Qur'an and Torah

Does the Qur’an teach that the Torah was corrupted?

A close look at passages some Muslims say teach corruption

Was the Torah at the time of Muhammad reliable? As we saw before from several passages in the Qur’an, Allah affirmed the reliability of the Torah—or at least certain parts of the Torah—that existed at the time of Muhammad in the 7th century. Nevertheless, dear reader, you might be wondering if there are also ayat in the Qur’an that say that the Torah was corrupted at that time. The passage of the Qur’an that is most often cited to show that the text of the Torah has been corrupted is Surah Al-Baqarah 2:79.

فَوَيْلٌۭ لِّلَّذِينَ يَكْتُبُونَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ بِأَيْدِيهِمْ ثُمَّ يَقُولُونَ هَـٰذَا مِنْ عِندِ ٱللَّهِ لِيَشْتَرُوا۟ بِهِۦ ثَمَنًۭا قَلِيلًۭا ۖ فَوَيْلٌۭ لَّهُم مِّمَّا كَتَبَتْ أَيْدِيهِمْ وَوَيْلٌۭ لَّهُم مِّمَّا يَكْسِبُونَ

So woe to those who write the book with their own hands, and then say, “This is from Allāh,” in order to exchange it for a small price. Woe to them for what their hands have written, and woe to them for what they earn.

– Surah Al-Baqarah 2:79 –

The great Qur’an commentator Al-Tabari identified the primary subjects of this ayah as the Jewish leaders of Medina. Because of this, some Muslims argue that ‘the book’ refers to the Torah, which was entrusted to the Jews. Therefore, Muslims may say that this text clearly teaches that the Jews distorted the text of the Torah and then claimed: ‘This is from Allah’. At first glance, this interpretation might seem reasonable. However, consider the following:

  1. The ayah does not say which book the Jews wrote. Therefore, it is not certain whether ‘the book’ refers to the Torah or another book.

  2. Furthermore, the original Arabic text in the Qur’an uses the infinitive form ‘write’ (كِتَابَة) instead of ‘distort’. The ayah does not say that the Jews took the text of the Torah and changed it. Rather, a plain reading suggests that they wrote a new text beside the Torah and then claimed it was from God. This is exactly what Jews did. They wrote another book called the Talmud (a record of Jewish debates on how to live one’s life) and then claimed it was divinely authoritative.

    Writing another book alongside the Torah and claiming it was divinely revealed does not mean that the text of the Torah was changed. Given the countless other ayat of the Qur’an that speak positively about the Torah, we would need a clearer ayah to know that the text was changed.

  3. We must also consider the context of Surah Al-Baqarah 2:79. The ayat (75-78)1 immediately before say that the Jews of Muhammad’s day understood what the Torah said and then disputed among themselves about whether to tell the Muslims about it. They were thinking about hiding what was written in the Torah. If they understood the Torah, had disputes over it, and wanted to hide parts of it, that suggests that the preserved text of the Torah existed up to that point.

    Furthermore, according to the tafasir2, the Jews were specifically discussing hiding the prophecies about Muhammad in the Torah from the Muslims. Surah Al-A’raf 7:157 states that the Torah contains these prophecies:

    ٱلَّذِينَ يَتَّبِعُونَ ٱلرَّسُولَ ٱلنَّبِىَّ ٱلْأُمِّىَّ ٱلَّذِى يَجِدُونَهُۥ مَكْتُوبًا عِندَهُمْ فِى ٱلتَّوْرَىٰةِ وَٱلْإِنجِيلِ

    ˹They are˺ the ones who follow the Messenger, the unlettered Prophet, whose description they find in their Torah and the Gospel […].

    – Surah Al-A’raf 7:157 –

    If the Jews of Muhammad’s time (7th century) were trying to hide prophecies in the Torah, these prophecies must have existed in the Torah up to that time. Otherwise, they could not have tried to hide them. Consequently, the Torah—or at least the prophecies therein—must have been intact at that time of Muhammad.3 Furthermore, there is also no indication in ayah 2:79 that other parts of the Torah, such as the stories of the prophets, were corrupted.

    Thus, Surah Al-Baqarah 2:79 does not teach that the text of the Torah was unreliable in Muhammad’s days. Rather, it seems to teach the contrary, affirming the reliability of the Torah in the 7th century instead of denying it!

Another passage used to argue for the corruption of the text of the Torah is Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:13. Referring to the Jews, it says:

فَبِمَا نَقْضِهِم مِّيثَـٰقَهُمْ لَعَنَّـٰهُمْ وَجَعَلْنَا قُلُوبَهُمْ قَـٰسِيَةًۭ ۖ يُحَرِّفُونَ ٱلْكَلِمَ عَن مَّوَاضِعِهِۦ ۙ وَنَسُوا۟ حَظًّۭا مِّمَّا ذُكِّرُوا۟ بِهِۦ

So for their breaking of the covenant We cursed them and made their hearts hard. They distort words from their [proper] usages and have forgotten a portion of that of which they were reminded.

– Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:13 –

Some Muslims argue that the phrase ‘They distort words from their [proper] usages’ refers to the physical text of the Torah. In other words, they changed the written words in the book. Furthermore, they argue that the expression ‘they have forgotten a portion’ means that the Jews omitted parts of the Torah when copying it. As a result, these parts were lost over time.

However, we need to consider the following:

  1. The ayah does not say that the Jews corrupted the text of the Torah. It is not specific and doesn’t even mention the Torah.
  2. As we saw before, just a few ayat later in the same chapter, the Torah that existed in Muhammad’s days is called a ‘judgment of Allah’ (5:43). Allah commanded the People of the Book to obey the Torah that existed back then and calls those who do not obey ‘disbelievers’ (5:43.44) and ‘wrongdoers’ (5:45). Thus, Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:13 probably does not mean that the text of the Torah was corrupted.

