Taḥrīf (Arabic Arabic (العربية al-ʿarabīyah, ( Arabic pronunciation ) or عربي ʿarabi) is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages such as Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages. Arabic has more speakers than any other language in the Semitic language family. It is spoken by more than 280 million: تحريف "distortion, corruption, alteration") is an Arabic term used by Muslims A Muslim or Moslem is an adherent of the religion of Islam. Literally, the word means "one who submits (to God)". Muslim is the participle of the same verb of which Islam is the infinitive. All Muslims observe Sunnah, but differences in the definition of what is and what is not Sunnah has led to the emergence of sectarian movements.[ with regard to irreparable alterations Islamic Islam (Arabic: الإسلام‎ al-’islām, pronounced [ʔislæːm] [note 1]) is the monotheistic religion articulated by the Qur’an, a text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of their one, incomparable God (Arabic: الله‎, Allāh), and by the Prophet of Islam Muhammad's teachings and normative example (in Arabic called tradition supposes Jews Judaism is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people. Judaism, originating in the Hebrew Bible and explored in later texts such as the Talmud, is considered by Jews to be the expression of the covenantal relationship God developed with the Children of Israel. According to traditional Rabbinic Judaism, God revealed and Christians Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the New Testament. Christianity comprises three major branches: Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy (which parted ways with Catholicism in 1054 A.D.) and Protestantism (which came into existence during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th to have made to Biblical manuscripts A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. The word Bible comes from the Greek biblion ; manuscript comes from Latin manu (hand) and scriptum (written). The original manuscript (the original parchment the author physically wrote on) is called the "autographa." Biblical manuscripts vary in size, specifically those that make up the Tawrat Tawrat is the Arabic word for the Torah. Most Muslims believe it is one of the Holy books given by God to prophet Moses. The Hebrew word for their scripture, the Torah (also known as the Five Books of Moses or the Pentateuch) means instructions, that is why Tawrat as per the Qur'an does not refer to the entire Tanakh or Old Testament. All prophets (or Torah The term Torah , also known as the Pentateuch (Greek: penta [five] and teuchos [tool, vessel, book]), refers to the Five Books of Moses—the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts. A "Sefer Torah" (סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה, "book of Torah") or Torah scroll is a copy of the Torah written on parchment), Zabur Zabur is by Islam, the holy book of David, and according to Islam, one of the holy books revealed by God before the Qur'an (the others being the Tawrat (Torah) and the Injil (New Testament)) (or Psalms Psalms is a book of the Hebrew Bible. Taken together, its 150 sacred poems express virtually the full range of Israel's faith) and Injil The Injil (Arabic إنجيل is the Arabic name for the Christian gospel, and one of the four Islamic Holy Books the Qur'an records as revealed by God, the others being the Suhuf Ibrahim, Zabur, Tawrat and Qur'an (the New Testament The New Testament is the name given to the second major division of the Christian Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament. Unlike the Old Testament, the contents of the New Testament deal explicitly with Christianity, although both the Old and New Testament are regarded, together, as Sacred Scripture. The New Testament).

Traditional Muslim scholars Ulama , also spelt ulema, refers to the educated class of Muslim legal scholars engaged in the several fields of Islamic studies. They are best known as the arbiters of shari‘a law. While the ulama are well versed in legal jurisprudence being Islamic lawyers, some of them also go on to specialize in other fields, such as philosophy, dialectical,[1] based on Qur'anic and other traditions,[2] maintain that Jews The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation. Converts to Judaism, whose status as Jews within the Jewish ethnos and Christians A Christian (pronounced /ˈkrɪstʃən/ ) is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe is the Messiah (the Christ in Greek-derived terminology) prophesied in the Hebrew Bible, and the son of God. Most Christians believe in the doctrine of have changed the word of God God is the English name given to the singular omnipotent being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism. Therefore it is a presupposition of the final outcome of biblical Textual Criticism Textual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts. Ancient scribes made errors or alterations when copying manuscripts by hand. Given a manuscript copy, several or many copies, but not the original document, the textual critic seeks to to be failure of the text. Based on the current textual criticism consensus, the most reliable editions of these documents available are:

These critical texts are continually drawing closer to the original texts. Before 1900, only 9 New Testament papyri manuscripts were known, in 1963 there were 76 papyri - while as of 2008 there are 124 papyri.

