Usually, scholars give two descriptions of Muslim views of the Bible regarding taḥrīf: tampering with the meaning of the biblical text or tampering with the biblical text itself. The view found in the earliest Muslim commentaries, however, does not fit into either of these categories, yet it seldom features in scholarship on the subject. The earliest Muslim commentaries on the Qur’an regard the previous scriptures as sources of authority and attestation while simultaneously showing uncertainty and suspicion toward the handling of those scriptures by Jews and Christians.
For the most part, the Torah and the Gospel are referred to as intact texts in the possession of Jews and Christians in seventh century Medina. The most common accusation is that Jews and Christians—and mainly Jews—are concealing material in the previous scriptures that refers to the messenger of Islam. When an accusation of falsification of the text of the previous scriptures does appear, and this happens only rarely, the accusation is usually related to an act of erasing or changing an alleged reference to the messenger of Islam in the Torah in response to his appearance in the seventh century.
MUQĀTIL AND THE PREVIOUS SCRIPTURES
A good way to research views of the Bible in Muslim Qur’an commentaries is to look at how they interpreted verses that are commonly associated with the Bible in Muslim polemic. Scholars of Muslim polemic highlight a series of about 25 verses, all but a few of them found in Suras 2 to 5.
The early commentaries of Muqātil ibn Sulaymān, al-Farrā’ and ‘Abd al-Razzāq on these verses yield a lot of relevant material. The material described here is mainly from the eighth-century commentary on the Qur’an by Muqātil, largely because it is so abundant and so cohesive. According to the best academic scholarship, Muqātil who died in 767, wrote his commentary around the middle of the second Islamic century.1
The most frequent action of tampering in the Qur’an is concealing, indicated by the three Arabic verbs katama, akhfā and asarra. Perhaps for this reason, Muqātil tells more stories of concealing than about any other action.
The typical story in Muqātil’s interpretations is that the Jews conceal the description, or “matter,” of Muḥammad that is in the Torah (Q 2:42). For instance on, “Who does a greater wrong than he who conceals a testimony that has come to him from Allah?” (Q 2:140) Muqātil wrote, “This is about how Allah made clear the matter of Muḥammad in the Torah and the Gospel. They concealed this testimony that is with them”. The reason Muqātil gives for this is that “the Jews found the description of Muḥammad the prophet in the Torah before he was sent, and believed in him, assuming that he was from the descendents of Isaac. Then when Muḥammad was sent from among the Arabs, from the descendents of Ishmael, they disbelieved in him out of envy”.
INTERPRETING
It is interesting that al-Ṭabarī (d. 923), in his commentary a century and a half later, understands the concealment verses in much the same way. For al-Ṭabarī, the object of concealment in 10 out of the 11 verses is the description of Muḥammad. Indeed, it is virtually the only object of concealment in eight of his passages and 12 times he cites the Qur’anic phrase “they find him written with them in the Torah and the Gospel” (Q 7:157).2
Those who are familiar with the tampering verses in the Qur’an, however, may wonder about Muqātil’s interpretation of the four verses that contain the verb ḥarrafa, from which the technical term taḥrīf (corruption) comes; and perhaps also the verses containing baddala, the verb that gives us the verbal noun tabdīl (alteration).
Muqātil understood none of these verses to indicate a change of scriptural text. For him the two baddala verses, Q 2:59 and 2:211, and the first ḥarrafa verse, 2:75, are about verbal alteration of God’s commands by the Children of Israel in the distant past.
The verb ḥarrafa at Q 4:46 and 5:13 indicates actions of disrespect or disbelief by the Jews of Medina toward the messenger of Islam. And Muqātil interpreted the fourth ḥarrafa verse (Q5:41) using a story about concealing a verse in an intact Torah, as do the majority of classical Muslim commentators on the Qur’an.
The straightforward impression from Muqātil’s exegesis of the 25 “tampering verses” is that he pictured a variety of Jewish actions of resistance to the authority of Islam’s messenger on the basis of an intact Torah. Moreover, a wider reading of Muqātil’s interpretation of the Qur’an’s longest suras would seem to confirm this impression as well.
SCHOLARLY ANALYSIS
It is essential in any scholarly analysis of primary material to carefully articulate both what is there and what is not. The view of the Bible in the earliest Muslim commentaries on the Qur’an is not about beliefs at variance with Muslim teaching, such as the deity of Jesus, or the death of Jesus, or the biblical concept of God. Rather, it is mainly about the attestation of the messenger of Islam in the previous scriptures. Virtually all of the accusations are about concealing alleged references to the messenger of Islam in intact scriptures, or about Jewish denial of the messenger’s claim to authority.
Jews of Medina to be hostile and deceptive, it makes no accusation of falsification of the Torah.4 At the same time the Sīra offers a version of John 15:23-16:1 and claims the messenger of Islam is the paraclete.
A number of scholars, such as William Montgomery Watt,5 have understood this claim of references to the messenger of Islam in the previous scriptures to represent an early Muslim need for attestation of Muhammad. Some scholars such as Ignaz Goldziher6 and Uri Rubin7 have also suggested that the need for such an attestation was the initial impetus for the Muslim accusation of biblical corruption or falsification.
CONCLUSION
Muqātil’s interpretations of the Qur’anic verses containing the verbs baddala and show that one should question the claim that these six verses somehow prove that the Bible was corrupt or falsified. One might perhaps say that the verses came to mean that for later exegetes or polemicists. However, this raises the question of the meaning of the Qur’an. If it is true that Muqātil’s commentary represents Muslim views of the Bible in the middle of the eighth century, and that there is no earlier extant commentary, on what basis can one say that later classical commentaries—or later polemicists—provide a truer interpretation of those verses?
It also raises the question of the impact of Muslim views of the Bible on the academic study of the Bible. Do accusations of corruption and falsification against the Bible encourage Muslims to actually read the Bible—other than for polemical purposes? Many non-Muslims read the Qur’an for its own sake, without either accepting the truth claims Muslims make or searching for material to use against Islam.
Some Muslims have read the Bible out of a simple desire to know its contents. A greater awareness of the early Islamic commentary above may encourage more widespread Muslim reading of the Bible which would hold great promise for a reasonable, meaningful academic conversation about the scriptures between Muslims and the “People of the Book.”
FOOTNOTES
1 I provide full details about the dating of Muqātil’s commentary in my monograph, Narratives of tampering in the earliest commentaries on the Qur’an (Leiden: Brill 2011).
2 Nickel, Narratives of Tampering, 147.
3 See The Life of Muhammad: Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat rasul Allah, trans. A. Guillaume (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955).
4 Nickel, Narratives of Tampearing, 219.
5 W. Montgomery Watt, “The early development of the Muslim attitude to the Bible,” Glasgow University Oriental Society Transactions 16 (1955-56), 50-62.
6 Ignaz Goldziher, “Über muhammedanische Polemik gegen Ahl al-Kitab.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft xxxii (1878), 348.
7 Uri Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder: The life of Muḥammad as viewed by the early Muslims: a textual analysis. (Princeton: Darwin, 1995), 21.
Source: Original Source!
Short Bio: Dr Gordon Nickel is a Christian scholar who researches the interplay between Islam and the Gospel, especially between the Qur’an and the New Testament. He teaches in the Department of Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia.
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