The Bible according to the Qur'an
Christians may be surprised to learn that the Qur'an itself often speaks of other books that God inspired (sent down) in the past. Jews and Christians are called the “People of the Book”, and the Qur'an affirms that what they possess is divine revelation.
2:41 [O Children of Israel] believe in what I have sent down confirming that which is [already] with you, and be not the first to disbelieve in it. And do not exchange My signs for a small price, and fear [only] Me.
4:136 O you who have believed, believe1 in Allāh and His Messenger and the Book that He sent down upon His Messenger and the Scripture which He sent down before.
The Qur’an specifically mentions the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament), and the Injil, that is, the Gospel.
5:44-47 Indeed, We sent down the Torah, in which was guidance and light. […] 46 And We sent, following in their footsteps, Jesus, the son of Mary, confirming that which came before him in the Torah; and We gave him the Gospel, in which was guidance and light and confirming that which preceded it of the Torah as guidance and instruction for the righteous. 47 And let the People of the Gospel judge by what Allāh has revealed therein. And whoever does not judge by what Allāh has revealed - then it is those who are the defiantly disobedient.
5:68 Say, "O People of the Scripture, you are [standing] on nothing until you uphold [the law of] the Torah, the Gospel, and what has been revealed to you from your Lord [i.e., the Qur’ān]."
Muslims are divided over the precise identity of the Gospel in the Qur'an. It is described as a written revelation that was given to Jesus and was in the possession of the Christian community at the time of Mohammed. As there are four books that are called gospels, none of which was written by Jesus, there is a certain amount of confusion. The most likely is that the Qur'an is talking about the entire New Testament, which was called the Gospel by early Christians before it was known as the New Testament. What is very clear is that this Gospel is the particular Scripture of Christians which can’t be anything other than the New Testament or a part thereof.
Sent down to confirm
According to the Qur'an, the message of God brought by each new Scripture does not change. Rather, on several occasions we read that God sends down the Qur'an to confirm previous Scriptures (as the Gospel also confirms the Torah, 5:46 above).
3:3-4 He has sent down upon you, [O Muḥammad], the Book in truth, confirming what was before it. And He revealed the Torah and the Gospel before, as guidance for the people.
2:101 And when a messenger from Allāh came to them confirming that which was with them, a party of those who had been given the Scripture threw the Scripture of Allāh [i.e., the Torah] behind their backs as if they did not know [what it contained].
The Qur'an sees itself as the continuation of a chain of revelation from God that runs through the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. It does not claim to institute a new religion in opposition to Judaism or Christianity, but rather to reaffirm the true monotheistic faith held by Jews and Christians.
The problem is that the Qur'an does not essentially agree with the Bible, especially the New Testament. According to the Qur'an, Jesus is not the Son of God (9.30), nor did he die on the cross (4.157). The very heart of the Good News of the New Testament is denied by the Qur'an, even as it claims to confirm the New Testament. This is a flagrant contradiction which is sufficient proof that the Qur'an is in fact not a revelation from God.
Corrupted scriptures?
Muslims who are aware of the fundamental differences between the Qur'an and the previous Scriptures tend to assert that the latter were corrupted after their initial revelation. The Qur'an therefore restores the original message of the other books. Q2.79 and Q5.48 are often used to support this thesis:
2.78-79 And among them are unlettered ones who do not know the Scripture except [indulgement in] wishful thinking, but they are only assuming. 79 So woe to those who write the "scripture" with their own hands, then say, "This is from Allāh," in order to exchange it for a small price. Woe to them for what their hands have written and woe to them for what they earn.
The problem with 2.79 as evidence of Scriptural corruption is that there is simply no reason to think that this verse is talking about the Christian and Jewish Scriptures. We're dealing with people who write false revelations, but there's no indication that these false books are the Torah or the Gospel. On the contrary, the people responsible for these forgeries “do not know the Scripture.” They’re not Jewish or Christian scribes who purposely change the text of the Bible because of their unbelief. Rather, it's people who invent new “revelations” out of thin air in order to sell them for “a small price.”
5.48 And We have revealed to you, [O Muḥammad], the Book [i.e., the Qur’ān] in truth, confirming that which preceded it of the Scripture and as a criterion over it.
Some Muslims say that this verse indicates that the Qur'an is given as the criterion over previous Scriptures. They claim that the Qur'an serves to distinguish between those parts of the Bible that have been corrupted and those parts where the original revelation remains.
One difficulty with this interpretation is that it contradicts the Qur'an's repeated assertion that it confirms previous Scriptures. Confirmation and correction are not the same thing, and if we were supposed to understand that the Qur'an confirms the other Scriptures in part, this is not what the text says.
What’s more, it's not clear that “criterion” is an accurate translation of the Arabic muhaymin. According to James White:
We have not been able to find any contemporary lexical evidence that muhaymin means “corrector.” It refers to a guardian, and if anything, this would seem to mean it is to act as one protecting, not correcting, these texts.1
Other translations opt for this interpretation such as that of T. Usmani: “We have sent down to you the Book with truth, confirming the Book before it, and a protector for it.” A. Maudui, Yusuf Ali, and the Study Quran also have “protector”, while Pickthall has “watcher over.” The commentary of the Study Quran explains:
The Quran is further described as a protector (muhaymin) over the previous scriptures, meaning that the Quran testifies to the validity of the earlier scriptures and serves as their trustee, keeper, and guardian (see the commentaries of al-Tabari and al-Zamakhshari). "Protector” (al-Muhaymin) is also one of the Names of God in the Quran (59:23).2
This theory of the corruption of the Bible therefore does not come from the Qur'an itself, but rather exists to explain the approval of previous Scriptures in the Qur'an despite the irreconcilable differences between these books. It’s an attempt to save the Qur'an from an obvious contradiction, but not a doctrine that comes from the text of Islam’s holy book.
The Preservation of the Bible
The theory of Bible corruption is also refuted by the facts of the New Testament manuscript tradition. Today, we possess some 5,700 manuscripts of New Testament texts. The oldest date from the 2nd century AD, less than 100 years after the documents were written. Despite the many small differences between all these manuscripts, there is no difference that changes the message of the New Testament books. There is no New Testament manuscript in which Jesus is not the Son of God or which denies his crucifixion.
It should also be noted that the transmission of the New Testament text was a free transmission. This means that there was no authority, either ecclesiastical or civil, controlling the text of the New Testament (unlike the Qur'an). The various documents were written in different places, and copies were quickly distributed throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. As the text was preserved and recopied in several places, there was no one person or group who had the opportunity to introduce changes in all copies of a New Testament book. The consequence of these historical realities is that the theory of the corruption of the Gospel by Christian scribes is a theory that flies in the face of all the evidence. On the contrary, in God's providence, we can have the highest level of confidence in the Scriptures we have received.
White, James R. What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Qur'an (p. 169). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, Caner K. Dagli, Maria Massi Dakake, Joseph E. B. Lumbard, and Mohammed Rustom, eds. The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary. First edition. New York, NY: HarperOne, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2015, p. 300.