standing, and the utmost they could do was to attempt to conceal it by placing the hand over the text (according to ibn Ishaq's version), or by lying about the meaning of the Hebrew, or by refusing to find the text, or denying its existence, or otherwise.

If, therefore, the tampering with the text, in the smallest particular, was impossible in Muhammad's time, what shall we say of those who falsely claim it was wholly perverted before his time, or in his time, or after his time either!

2. We have here the spectacle of a written Taurat known and circulated among the Jews of the Arabian peninsula; we see a community largely educated and able to read it themselves, and knowing its contents, whether they chose to observe them or not. If, then, this was the case in Arabia, it must have been so, too, wherever else the Jews were, for there is not a shred of evidence to be produced that elsewhere the Jews —in Egypt, Syria, Byzantium, or the West, etc. —were more ignorant, or slacker about keeping their law pure. On the contrary, the text bears witness that their Rabbis and Priests in general, as a class, were specially raised up by God to do this sentinel work. Therefore, the text of the Taurat was as pure all over the Jewish world as it was in Arabia in Muhammad's day.

3. Not only so, but the text and the commentators make it abundantly clear that not only

the Jewish leaders, such as the sons of Suriya, but also the Prophets, including (they say) Muhammad himself, were specially commissioned by God¹ to keep intact the Taurat, and preserve it from 'concealment', 'alteration', 'substitution', 'perversion', and from being 'forgotten' or 'lost' (all of these words are used by the commentators). Are we, then, really to say that one and all, including Muhammad, had failed, were failing, or would fail, in their divine task

4. Let no one pervert obvious truth by the subterfuge that a part of the Book was correct in those days, and that the Rabbis, and Priests, and Prophets, and Muhammad himself, were charged to keep that correct part. This opinion goes against every fact. For, first, Muhammad always alludes to the Book, not to any part of it. He never gave a hint at this or any other time that the Book, as a Book, was corrupted, and that he only recognized a part of it. Had the case been so, what gross ignorance or negligence were it, on his part, not to mention the fact, nay, not to blaze it abroad in language incapable of being misunderstood! Again, not a single commentator countenances this view!