and work independently of one another, without conspiring to lie. When the account of each translator is further supported by contextual clues and other corroborating factors, sound knowledge is secured. Indeed, if only two people undertake the task—each unaware of what the other is writing, with no collusion between them—the desired certainty is, in most cases, achieved.

People recount that the Torah was rendered into Greek by seventy-two Jewish rabbis who were not infallible; the king deliberately separated them so they could not agree on a falsehood, yet they all produced a single, identical translation. This happened after the first destruction of Jerusalem. By the same token, any other book besides the Torah can certainly be translated.

In our own day the Torah, the Gospel, and the Psalms have all been translated into Arabic, and their intended meanings are understood without dispute. How much truer must this be of the Quran, whose very people grasp its import, expound it, and translate it more completely and more accurately than the people of the Torah and the Gospel translate their scriptures?

Third response:
To claim that every one of the disciples was infallible and that they were messengers of God on the level of Abraham and Moses, peace be upon them, is an invalid and impermissible assertion. They were merely envoys of the Messiah, peace be upon him—just as there were envoys of Moses, envoys of Abraham, and envoys of Muhammad. Most Christians, or many of them, or all of them, say that the disciples were messengers of God but not prophets. Yet anyone who is not a prophet is neither a messenger of God nor immune from error. Even if extraordinary occurrences appear at his hands—like the wonders granted to the friends of God among Muslims and others—such miracles do not render him free from mistakes.