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From: ta00est@unccvax.uncc.edu (elizabeth s tallant)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam
Subject: Re: The Torah in the Koran
Message-ID: <1990Nov29.185901.10029@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Date: 29 Nov 90 18:59:01 GMT
Sender: bes@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Behnam Sadeghi)
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
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Approved: bes@tybalt.caltech.edu

Elizabeth Talllant writes:

>From what I now understand, Islam teaches that the Torah was altered
>some time between the death of Christ and the birth of Mohammed.  This 
>answer leaves me with more questions than I had before.  Anyone who
>wishes to answer them is quite welcome.   
>
>1)  How does Islam explain the manuscripts dating back to over 1,000
>    years before the birth of Christ which say the same thing that the
>    Old Testament says today?

As you wrote in the first paragraph quoted above, the Islamic belief
is that the Torah [i.e. the book revealed to Moses by God]  has been
altered.  The Islamic belief is not that necessarily all of the book
has been lost, as you question implies.  We don't know if that's the
case or not, though we can speculate about it.

[As a side comment, your question also implies that we have historical 
evidence that the ancient manuscripts of the Five Books of Moses were 
written down by Moses! Such historical evidence does not exist.]

>2)  If Islam teaches that the Torah has been altered, then why has the
>    Koran also not been altered?

Because there is extensive and detailed historical information about the
development of the Quran.  The consensus **even** among the major Western 
scholars of Islam is that the Quran that we have today is what was declared
by Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) to be the word of God.

>3)  Since the Bible (which includes the Torah) was obviously in existence
>    at the time of Mohammed, is it not possible that people altered the 
>    Bible, changed its style similar to that in the book of Psalms, and
>    made it into the Koran?

This isn't possible because we know how the Quran came into being.  

>Thanks,

Sure.

>Elizabeth

Behnam Sadeghi