Tahrif Is Moses’s Will Of Pluralism

The Jewish Rabbis stated that 55 Jewish Prophets in the Hebrew Bible were know by name. The Talmud counts 48 male prophets and 7 female prophets.

Muslim scholars like Ibn Atiyya report that Ibn Abbas and Muqatil ibn Sulayman interpret the statement about there being no warner before in Qur’an 32:3 to refer only to the period of time between Jesus and Muhammad. Mahmud ibn Umar al-Zamakhshan (d. 538/1144) explains also that the lack of a warner mentioned in Qur’an 28:46 and Qur’an 36:6 refers to the 550 years between Prophets Jesus and Prophet Muhammad.

Muhammad ibn Sacd (d. 230/845) reports that the number of apostles, including Prophet Muhammad, is 315, and the total number of prophets is 2,000: Ibn Abbas says: Between Moses and Jesus ibn Mary were 1,900 years (really 1,300) and there was no pause between them, for between them were sent 1,000 prophets from the Israelites, equal to what was sent for all the world’s non-Israelites.

Why so many Jewish prophets? In the Torah is the brief episode of Eldad and Medad (Numbers 11:26-30) that is really a subunit within a larger framework of Numbers 11, where we are told how God provided Moses with a special group of seventy elders from the 12 tribes, who would serve as his assistants in his dealings with the Hebrew people.

These elders were to undergo a special “initiation rite” (11: 16-17); they were to follow Moses to the Tent of Meeting that stood at a distance from the Israelite tents and stand there with Moses in a state of preparedness. God would come down in a cloud and speak to Moses at the tent, and He would extend some of the “spirit” (ru’ach) that was on Moses onto the adjacent elders of Israel. This, apparently, would “energize” the elders, and give them the spiritual power necessary to aid Prophet Moses in leading the Jewish people (1 Samuel 10:5-7).

So Prophet Moses gathered the elders and placed them around the tent of meeting. God came down in a cloud and spoke to Moses, and conferred some of the spirit that was on Moses onto the elders. The elders immediately hitnab‘u, “prophesied,” or “spoke in ecstasy,” clearly as a result and sign of their newly acquired spirit (verses 24-25). Then a new development is reported. Two men, Eldad and Medad, “spoke in ecstasy” in the presence of the people when Moses was away and far out of sight: (Numbers 11:26) The two men, Eldad and Meded, remained behind in the camp, and the spirit rested upon them. They were among those (70) who had been enrolled, but they did not go out to the Tent. And they spoke in ecstasy inside the camp.”

When Moses is informed of this (v. 27), Joshua attempts to intervene: “And Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ attendant from his (Joshua) youth, spoke up and said, “My lord Moses, imprison them!” (11:29) But Moses said to him, are you being zealous for me? “I wish that the entire people of the Lord were prophets and that the Lord would confer his spirit on them all!”

The story exemplifies Prophet Moses’ modesty (Numbers 12:3). He is not zealous for his own status as a Prophet. While Joshua sees in the act of prophesying in the absence of Moses a potential threat (perhaps to his own future position as successor to Moses), Moses sees in it a sign of divine blessing and even expresses the wish that many, perhaps all Israel might become prophets.

The main Muslim accusation of falsification of the earlier scriptures was that the Jews of Medina, in the first half of the seventh century, removed or changed references to the messenger of Islam from the Torah. This central accusation was preserved in works of tafsir  (Qur’an commentary) and in this way passed into the great mass of Islamic tradition that Muslims have treasured right up to modern times. So we continue to hear this particular accusation today.

Abu Dharr asked the Messenger of Allah: How many prophets are there in all? He replied: One hundred and twenty four thousand. He then asked: How many of them were messenger prophets? He replied: Three hundred thirteen from the above group. He asked: Who was the first of them? He replied: Adam… The first prophet among Bani Israel was Musa and the last of them was Isa and they were in all six hundred (Jewish) prophets.” (Biharul Anwar, Vol. 11, Pg. 32)

Until relatively recently, the Muslim accusation that Christians and Jews removed references to the messenger of Islam from the Bible could be made without fear of being tested by hard evidence because no one was able to compare the biblical manuscripts from before the seventh century with the manuscripts from after the seventh century to see whether there was any evidence for the accusation.

The accusation could take advantage of this “silence” and base the falsification claim on an interpretation of some Qur’an verses that seemed to point to misinterpretation of the text, into a claim of falsification of the text.

However, during the past century, a number of very important discoveries have cast scholarly light on the accusation. Manuscripts of the Torah and Gospel dated to before the seventh century have been discovered and are now available for open study.

If the manuscripts of the Bible that are known to exist show no change related to the messenger of Islam between the sixth and eighth centuries, then “silence” can no longer be used to support the accusation. Rather, some evidence must be required of those who bring the accusation: Where is the Torah, or Torahs, from before the seventh century that contain references to the messenger of Islam? Where are the manuscripts that show signs of removal or alteration of information about the messenger of Islam?

