By: Hubert Agamasu

Introduction

Modern-day Muslims are under the impression that the Bible has been corrupted. We shall investigate this claim by analyzing what the Quran and Muslims have to say on the matter. 

Why use the Quran and not scholarship? 

 It is a futile attempt to convince a Muslim based on scholarship (Muslims believe Christ didn’t die, despite the unanimous assertion by Biblical and historical scholarship that he did). Hence, we shall resort to the very book they revere in order to prove our point. 

The Qur’anic dilemma

• Premise 1: The Bible and Quran disagree oin fundamental doctrines such as the deity, death and resurrection of Jesus.
• Premise 2: The Quran, however, affirms the Bible as the inspired, preserved and authoritative word of God.

Conclusions

• If the Bible is true, then the Quran is false because they disagree on fundamental doctrines.
• If the Bible is false, then the Quran is  false because it affirms the Bible as being true.

If our premises are true, then the conclusion follows that the Quran is false, no matter what.

Premise 1: The Bible contradicts the Quran.

This is true because the Bible asserts that God has a son (John 3:16) while the Quran asserts Allah has no son because he has no wife (Surah 6:105). So the Bible and Quran disagree.

Premise 2: The Quran affirms the Bible. 

1. The Quran affirms that no one can change the words of Allah. Surah 18:27: 

And recite that which hath been revealed unto thee of the scripture of thy Lord. There is none who can change His words and thou wilt find no refuge beside Him

1. The Quran affirms that the Torah and Gospel are the word of Allah: Surah 3:3-4

He hath revealed unto thee (Muhammad) the Scripture with truth, confirming that which was (revealed) before it, even as He revealed the Torah and the Gospel.

• According to the Quran, the Torah and Gospel are inspired by Allah (3:3-4)
• According to the Quran, the Torah and Gospel are preserved by Allah (18:27)

Conclusion: The Torah and Injeel could not have been changed.

Further Qur’anic verses and sources confirming the authority Bible.

• According to the Quran, the Torah and Gospel existed at the time of Muhammed (Surah 7:157)

• This is confirmed by the fact that Muhammed’s cousin Waraqa used to write from the Gospels (Sahih Bukhari Vol 4, Bk 55, Nu 605; Volume 6, Book 60 Number 478; Volume 9, Book 87, Hadith 111; Sahih Muslim Bk 001, Number 0301.
• Christians are to Judge by the Gospel (Surah 5:47)
• Muhammed himself gave judgement based on the Old Testament. In another instance when some Jews in Arabia asked Muhammed to pronounce judgement on an adulterous pair, he referred them to what was in the Torah. (see Sahih Bukhari Volume 4 Book 56 Number 829, see also 6,60,79; 4, 56, 829; Sahih Muslim Book 017, Number 4211). Why would Muhammed refer people to the Torah if it was corrupted?
• Christians to stand on the Torah and the Gospel (Surah 5:66)
• Muhammed was to judge by the Gospel and Torah? (Surah 10: 94)

There is not a single verse in the Quran talking about corruption of the Torah and Injeel!

Objection 1: The Quran says some distort the scripture with their tongues (Surah 3:79)

Ibn Kathir explains this in his commentary on Surah 3:39, that the Jews distort Allah’s words with their tongues, change them from their appropriate places and alter their intended meaning. Hence, the accusation is about people changing the meaning of the text, not the text itself. Ibn Kathir makes it clear that it is not the text that is corrupted. He quotes Imam Bukhari who quoted Ibn Abbass, companion of Muhammed, to show that Allah’s words themselves cannot be altered:

<who distort the Book with their tongues>

means, “They alter them (A

llah’s Words). 1
Al-Bukhari reported that Ibn ‘Abbas said that the Ayah means they alter and add although none among Allah’s creation can remove the Words of Allah from His Books, they alter

 and distort their apparent meanings. Wahb bin Munabbih said, “The Tawrah and the Injil remain as Allah revealed them, and no letter in them was removed. However, the people misguide others by addition and false interpretation, relying on books that they wrote themselves. 

Objection 2: Some verses say the Bible has been corrupted (Surah 2:79)

Ibn Kathir again makes it clear this refers to a portion of the Jews who wrote books and claimed these books were from Allah. Again he quotes a hadith from Ibn Abbas saying the people of the Book altered it, changed it and wrote another book with their own hands (Ibn Kathir on Surah 2:79). From the previous hadith, we understand that no one can change Allah’s words and the alterations and changes were by word of mouth. Here we meet a third category who write a book and claim it is from Allah. Obviously, this is not the same as corrupting the original book of Allah (if someone wrote a different Quran today and claims it is from Allah, does that corrupt the original Quran?)

Conclusion

• The charge of corruption is levelled against some Jews, not Christians.
• The charge involves misinterpreting Allah’s book and writing other books as though they were from Allah. None of the verses speaks about people changing the words.

Objection 3:  The word Bible is not in the Quran.

1. Bible is from biblos, the Greek for Book. Quran was written in Arabic, not Greek so one should not expect to find biblios. The equivalent word for book in Arabic is kitab and this is the exact word Allah uses.   
2. The Quran referred to the Jews and Christians as people of the book. Which book? The Christians were given the Injeel and Jews the given Torah. Why did Allah not say “people of the BOOKS”? This only makes sense if there’s a single book that contains both the Torah and Injeel. This book is called the Bible. Hence, when Allah refers to both Jews and Christians as people of the Book, he could only be referring to the Bible.

