What The Qur’an and Islamic Tradition Say About the Bible

WHAT THE QUR’AN AND
ISLAMIC TRADITION SAY
ABOUT THE BIBLE
By Jose Luis Dizon

Four Possible Scenarios
The Qur’an teaches Biblical
Corruption
The Qur’an does not
teach Biblical
Corruption
The Bible has
been corrupted
1. Christianity is
falsified; Islam is
vindicated
3. Christianity
and Islam are
both falsified
The Bible has not
been corrupted
2. Christianity is
vindicated; Islam is
falsified
4. Christianity is
vindicated;
Islam is falsified

Biblical Narrative and the Qur’an
• “Muslims in the first century of their religious history
inevitably had to rely on the Bible for the background
of the salvific history that the Qur'an was claiming to
inherit. Moreover, the abbreviated manner in which
the Qur'an related stories from the Jewish and
Christian traditions was scarcely sufficient for the
stories to function independently. The Qur'an needed
a narrative background for it to become
comprehensible. . . . They naturally turned to biblical
lore (the Bible, midrash, and Christian literature) to
provide that narrative background.”
• Walid Saleh, “A Muslim Hebraist: Al-Biqai’s Bible Treatise and His Defence
of Using the Bible to Interpret the Qur’an,” Speculum 83, 632-633.

• Surat Yunus, 10:94: “If you are in doubt as to
what we have revealed to you, ask those who
read the book before you; the truth has come to
you from your Lord: so never be among the
doubters.”

• Hadith narrated by al-Biqa’i: “Do not hesitate to
narrate from the Sons of Israel.”
• Cited in Saleh, “A Muslim Hebraist,” 644.

Two Key Words
•Tasdīq (‫)تصديق‬ – “Confirmation”
•Taḥrīf (‫)تحريف‬ – “Corruption”

Tasdīq (‫)تصديق‬
• From the Arabic verb ‫ق‬ّ‫د‬‫ص‬ (saddaqa, “to confirm”)
• Usually appears in the active participle form ‫ق‬ِّّ‫د‬َ‫ص‬ُ‫م‬
(musaddiq)
• Has the connotation of verifying or proving
something to be true (cf. Lane’s Lexicon)
• Appears in Q 2:41, 2:89, 3:3, 3:48, 5:48

• Surat Āl Imrān, 3:3: “He has sent down upon
you the Book in truth, confirming what was before
it [literally, what is between its hands]. And He
revealed the Torah and the Gospel.”

• Surat al-Baqarah, 2:41: “Believe in what I reveal,
confirming what is with you and be not the first to
disbelieve in it. And do not sell My signs for a
small price, and fear Me.”

Taḥrīf (‫)تحريف‬
• From the Arabic verb ‫ف‬ّ‫حر‬ (“to corrupt”)
• Found in Q 2:75, 4:46, 5:13 and 5:41
• Related verbs: ‫ل‬ّ‫د‬‫ب‬ (“to change”) and ّّ‫ي‬‫ل‬ (“to distort”)

• Surat al-Baqarah, 2:75: “Do you hope that they
would believe for you while a party of them used
to hear the words of Allah and then corrupt it after
they had understood it while they were knowing?”

• Two types of Taḥrīf:
1. Taḥrīf al-Mana (Corruption of meaning)
2. Taḥrīf al-Nass (Corruption of the text)
• Most modern Muslim preachers and apologists
advocate the latter
• The Qur’an, however, appears to be teaching the
former

• Surat Āl Imrān, 3:78: “There is among them a
party who distort the Book with their tongues that
you may consider it to be of the Book, and they
say, It is from Allah, while it is not from Allah, and
they tell a lie against Allah whilst they know.”

• “According to the linguists of Arabic, taḥrīf means
corruption of meaning, not of text. So, four verses
mentioned above [Q 2:75, 4:46, 5:13, 5:41] claim
that Jews misinterprets [sic] their holy books. On
the other hand, in the usage of some Muslim
commentators of the Qur'an, the word derived an
expanded meaning including corruption of text.”
• Muhammet Tarakci and Suleyman Sayar, “The Quranic View of the
Corruption of the Torah and the Gospels,” The Islamic Quarterly 39/3, 230.

