Age of Ahaziah

2 Kings 8:26 states: 'Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign; and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri king of Israel.' Now compare this to 2 Chronicles 22:2: 'Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. His mother's name also was Athaliah the daughter of Omri.' Same king, same mother, same grandfather, same one-year reign in Jerusalem — but one says 22 and the other says 42. This is not a matter of interpretation — it's a 20-year numerical discrepancy.

No. The Hebrew wording in both verses is identical. 2 Kings 8:26 says 'ben esrim u-shtayim shanah Achazyahu be-malko' — 'a son of twenty-two years was Ahaziah when he reigned.' 2 Chronicles 22:2 uses the same grammatical construction: 'ben arba'im u-shtayim shanah Achazyahu be-malko' — 'a son of forty-two years was Ahaziah when he reigned.' Both use 'ben X shanah' — son of X years — which is the standard Hebrew expression for personal age. If 42 meant dynastic years, the grammar would need to be different. You're reading a meaning into the text that the Hebrew does not support.

Yes. The MacArthur Study Bible — a major evangelical Christian study Bible — acknowledges this as a copyist error. The footnote states that the correct reading should be 22, and that 42 is an error introduced during copying. The NIV translation actually changed the number from 42 to 22 in 2 Chronicles 22:2 to harmonize the texts. So Christian scholars themselves admit this is an error — a human mistake in the text. If even your own scholars say it's a copyist error, then you've conceded that the Bible as we have it today contains human errors, which means it is not a perfectly preserved Word of God.

That's exactly the point. As Muslims, we don't say the original Torah or the original Gospel were not from God — we say they were. But we say the text has been changed over time by human hands. You just admitted that copyist errors exist. Once you concede that, you've conceded my entire argument: the Bible as it exists today is not identical to what was originally revealed. The question is not whether the 'message' survived — the question is whether the text is the unchanged Word of God. And the answer, by your own scholars' admission, is no.