement but to cook his food on it as a sign of what is going to befall Israel in judgement for their continued sin and rebellion. We see from reading the passage that Ezekiel is horrified with the thought and begs God not to make him do this. God having made his point allows him to use animal dung but the Jews know that God is saying you will be doing this on human dung – yuk.

 

(j) is another of those so what Mr Deedat – what are you trying to say? The Bible is not saying that Samson should sleep with a prostitute. No, this is wrong behaviour. The story of Samson has a lot of him doing the wrong thing and in the end it leads to his capture and having his eyes gouged out. After this he sees (no pun intended) the errors of his way and turns back to God. God then allows him to pull down the Philistines temple on their heads and he kills more Philistines by that than all his previous victories over them. It has a symbolic message to us that when we die to self, God can give us victory over our enemy of sin.

 

(k) mentions Ruth and Boaz but what Deedat is trying to do is make it all look shady. He is painting a picture of Ruth and Boaz sneaking off to have sex with each other (he should have written tabloid newspaper stories!) but anyone who actually reads the whole account will quickly see that this is not the case. Both parties are shown to be moral people who would not dream of doing such a thing. This beautiful love story is all about a kinsman redeemer and is beyond the scope of this defence of Ruth and Boaz.

 

With (l) Deedat is again trying to make a scandal out of an incident. The story is that King David has grown old and frail and can no longer keep himself warm. His advisors think the solution is to get a young woman to act as a hot water bottle. 1 Kings 1 tells us this “she took care of the king and waited on him, but the king had no sexual relations with her.”

What Deedat is really trying to do here is say that the old man King David took a young virgin and then use that as a justification for the actions of his Prophet who married a six year old and consummated that marriage when his bride was nine.