Tahrif

Taḥrīf (Arabic: تحريف "distortion, corruption, alteration") is an Arabic term used by Muslims with regard to irreparable alterations Islamic tradition claims Jews and Christians have made to Biblical manuscripts, specifically those that make up the Tawrat (or Torah), Zabur (or Psalms) and Injil. Traditional Muslim scholars, based on Qur'anic and other traditions, maintain that Jews and Christians have changed the word of God. Based on the current Textual Criticism scholarly consensus, the most reliable editions of these documents available are:

• the Biblia Hebraica Quinta - the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), or Old Testament.
• the Novum Testamentum Graecae - the New Testament, a document relating to the Injil.

Types of tahrif

Amin Ahsan Islahi writes about four types of tahrif:

1. To deliberately interpret something in a manner that is totally opposite to the intention of the author. To distort the pronunciation of a word to such an extent that the word changes completely. For example, the word ‘مروه’ was changed to ‘موره’ or ‘موريا’.
2. To add to or delete a sentence or discourse in a manner that completely distorts the original meaning. For example, according to Islam, the Jews altered the incident of the migration of the Prophet Abraham in a manner that no one could prove that Abraham had any relationship with the Ka‘bah.
3. To translate a word that has two meanings in the meaning that is totally against the context. For example the Hebrew word that is equivalent to the Arabic ‘ابن’ was translated as ‘son’ whereas it also meant ‘servant’ and ‘slave’.
4. To raise questions about something that is absolutely clear in order to create uncertainty about it, or to change it completely.

Origin of tahrif

Ibn Hazm

The theme of tahrif found its first detailed elaboration in the writings of Ibn Hazm (10th century), who argued against Mosaic authorship and accused Ezra of writing the Torah.^{[citation needed]} He also arranged systematically and in scholarly detail the arguments against the authenticity of the Biblical text in the first (Tanakh) and second part (New Testament) of his book: chronological and geographical inaccuracies and contradictions; theological impossibilities (anthropomorphic expressions, stories of fornication and whoredom, and the attributing of sins to prophets), as well as lack of reliable transmission (tawatur) of the text. He explains how the falsification of the Torah could have taken place while there existed only one copy of the Torah kept by the Aaronic priesthood of the Temple in Jerusalem. Ibn Hazm's impact on later Muslim polemics was great, and the themes which he raised with regard to tahrif and other polemical ideas were updated only slightly by some later authors.

Evidence for tahrif

From The Quran

Tahrif of the Old Testament

In the Quran, descriptions befit God. He does not eat, drink, sleep etc. In the Bible, God is ignorant, wrestles with Jacob and loses, sleep, and many more descriptions in the Bible would be considered as blasphemous in the Quran.

Tahrif of the New Testament

In the Quran, the Injil (good news or Gospel in English) is a revelation to Jesus as a prophet. It was not a revelation about Jesus to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter or any other person. It is believed among Muslims that Jesus' sayings in the Gospels are part of Jesus' revelation, that was never noted down.

From The Bible

Many things in the Bible are considered by Muslims to be proof of tahrif. Things from contradictions and historical or scientific errors to propetic testimonies. Things like Jeremiah's words are considered by Muslims as key points for proof of tahrif.

'How can you say, "We are wise,
for we have the law of the LORD",
when actually the lying pen of the scribes
has handled it falsely?

Criticism of tahrif

Pre-Qur'anic understanding

At or before c. 33 AD

Muslims believe that holy revelations prior to the life of Jesus were contained in the Suhuf Ibrahim, the Tawrat and the Zabur. Muslims also believe that Jesus was taught and accepted the truth of the Tawrat and the Zabur during his lifetime. Therefore, any manuscripts of the Tawrat (Torah) or Zabur (Psalms) that can be dated prior to (or during) the life of Jesus are possibly without error.

From c. 33 AD to c. 700 AD

Sura 29:46 implies that up to the time of the Quranic revelation, the Christian scriptures were valid.

'And dispute ye not with the People of the Book, except with means better (than mere disputation), unless it be with those of them who inflict wrong (and injury); but say, 'We believe in the revelation which has come down to us and in that which came down to you; our God and your God is One; and it is to Him we bow (in Islam).'