There are indeed manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Qur’an that show clear evidence of having been “corrected.” This is a common feature of manuscripts of all three scriptures.

During the earliest period of Islam, when Muslim writers accused the Torah of having been falsified, the main accusation they made was that the Jews of Medina erase or change references to the messenger of Islam from the Torah after they see the messenger appear.

According to these accusations, the references to the messenger of Islam can be found in the Torah before the messenger appears, and the Jews are anticipating the messenger’s appearance. However, when the Jews see that Islam’s messenger is from the line of Ishmael rather than from the line of Isaac, out of envy they refuse to acknowledge the authority of the messenger and remove or alter the references to him from the Torah in order to justify themselves.

Thus, Muslim writers put a time stamp on their accusation. This reason for falsification requires that the “falsification” of the Torah take place in the first half of the seventh century. Muslim interpretations of Qur’an 2.79 and 3.78 in qur’anic commentaries develop this view.

The same pattern appears in many other early Muslim sources. The first stage of the falsification accusation was the claim that the Jews of Medina, prior to meeting the messenger of Islam, know he is mentioned in the Torah and are expecting his arrival.

Muslim commentators connected this theme with verses such as Q 2.89. Muqatil ibn Sulayman (d. 767), for example, comments at Qur’an 2.89 that before the messenger of Islam appeared the Jews prayed for assistance against the idolatrous Arabs through the messenger’s coming. “The Jews say they find the messenger in their book and anticipate his help.” Muqatil also wrote at Qur’an 2:16 that the Jews find the description of Muhammad in the Torah before he appears, and believe in him. But when Allah sends him from among the Arabs, “they disbelieved in him out of envy.”

At the end of the third Islamic century, al-Tabari (d. 923) transmitted a variety of traditions at Qur’an 2.89 and 2.90 about the Jewish expectation of the messenger of Islam in pre-Islamic times.

The second stage of the accusation was that when the Jews of Medina see the messenger of Islam appear, they deny knowing he was mentioned in the Torah. Muqatil wrote at Q 2:16 that the Jews find the description of Muchammad in the Torah before he appears, and believe in him. But when Allah sends him from among the Arabs, “they disbelieved in him out of envy.”

According to the early Muslim sources, the messenger of Islam also directly appealed to the Jews of Medina: “You know well…that I am the apostle of Allah. You find it written in the Torah you have.” The same claim appears in other early Muslim sources. “You know (that I am a prophet sent, for you find it in your scriptures and Allah’s covenant with you,” says the messenger, according to al-Wahidi. “I am written (maktub) in [the Torah] that I am a prophet and a messenger,” the messenger says to the Jews in Muqtil’s interpretation of Qur”an 3.23.

After the battle of Badr, according to al-Wahidi, “the Jews of Medina said, ‘This is, by Allah, the ummi prophet whom Moses announced to us, and whom we find in our book by his description [role] and his [personal] characteristics (sifa). No banner of his will ever be brought low.’

“Be deliberate in judgment. How so? This teaches that a person should carefully deliberate in judgment, for all who are careful in judgment will feel settled about their judgment, as it says (Proverbs 25:1), “These, too, are the proverbs of Solomon, which the men of King Hezekiah of Judah copied.” This does not mean they merely copied them, but that they deliberated over them.

“Abba Shaul says: They did not merely deliberate carefully over them, but explained them. Originally, they would say: Proverbs, and Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes had to be hidden, for people would recite proverbs that were at odds with Scripture. So they decided to hide them, until the Men of the Great Assembly came along and explained them.” Avot D’Rabbi Natan A 1:4

A very small number of Hebrew verses were actually changed slightly. Rabbi Marty Lockshin writes that “Rabbinic literature makes reference to scribal corrections (of the Bible). Different works of classical rabbinic literature have different lists of these “scribal corrections,” totaling between 7 and 18, from all over Hebrew Bible which has 23,145 verses, including three verses from the Torah (Genesis 18:22, and Numbers 11:15 and 12:12). What did the rabbis mean when they claimed that a phrase in a Biblical verse was a “scribal correction”?

The simplest understanding is that the scribes of pre fourth century BCE times changed the wording of a few verses in the Bible. For example, in Zechariah 2:12 God is quoted as saying: “Whoever touches you touches the pupil of his own eye.” A number of rabbinic texts claim that the uncorrected wording was: “Whoever touches you touches the pupil of My [God’s] eye.”

Midrash Tanhuma calls this “a scribal correction [made] by the Men of the Great Assembly”. “The original text read, ‘the pupil of My own eye,’ and was changed by the scribes so as to avoid this obvious blunt anthropomorphism.”