To fully understand what a Muslim means when he says
that the Bible is corrupted, we must first understand what in his mind is the
concept of uncorrupted revealed literature. Briefly stated, Muslims have
basically two criteria for this.
Firstly, the Muslim mind contrary to (a majority of) the
early Christians, at least such Christians as played a major role in the
canonization of the books of the New Testament, does not believe that God's
revelation is accessible to all men without distinction. On the contrary, it
believes that God reveals His words to those whom He selects from amongst men.
Such men are of impeccable character and repute. They bring with them clear
evidence of their divine authority. These men are called Prophets, or
Messengers of God, by the Muslims. Whatever they say and whatever they do with
reference to religious beliefs or actions gets the status of True Religious
Teachings. No one other than the Prophets or Messengers of God holds this
position. The apostles of any Prophet, are by their very name, subordinate to
these Prophets or Messengers of God. They only deliver the message of a
Prophet and do not speak or write with divine inspiration. Consequently,
Muslims believe that the origin of any divine literature must lie with some
Prophet (and thus God) and not with a Prophet's disciples or apostles.
Secondly, such writings, actions or sayings of the
Prophets must come down to their followers through unbroken and absolutely
dependable chains of transmission. For instance, it should not be so that a
compilation of the sayings of a Prophet is suddenly made available to the
world, while in the past it is not known to exist. If such be the case, the
Muslim mind would not base its religious beliefs on such a narrative. This
also means that such a transmission must be free of any kind of alteration,
and must be delivered to the later people in exactly the same words as it was
delivered to the companions of a Prophet.
Thus, when a Muslim says that the text of the Bible is
corrupted, all that he means is that:
1. The books that comprise the Bible are not the ones
given by the respective prophets to whom they are ascribed.
2. These books do not meet the criteria of unbroken and
dependable chains of transmission, and
3. A number of intentional and unintentional changes
have occurred in the text of these books.
It should be borne in mind that Muslims do believe that
the Torah was revealed to Moses, and the Gospel was revealed to Jesus. But it
is pretty obvious from these books as they appear in the Bible today that
neither of the two books are the same ones which were revealed to these
Prophets of Allah or even dictated by them. They are more of a historian's
account of the lives and teachings of Moses and Jesus respectively than books
revealed to them.
The Bible that is normally read around the world today
is basically a translation of the (narration of the) original text. The
various books that constitute the Bible today were first written in languages
other than English or German or Urdu or Arabic. For example, the Genesis is
thought to be originally written in Hebrew. So is Exodus and the other books
of the Pentateuch.
Let us first consider the Torah (or the Pentateuch). The
Torah is believed to be revealed by God to Moses (sws). Thus it is believed to
be revealed somewhere around the 13th century BC. But the books that we have
with us today that constitute the Torah do not date as farther back.
Furthermore, experts on the text of the Bible also believe that the Torah, as
we have it now, was not written or even dictated by Moses (sws) himself.
Geddes MacGregor, in his book, "The Bible in the Making" writes:
All you have to do to see that the Old Testament as we
know it did not come straight from the pen of its several authors, is to look
at the first three chapters of Genesis. There you will find two quite distinct
accounts of the creation of man. The account in the first chapter is startling
different from the account in the second and third.
There is no doubt that these two stories of the creation
of man which have been set down together in the opening chapters of Genesis
belong to very different periods. The second is by far the more primitive one,
and between the writings of the two narratives about as much time elapsed, as
has elapsed between the day of Christopher Columbus and our own. The disparity
is obvious from the character of the stories themselves: you can detect it in
reading them alongside each other in an English Bible. If you were reading
them in Hebrew you would be struck by the fact that throughout the first
account, the word used for "God" is from "Elohim", while in the second the
name assigned is that of "Yahweh".
