If Muhammad is the final prophet, why does the Qur’an command belief in the Torah and the Gospel?
An academic response
By Dr. Maxwell Shimba — Shimba Theological Institute
Abstract.
This paper examines a frequent challenge in Muslim–Christian polemics: the Qur’anic injunctions that call Jews and Christians to judge by their scriptures (e.g., Q 5:47) versus Muslim claims that earlier scriptures were altered (taḥrīf). The apparent contradiction — “follow the Gospel” vs. “the Gospel has been corrupted” — has been treated in classical and modern Muslim exegesis and in Christian apologetics in several ways. I map the relevant Qur’anic texts, summarize mainstream Muslim exegetical responses, survey relevant findings from New Testament textual criticism, and offer plausible hermeneutical and theological reconciliations that explain why the Qur’an can both affirm the original Torah/Injīl and critique the received communities and texts. The paper cites primary texts and representative scholarship and concludes with implications for interfaith dialogue.
1. The biblical injunction in the Qur’an (the text at issue)
The verse commonly quoted in polemics reads, in standard English translations, “And let the People of the Gospel judge by what Allah has revealed therein. And whoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed — then it is those who are the defiantly disobedient.” (Q 5:47). This is an explicit Qur’anic command addressed to “ahl al-injīl” (the People of the Gospel) to judge by what God revealed in the Gospel. (Quranic Arabic Corpus)
This is one of several Qur’anic passages that both speak positively about earlier revelations (the Torah, the Psalms, the Gospel) and also criticize some Jews and Christians for failing to live by those revealed laws. The tension is therefore textual and theological, not merely rhetorical.
2. How classical and mainstream Muslim exegesis understands these injunctions
Classical tafsīr (e.g., Ibn Kathīr, al-Ṭabarī summaries, al-Maʿrūf) reads Q 5:46–47 as an exhortation that the followers of Moses and Jesus were originally given divine books that contained guidance and light, and that believers should live according to what God revealed in them. The exegetical tradition then distinguishes between two related claims:
Affirmation of the original revelation. The Qur’an affirms that God revealed a Torah to Moses and an Injīl (Gospel) to Jesus; these original revelations were true and authoritative. Exegetes often insist that believers of previous dispensations were commanded to live by what God had revealed to them. (Surah Quran)
Critique of later reception and practice. Many tafsīr works also describe Jews and Christians who, despite possessing the received scriptures, failed to judge by them (either through selective application, corrupting interpretations, or in some interpretations, actual textual alteration). This critique targets practice, interpretation, and — in some formulations — textual transmission.
This is the place where the doctrine of taḥrīf (variously translated “corruption,” “alteration,” or “distortion”) appears in Muslim apologetics and polemics. The classics disagree on the extent and kind of taḥrīf: some assert substantial textual tampering, others focus on corrupting interpretations (taḥrīf al-ta’wīl) or partial suppression. Recent scholarship surveys these positions and their development in Muslim thought. (Surah Quran)
3. What “corruption” (taḥrīf) has meant in Muslim thought — clarifying terms
Modern scholars emphasize that “taḥrīf” is not a single, uniform claim across Islamic history. It can mean at least three things in Muslim sources:
Taḥrīf al-nass (textual alteration): claims that words/verses were changed, removed, or interpolated in the written texts.
Taḥrīf al-ta’wīl (corrupt interpretation): claims that the communities misinterpreted or allegorized material in ways that departed from the original divine intent.
Selective obedience / suppression: accusations that communities knowingly ignored or concealed portions of revelation.
