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Hence any Muslim who affirms that the Old Testament and the New are corrupt
(محرّف) in text, and no
longer exist as they did in Muhammad’s day, is contradicting the Qur'an, and thereby denying the
truth of the book which all true Muslims believe to have been sent down by God Most High to Muhammad
with the object of confirming1 the Torah and the Injil. It is impossible to say that the
Qur'an teaches both that the Torah and the Injil are true and inspired, and also that they have been
so altered as to be no longer reliable; for to say this would be to accuse the Qur'an of
self-contradiction. No believer in God who is the Truth
(الحقّ) can believe that He sent down the
Qur'an in order to confirm a corrupted book, and one which, in consequence of such
corruption, taught false doctrine. The commentators whom we have quoted support our contention that
the Bible had not become corrupted before or during Muhammad's time.
The only question which remains is, "Has it been corrupted since his time?" It is not
difficult to answer this. The MSS. to which we have already referred, written in most cases long
before Muhammad's birth, are those from which the copies of the Bible now in circulation are
printed. Hence the impossibility of supporting the suggestion that since Muhammad's death either
Jews or Christians have corrupted the Bible in any way.
But let us hear what is said on the other side. Among Muslims all the ignorant and some of their
learned men who have not carefully studied this subject still fancy that the Bible as it now exists
is corrupt. If they are asked when this corruption took place, they are not agreed as to their
answer. Some say "before Muhammad's time", some "after that", some "both
before and after". To prove their point they have carefully picked out and repeated every
foolish and unsupported accusation which has been brought against the Bible by unbelievers, by such
pagans as Celsus,
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and by such heretics as the followers of Mani. These objections have long since been completely
refuted. They do not therefore influence men of learning in the West, and it is impossible that
really learned men among the Muslims should long continue to be deceived by them. It is sometimes
said that certain Christians of the first few centuries accused the Jews of corrupting the text of
the Old Testament. Some ignorant Christians did say that the Jews had altered the numbers in the
ages of the Patriarchs given in Gen. v. and xi, because it was found that some difference in these
numbers existed between the Hebrew text and that of the Greek Septuagint Version. But it is not true
(as has been asserted) that Augustine1 shared this opinion. Now that the matter has been
studied for some 1,400 years longer, no man of learning in the West believes that the Jews were
guilty of corrupting their Scriptures either in these passages or in any others.
Some Muslim writers speak of the many different readings to be found in the Bible, and say that
these prove the corruption of its text. But this argument is baseless. We have such a large number
of Biblical MSS. in Hebrew and Greek and other languages that, when we compare them with one
another, it is natural to find various readings. They are found in the same circumstances in all
other ancient books too. But what is the nature of these various readings? Most of them are merely
differences of spelling, as if in Arabic one book had
صلَوة and another
صلاة; one
حيوَة and another
حياة;
one
توريت and another
تورات; one
قيامة and another
قيَمة. In other instances there are differences of verbal
forms, such as those that so frequently meet us in the various readings given by the commentators on
the Qur'an. For instance, Baizawi 2 gives us the
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