The use of the term "Elohim" goes further back, however,
than the date of the passages in Genesis in which it is used. A study of
various passages in the Hebrew Bible shows that there must have been
originally two documents, of which the author of the more primitive one used
the name Yahweh in referring to God, while the author of the other used the
name Elohim. Scholars call the first document J, from "Jahveh" ("Yahweh"), and
the second document E, from "Elohim". (London: William Clowes and Sons Ltd,
1961, pp. 23-24,)
The author has then described briefly how the first six
books of the Hebrew Bible have come down to us. A summary of the writer's
description follows:
J was the product of the southern kingdom, while E of
the northern kingdom. Some time after 721 BC, a writer in the southern kingdom
put these two documents together with additions of his own. The work of this
scholar is called JE by the modern scholars. In the following century, JE was
enlarged by the addition of the discourses of Deuteronomy (these are
apparently, addresses delivered by Moses, shortly before his death). Around
500 BC, a school of priests undertook further editorial revision. Finally, in
the fifth century BC, this codification was incorporated with JE as revised
and expanded by the Deuteronomic editor.
In other words, J and E are the two most primitive
narrations of the life and teachings of Moses (though not written or dictated
by him). Both these narratives are not similar, and differ with each other in
many respects. J (written somewhere around 850 BC) and E (around 750 BC) were
combined and added upon in (around) 650 BC and the resulting document was
called JE. In (around) 550 BC, further additions were made from a document
called D (dated around 621 BC) and thus, the document now became JED. In
(around) 400 BC, priestly ritual laws, (written around 500 - 450 BC) were
added to JED - now growing to JEDP. JEDP, as it became in 400 BC, is the
Pentateuch (The Torah) as we now know it. Thus, a book considered and believed
to be written by and revealed to Moses (around the 13th century) is actually
written in the fourth or the fifth century.
This then is the reality about the Torah. No doubt, the
text of these books do contain parts of revelations to Moses, but, the
situation as it actually stands does not endorse that all the material
contained therein is revelation -- all revelation. Consequently, Geddes
MacGregor writes:
There are, indeed, probably echoes in the Old Testament
itself of dissatisfaction with the revisions. Jeremiah, for instance, having
questioned whether his compatriots are justified in their confidence in
possessing the Law of God revealed to Moses, warns them: Behold, the false pen
of the scribes hath wrought falsely (Jeremiah viii.).
The position of most of the other books of the Old
Testament is not much different.
Now, let us turn towards the New Testament.
The New Testament does not consist of any book that even
claims to be written or dictated or even proposed to be written by Jesus (sws)
-- the prophet of God (as Muslims believe him to be), to whom, as the Muslims
believe, the real Injil was revealed. All the New Testament consists of,
besides the book called "Revelation", are four biographies of Jesus (sws)
claimed to be written by his disciples, and some letters (claimed to be) of
his disciples. The case of "Revelation" is just a little bit different, as it
is presented completely as a narrative of a dialogue of Jesus with one of his
disciples. Recognizing this fact, C. F. Evans writes:
The only New Testament book, which appears to have been
written self-consciously as if for canonical status (but only until the
imminent end) is Revelation, with its solemn blessing on those who read and
hear it and its threat of damnation on anyone who adds to or subtracts from
it, but this is because writing had become a solemn and mysterious act in the
apocalyptic tradition, and it is significant that Revelation, though a mosaic
of Old Testament phrases and allusions, nowhere makes any explicit citation
from it. (The Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol 1, Cambridge: University
Printing House, 1970, p. 234)
It seems that in the beginning all the writings now
included in the New Testament with many others that were in circulation among
Christians were written only to preserve the life and teachings of Jesus (sws),
as was understood or interpreted by their respective writers. Most of these
writings it seems were never meant, initially, to become the basis or canons
of a new religion. So whoever had anything related to the life and teachings
of Jesus (sws), he wrote it down. This is quite understandable. Disciples of
all great people tend to do this and, no doubt, such writings are of great
importance for a student of history. But placing them at the exalted status of
canons or basis of a new religious belief does not seem to be quite justified.
