Evidence · Case 10 · Islam
The Qur’an endorses the earlier scriptures
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
The Qur’an tells the followers of the Gospel to judge by what God revealed in it, and it tells doubters to “ask those who read the Scripture before you.” This treats the Torah and the Gospel as available and authoritative in Muhammad’s own day.
Sources
Objections & responses
- The Qur’an also accuses the People of the Book of concealing, twisting, and writing scripture with their own hands (2:79, 3:78, 5:13). Doesn’t reading those alongside 5:47 dissolve the dilemma?
A Muslim reader will raise 2:79 and 3:78 immediately, and they belong in the discussion. The Christian reply is that the criticism verses are about interpretation, concealment, or selective quotation, not about the text in circulation being different from the original; and that 5:47 commands the Gospel’s people to judge by what is in it now, which presupposes that what they have is trustworthy. Whether the two sets of verses can be reconciled is the debate. Read both sets, and weigh whether the text a seventh-century Christian was told to judge by can also be a text that had already been corrupted beyond use.
- The Injil the Qur’an refers to is a single book given to Jesus, not the four Gospels. Christians don’t possess the Injil in the Qur’anic sense, so the endorsement doesn’t apply to the New Testament.
This is a common Muslim reply. The historical problem is that there is no evidence any such single book ever existed or was known to Christians at any period, while the four Gospels were the Gospel Christians possessed in Muhammad’s day. If the Qur’an commanded seventh-century Christians to judge by the Gospel, it was commanding them to judge by the Gospels they had. The reply is possible, but it requires positing a lost book with no historical trace, and the burden of that is worth noticing.