Post to Mankind's corruption of the Bible.  M. wrote:
"We must study the characteristics of the "Paraclete" and compare them to both the "Holy Spirit" and to a "spirit." Muslims believe that Mohammad was the one intended and not the Holy Ghost, In the Christian's own "Gospel of Barnabas" Mohammad is mentioned by name here._ For this reason it becomes necessary to show that even the Gospels adopted by Paul's church also originally spoke of Mohammad."

My reply:
I hope that all Muslims will read the Gospel of Barnabas  (GB), for then it will be obvious that the Qur‘an and the Gospel of Barnabas contradict one another. The Qur‘an declares that Jesus is the Messiah but the Gospel of Barnabas declares Mohammed to be the Messiah. p,55 of the GB, Jesus is quoted as saying, "For I am not worthy to unloose the ties of the hosen or the latchets of the shoes of the messenger of God whom ye call "Messiah," who was made before me, and shall come after me, and shall bring the words of truth, so that his faith shall have no end." This is repeated in a number of places in the Gospel of Barnabas.

On p. l23 Jesus answered: "The name of the Messiah is admirable, for God himself gave him the name when he had created his soul, and placed it in celestial  splendor._ God said: Wait, Mohammed, for thy sake I will to create paradise, the world, and a great multitude of creatures, whereof I made thee a present, insomuch that whoso shall bless thee shall be blessed. Mohammed is his blessed name."

It would appear just in this brief comparison that no Muslim would give credence to this gospel. Both the Qur‘an and the Gospel of Barnabas cannot be telling the truth.

The gospel of Barnabas is a fraud and should be admitted by all parties that it is.
The evidence both internally and externally is that the work is a fraud. David Sox in his study has written, "There is no Gospel of Barnabas written in his own hand, no fragment of a lost gospel of Barnabas, no quotations from a Gospel of Barnabas in the Church Fathers; the Gospel in its present form is in Vienna, " and he concludes that the work is a deliberate forgery "of the latter half of the sixteenth century." The date is established on the basis of the paper itself--"a somewhat coarse and stout 'cottonpaper‘ with a water-mark no oriental paper ever bore." p. 28

The materials have been drawn from the four gospels and rewritten in many ways to support Muslim ideology. The author was not really familiar with the Qur‘an or the Palestine of the first century of the Christian era. The Gospel writes that Mary suffered no pain in the birth of Jesus, which contradicts the Qur‘an. This does reflect the idea of pain in Medieval Christianity.

The Gospel of Barnabas does not know that one could not sail to Nazareth where the "seamen spread thru the city” telling all that Jesus had wrought upon the sea.

The book refers to the year of Jubilee which was a hundred years, and then was shortened to every year. This reflects the late middle ages and the papal declaration about the year of Jubilee. (The OT was every 50 years)

The Gospel has some unusual things like Jonah fleeing to Tarsus (not Joppa) and then the fish cast him up nigh to Nineveh. Given Jonah‘s tribal territory, one only need to check a map to see that Tarsus is in Asia minor, whereas Joppa would be quite convenient, and Ninevah has no sea port for a big fish.

The author seems quite familiar with the work of Thomas Aquinas who died about 1274. He has Jesus talking about the soul "that the more part of men affirm the soul and the sense to be one and the same thing, dividing it by operation and not by essence, calling it the sensitive, vegetative, and intellectual soul." p.l34 of the GB. If you will turn to the Summa Theologia of Aquinas question LXXX seems to be the source of this kind of language.

The Gospel of B. also relates the idea that the book of Moses had been corrupted as well as the book of David (whatever that is) and then the Gospels have been corrupted. When did this idea arise? The answer seems to be that it arose a long time after the Qur'an was in circulation and only alter Muslim scholars began to read the Old and New Testaments. There is evidence in the Qur'an to indicate that the books received were credible books and were to be read by the followers of Mohammed.

There are other suggestions in the Gospel of B. that make it sound more like Italy than Palestine. "There are references to stone quarries, ships, sailors, wine casks and feudal-sounding land divisions which are redolent of someone living in medieval Italy." (Sox)

There is much more evidence against the Gospel of Barnabas being genuine, but I don‘t want to labor the point. The first point is serious. Muslims everywhere need to know that this work is a fraud. Unfortunately ,the Secretary General of the Qur’an Council of Pakistan and the Pakistan Chapter of the World Muslim Congress sponsored the publication of the Gospel of Barnabas in 1973.
Peace to you.

Part Two in response to your post:

I hope that you will bear with me in my observations about your use of the Bible.
My purpose is to have a better meeting ofthe minds on the issues you raised.Let's go first to your comments on a “Paraclete" like Jesus.
you quoted John 14: 16 :And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever." If you had gone further in your quoting you would find a different impression. v. 17 He is the Spirit, who reveals the truth about God. The world cannot receive him, because it cannot see him or know him. But you know him, because he remains with you and is in you." This cannot possibly refer to Mohammed since he was seen by the world and Mohammed had no relation to the first disciples to whom Jesus was speaking. A promise fulfilled 500 years later would not have been any comfort and an advocate for them

If we take this word of Jesus seriously, and view the gospels correctly we can see how this worked out. He told his disciples (Mt. 10:19) that when they were arrested and taken before the courts, "do not worry about what you are going to say, or how you will say it, when the time comes, you will be given what you will say. For the words you will speak will not be yours, they will come from the Spirit of your Father speaking (laleo) through you." If you read the book of Acts carefully, which you quoted, you will see that Paul did not corrupt Christianity, but the message of the Spirit (by Peter) on Pentecost was that the Messiah who had been put to death was resurrected and was proclaimed the Savior. He declared to them that they were to know for sure that "this Jesus whom you crucified is the one that God has made Lord and Messiah." V. 32 indicates that we (Peter and the others) had received from him the Holy Spirit as he had promised. 'What has become obvious is that the slow to understand disciples that you mentioned are now taught the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

It appears to me that you are only using one meaning of a word when the context really defines the word. In I John the word paraclete is tranlated in the sense of advocate
One could translate the passages in John as well. The Word Comforter is an old English  word, but an Advocate does much the same. Modern translations speak of "The Helper, and the passage still has the same meaning of the Spirit as the Helper sent by Jesus.

