Tahrif Is Actually Loyal Opposition

Any religion that has inspired people for more than a few centuries will over the course of time develop variations in its perspectives and its insights. The major world religions, which span more than one civilization and one historical epoch, will all exhibit even more variation. Judaism gives evidence of this more explicitly than any other religion I know.

Even within Orthodox and traditional rabbinic thought there is not only lots of variety, but very frequently opposing statements are juxtaposed, as if to call our attention to the important concept that opposition due to seeing things differently is not a sin. For example, the concluding service on Yom Kippur-the Day of Atonement is called Ne’ilah (locking up). In the Jerusalem Talmud there are two different opinions about what is being locked up at the end of our prayers. One says it refers to the gates of the Temple in Jerusalem. The other opinion is that it refers to the gates of heaven.

One of the most complex, controversial and misunderstood concepts in the Qur’an is Tahrif. The term Tahrif does not occur in the Quran, but there are four verses claiming that some people have tampered with the sacred texts (Qur’an 2:75; 4:46; 5:13; 5:41). The term Tahrif is also used to refer to Shi’a charges that parts of the Quran in which Ali’s authority is given divine sanction, have been removed.

Most Muslims today think that tahrif implies Jews and Christians had in pre-Prophet Muhammad decades, consciously changed the written text of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Gospels. But the earliest and most credible Tafsir scholars explicitly state that the written text of the Torah is intact, but Banu Yisrael misinterpreted it.

In the Qur’an tahrif is generally understood as a specific charge that previous religious communities, through actual textual alteration; or through false interpretation, specifically expunged references to the advent of Muhammad that were contained in the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Gospels.

In later centuries, especially after Ibn Hazm, tahrif was greatly expanded to raise doubts about everything in the both other scriptures and very few Muslims today have read either the Torah or the Gospels.

For example, the Torah (Genesis 22) narrates the dramatic account of Prophet Abraham’s bringing Prophet Isaac to Mount Moriah in order to sacrifice him, an act prevented only by the last-minute intervention of an angel messenger of Allah.

In Christian tradition, this narrative is known as “the sacrifice of Isaac, because most Christians theologians see Prophet Isaac’s experience as a prefiguration of the crucifixion of Prophet Jesus, even though Prophet Isaac was not sacrificed in the biblical narrative.

The Qur’an explains that Prophet Jesus was indeed not sacrificed because the crucifixion of Prophet Jesus did not occur; or if it did occur, another person who looked like Prophet Jesus was crucified.

In Jewish tradition, however, the story is referred to as Aqedat Yiṣhaq, “the binding of Isaac,” or in short, just the Aqedah, “the binding.” This derives from the central verse in the drama: “And they came to the place which God had told him, and Abraham built an altar there, and he arranged the wood; and he bound Isaac his son, and he placed him on the altar, on top of the wood.” (Genesis 22:9)

The Jewish Professor Gary Rendsburg writes that the root ע.ק.ד with the meaning “bind” appears only here in the Hebrew Bible. This is a hapax legomenon: a word from a root that appears in this form only once in a given text. The root ע.ק.ד in the sense of “tie” or “bind” is actually rare in post-biblical texts as well; although it is the common verb for this action (binding) in Arabic.

The more common root for “tie/bind” in Hebrew is ק.שׁ.ר (see Genesis 38:28, Joshua 2:18, 2:21, Job 39:10) Why, then, does Genesis 22 use the very rare verb ע.ק.ד ʿinstead of the common verb for use at this key point in the narrative?

My answer is that exactly because the root ע.ק.ד in the sense of “tie” or “bind” is very rare in both Biblical and post-biblical texts; and it is the common verb for this action (binding) in Arabic; it is used to closely connect the Hebrew Torah with the Arabic Qur’an; and hint that both sons of Prophet Abraham; Prophet Ishmael and Prophet Isaac were tested in Prophet Abraham’s twofold test.

But if both sons were tested at two different times why does the Torah text say “only son”: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” (Genesis 22:2)

God commands Abraham to take his “only son”—a detail repeated in verse 12 and repeated again in verse 16—but Isaac is not actually Abraham’s only son; for the Torah tells us that Abraham had an older son, Ishmael (Genesis 16:15) who was circumcised as a member of his own household (Genesis 17:23).

This might be a good example of Tahrif: textual error. In the Septuagint, the first translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew “your only one, whom you love” is rendered as “your beloved whom you love.”

This reading may reflect a textual issue, with the apparent rendering of the Hebrew word yǝdîdĕkā (ידידך) “your beloved” instead of yǝḥîdĕkā (יחידך) “your only one”, where one word in Hebrew looks very similar to another Hebrew word.

This text solves the issue of Abraham’s “only son”. The composer of the Hebrew Book of Jubilees, dated to the mid-second century B.C.E., also appears to have been using the same Hebrew text, as he describes Isaac as “your beloved” or “dear one” at the moment Abraham is tested (Jubilees 18:2). However, the traditional Hebrew text is supported by the Samaritan Pentateuch (את יחידך), and the Syriac Peshitta (לאיחידך; ܠܐܝܚܝܕܟ).

Thus, Tahrif refers to some ancient variations in hand written manuscripts that Biblical scholars still refer to. The two extreme views: that all Jewish and Christian sacred scriptures are corrupted by variations; and its opposite, that no Jewish and Christian variations at all exist; are both incorrect.

In other words, the Qur’an is correct in stating that there are many small variation in the Hebrew Bible’s text, as one might expect since the written Torah text was already more than 1500 years old in Prophet Muhammad’s day.

If Muslims are looking for ways to attack Jewish or Christian sacred scriptures they can say variations are intended corruptions. If Muslims are looking for ways to promote peace they should say the variations are just differences of loyal oppositions in the sacred scriptures of all monotheistic religions and they are welcomed to do so.