Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!jarthur!nntp-server.caltech.edu!bes
From: SX43@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam
Subject: Re: The Torah in the Koran
Message-ID: <1990Dec5.082813.2192@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Date: 5 Dec 90 08:28:13 GMT
Sender: bes@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Behnam Sadeghi)
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lines: 57
Approved: bes@tybalt.caltech.edu

Salaam,
 
BS> Elizabeth Talllant writes:
BS>
BS> >From what I now understand, Islam teaches that the Torah was altered
BS> >some time between the death of Christ and the birth of Mohammed.  This
 
I don't know who told you that. As far as I know there is no statement
in the Quran that the Torah was changed *after* Christ (PBUH). In fact
why would a new Messenger be necessary if the previous Message was
completely intact ?
 
BS> [As a side comment, your question also implies that we have historical
BS> evidence that the ancient manuscripts of the Five Books of Moses were
BS> written down by Moses! Such historical evidence does not exist.]
 
In fact, doesn't the text of the Bible supposedly written by Moses (PBUH)
actually contain an account of how he was buried ??! (Seriously.) This
would prove he didn't write that part, at least.
 
BS>
BS> >2)  If Islam teaches that the Torah has been altered, then why has the
BS> >    Koran also not been altered?
 
Apart from the fact that it *hasn't* been altered (we still have the
very first copies, in museums, and literally not a dot has changed..)
there is the standing Guarantee from Allah, within the Quran, that
He will personally see to it that it remains safe from corruption. This
is not the case with any previous scripture; nor does history show them
to have remained safe from the tampering hands of men.
 
BS> >3)  Since the Bible (which includes the Torah) was obviously in existence
BS> >    at the time of Mohammed, is it not possible that people altered the
BS> >    Bible, changed its style similar to that in the book of Psalms, and
BS> >    made it into the Koran?
 
Behnam has made the point that we know how the Qur'an came into being..
let me give another angle. The Bible contains and presumably at the
time also contained many errors of logic and consistency. The Quran
does not (standing challenge of 15 centuries : find any inconsistency
or 'crookedness' in it).
 
It doesn't make sense that whoever 'converted' the current scripture
into the Quran managed to weed out all the scientific and logical
flaws in the Bible in the process. One trivial example... in Genesis
the account of Creation says that the vegetation appeared on earth
*before* the sun was created. In the Qur'an, this apparently
innoccuous error is not present --why ? It only makes a difference to
us, here in the twentieth century, who know of these things. To the
scribes and scholars of those days, creation was a story found in books
like the Bible; why should *every* *single* factual error of this sort
in the Bible have been smoothly corrected in the production of the
Qur'an. In the words of Buccaille, the Qur'an remains to date a
challenge to human explanation.
 
Trying to be helpful,
                     Fazal.