The criterion
The Qur’an judges which gospel material is kept.
- Where gospel material agrees with the Qur’an, this site uses it.
- Where it contradicts the Qur’an, this site sets it aside and says so.
- Where the Qur’an is silent, material is used only if mainstream critical scholarship treats it as early, and it is labelled as such.
Which claim of alteration this site makes
The claim this website makes is one of identity, not of wholesale corruption. The Injīl the Qur’an affirms is the revelation given to ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (5:46). The four gospels are four anonymous Greek books written one to three generations after him, about him, by others. They contain material from the Injīl and material that is not from it. The measure above is how the two are told apart.
Within that claim, two kinds of alteration are named, and each only where it can be shown. Alteration of meaning (taḥrīf al-maʿnā) is the reading of a text against its sense: the Qur’an charges some of the People of the Book with twisting words from their places (4:46; 5:13; 5:41) and with passing off their own writing as God’s (2:79), and the pages on Paul of Tarsus and on John show where the gospels themselves record this happening. Alteration of text (taḥrīf al-lafẓ) is asserted only where the manuscripts show it: the ending of Mark (16:9-20), the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11) and the Johannine comma (1 John 5:7) are absent from the oldest witnesses and present in later ones. These are additions to a text that is otherwise copied with care, and the discrepancy tables name each case. Classical Muslim scholars held both views at once and argued over their weight; the two are not an early stage and a late stage of one opinion, and this website does not present them as such.
What follows from this is the rule stated at the top. The argument of the website does not rest on the charge that the text was replaced. It rests on the Qur’an as the measure of what in the four gospels is the Injīl, and on the gospels’ own record of who wrote them, when, and against whom. Sources: Schaffner, dissertation ch. 2 (Ohio State, 2016); Tarakci and Sayar, Islamic Quarterly 49:3.
Questions about the measure
What does it mean to use the Qur’an as the measure?
That the Qur’an decides which gospel material is the Injīl. Where the gospels agree with the Qur’an, the material is kept; where they contradict it, the material is set aside and the page says so; where the Qur’an is silent, material is kept only if critical scholarship treats it as early, and it is labelled. The Qur’an calls itself a guardian over the earlier scripture (5:48).
Does the Qur’an confirm the Bible?
It confirms the Torah and the Injīl as revelations God gave (5:44-48) and says the Prophet is described in the books with the People of the Book (7:157). It also says those books were in part altered and in part forgotten (2:79; 5:13-14). Confirming a revelation is not certifying every line of every copy of it.
What does muhaymin mean in Qur’an 5:48?
Guardian, overseer, the one who watches over and judges. The Qur’an is sent down “confirming the scripture before it and as a guardian over it”. The classical commentators gloss it as witness and judge: what in the earlier books agrees with the Qur’an is confirmed, what does not is corrected.
What is taḥrīf?
Alteration. Muslim scholars distinguish alteration of meaning, reading a text against its sense, from alteration of the text itself. The Qur’an charges some of the People of the Book with both (2:79; 4:46). This website asserts textual change only where the manuscripts show it, as in Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11.
Does this website claim the Bible was changed?
It claims that the four gospels are not the Injīl given to Jesus: a question of identity, not of wholesale corruption. Within that, it names alteration of meaning where the gospels record it and alteration of text where the manuscripts show it, and it does not rest its argument on the charge that the text was replaced.
Why keep any gospel material at all?
Because the Qur’an says the Injīl is in the books the Christians hold (7:157), and because the gospels preserve, among much else, a Jesus who confirmed the law, called himself a servant, and worshipped God alone. Muslim scholars have read the gospels this way since the ninth century. Discarding them would discard the Injīl with them.