Historians of the doctrine show that earlier Muslim polemics sometimes focused on misreading and misapplication rather than wholesale textual destruction, while later polemics at times argued for more forceful textual alteration. Contemporary academic treatments trace how the doctrine developed and how it functioned in interreligious disputes. (Almuslih)
4. What biblical studies actually say about textual transmission (brief survey)
It is important to be precise about what modern textual criticism of the Bible affirms:
The New Testament manuscript tradition contains many variants. Modern textual critics (and popularizers like Bart Ehrman) have documented numerous variants across the manuscript tradition. Most textual critics emphasize that the vast majority of variants are minor (grammatical, spelling), though a smaller set of variants affect longer readings or potentially interesting theological formulations. Scholarly consensus among textual critics is that while the transmission process produced variants, textual criticism methods allow scholars to reconstruct the earliest attainable text with a high degree of confidence for most passages. (Bart Ehrman Courses Online)
The Old Testament / Hebrew Bible. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other finds has shown both surprising preservation (many texts closely match the Masoretic tradition) and also textual plurality in antiquity. Textual critics distinguish between transmission instability and wholesale repudiation of the scriptures.
These findings complicate absolutist claims on both sides: they do not support a naïve view that every original word has been perfectly preserved everywhere, nor do they demonstrate that the Bible is “utterly lost” or “completely fabricated.” They show a complex transmission history with strong lines of preservation and some places of genuine textual uncertainty that scholars study carefully. (Logos)
5. Reconciling Q 5:47 (and similar verses) with Qur’anic critique: three coherent readings
Below are three intellectually respectable reconstructions, drawn from Muslim exegetical options and from the realities established by textual criticism:
A. Qur’an is commanding obedience to the original revelation (normative appeal).
Read this way, Q 5:47 addresses the People of the Gospel as a moral-theological summons: if you truly have and follow God’s revelation, then judge by it. The Qur’an thus appeals to the authority of the original revelation while simultaneously indicting communities who fail to live up to it. In other words: the Qur’an treats the original Injīl as normative and calls people back to it; the failure of many Christians to do that is the Qur’an’s complaint. This reading is consistent with major tafsīr strands. (Quranic Arabic Corpus)
B. Qur’an distinguishes between the original revelation and later corrupted reception.
Under this model the Qur’an affirms the original Torah/Injīl as God’s word but claims that existing scripture-communities, over centuries, have not preserved or applied that revelation faithfully. Thus the Qur’anic command is not a literal endorsement of every phrase in the extant canonical Bible as transmitted to the 7th century reader; it is an appeal to the true revelation that God gave to earlier prophets — a revelation which, the Qur’an suggests, the present community may not fully possess in purity. Many Muslim exegetes and later apologetic works express this nuanced position (some opting for textual alteration, others for misinterpretation and selective obedience). (Surah Quran)
C. Qur’an’s command is rhetorical and dialogical (polemic and reform).
Some scholars emphasize the Qur’an’s rhetorical strategy: it both affirms common revelation (to build interfaith moral pressure) and issues a corrective message, positioning Muhammad as a muṣaddiq (confirmer) of true earlier teachings while also calling for reform where practice diverged. The command in Q 5:47 is therefore part of a broader Qur’anic engagement strategy: affirm the shared foundation, then call for repentance, reform, and — ultimately — acceptance of the final revelation. (Quran.com)
All three readings help explain why the Qur’an can tell Christians to “judge by the Gospel” at the same time that it critiques their communities and—according to some Muslim readings—attacks corruptions.
6. Christian theological objection: “Jesus said my words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35)
Christians frequently appeal to Jesus’ saying “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Matt 24:35) as a doctrinal basis for scriptural preservation and authority. This affirmation functions as a theological claim that Jesus’ teaching enjoys enduring authority.