Also Islamic tradition holds that the Gospel was available to Arabs as narrated by 'Aisha:

"The Prophet returned to Khadija while his heart was beating rapidly. She took him to Waraqa bin Naufal who was a Christian convert and used to read the Gospels in Arabic. Waraqa asked (the Prophet), "What do you see?" When he told him, Waraqa said, "That is the same angel whom Allah sent to (the Prophet) Moses. Should I live till you receive the Divine Message, I will support you strongly."

... Khadija then took him to Waraqa bin Naufil, the son of Khadija's paternal uncle. Waraqa had been converted to Christianity in the Pre-lslamic Period and used to write Arabic and write of the Gospel in Arabic as much as Allah wished him to write...

... Khadija then took him to Waraqa b. Naufal b. Asad b. 'Abd al-'Uzza, and he was the son of Khadija's uncle, i.e., the brother of her father. And he was the man who had embraced Christianity in the Days of Ignorance (i.e. before Islam) and he used to write books in Arabic and, therefore, wrote Injil in Arabic as God willed that he should write...

These Hadiths suggest that in the late 700s Jews and Christians were still using an uncorrupted text. If this is the suggested time of corruption there would already be too many copies in circulation to change — not to mention the diversity of language as there were even texts in Arabic.

Qur'an and the claim of the distortion of the text itself

Gary Miller (Abdul-Ahad Omar) believes that the Qur'an criticizes the handling of scripture by some Jews and Christians rather than their holy books. According to Gary Miller, Qur'an only makes the following three accusations:

• "The Qur'an says some of the Jews and Christians pass over much of what is in their scriptures."

• "Some of them have changed the words, and this is the one that is misused by Muslims very often giving the impression that once there was a true bible and then somebody hid that one away, then they published a false one. The Qur'an doesn’t say that. What it criticizes is that people who have the proper words in front of them, but they don’t deliver that up to people. They mistranslate it, or misrepresent it, or they add to the meaning of it. They put a different slant on it."

• "Some people falsely attribute to God what is really written by men."^{[citation needed]}

Early criticism

Among the earliest Christian documents on Islam in retrospect are the letter Maximus the Confessor wrote between the year 634 and 640 to Peter the Illustrious and the three writings of Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem (d. 639) ranging from 634 till 637. Absent from these writings is any sense that the Arabs were spurred by a new religion.
The Melkites, those who had lost their empire, ascribed the success of the Muslims to Christian sins. The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, written between 685 and 692 (Syriac version), state among other things that the Muslims were given to rule over the Christians for their punishment and purification.
The first Melkite example of doctrinal refutation is Anastasius of Sinai (d.c. 700).

The argument of tahrif is also refuted in an early polemical text attributed to the Byzantine Emperor Leo III with the statement that Jews and Christians share the same, widely-known divine text, and that Ezra, the covenantal architect of the Second Temple, was a pious, reliable person. The same arguments appear in later Jewish writings.

Further Modern Christian criticism

Modern Christian rejection of tahrif is based on five broad arguments:

1. There is little physical manuscript evidence of alteration to the Biblical texts. Also devotion of the Jewish people to the Torah and the meticulous copying of text by the Massoretes runs against Muslim charges. The oldest Dead Sea Scrolls versions c. 280 BCE – 68 CE match current usage with only minor variations.
2. There is no satisfactory answer to why Jews and Christians would change their text.
3. Jews and Christians were hostile to each other. Little agreement could have been achieved. For example in the 1st century St Paul was regularly attacked by the Jews (Acts 23v12) and anti-Jewish attacks were a regular occurrence by 372CE.
4. Differing new sects would have disagreed with mainline groups over changes. Thus no uniform set of alterations could be made as the Muslim claims.
5. Former Jews and Christians who became Muslims never mentioned any possibility of deliberate corruption—something critics could definitely expect if it were true.

Some modern Christian apologists have used these refutations of tahrif as a weakness of Islam.

See also

• Categories of New Testament manuscripts
• Historical Jesus
• Historicity of Jesus
• The Bible and history
• Development of the New Testament canon
• Biblical Inerrancy
• Internal consistency of the Bible
• Textual variants in the New Testament
• Documentary Hypothesis
• Biblical Minimalism

External links

• Is The Bible In Our Hands The Same As During The Time Of Muhammad(P)?
• Corruption in the Bible: The Muslim Stance
• Is The Bible Corrupted?
• What the Gospels Mean to Muslims
• What the Qur'an and other very early Muslim sources say about the Bible
• Is the Qur’an Corrupted? Shi’ites’ View

See also

• Islamic holy books
• Injil
• Tawrat
• Supersessionism
• Satanic Verses