Tahrif and God’s Words Have Many Meanings Because Human Times Change

When Does Counting the Omer begin asks Prof. Marvin A. Sweeney and Dr. Rabbi Zev Farber. The omer or “sheaf” offering takes place ממחרת השבת, “after the Shabbat” (Leviticus 23:15). Jewish interpreters have debated the exact meaning of this phrase for two millennia, resulting in all four possible dates being adopted by one Jewish community or another.

This could be a good example of religious charges of Tahrif, that many Muslim scholars claim of corruption of sacred scriptures, which did not begin with Islam; but began with Judaism and Christianity.

Rabbi Elazar ben Yossi HaGelili who lived in the first half of the 2nd century C.E. said: “I said to the Cuthite scribes: You falsified the Torah and gained nothing from that. For you wrote “near the terebinths of Moreh near Shechem,” [“near Shechem” being an addition by the Cuthites to the Samaritan Torah]. (Sifre on Deuteronomy piska 56)

The Torah says that the holiday of Shavuot should be observed seven weeks from the day after the Shabbat of the omer wave offering (Leviticus 23:11, 15-16). According to the Samaritan interpretation, “Shabbat” literally means the day of Shabbat, and thus Shavuot must always fall out on a Sunday. This understanding of the word Shabbat is shared by the post-biblical book of Jubilees, the Essenes of Qumran, the Sadducees, and the Karaites.

The Torah never specially associates Shavuot with any event in the history of the Jewish People. Moshe Weinfeld (1925–2009) of the Hebrew University argued that already in biblical times it was associated with the revelation on Mount Sinai. He notes the date of this revelation as having taken place in the third month (Exodus 19:1), and believes that certain Psalms (50 and 81) as well as a passage in Chronicles (2 Chronicles 15:10) imply a yearly renewal of the covenant celebration that could have taken place on Shavuot.

The earliest rabbinic sage to make this connection explicitly, is Rabbi Elazar ben Pedat, a post-mishmah 3rd century C.E. Galilean sage, who argues that it is a mitzvah for people to enjoy themselves on Shavuot because that was the day the Torah was given to the Jewish People at Mount Sinai. (Pesachim 68b)

The kabbalistic practice of staying up all night to study Torah, appears at least a two or three centuries before the Zohar (1:8a–9b) reference, and is popularized by 16th century Sefad, which emphasizes how this is a day in which Jews renew the Sinai Covenant, by showing joy to accept the Torah again and again.

As the centuries pass, most important words change their meaning; adding new meanings to the old meanings, which are sometimes even lost. So Rabbi Judah said: If one translates a verse literally one is a liar; if one adds or subtracts anything, one could be a blasphemer and can be accused of libel.” (Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 49a)

At the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad, the Hebrew words that God said, had been written down over a dozen centuries, in the dozens of books that make up the Hebrew Bible. But the meaning of many of the Hebrew words had been further developed. One good example of this is the question asked (and answered) at the beginning of this essay: when does counting the Omer begin? Jews do not think that Midrash (expansions of Biblical verses) as Tahrif ; any more than Americans view the ongoing development of the U.S. constitution.

A simple example of Tahrif in the Torah is Exodus 12:40–41 which states: “The length of time the Israelites lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. At the end of the four hundred and thirtieth year, to the very day, all the ranks of the Lord departed from the land of Egypt.” But this sum is inconsistent with the 2-3 generations name data in Genesis 46 and Exodus 6.

Two ancient versions of the Torah solved this problem by extending the period of 430 years back to Abraham’s arrival in Canaan. Both the first Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible and the Samaritan Torah solve the problem by beginning the stay in Canaan explicitly into Exodus 12:40: “And the sojourning of the children of Israel, while they sojourned in the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan, was 430 years”

The rabbis (Mekhilta Bo, parasha 14) also recognized that a 400 year enslavement does not square with the notion of a only four generation absence from the land of Israel and thus infer, “Rabbi Judah HaNasi says: One passage says ‘And they shall serve them and they shall afflict them four hundred years,’ and one passage says, ‘And in the fourth generation they shall come back here.’ How can both these passages be maintained (as correct)? The Holy One said: “If they repent I will redeem them after the number of generations, and if not, I will redeem them after the number of years.” The strong Jewish commitment to free will morality, is stronger than literalism.

Organized Judaism from the Rabbinic period onwards always considered the Masoretic Text as the only (kosher) text of the Bible, and thus by implication the “original text” of the Hebrew Bible. The rabbis describe the Samaritan Pentateuch as a falsification (Tahrif) of the Jewish Torah (Jerusalem Talmud Sotah 7.3; Babylonian Talmud Sotah 33b; and Sanhedrin 90b) and its text was never quoted in rabbinic literature.

The obvious reason why some Muslims of the past such as Ibn Hazm (and some today) argue that written Scriptural verses were corrupted, is that the Trinitarian message of the New Testament Bible: “About him all the prophets testify, that everyone who believes in him (Jesus, the Son of God) receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” (Acts 10:43 NET) is directly opposed to the verses of the Quran. Since Jews are not Christians we are not in this kind of dilemma.