Contents

Types of tahrif

Amin Ahsan Islahi Amin Ahsan Islahi was an Indian/Pakistani exegete of the Qur'an, who became famous for his Urdu exegeses of Qur'an, Tadabbur-i-Qur’an—an exegesis that he based on Hamiduddin Farahi's (1863-1930) idea of thematic and structural coherence in the Qur'an writes about four types of tahrif:[3]

  1. To deliberately interpret something in a manner that is totally opposite to the intention of the author. To distort the pronunciation of a word to such an extent that the word changes completely. For example, the word ‘مروه’ was changed to ‘موره’ or ‘موريا’.
  2. To add to or delete a sentence or discourse in a manner that completely distorts the original meaning. For example, according to Islam, the Jews altered the incident of the migration of the Prophet Abraham in a manner that no one could prove that Abraham had any relationship with the Ka‘bah.
  3. To translate a word that has two meanings in the meaning that is totally against the context. For example the Hebrew word that is equivalent to the Arabic ‘ابن’ was translated as ‘son’ whereas it also meant ‘servant’ and ‘slave’.
  4. To raise questions about something that is absolutely clear in order to create uncertainty about it, or to change it completely.

Origin of tahrif

Tahrif in the first centuries of Islam

According to Camilla Adang, early scholars known to support the lack of change of the Tawrat and Injil are Ibn al-Layth, Ibn Rabban, Ibn Qutayba, Al-Ya'qubi, Al-Tabari Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari was one of the earliest, most prominent and famous Persian historian and exegete of the Qur'an,who wrote exclusively in Arabic , most famous for his Tarikh al-Tabari (History of the Prophets and Kings) and Tafsir al-Tabari, Al-Baqillani, Al-Mas'udi Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn ibn Ali al-Mas'udi (born c. 896, Baghdad, died September 956, Cairo, Egypt), was an Arab historian and geographer, known as the "Herodotus of the Arabs." Al-Masudi (in Arabic المسعودي) was one of the first to combine history and scientific geography in a large-scale work, Muruj adh-dhahab |Muruj adh-.[4]

Ibn Hazm

The theme of tahrif found its first detailed elaboration in the writings of Ibn Hazm Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd ibn Ḥazm (Arabic: أبو محمد علي بن احمد بن سعيد بن حزم‎; also sometimes known as al-Andalusī aẓ-Ẓāhirī; 7 November 994–15 August 1064 ) was an Andalusian philosopher, litterateur, psychologist, historian, jurist and theologian born in Córdoba, present-day Spain (10th century), who argued against Mosaic authorship Mosaic authorship is the tradition attributing the five books of the Torah or Pentateuch to Moses, the legendary leader, lawgiver, and prophet of the Israelites who figures as the main protagonist in the Book of Exodus and accused Ezra Ezra was a Jewish priestly scribe who led about 5,000 Judean exiles living in Babylon to their home city of Jerusalem in 459 BCE. Ezra reconstituted the dispersed Jewish community on the basis of the Torah and with an emphasis on the law. According to the Hebrew Bible, Ezra resolved the identity threat which arose by the intermarriage between Jews of writing the Torah.[citation needed] He also arranged systematically and in scholarly detail the arguments against the authenticity of the Biblical text in the first (Tanakh The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name "Tanakh" is a Hebrew acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah ("Teaching", also known as the Five Books of Moses),) and second part (New Testament The New Testament is the name given to the second major division of the Christian Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament. Unlike the Old Testament, the contents of the New Testament deal explicitly with Christianity, although both the Old and New Testament are regarded, together, as Sacred Scripture. The New Testament) of his book: chronological and geographical inaccuracies and contradictions; theological impossibilities (anthropomorphic expressions, stories of fornication and whoredom, and the attributing of sins to prophets), as well as lack of reliable transmission (tawatur) of the text. He explains how the falsification of the Torah The term Torah , also known as the Pentateuch (Greek: penta [five] and teuchos [tool, vessel, book]), refers to the Five Books of Moses—the entirety of Judaism's founding legal and ethical religious texts. A "Sefer Torah" (סֵפֶר תּוֹרָה, "book of Torah") or Torah scroll is a copy of the Torah written on parchment could have taken place while there existed only one copy of the Torah kept by the Aaronic priesthood A kohen is a Jew who is in direct patrilineal descent from the Biblical Aaron, older brother of Moses, and so comprise a family dynasty within the larger Jewish Levitical tribe. Kohanim enjoy an honored status in Judaism, with certain designated rights and responsibilities. Another term for the descendants of Aaron are the Aaronites or Aaronids of the Temple in Jerusalem Jerusalem (Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם‎ (help·info), Yerushaláyim (for the meaning, see below); Arabic: القُدس (audio) (help·info), al-Quds Sharif, lit. "The Holy Sanctuary"; Yiddish: ירושלים Yərusholáyəm)[ii] is the capital[iii] of Israel and, if including the area and population of East Jerusalem, its. Ibn Hazm's impact on later Muslim polemics was great, and the themes which he raised with regard to tahrif and other polemical ideas were updated only slightly by some later authors.[5][6][7]