• “In the Qur’anic context, tahrif is principally an
ambiguous accusation raised against the Jews.
Moreover, [the tahrif verses] more readily lend
themselves to being understood as accusations
of taḥrīf mana, rather than textual corruption,
taḥrīf lafz. One should not therefore too quickly
conclude, as most do today, that these verses
were automatically understood in the sense of
textual corruption of the whole Bible, for this
would represent an anachronism.”
• Martin Accad, “Corruption and/or Misinterpretation of the Bible: The Story of
the Islamic Usage of Tahrif,” Theological Review 24/2 (2003), 71.

Muslim Scholarly Opinions
• “Someone might come out against this tradition
with the argument that it occurs only in the Torah
which, as is well known, was altered by the Jews.
The reply to this argument would be that the
statement concerning the alteration of the Torah
by the Jews is unacceptable to thorough scholars
and cannot be understood in its plain meaning,
since custom prevents people who have a
revealed religion from dealing with the divine
scriptures in such a manner.”
• Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, Vol. I,
trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton University Press, 1967), 20.

Muslim Scholarly Opinions
• “In no verse in the Qur’an is there a denigrating
remark about the scriptures of the Jews and
Christians. Instead, there is respect and
reverence. Any disparaging remarks were about
the People of the Book, individuals or groups, and
their actions.”
• Abdullah Saeed, “The Charge of Distortion of Jewish and Christian
Scriptures,” The Muslim World 92 (Fall 2002): 429.

The Evolution of Taḥrīf
• “…it quickly became the practice in debates
between Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the
tenth century onwards for Muslim scholars to
impugn the authenticity of the Bible text as Jews
and Christians actually have it and interpret it.”
• Sidney H. Griffith, The Bible in Arabic: The Scripture of the “People of the
Book” in the Language of Islam (Princeton University Press, 2013), 178.

• Camilla Adang surveyed ten Muslim writers from
Ibn Rabban (9th century) to Ibn Hazm (11th
century), and found that the 1st explicit reference
to textual corruption among them was from al-
Maqdisi (10th century). But the idea wasn’t fully
developed until Ibn Hazm.
• Camilla Adang, Muslim Writers on Judaism and the
Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm (Leiden:
Brill, 1996), 223-248.

• It is generally accepted in scholarly circles that
the main thrust behind the shift towards textual
corruption seems to be the 11th century polemicist
Ibn Hazm, of whom Gabriel Said Reynolds says
that he “is distinguished from earlier Muslim
authors... more by his unfailingly hostile rhetoric
than by the method or content of his arguments
against Christianity.”
• Gabriel Said Reynolds, “Review of S.M. Behloul, Ibn Ḥazm’s
Evangelienkritik: Eine methodische Untersuchung,” Journal of the
American Oriental Society 124 (2004), 116.

• For more information, see my article, “Muslim
writers on Taḥrīf,” at the following link:
• bit.ly/ontahrif

The Deleted Description
• “Al-Kalbi mentioned, through the above-
mentioned chain of transmission: ‘They had
changed the description of Allah’s Messenger,
Allah bless him and give him peace, in their
Scripture. They made him white and tall while the
Prophet, Allah bless him and give him peace, was
brown and of medium height. They had said to
their followers and companions: ‘Look at the
description of the prophet who will be sent at the
end of time; his description does not match that of
this [man].’”
• Al-Wahidi, Asbāb al-Nuzūl, trans. Mokrane Guezzou (Amman:
Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought), 3.

Four Possible Scenarios, Revisited
The Qur’an teaches Biblical
Corruption
The Qur’an does not
teach Biblical
Corruption
The Bible has
been corrupted
1. Christianity is
falsified; Islam is
vindicated
3. Christianity
and Islam are
both falsified
The Bible has not
been corrupted
2. Christianity is
vindicated; Islam is
falsified
4. Christianity is
vindicated;
Islam is falsified

What The Qur’an and Islamic Tradition Say About the Bible

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Tendances

Tendances (20)

Similaire à What The Qur’an and Islamic Tradition Say About the Bible

Similaire à What The Qur’an and Islamic Tradition Say About the Bible (20)

Dernier

Dernier (20)

What The Qur’an and Islamic Tradition Say About the Bible