Tampering with the Pre-Islamic Scriptures Gordon Nickel
The Quran contains numerous verses that show suspicion about the treatment of the pre-Islamic scriptures by the communities who possessed these scriptures. The meanings of the verses are not clear because important details are missing, and the actions referred to are often obscure. However, this has not prevented Muslim polemicists from using these verses to accuse the Bible of being corrupt and falsified.
The Quran refers to the pre-Islamic scriptures by the names tawrāt (Torah, eighteen times), injīl (Gospel, twelve times), and zabūr (Psalms, three times). Wherever the Quran actually names these scriptures, it speaks of them only in the most positive and respectful terms. In several verses the Quran describes the Torah as “complete,” “detailed,” “guidance,” and “a mercy” (e.g., 6.154) and the Gospel as “guidance,” “light,” and “admonition” (5.46). The Quran also frequently characterizes its relationship to the earlier scriptures as “confirming” what came before (muṣaddiqan; e.g., 3.3).
Suggestions of doubtful treatment of these earlier scriptures come in verses that use a series of important Arabic verbs and expressions of action. The most common verbs in this group mean “to conceal” (katama, asarra, and akhfā’). For example, already in the first part of the second sūra, the Quran commands the Children of Israel not to “conceal (katama) the truth knowingly” (2.42). By the end of the sixth sūra, the Quran has used these verbs an additional ten times, apparently with reference to treatment of the earlier scriptures.
More difficult to interpret are the verses using the Arabic verbs ḥarrafa (2.75; 4.46; 5.13, 41) and baddala (2.59; 7.162), or expressions like “twist tongues” (3.78) and “write the book with hands” (2.79). These verses generally lack information as to the precise nature of the action, who is doing the action, and what text, if any, is being acted upon.
Muslim commentaries on the Quran have interpreted most of these verses to mean a range of actions of resistance to the messenger of Islam. The earliest commentaries explain the verb ḥarrafa in line with the elastic English concept of “tampering.” The commentaries also contain accusations of falsification of the Torah, especially in comments on 2.79 and 3.78. Interpreting these verses, the commentaries often claimed that the People of the Book were changing or removing references to Muhammad from their scriptures.
Between the early commentaries and the later harsh Muslim accusations against the Bible often heard today, the development of the doctrine of tampering with pre-Islamic scriptures is something of a curiosity. None of the early Muslim stories of the life of Islam’s messenger include an episode of falsification, nor does the messenger make any such accusation. In the six authoritative collections of hadith (sayings attributed to the messenger), only a single tradition in a single collection accuses Jews and Christians of falsification, and this is attributed not to Muhammad but to a Muslim of a later generation. By contrast, many stories and traditions mentioning the earlier scriptures seem to assume intact texts in the hands of Jews and Christians.
It has been therefore works of Muslim polemic that have given this accusation its great currency and popularity. Many scholars locate the first major development of the accusation in the writings of Ibn Ḥazm (d. 1064) of Cordoba. Ibn Ḥazm’s Kitāb al-fiṣal fī ’l-milal set up the main lines of the accusation. He presented examples from the Hebrew Bible of what he considered to be chronological and geographical inaccuracies, theological impossibilities, and behavior of prophets that did not match the Islamic doctrine of the infallibility (‘iṣma) of prophets. Ibn Ḥazm’s critique provided the main inspiration for the accusation until Rahmat Allah Kayranwi added material from European works of “higher criticism” in his 1864 polemic, Iẓhār al-ḥaqq.
As far as the Quran is concerned, if the Quran does indeed make an accusation of falsification against the Bible, it is a bare claim, not supported in the Quran with anything like material evidence. The accusation therefore needs to be evaluated academically in light of the history of biblical manuscripts – from the earliest Qumran evidence (third century BC), through the origins of the Quran (seventh century AD), and up to the famous manuscripts dated to the first centuries of Islam (e.g., Masoretic Text, tenth century AD). Academic studies have revealed a few inconsistencies in this manuscript history, but none has indicated that any possible material about Muhammad was altered or erased.

5.43 – they have the Torah, containing the judgment of God
In contrast to the Muslim polemical use of verses 13 and 41 to accuse the People of the Book of having falsified their scriptures, this verse and the following verses describe those scriptures in a purely positive and respectful way. The Jews possess the Torah; the Torah contains the judgment (ḥukm) of Allah, as well as guidance and light (v. 44); God revealed or “sent down” the Torah (v. 44), and ‘Īsā confirmed the Torah (v. 46; also v. 110).
The prophets made their judgments according to the Torah; Jewish rabbis and teachers were entrusted with the “Book of Allah” (v. 44), which many Muslim commentators understand to mean the Torah; and verse 48 seems to say that the new recitations confirm and preserve the Torah. Further along in this sūra, the Quran urges the People of the Book to observe the Torah and the Gospel (vv. 66, 68).