Thus, it seems that initially no one even thought about collecting and
publishing all the writings that were in circulation and at that time they
were probably not even as much revered as they later became. C. F. Evans
writes:
So long as Christianity stood close to Judaism, or was
predominantly Jewish, scripture remained the Old Testament, and this situation
can be seen persisting in such a document as I Clement, with its frequent and
almost exclusive appeal to the Old Testament text. The elevation of Christian
writings to the position of a new canon, like those writings themselves, was
primarily the work of Gentile Christianity, whose literature also betrays a
feeling that the very existence of the Old Testament was now a problem to be
solved and that there was need of some new and specifically Christian
authority. ... what eventually took place was precisely what in the earliest
days of the Church could hardly have been conceived, namely, the creation of a
further Bible along with that already in existence, which was to turn it into
the first of two, and in the end to relegate it to the position of 'old' in a
Bible now made up of two testaments. The history of the development of the New
Testament Canon is the history of the process by which books written for the
most part for other purposes and from other motives came to be given this
unique status; and the study of the New Testament is in part an investigation
of why there were any such writings to canonize, and of how, and in what
circumstances, they came to possess such qualities as fitted them for their
new role, and made it impossible for them to continue simply as an expansion
of, or supplement to, something else. (The Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol
1, Cambridge: University Printing House, 1970, pp. 234-235)
He further writes:
During the apostolic age the Christian Bible consisted
of the Old Testament alone. (The Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol 1,
Cambridge: University Printing House, 1970, p. 286)
Consequently, it seems quite obvious that this status
was given to these books only at a later stage. Initially, they were neither
considered as divine nor as canons of a new religion. They were simply
regarded but a narration of the teachings of a Prophet by such people as were
his companions or by those who had been companions of his companions. Nothing
more than that. Furthermore, to improve the attitude towards them, it was
claimed that they were divinely inspired. Geddes MacGregor writes:
Prominent in the measures taken to safeguard the Church
against the dangers that beset it was the attempt to provide a body of
Scripture that could be set side by side with the Old Testament and have, for
Christians, a comparable status. But this movement to limit the Christians
Scriptures to a fixed number of books was much stronger among some Christian
communities than among others. (The Bible in the Making, Cambridge: William
Clowes and Sons Ltd, 1961, pp. 39-40)
This process of selecting some of the books that were in
circulation at that time as more authoritative and making a New Testament on
their basis began in the second century. By the end of the second century
churches in the West, especially Rome, accepted some books to be more
authoritative and started calling them the New Testament. In this
categorization of the books in circulation, Revelation, the Epistle to the
Hebrews, II Peter, II and III John, and Jude were considered to be less
authoritative. While among the Eastern or Greek Fathers, there was
considerable disagreement even in the fourth century.
Now, let us take a look at the “corruption” alleged.
A few methods have been devised by textual scholars of
the Bible to infer which of the text given in the old manuscripts is most
likely that of the originally written document. A number of books have been
written on the explanation of these methods. One such book is Bruce M.
Metzger's "The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and
Restoration". The author, in the preface of the book has briefly mentioned why
it is important to apply textual criticism on the Bible. He states:
The necessity of applying textual criticism to the books
of the New Testament arises from two circumstances: (a) none of the original
documents is extant, and (b) the existing copies differ from one another. The
textual critic seeks to ascertain from the divergent copies which form of the
text should be regarded as most nearly conforming to the original. (Oxford:
The University Press, 1964, Preface)
This statement, in other words simply means that the
oldest of the manuscripts of the New Testament that we have, do not comply
with each other. In such a state, a simple mind, is obviously prone to
believing that the text of the New Testament from its oldest of days was not
safe from corruption.
