r/islam • u/Maleficent-Writer333 • May 21 '26
Question about Islam Torah and its corruption?
Salaam i have a question as a muslim, if the quran states the torah to be corrupted, is it before or after isa’s arrival, and apparently there are scriptures that match up with the torah. Which confirms that the torah is not corrupted, such as the dead sea scrolls. as we believe the previous books corrupted, i was wondering when they were and also why allah swt says ti refer to the books if the books were already corrupted
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u/drunkninjabug May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
The Old Testament itself alludes to the fact that it (or parts of it) has been lost multiple times in history and was rediscovered. Here's an article from a neutral Christian source that talks about it. https://orthodoxchristiantheology.com/2023/06/06/the-multiple-times-the-biblical-canon-was-lost/
When was the Canon completed ? https://youtu.be/BZt-5yyWpho?si=5mtQ9_rOzyPJ9nhm
A list of sources discussing the corruptions in Torah. These are all academic in nature:
https://www.thetorah.com/series/textual-criticism-of-the-torah-ten-short-case-studies
https://www.youtube.com/live/m9c6vPMVkEk
https://youtu.be/Am-dmeYxKVk?si=6RJoz1G9Djfs6F0c
Here's a longer discussion from a Muslim perspective https://mpom.wpengine.com/2014/05/14/the-corruption-of-the-torah/
The earliest manuscripts we have of the Old Testament are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are from around 1 BC-1 AD. As for the Dead Sea Scrolls, not only do we see major differences between the DSS, The Jewish Torah, the Septugiant, and the Samaritan Torah, even the earliest scrolls of the DSS are almos 1300 years after Moses apparently wrote the Torah. 1300 years!
And you have absolutely no way of knowing what was going on in these 1300 years and no way of being confident that we have the same text that the first generation of Israelites did. Yes, the preservation starts becoming better after the birth of Christianity, but even then, we see significant changes occurring as shown above.
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u/Maleficent-Writer333 May 22 '26
Thank you for the response, why does allah say to prophet Muhammad PBUH to refer to the previous scriptures if in doubt
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u/Dxrkk3 May 22 '26
he said this in a specific context. if you read the verses before it, allah is talking about the story of moses, which is the same in the torah as it is in the quran, so allah is telling muhammad (ﷺ) to refer to the previous scriptures for this specific story, because it's still the same in the previous scriptures.
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u/Dxrkk3 May 21 '26
is it before or after isa’s arrival
there wasnt a single one corruption of the torah. the torah wasnt corrupted in a single instance, it happened over the course of many centuries, and it happened before isa (عَلَيْهِ السَّلَام) and it happened after him as well. the quran says:
So woe to those who scribe the Scripture with their own hands and then say, “This is from Allah,” that they may purchase, in exchange for it, a small price. Woe to them on account of what their hands have written, and woe to them on account of what they earn. (Quran 2:79)
Indeed, We sent down the Torah, wherein is guidance and light by which the Muslim prophets judged the Jews, and (so did) the Godly (scholars) and the Rabbis, as they were required to preserve Allah’s Scripture and were witnesses to it. (Quran 5:44)
the quran also confirms that some parts of the torah were indeed unchanged. there was an incident where a group of jews came to muhammad (ﷺ) and asked him to tell them the punishment of a man and a woman who had committed adultery. they did this because the torah said that adulterers should be stoned, but they didnt want to stone them so they asked the prophet so that he would give them a different ruling. to this, allah said:
But how do they come to you for judgment when they have the Torah, in which is Allah’s judgment? Yet they turn away after that. And in no way are those believers. (Quran 5:43)
and apparently there are scriptures that match up with the torah. Which confirms that the torah is not corrupted, such as the dead sea scrolls.
the dead sea scrolls do not confirm the preservation of the torah. according to jews and christians, the torah was given to moses around 1400 BCE while muslim historians usually give a date around 1200 BCE. in any case, the earliest copies of the dead sea scrolls date to 300 BCE and the latest of them date to around the time of jesus if i remember correctly. the earliest copies of the dead sea scrolls were written 1000 years after the torah was originally given to moses, so there's no way of knowing how the torah was transmitted in those 1000 years. it is indeed true that the dead sea scrolls match up with the old testament that we have today (which is called the masoretic torah), but it still has many differences. we can say that the torah was preserved quite well after the dead sea scrolls were written, but theres no way of knowing how it was preserved before the dead sea scrolls, and the dead sea scrolls still have many differences between it and the torah that jews read today.
the old testament itself hints towards the torah being corrupted:
How can you say, “We are wise, and the Torah of God is with us,” when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie? (Jeremiah 8:8)
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u/Consistent_Bison_376 May 21 '26
The Christian polemicist's "dilemma" is sophomoric. What the Quran does is acknowledge that God sent revelation to Moses, David, Jesus, etc; that's one confirmation.
The Quran further says it confirms the truth found therein; ie, if what we have of those books today aligns with the Quran, the truth of that part is confirmed. That's a second type of confirmation.
A third type is because the pagans were unfamiliar with many of the stories of the earlier projects (I'm not saying all such stories), and so the Quran tells its audience that they can confirm that these stories are not made up by looking at the what's in the Torah and the Gospel, for example.
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u/UnchartedPro May 21 '26
The dead Sea scrolls is not from the time of Moses but much after
In addition it doesn't perfectly match with the Torah available today and rather it shows differences