The Bible in Islam
The neutrality of this article is disputed.This article discuses how the Bible is seen in Islamic religious texts.
The author of the Quran, distinguished between idol-worshipers and ethical monotheists who followed the Bible; he called the latter "the People of the Book": holders and followers of a written revelation. Most prominent among these were the Jews and Christians. As to the nature and contents of their books, the author had one fixed idea: These taught the same doctrine exactly as taught in the Quran; they could, in fact, teach no other, as all doctrines came from the one Lord.
The Quran contains vague references to certain "leaves" being delivered to the biblical patriarch Abraham; but what eventually became of them it does not say. The later Muslim theory is that they were taken back into heaven, and that whatever light the Sabeans and Magi enjoy is derived from them.
According to the Quran, to Moses, the "Tawrat" (Torah) had been revealed; to King David, the "Zubur" (Psalms); and to Jesus, the "Injil" (Evangelium). The Torah, the Psalms, and the "Gospel" represented for the author the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Some of the Quran seems to address a group where both Jews and Christians must have melted together into one.
To the series of prophets involved in this scheme of religious history Mohammed claimed to be heir. In the providence of God the time had now come when the Arabs, in their turn, were to have a prophet sent to them, speaking in their tongue, sprung from their blood, and calling them to repentance and to the acceptance of the one God and His doctrine as the other prophets had done with their respective peoples. Mohammed seems to have been satisfied that what he taught was already taught in the Tawrat, the Zubur, and the Injil. Objective Jews and Christians, he felt, would recognize that he was exactly such a prophet as those who had come before and that he fulfilled all the conditions called for in the Books. Of direct knowledge of the sacred books, as then in the hands of the Jews and Christians, it has long been a tradition that he had none.
When, however, most Jews and Christians refused to recognize his doctrine and to accept his prophethood, he ascribed their conduct to deliberate obstinacy. They concealed passages in their books; they misinterpreted others, "twisting their tongues in them" (Koran iii. 72).
In the Quran, Allah charges the Jewish people with "falsehood" (Sura 3:71), distortion (4:46), and of being "corrupters of Scripture."
Some parts of the Quran attribute differences between Muslims and non-Muslims to tahref-ma'any, a "corruption of the meaning" of the words. In this view, the Hebrew Bible and New Testament are true, but Jews and Christians misunderstood the meaning of their own Scripture, and thus need the Quran to clearly understand the will of God.
However, other parts of the Quran state that Jews and Christians used deliberately altered versions of their scripture, and had altered the word of God. This belief was developed further in medieval Islamic polemics, and is a mainstream part of both Sunii and Shiitte Islami today. This is known as the doctrine of tahref-lafzy, "the corruption of the text".
Most Muslims are unaware of the actual text of the Hebrew Bible, and know of its only contents only through Muslim legends, and discussions from Islamic literature. As such, in Islamic literature one often finds confusion between the Torah (the five books of Moses) and the Tables of the Law.
In Islamic literature the five small books of the Torah is enormously increased in bulk: it is alleged to contain a varying number of parts, up to 1,000, and to make seventy camel-loads. Each single part takes a year to read through. It is said that only four men — Moses, Joshua, Ezra, and Jesus — have studied it all.
Imaginative and incorrect statements are given as to how it begins and ends. Quotations of the wildest character are introduced as from it; and the quoter will say, "I have read them in the Torah." The same is true in regards to the book of Psalms, and to the New Testament. In regards to the book of Pslams, there exists in Arabic one of one hundred and fifty chapters, only the first two of which agree with the Psalms; the rest being a free imitation of the Koran.
Modern critical bible scholarship has shown that the Torah and the New Testament at one time have had a small amount of textual differences when compared to today's text, but nothing close to that suggested by the Quran and later Islamic literature. For instance, the Torah was said to begin like sura vi. of the Koran and to end like sura xi. In it was an exact description of Mohammed and of some other persons associated with the beginning of Islam. For the Gospel, the following statement by an early authority will probably suffice: "I found in the Gospel that the keys of the treasure of Ḳarun [Korah] were a load for sixty mules; no one of them was larger than a finger, and each key served for a separate treasury."
Besides these three books, there are also given references to the wisdom literature; and in this case a much closer approximation is made to the actual contexts of these books. There are quotations from the Wisdom of Solomon, the Testament of Solomon (apparently part of Proverbs), and the Wisdom of the Family of David, and these have usually at least a possible source.
It must not be thought that all this characterized only the earliest times and the most careless minds. Al-Gazzali (d. 1111), the greatest theologian of Islam, and a man of the intellectual rank of Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, quotes almost as credulously and rashly as any. Nor does he ever dream of verifying a quotation. Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209), another theologian of eminence, boasted that he knew the Torah and the Gospel by heart; and yet in his commentary on the Koran the most incredible things are cited as being contained in these. The best we can say for him is that either there were a pseudo-Torah and a pseudo-Gospel, which deceived him, or else that he lied. Such were the results of the mendacity of the early proselytes to Islam and of the credulity and carelessness of the Muslims. As some excuse for the last may serve the feeling which grew up that there was sin as well as danger in reading the books of Jews or Christians. Even Ibn Khaldun (d. 1405), the first philosophical historian of Islam, disapproved of such study: Muslims had certainty in the Koran, he held, and should be content with that.
Among the various general statements in the Koran that Mohammed had been foretold in the earlier books, only one gives the impression that Mohammed had had a specific passage in mind. It is in sura lxi. 6, where Jesus says, "O Sons of Israel, lo, I am a messenger of God to you . . . giving you good tidings of a messenger who will come after me, whose name will be Aḥmad." This seems a tolerably clear reference to the promise of the paraclete in John's Gospel, ch. xiv. et seq., and a very early Muslim tradition so takes it, quoting an Arabized form of the Greek παράκλητος. Another passage is Deut. xviii. 18 et seq.: "I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee." This, it is explained, could only refer to a prophet of the line of Ishmael; for he was the brother of Isaac, and there was no prophet of the line of Esau; and "their brethren" excludes the line of Jacob. In Isa. xxi. 6-9 the rider on the ass is Jesus and the rider on the camel is Mohammed. The details in Isa. lx. 4-7 are regarded as applying very exactly to Mohammed. Also, in Deut. xxxiii. 2 "Sinai" refers to the Mosaic revelation; "Seir" is a mountain in Syria where Jesus served his Lord; and "Paran" is either a mountain of the Banu Hashim, where Mohammed similarly worshiped, or Mecca itself. These were accepted as proof by the great scientist Al-Beruni (d. 1048).
There are statements in the Quran about the "sister of Aaron", who in the Hebrew Bible is Miriam, the sister of Moses. Many Muslims believe that this verse also refers to Mary, the mother of Jesus, a person who according to the New Testament lived nearly a milennium after Miriam. Other Muslims interpret this phrase as an allusion to Mary as being a descendent of Miriam.Views of the Bible
Lost books
Identification of new teachings with old teachings
Corruption of the text
False citations from the Bible
Reading Mohammed into the Bible