Companions of Muhammad and classical Islamic theologians argued that the phrase ‘They distort words from their [proper] usages’ does not mean that the Jews corrupted the text of the Torah. Rather, they took this to mean that the Jews misinterpreted the meaning of the text. The text of the Torah remained intact, but the Jews took verses out of context and thus twisted the meaning of the text.

In this same way we must understand passages like Surah An-Nisa 4:46, which says:

مِّنَ ٱلَّذِينَ هَادُوا۟ يُحَرِّفُونَ ٱلْكَلِمَ عَن مَّوَاضِعِهِ

Among those who are Jews, there are some who displace words from (their) right places.

– Surah Al-Nisa 4:46 –

Or Surah Ali ‘Imran 3:78, which says:

وَإِنَّ مِنْهُمْ لَفَرِيقًۭا يَلْوُۥنَ أَلْسِنَتَهُم بِٱلْكِتَـٰبِ لِتَحْسَبُوهُ مِنَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبِ وَمَا هُوَ مِنَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبِ وَيَقُولُونَ هُوَ مِنْ عِندِ ٱللَّهِ وَمَا هُوَ مِنْ عِندِ ٱللَّهِ وَيَقُولُونَ عَلَى ٱللَّهِ ٱلْكَذِبَ وَهُمْ يَعْلَمُونَ

There are some among them who distort the Book with their tongues to make you think this ˹distortion˺ is from the Book—but it is not what the Book says. They say, “It is from Allah”—but it is not from Allah. And ˹so˺ they attribute lies to Allah knowingly.

– Surah Ali ‘Imran 3:78 –

All the Qur’an is saying in these passages is that the Jews verbally misrepresented the teaching of the Torah. They distorted the Torah with their tongues, not with their hands! The same thing could happen on a Friday at a masjid. An innovating imam could preach a sermon which is not in line with the Qur’an. If he does this, he misrepresents the meaning of the Qur’anic text without changing the text itself.

Taken together, we must conclude that these ayat of the Qur’an teach that certain Jews interpreted the text of the Torah during Muhammad’s time in a wrong way and thus corrupted its original meaning. But evidence for a rewriting or manipulation of the actual words on parchment cannot be found in the Qur’an.4

The Qur’an is consistent. It does not teach in some passages that the Torah of Muhammad’s time corrupted and in other passages that it was reliable (as discussed before). The overall message from the Qur’an is clear: The Torah that the Jews had in the 7th century—or at least large portions of it5 —were Allah’s reliable, undistorted, holy revelation.

Aside from the evidence in the Qur’an itself, one must wonder how the Jews could have managed to consistently change the text of the Torah at all. We must keep in mind that hundreds of copies of the Torah already existed several hundred years before Muhammad’s birth, spread across various locations in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa where some Jews had migrated (see Figure 1 below). The Jews living in these places spoke different languages and belonged to different sects that, in some cases, rejected each other. How could they have cooperated together and changed all their copies of the Torah? And why would they have done that?

As we will see in the next article, we have discovered many manuscripts of the Torah that were written at different times and even translated into different languages. Yet, the content of the manuscripts is largely the same. How, then, could the Jews—living in different places, speaking different languages, and often enemies of each other—have managed to secretly change and forge hundreds of copies of the Torah in the same way without leaving one single shred of evidence? And all of this before the Internet existed!

Figure 1: [The Jewish diaspora between around 600-500 B.H.](https://www.facebook.com/historyforfunn/posts/the-jewish-diaspora-in-the-roman-empire/590136949951663/)

All of this evidence leaves us with the conclusion that the Torah in the 7th century—or at least the prophecies of Muhammad, the law code, and the stories of the prophets therein—were reliable. The all-important question is this: Can we know what the uncorrupted, reliable Torah that existed in the 7th century said? If we cannot know that, everything we have discussed so far is irrelevant. Because one might say, “Yes, the Torah of Muhammad’s day was intact, but people have corrupted it after his time!”  That would mean that we still have a corrupted Torah today!

Dear reader, what’s fascinating is that we can know what the text of the Torah during and before Muhammad’s time said! Please continue reading:

Footnotes

  1. Surah al-Baqara 2: [75] Do you covet [the hope, O believers], that they would believe for you while a party of them used to hear the words of Allah and then distort the Torah after they had understood it while they were knowing [it]?” [76] And when they meet those who believe, they say, ‘We have believed’; but when they are alone with one another, they say, ‘Shall you tell them what Allah has revealed to you so that they might argue with you about it before your Lord?’ Then will you not reason? [77] Do they not know that Allah knows what they conceal and what they declare?” [78] And among them are unlettered ones who do not know the Scripture except in wishful thinking, but they are only guessing.” ↩

  2. For example, Al Tabari and Ibn Kathir ↩

  3. There would also have been no reason to corrupt the prophecies of Muhammad before he was born. ↩

  4. This is exactly what the early ummah, including high profile Muslims like Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. 728 AD) and Al-Tabari (d. 923 AD)) believed: Instead of corruption of the physical text of the Torah (a view called tahrif al-nass/ tahrif al-lafz (تحريف النص / تحريف اللفظ)) they believed in the corruption of the interpretation of the text (a view called tahrif al-mana (تحريف المعنى). ↩

  5. Namely the prophecies about Muhammad, the law code and the stories of the prophets. ↩