Product Code Database
(, ) or corruption of the Bible, is a term used by most Muslims to refer to believed alterations made to the previous revelations of God—specifically those that make up the Tawrat or Torah, the Zabur or Psalms, and the Injil or Gospel. The term can also refer to what Muslims consider to be the corrupted Jewish and Christian interpretations of the previous revelations of God, known as "Tahrif al-Mana". This concept holds that earlier revelations have been misinterpreted rather than textually altered.
According to Camilla Adang, the early quranic exegete al-Tabari believed that there was a genuine Tawrat of Moses that had been lost and then restored by Ezra alongside a different Torah created by the and ignorant Jews. Tabari suspected that the Jews of his time were using this different Tawrat instead of the authentic Mosaic one, which is why Tabari made the distinction of referring to the Torah of his time as "The Torah that they possess today". Tabari says elsewhere in his Tafsir of Quran al-Baqara:42 that the Jews had introduced falsehood with their own hands in the Torah.Ryan Schaffner. The Bible through a Qur’ānic Filter: Scripture Falsification (Taḥrīf) in 8th- and 9th-Century Muslim Disputational Literature. The Ohio State University. 2016. pages 247-248.Tafsir al-Tabari 2:42
Some companions of the Prophet, such as Uthman(Ibn Qasir rejects the authenticity of the transmission from him) and ibn Abbas, made some statements that imply he believed the scriptures of "the people of the book" were distorted.(according to Tafsir Ibn Kathir 2:79) In Sahih al-Bukhari, he is quoted saying:
The first the corruption of the Biblical text was elaborated more extensively by ibn Hazm in the 11th century, who popularized the concept of tahrif al-nass, 'corruption of the text'. Ibn Hazm rejected claims of Mosaic authorship and posited that Ezra was the author of the Torah. He systematically organised the arguments against the authenticity of the Biblical text in the Hebrew Bible and the 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.
Ibn Hazm explains how the falsification of the Torah could have taken place while only one copy of the Torah existed, kept by the kohen of the Temple in Jerusalem. Ibn Hazm's arguments had a major impact on Muslim literature and scholars, and the themes that he raised concerning tahrif and other polemical ideas were modified slightly by some later authors. The Encyclopedia of Islam, BRILL Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages, p. 146, The Twelver Shia scholar ibn Babawayh narrated a debate between Ali al-Rida and the catholicos where Ali al-Rida, the 8th Imam of the Twelvers, claimed that the existing Gospels were created and changed after the original Gospel was lost.
Tahrif has also been advocated by Quranists such as Rashad Khalifa, who believed that previous revelations of God, such as the Bible, contained contradictions due to human interference.
/ref>
Al-Biqa'i also defended the use of quoting the Gospels and the Torah due to the Ijma of the Muslim community. He said that the tradition of intertextual quoting between the revelations of God or more specifically quoting the Torah and the Gospel, has become commonplace in the Muslim world. He also revealed that the tradition of quoting has become ijma' sukuti (silent agreement). This was evidenced by the number of commentaries that practiced quotation, including Al-Kashshaaf written by al-Zamakhshari, and
/ref>
Other notable Muslim commentators of the Bible and Qur'an who weaved biblical texts together with Qur'anic ones include Abu al-Hakam Abd al-Salam bin al-Isbili of
/ref>
|
|