Now coming to the matter of versions and  translations, you must keep in mind that the authoritative scripture are the Hebrew (OT) and the Greek for the New Testament. It does not matter that there are variations in some translations. This has been a bad thing. Even the Vulgate of the Roman Church has some horrible translations that do affect theological renderings. But the New Testament Greek text is the foundation of the theological beliefs of the Christian. The same analogy holds in Islam. I have read that one must truly know Arabic to "really" understand the Qur'an. You would not like someone to prove a point from a translation of the Qur'an.

I have a concern about your sources in talking about the ancient manuscripts_ It is my observation that Muslims are not discriminating about the sources that are used in talking about Christianity. For example, there are lots of people who are "Christians" who have naturalistic presuppositions. There are "scholars" who reject the virgin birth of Jesus. The same relates to manuscript study. There are textual critics who will maintain that the New Testament is 99 and 44/100 percent pure in recapturing the original documents. I am presuming you to be a Sunni and faithful to your tradition, but if someone comes along who rejects part or all of your beliefs and still call themselves Muslims, you could not accept that. Be careful in your sources concerning what you accept as orthodox Christianity.

My next point relates to your comment that "a spirit, according to the language of the Bible simply means "a prophet: (see for instance I John 4:1-3.) You refer to I Cor. 2:10, and 2 Thess. 2:2. These do not help your point. For example, the whole context of 1 Cor. 2:10 is that "it was to us that God made know his secret by means of his Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, even the hidden depths of God's purposes. It is only a person's own spirit within him that knows all about him, in the same way, only God's Spirit knows all about God. We have not received this world's spirit, instead, we have received the Spirit sent by God, so that we may know all that God has given us."

Please note that spirit for man (pneuma) is the same word in the verses relating to the Spirit of God. In both cases the case is neuter, but one does not say "it" for man's spirit because a man is a person. The same is true with the Christian idea of God's Spirit, it is neuter and is translated as He. There are many references to the pneuma (spirit) of man. The word occurs many times in reference to the teaching role of the Holy Spirit. Acts. 1:2,5,8, 16, 2;33,38, 5:3, and many more. The book of Acts describes the activity of the Holy Spirit in the lives of people giving them boldness to speak, do miracles, transforming them from being Jews to Christians.
There is something that has always intrigued me about the Muslim apologetic. This relates to the idea that there was deliberate modification of the Biblical texts. This is a conspiracy theory of the grandest scale. Are we to conjecture that all the manuscripts scattered around the world were somehow expunged in the attempt to undermine Mohammed?

You have used a source again that is questionable. You do not seem to make any distinction in sources. You refer to the Christians' own "Gospel of Barnabas." You make no note of its date, and the ideas in it. Christians have never accepted it. There are lots of documents that people wrote to draw on Christian ideas and combine them with pagan philosophy. One need only look at the Gnostics in their attempts to use Christianity for their own purposes. Most of these documents come after the Christian era begins and do not have any relationship to the New Testament documents.

  The more I read of your post the more I am convinced that you have not grasped the Christian idea of the Holy Spirit. One must know the correct doctrine of an opponent before arguing against it. The distinction that you make between "speaking" and hearing and inspiring is of no consequence. For example, in Acts 8:29, the Spirit said (eipen) to Philip,"Go over to that carriage and stay close to it." Acts 10: 19 tells of Peter "when the Spirit said, ’Listen! Three men are here looking for you .._., I have sent them." (This could not have been Mohammed) Acts 10:47, "These people have received the Holy Spirit, just as we did .... “ Acts 13:2 talks also of the Holy Spirit saying to them, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul, to do the work to which I have called them." There are many other passages in Acts as well as the epistles speaking of the Spirit and this is the fulfillment of the promise of Jesus.

There is an event in the New Testament that may help you deal with the comments you made about the Holy Spirit. If you can accept the idea that a suffering Messiah was prophesied (Isa.53) then the death of Jesus becomes an important event. The  prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel prophesied of a New Covenant. The Gospels record that Jesus took bread and wine and said some words: This is my body which is broken for you, and this is my blood which is the blood of the New Covenant which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins. In this event there is the fulfillment of the prophets as well as the establishment of the New Covenant. This New Covenant is the before and after event in Jewish /Christian thought. This before and after event also relates to the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is eternal, but He has not always worked in the same way. In the Old Testament he came upon the prophets in times of crisis, or upon deliverers, but He was not related to the common people. In the New Testament He is the gift of everyone who receives Jesus as Savior and Lord. The phrase "filled with the Spirit" often relates to particular moments in their lives when extraordinary power was needed. The apostles were "filled" again and again. This does not mean in the New Covenant that the Spirit departed, only that the present mission required special help. Each believer receives the gift of the Spirit by virtue of their faith in Jesus as Savior. He is described as the earnest (like a promise) of their heavenly inheritance. Without the Spirit there is no such person as a Christian. So to answer your question, yes, God's Spirit worked in Moses, and all of the people, but not in the same way that He works in the Christian era.

So much for this installment.  Peace