This article discuses how the Bible is seen in the religion of Islam.
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2 Doctrine of the corruption of the text 3 Biblical citations not in the Bible 4 Reading Mohammed into the Bible 5 Islamic Study of Original Sources |
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. The author of the Quran believed that in their original and correct form, all these books taught the same doctrine as taught in the Quran.
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.
Mohammed claimed to be heir to the Biblical prophets. Mohammed believed that what he taught was the same as that 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.
The Quran contains references to certain pages being delivered to the biblical patriarch Abraham; but what eventually became of them it does not say.
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 were unaware of the text of the Hebrew Bible, and know its 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. (This same phenomenon occurs in other religions; for instance Jewish discussions of the New Testament in the Talmud show a similar lack of familiarity with its actual contents.)
Imaginative statements are given as to how the five books of Moses begin and end, none of which match any known text. 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. Besides these three books, there are also references to the wisdom literature; 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 the Book of Proverbs), and the Wisdom of the Family of David.
Modern critical bible scholarship has shown that the Torah and the New Testament, at the time Muhammed, had a small amount of textual differences when compared to today's standardized texts. However, these differences are extremely minor compared to the alleged quotes in the Quran and later Islamic literature.
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 as any. There seems to be no attempt to verify Biblical quotations. Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209), another theologian of eminence, stated that he knew the Torah and the New Testament by heart; and yet in his commentary on the Quran the most incredible things are cited as being contained in these.
One of the reasons for this lack of accuracy was the belief that it was sinful to read the books of Jews and Christians. For instance, Ibn Khaldun (d. 1405 CE), the first philosophical historian of Islam, disapproved of such study: Muslims had certainty in the Quran, he held, and should be content with that. Reading non-Muslim books was unnecessary.
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. 18:18 et seq.: "I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee." The Quran holds that this must refer to an Arab prophet descended from 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 Isaiah 21:6-9 the rider on the ass is Jesus and the rider on the camel is Mohammed. The details in Isaiah 60:4-7 are regarded as applying to Mohammed. In Deut. 32:2 "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 Muslim scientist Al-Beruni (d. 1048 CE).
For a brief time, a study was made in some parts of the Islam world of the actual books of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. It occurred under the first Abbassids and especially under Al-Mamun. Through the Persian Aristotelians and physicians, the Syrian monasteries, and the Harran, Greek civilization and its methods began to affect Islam. The Muslim historians of the time show a commendable desire to go back to original sources and to test and examine for themselves.
Ibn Waḍah, who wrote about 880 CE, had an excellent knowledge of the Bible; the same is true of Ibn Ḳutaibah, who died in 889 CE. Yet in the works of both of these writers are included wild legends that had come down from the earlier times, which Moslem story-tellers expanded upon, side by side with sober translations from the Hebrew and Greek. And, just as the flourishing time of science under the Abbassids was short, so, too, with this branch of it. Ṭabari (d. 921) is already less affected by it; and Mas'udi (d. 957), although a free-thinking theologian, seems to have gone back to traditionalism. The result was simply that another set of assertions, much more trustworthy, was added to the contradictory jumble which was being passed on from writer to writer.
With Ibn Ḥazm, the Zahirite (d. 1064), however, a new development was reached, with results lasting to the present day. Ibn Ḥazm is distinguished in Moslem history for having applied to theology the principles of literal interpretation already used by the Zahirites in canon law, and for the remorseless vigor and rigor with which he carried on his polemics. He now marked a similar era in treating the doctrine of the older Scriptures, declaring them to be forgeries. Modern education in India and elsewhere has spread a more exact knowledge of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.Views of the Bible
Lost books of the Bible
Doctrine of the corruption of the text
Biblical citations not in the Bible
Reading Mohammed into the Bible
Islamic Study of Original Sources