Proof of tahrif

From The Quran

Tahrif of the Old Testament

In the Quran, descriptions befit God. He does not eat, drink, sleep etc. In the Bible, God is ignorant, wrestles with Jacob and loses, and many more descriptions in the Bible would be considered as blasphemous in the Quran.[8]

Tahrif of the New Testament

In the Quran, the Injil (good news or Gospel in English) is a revelation to Jesus as a prophet. It was not a revelation to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter or any other person. It is believed among Muslims that Jesus' sayings in the Gospels are part of Jesus' revelation, that was never noted down.

From The Bible

Many things in the Bible are considered by Muslims to be proof of tahrif. Things from contradictions and historical or scientific errors to propetic testimonies. Things like Jeremiah's words are considered by Muslims as key points for proof of tahrif.

'How can you say, "We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD", when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely? [9]

Criticism of tahrif

Pre-Qur'anic understanding

At or before c. 33 AD

Muslims believe that holy revelations prior to the life of Jesus were contained in the Suhuf Ibrahim, the Tawrat Tawrat is the Arabic word for the Torah. Most Muslims believe it is one of the Holy books given by God to prophet Moses. The Hebrew word for their scripture, the Torah (also known as the Five Books of Moses or the Pentateuch) means instructions, that is why Tawrat as per the Qur'an does not refer to the entire Tanakh or Old Testament. All prophets and the Zabur Zabur is by Islam, the holy book of David, and according to Islam, one of the holy books revealed by God before the Qur'an (the others being the Tawrat (Torah) and the Injil (New Testament)). Muslims also believe that Jesus In Islam, Jesus is considered a prophet Messenger of God who had been sent to guide the People of Israel (banī isrā'īl) with a new scripture, the Injīl (gospel). The Qur'an, believed by Muslims to be God's final revelation, mentions Jesus 25 times. It states that Jesus was born to Mary (Arabic: Maryam) as the result of virginal conception, a was taught and accepted the truth of the Tawrat and the Zabur during his lifetime.[10] Therefore, any manuscripts of the Tawrat (Torah) or Zabur (Psalms) that can be dated prior to (or during) the life of Jesus are possibly without error.

From c. 33 AD to c. 700 AD

Sura 29:46 implies that up to the time of the Quranic revelation, the Bible was valid[11].

'And dispute ye not with the People of the Book, except with means better (than mere disputation), unless it be with those of them who inflict wrong (and injury); but say, 'We believe in the revelation which as come down to us and in that which came down to you; our God and your God is One; and it is to Him we bow (in Islam).'