Objection 4: The Torah and Gospel Muhammed spoke of are different from the ones we have today.

1. 1. If the Gospels we have today are not the ones Allah promised to preserve, then Allah could not preserve the Gospels as he claimed! This makes the Quran false. 

• If the earlier scriptures were corrupted, why have we not found a single copy of the true injeeil? In desperation, Muslims point to one book as the true Injeel: Gospel of Barnabas.

• The Gospel of Barnabas denies that Jesus also flatly denies that Jesus is the Messiah, contrary to the Quran (see Gospel of Barnabas, sects 42, 48. Compare with Surah 5:19). 
• Conclusion: If Muslims are going to accept Gospel of Barnabas which contradicts their Quran, then they are calling their Quran false.

1. When were the Scriptures cCorrupted?

• If they were corrupted before Muhammed, why did Muhammed affirm the preservation, authority and reliability of the Scriptures before him?
• If the corruption occurred after Muhammed, then we would expect the Scriptures after Muhammed to be different from the ones before Muhammed. Yet, the scriptures that date from periods before Muhammed (3rd, 4th century etc.) are the same ones we have today.

Conclusion: The Sscriptures could not have been corrupted before or after Muhammed.

Objection 5: Quran revealed because Bible was corrupted?

There are some who think the existence of the Quran presupposes an abrogation of the Bible. Why then was the Quran revealed? According to the Quran itself, it was revealed so that the Arabs would have a revelation in their language and thus, would be warned (6:155-157). We also see this in Surah 42:7: 

Thus We have inspired in thee a Lecture in Arabic, that thou mayst warn the mother-town and those around it, and mayst warn of a day of
assembling whereof there is no doubt. A host will be in the Garden, and a
host of them in the Flame. 

Objection 6: Allah revealed a Gospel and not Gospels

Muslims falsely allege that the Gospel is a single book revealed to Jesus and that the existence of many Gospels is evidence of fraud.

• A man called Tatianus combined the four Gospels into one document. Copies of this single Gospel exist and one was translated in Rome and is known as the Diatessaron. Muhammed obviously mistook the Diatessaron for one Gospel, not knowing that it was a combination of the four Gospels.
• Early Muslim writers recognized John as the Gospel. Ibn Ishaq, writing about 100 years after Muhammed made mention of a passage that was “extracted from what John the Apostle set down for them when he wrote the Gospel for them from the Testament of Jesus the Son of Mary.” He then proceeds to quote from the gospel of John (Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah, translated by Guillaume, p 104).
• If Muslims believe there is only one Gospel, and if they accept their Ibn Ishaq’s words that John wrote the Gospel, then they are forced to accept the Gospel of John which clearly says the Word was God and became flesh (John Chapter 1)!

Objection 7: Jesus did not Speak Greek

1. Neither did he speak Arabic. And yet the Quran quotes Jesus in Arabic.
2. The Arabic word injeel was a transliteration of the Aramaic awongaleeyoon which itself is borrowed from Greek word euangelion, a name that referred to the Original Greek New Testament and means Good News. (see Abdul Haque Vidyarthi – 1997: Muhammed in World Scriptures)

• If Muslims claim the Gospels cannot be trusted because Jesus did not speak Greek, w. Why then did Allah borrow the Greek name for “Gospel”?

   Dilemma 2

• Allah promised to make the true followers of Jesus dominant over their enemies until resurrection (Surah 61:14, 3:55). We should see this dominant group in the centuries before Muhammed.
• Historically, Trinitarians who believe in the incarnation, have been dominant before Muhammed and even till today.
• If Trinitarians are not the true followers of Jesus, then the Quran lied.
• If Trinitarians are the true followers of Christ, then the Quran is false since Trinitarians contradict the teachings of the Quran.

Ibn Kathir sees the difficulty in this verse and tries to dribble out of it in his commentary by stating that Constantine and his followers were the true followers of Christ who dominated over the Jews because they were closer to Allah in the truth (Ibn Kathir, commentary on Surah 3:55-58). This is strange because Muslims claim they are Monotheistic like the Jews and that Christians commit shirk. Why would Allah aid “shirk-committing” Trinitarians to become dominant over “monotheistic Jews”?

                  Conclusion

1. Muhammed endorsed the Judeo-Christian texts without knowing their content. Believing that the scriptures preserved, he and his early followers attributed “false Christian doctrines” to a misinterpretation of the text. This doctrine is known as “corruption of meaning” (tahrif bi’al ma’ni”, corruption of meaning).
2. Later when Muslims began to understand the authentic truth claims of the Bible and how they negate the message of the Quran, they realized the devastating implications of endorsing the Bible. This explains why the doctrine of corruption then changed conveniently to “tahrif bi’al-lafz” (corruption of the text, see Nazir-Ali, quoted in “Islam” by Geisler and Salam, p 92). 
3. Modern Muslims, thus, find themselves in an uncomfortable position of having to argue against their own Quran and early Muslims.

Having proven that 

• The Quran affirms the preservation and inspiration of the Bible.
• The Bible disagrees with the Quran on fundamental doctrines.
• The conclusion follows logically that the Quran is false.