C. F. Evans after a detailed analysis of the various
reasons that can be ascribed to the variant readings of the New Testament
presents his conclusion in the following words:
Thus a study of the history of the text of the New
Testament in the earliest and formative period shows a number of different
factors at work. In the first place, the New Testament documents have been
open to the normal hazards of manuscript transmission. This is evident in some
lines of descent.... It is still a matter of debate whether any places have
been so affected in all lines of transmission: a plausible case for corruption
might be made in John 3: 25, I Cor. 6: 5, Col. 2: 18, and Jas. 1: 17, to
mention only some striking instances... Another debated factor is the
influence of doctrine upon the text. It is understandable that many scholars,
conscious of the sensibilities of fellow-churchmen, and often sharing those
sensibilities themselves (whether from a consciously conservative standpoint
or not), should have denied that any variant had arisen from alteration in the
interest of some doctrinal issue. However, we have seen that there are
instances where we run in the face of the evidence if we deny the presence of
this factor in the development of the text. Many variants which can be traced
to the second century bear the mark of the development of doctrine... Many
variants of a different kind have sprung from the closely related factor of
interpretation... Lastly, we perceive that change has come about as a result
of the history of the Greek language, both conscious changes from locutions
deemed barbaric to others considered cultured, and unconscious changes such as
arose through the disappearance of the dative case or the attenuation of the
perfect. (The Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol 1, Cambridge: University
Printing House, 1970, pp. 375-376)
Bruce M. Metzger has outlined the causes of error in the
transmission of the text of the New Testament, in a separate chapter of his
book, "The Text of The New Testament". He has broadly divided such errors into
two categories: (a) Unintentional Changes, and (b) Intentional Changes. A
summary of the unintentional changes, he mentions, follows:
Errors Arising from Faulty Eyesight: This maybe of any
one of different natures. For example, a scribe with such a problem, found it
difficult to distinguish between Greek letters that resemble one another; this
was especially the case where the previous copyist had not written with care.
Then, there can be a problem of jumping from one line to other and thereby
omitting a line or a few lines, if both the lines ended or began with similar
words. Errors Arising from Faulty Hearing: Such problem can especially arise
when the scribe is making a copy from dictation. A scribe is more prone to
this problem in the case of two or more words with the same pronunciation.
Errors of the Mind: This category of errors seem to have arisen during the
particular instance when the copyist was holding a sentence or a phrase in his
mind, whether after looking at the previous copy, if the copy was made by
looking at a previous copy, or after hearing the sentence, if the copy was
made from dictation. This error can result in a number of variations in the
text. For example, the copyist may unintentionally substitute a word with a
synonymous word. The sequence of words may be unintentionally altered. The
letters of a word may be so transported that causes a different word to be
written in the copy being so made. The passage being so written may be
replaced in the mind of the scribe with a similar passage that is better known
to the scribe. Errors of Judgement: Such errors may arise when a scribe
mistakes some words written on the margin of a previously written manuscript
to be part of the text being written. (Oxford: The University Press, 1964,
pp.186-195)
A summary of the unintentional changes, the author
mentions, is give below:
Changes Involving Spelling and Grammar: The scribe may,
with a motive of correction, change or alter the spelling of a word or the
sequence of words in a sentence. Harmonistic Corruptions: Since the monks
normally knew portions of the Scriptures by heart, they tended to make changes
in the text to harmonize discordant parallels or quotations. Addition of
Natural Complements and Similar Adjuncts: Where the scribe thought a phrase to
be missing a few words that, in his opinion, should have been there, he added
such words as he thought were obviously missing and were meant to be there.
Clearing up Historical and Geographical Difficulties: The scribes who were
aware of a particular historical or geographical reference being made in the
text and found that reference to be incorrect in some way, tended to correct
such reference. Conflation of Readings: When the same passage was given
differently in different manuscripts most scribes incorporated both readings
in the new copy which they were writing. Alterations made because of Doctrinal
Considerations: When the words of the manuscript which was used as a source
differed from or negated the doctrine to which the scribe ascribed himself, he
was tempted to alter the words in a way that prevented the particular
doctrine from losing its ground. Addition of Miscellaneous Details: Some
scribes had the tendency of adding details to some event that was referred to
in the text. (Oxford: The University Press, 1964, pp.195-206)
The author has given a number of examples under each
sub-category of these changes.
0
This, then, is what confuses the Muslim. Muslims do not
believe that the books that now constitute the New Testament were written by
Jesus (sws), whereas, the basis of Christianity is ascribed to him. Even if
these books were ascribed to Jesus (sws), the Muslims have never been provided
with unbroken and dependable chains of transmission of these books from one
generation to the next. The case of the Torah is no different. Lastly, even
experts on the text of the Bible believe that it has not remained safe from
intentional and/or unintentional changes in the text. Consequently, in the
situation, as it stands, Muslims have no option but to believe that the books
of the Bible as we have them today do not truly reflect the true teachings of
the Prophets to whom they are ascribed.
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