Also Islamic tradition holds that the Gospel was available to Arabs as narrated by 'Aisha:

"The Prophet returned to Khadija while his heart was beating rapidly. She took him to Waraqa bin Naufal who was a Christian convert and used to read the Gospels in Arabic. Waraqa asked (the Prophet), "What do you see?" When he told him, Waraqa said, "That is the same angel whom Allah sent to (the Prophet) Moses. Should I live till you receive the Divine Message, I will support you strongly."[12]

... Khadija then took him to Waraqa bin Naufil, the son of Khadija's paternal uncle. Waraqa had been converted to Christianity in the Pre-lslamic Period and used to write Arabic and write of the Gospel in Arabic as much as Allah wished him to write...[13]

... Khadija then took him to Waraqa b. Naufal b. Asad b. 'Abd al-'Uzza, and he was the son of Khadija's uncle, i.e., the brother of her father. And he was the man who had embraced Christianity in the Days of Ignorance (i.e. before Islam) and he used to write books in Arabic and, therefore, wrote Injil in Arabic as God willed that he should write...[14]

These Hadiths suggest that in the late 700s Jews and Christians were still using an uncorrupted text. If this is the suggested time of corruption there would already be too many copies in circulation to change — not to mention the diversity of language as there were even texts in Arabic.

Qur'an and the claim of the distortion of the text itself

Gary Miller (Abdul-Ahad Omar) believes that the Qur'an criticizes the handling of scripture by some Jews and Christians rather than their holy books. According to Gary Miller, Qur'an only makes the following three accusations:

Early criticism

Among the earliest Christian documents on Islam in retrospect are the letter Maximus the Confessor wrote between the year 634 and 640 to Peter the Illustrious and the three writings of Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem (d. 639) ranging from 634 till 637. Absent from these writings is any sense that the Arabs were spurred by a new religion. The Melkites The term Melkite also written Melchite are Arameans/Syriacs and is used to refer to various Byzantine Rite Christian churches and their members originating in the Middle East. The word comes from the Syriac word malkāyā , and the Arabic word Malakī (Arabic: ملكي‎, meaning "royal", and by extension, "imperial". ), those who had lost their empire, ascribed the success of the Muslims to Christian sins. The Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, written between 685 and 692 (Syriac version), state among other things that the Muslims were given to rule over the Christians for their punishment and purification. The first Melkite example of doctrinal refutation is Anastasius of Sinai (d.c. 700).[15]

The argument of tahrif is also refuted in an early polemical text attributed to the Byzantine Emperor Leo III Leo III the Isaurian or the Syrian , (c. 685–June 18 741) was Byzantine emperor from 717 until his death in 741. He put an end to a period of instability, successfully defended the empire against the invading Umayyads, and forbade the veneration of icons (see Iconoclasm)[16] with the statement that Jews and Christians share the same, widely-known divine text, and that Ezra Ezra was a Jewish priestly scribe who led about 5,000 Judean exiles living in Babylon to their home city of Jerusalem in 459 BCE. Ezra reconstituted the dispersed Jewish community on the basis of the Torah and with an emphasis on the law. According to the Hebrew Bible, Ezra resolved the identity threat which arose by the intermarriage between Jews, the covenantal architect of the Second Temple The Second Temple stood between 516 BCE and 70 CE, during which time it was the center of Jewish sacrificial worship. It was the second temple in Jerusalem, built to replace the First Temple which was destroyed in 586 BCE when the Jewish nation was exiled to Babylon, was a pious, reliable person. The same arguments appear in later Jewish writings.

Further Modern Christian criticism

Modern Christian rejection of tahrif is based on five broad arguments:

  1. There is little physical manuscript evidence of alteration to the Biblical texts. Also devotion of the Jewish people to the Torah and the meticulous copying of text by the Massoretes runs against Muslim charges. The oldest Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank versions c. 280 BCE – 68 CE match current usage with only minor variations.[17]
  2. There is no satisfactory answer to why Jews and Christians would change their text.
  3. Jews and Christians were hostile to each other. Little agreement could have been achieved. For example in the first century St Paul was regularly attacked by the Jews (Acts 23v12) and anti-Jewish attacks were a regular occurrence by 372CE[18].
  4. Differing new sects would have disagreed with mainline groups over changes. Thus no uniform set of alterations could be made as the Muslim claims.
  5. Former Jews and Christians who became Muslims never mentioned any possibility of deliberate corruption—something we could definitely expect if it were true[19].

