Part Six: The Scriptures
Section 26 — Has the Bible Been Corrupted? The Manuscript Evidence
We have over 5,800 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament — more than any other ancient document by an enormous margin. The earliest date to within decades of the events. The text has not changed in any theologically significant way across two thousand years of transmission. The corruption claim requires: when was it corrupted? By whom? Which manuscripts show the uncorrupted version? No one has produced this evidence because it does not exist.
The corruption argument also fails its own internal logic: if the Bible was corrupted before Muhammad, the Quran's commands to Jews and Christians to judge by what God revealed to them (Surah 5:43–47) make no sense. If after Muhammad, our manuscripts — which predate Muhammad by centuries — should show the pre-corruption text. They are essentially identical to what we have today.
✖ Muslim Response: There are different versions of the Bible — Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox. This proves tampering.
✔ How to respond: The difference is about the Deuterocanonical books in the Old Testament — a debate about which ancient books to include, not about the content of those books. The New Testament is identical across all Christian traditions worldwide. The 27 books of the New Testament have been the same since the late 4th century.
Section 27 — The Quran's Own Testimony About the Bible
- Surah 5:43–44: Jews commanded to judge by the Torah as containing God's judgment
- Surah 5:46–47: Christians commanded to judge by the Gospel, containing guidance and light
- Surah 5:68: People of Scripture told to uphold Torah and Gospel
- Surah 10:94: Muhammad told to ask People of the Book if in doubt
These passages, written in the 7th century, treat the scriptures of Jews and Christians as reliable guidance. If they were already corrupted, why give this command? The corruption doctrine in Islamic apologetics developed after the early period, as Muslims encountered the theological content of the Bible and found it inconsistent with the Quran — circular reasoning.