Two considerations are important here:
Literal vs. theological readings. Many Christian interpreters understand Matthew 24:35 theologically (i.e., the divine authority and enduring salvific truth of Jesus’ teaching), not as a technical guarantee about manuscript transmission. Even among Christians, “preservation” as a doctrine has multiple formulations (divine preservation of essence and truth vs. absolute verbatim preservation), and textual criticism is an academic discipline that interacts with theology. (Bible Gateway)
The Qur’anic point is not primarily about the ontological death of words. The Qur’an’s claim that earlier communities failed to “judge by” their scriptures targets human failure to live by divine commandments or to preserve their communities’ fidelity. The Muslim polemical claim of taḥrīf therefore addresses the reception and application of revelation rather than an ontological contradiction with the theological claim that Jesus’ words possess enduring authority. Seen this way, Matthew 24:35 and Q 5:47 operate at different hermeneutical registers. The Christian text asserts enduring authority; the Qur’an asserts both deserving authority for what was originally revealed and a critique of how communities handled that trust. (Bible Gateway)
7. Practical implications for the polemic (“Either the Qur’an lied, or Islam crumbles”)
The dilemma posed in the user’s opening — that the Qur’an must either be lying or Islam collapses — rests on a set of strict syllogistic moves that overlook exegetical nuance and historical complexity:
The Qur’an can (and does) affirm the authoritative status of original revelations while simultaneously criticizing the received practices and transmissions of those revelations. That is not a logical contradiction if one distinguishes (a) the original, divine revelation from (b) the present textual reception and communal obedience. Classical tafsīr and modern Muslim scholarship make exactly this distinction. (Surah Quran)
Scriptural preservation questions are complex: modern biblical scholarship acknowledges textual variants and transmission issues, but that does not straightforwardly vindicate extreme claims of wholesale falsification, nor does it require Christians to capitulate to Muslim polemic. It does, however, show that both sides would benefit from careful historical and textual humility: Muslims should specify what kind and degree of “corruption” they allege; Christians should explain how theological claims like Matthew 24:35 relate to the mechanics of textual transmission. (Bart Ehrman Courses Online)
From an interfaith and academic vantage point, the most constructive path is not to force an either/or but to map precisely what each tradition means by “scripture,” “preservation,” and “corruption,” and then to test historical claims with historical-critical tools.
8. Conclusion — a charitable, evidence-based synthesis
A fair reading of the Qur’an, classical tafsīr, and modern scholarship shows that the Qur’anic command in Q 5:47 need not be a self-contradiction. The Qur’an can appeal to the original Torah and Gospel as normative revelation while criticizing later communities for failing to judge by those revelations or for misrepresenting them. The historical reality — that textual transmission of both Testaments involved variation — supports the Qur’anic emphasis on the dangers of human failure in preserving and applying revelation. At the same time, mainstream biblical textual scholarship argues for substantial preservation of core teachings and gives Christians reason to claim theological continuity with Jesus’ words (even while recognizing textual-critical complexities).
For debate: the interlocutor who wants to press the Qur’an to a decisive inconsistency must specify (1) exactly what is meant by “corruption” (textual loss, interpolation, misinterpretation), (2) what corpus of passages is alleged to be corrupted, and (3) why an appeal to the original revelation cannot be coherent. Without such precision, rhetorical claims (either “Qur’an lied” or “Islam crumbles”) oversimplify deep exegetical and historical questions best examined with careful philology and mutual scholarly respect.
Selected references and bibliography
Primary texts and classical tafsīr (online editions).
The Qur’an — multiple English translations and Arabic: quran.com (Surah 5:46–47). (Quran.com)
Ibn Kathīr (abridged) — tafsīr on Sūrat al-Māʾidah (5:46–47). (online tafsīr summaries). (Surah Quran)
The New Testament — Matthew 24:35 (KJV and multiple translations), BibleGateway/BibleHub. (Bible Gateway)
Scholarly studies on taḥrīf and Muslim views of scriptural corruption.
Keating, S. T., “Revisiting the Charge of Taḥrīf” (discussion of the doctrine’s development and varieties). (PDF/academic essay). (Almuslih)
Biçer, R., The Alteration of the Sacred Books According to the Islamic Tradition (overview essay on taḥrīf). (RAIS)
Textual criticism and the Bible (representative works and resources).
Ehrman, Bart D., Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (popular summary of New Testament textual issues; see Ehrman’s discussions of variants). See also Ehrman’s blog and resources on textual variants. (Bart Ehrman Courses Online)
Wegner, Paul D., A Student’s Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible: Its History, Methods and Results. (introductory textbook on methods and results in biblical textual criticism). (see overview resources). (Logos)
Further reading (interfaith, historical, and methodological).
“The Bible, the Qur’ān and the Question of Taḥrīf” — historiographical essays and case studies (e.g., Hurqalya and other academic repositories charting Muslim responses to Christian missionary debates). (Hurqalya)
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