—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—had contradicted it, he must first substantiate two premises:
- That the very wording is authentically attributed to that prophet.
- That the meaning conveyed by those words is likewise sound.
Whoever bases an argument on a report from any prophet must satisfy these two conditions—the chain of transmission (isnad) and the text itself (matn). He must demonstrate that the wording is genuine and that its meaning is established. If the report has reached us not in the prophet’s own language but in another tongue, an accurate translation is indispensable; yet most Christians do not possess the prophets’ books in their original languages.
Moses, the Messiah, and the prophets of the Children of Israel who came between them all spoke Hebrew. The Messiah was a Hebrew and spoke nothing but Hebrew; it was only some of his followers who later spoke other languages such as Syriac, Greek, and Latin. And the majority