Some modern Christian apologists Early Christian writers who defended their faith against critics and recommended their faith to outsiders were called apologists have used these refutations of tahrif as a weakness of Islam[20].

Internal Links

Notes

  1. ^ Ibn Hazm Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd ibn Ḥazm (Arabic: أبو محمد علي بن احمد بن سعيد بن حزم‎; also sometimes known as al-Andalusī aẓ-Ẓāhirī; 7 November 994–15 August 1064 ) was an Andalusian philosopher, litterateur, psychologist, historian, jurist and theologian born in Córdoba, present-day Spain, al-Qurtubi, al-Maqrizi, Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn al-Qayyim and recently Rahmatullah Kairanawi among many others. See Izhar ul-Haqq, Ch. 1 Sect. 4 titled (القول في التوراة والإنجيل).
  2. ^ See, for example, Ibn Hajar's explication of Bukhari's
  3. ^ Amin Ahsan Islahi, Tadabbur-i-Qur'an, 2nd ed., vol. 1, (Lahore: Faran Foundation, 1986), p. 252
  4. ^ Camilla Adang (1996), Muslim Writers on Judaism & the Hebrew Bible from Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm, Leiden: Brill. ISBN 90-04-10034-2.
  5. ^ The Encyclopedia of Islam, BRILL
  6. ^ Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Jews and Muslims in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century, chapter "An Andalusi-Muslim Literary Typology of Jewish Heresy and Sedition", pp. 56 and further, Tahrif: p. 58, ISBN 0-691-00187-1
  7. ^ Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages, p. 146, ISBN 0-691-01082-X
  8. ^ Genesis
  9. ^ Jeremiah 8:8
  10. ^ Surah 3:48-49
  11. ^ http://quran.al-islam.com/Targama/dispTargam.asp?l=arb&t=eng&nType=1&nSora=29&nAya=46
  12. ^ "Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 55, Number 605". http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/055.sbt.html. Retrieved 2010-07-12.
  13. ^ "Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 6, Book 60, Number 478". http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/060.sbt.html. Retrieved 2010-07-12.
  14. ^ "Sahih Muslim, Book 001, Number 0301". http://www.hadithcollection.com/sahihmuslim/129-Sahih%20Muslim%20Book%2001.%20Faith/8483-sahih-muslim-book-001-hadith-number-0301.html. Retrieved 2010-07-12.
  15. ^ See also: John C. Lamoreaux, Early Eastern Christian Responses to Islam (chapter 1) in Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam: A Book of Essays
  16. ^ A. Jeffery, Ghevond's text of the correspondence between Umar II and Leo III, in Harvard Theol. Review, xxxvii [1944], 269–321
  17. ^ Garry K. Brantley, M.A., M.Div. (April 1995). "The Dead Sea Scrolls and Biblical Integrity". Reason & Revelation (Apologetics Press) 15[4]: 25–30. http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/266. Retrieved 2008-12-03.
  18. ^ "St Ambrose and the Jews p1". http://www.history.umd.edu/Faculty/BCooperman/HistJewsI/Ambrose&Gregory.pdf. Retrieved 2008-12-03.
  19. ^ Josh McDowell; John Gilchrist (April) [1983] (in en) (Paperback). The Islam Debate. Here's Life Pub. p. 199 pages. ISBN 978-0866051040. http://joshmcdowellmedia.org/FreeBooks/TheIslamDebate.pdf. Retrieved 2008-11-21. Pages 52 - 53
  20. ^ "The Last Harvest - The Issue of Bible Corruption". http://www.thelastharvest.com/BibleCorr.htm. Retrieved 2008-11-21.

External links

See also

Categories: Islam and other religions | Islamic terms

 

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ue, 19 Jan 2010 21:28:22 GM

Daha oenceki semavi dinler gibi slam' . tahrif. etmek istiyorlar. Kimler istiyor? Bir k s m gayr-i Mueslimler istiyor, harbi ve militan slam kar tlar istiyor, onlarla i birli i yapan bozuk ve bid'atci soezde Muesluemanlar istiyor. ...

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