The Qur'an and Its Study. Adnan Zarzour
particularly the time when belief in the Trinity started, is beyond the scope of this work. This is a topic that is better discussed in works that deal with the history of religion.
The main point here is that confusion and distortion have afflicted Divine revelations given to the Jews and Christians. Indeed, both the Torah and the Gospel have greatly suffered as a result. By contrast, Islam has the great advantage of the Qur’an being immune, by God’s will, to distortion and alteration. It is also immune to being mixed up with statements by the Prophet (peace be upon him) or other sources of Islamic thought, culture and civilisation. To illustrate our point, we will give an overall idea of each Testament.
2.1 The Old Testament
The Old Testament is composed of thirty-nine books, in the following groups:
i.The Pentateuch, or Moses’ books. These are five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. According to the Jews, these five books make up the Torah, given to Moses by revelation.
ii.The history books. These are twelve books that provide a history of the Children of Israel after they took over the land of the Canaanites and settled in Palestine. They detail the history of their judges, kings, battles and main historical events.
iii.The hymn books. There are five of them: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. These books are written in poetic language and are sung as part of worship, but the book of Ecclesiastes includes some profanities.
iv.Books of the prophets. These are seventeen books: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi.
The Pentateuch is the most important of all these books, as the Jews attribute it to Moses and believe that he received it through revelation. We may say that the rest of the books of the Old Testament are far from being Divine revelations. Dr Wāfī says:
Contemporary scholars who studied the styles and language of these books, as well as their subject matter, the rules and laws they establish and the social and political environment they reflect, have concluded that they were written long after the time of Moses. Most probably, Moses lived in the fourteenth or thirteenth century BC, while Genesis and Exodus were written around the ninth century BC, Deuteronomy towards the end of the seventh century BC, while Numbers and Leviticus in the fifth and fourth century BC... They were all written by Jews and incorporate various beliefs and laws that reflect the ideas and several systems that prevailed in different periods of their long history... As such, they are widely different from the Torah which the Qur’an confirms is a Divine book revealed by God to Moses.37
In fact, the Qur’an refers to this as it says: ‘Woe to them [i.e. the Jews] for what their hands have written and woe to them for what they earn’ (2: 79).
Mālik relates in al-Muwaṭṭa’ that Ka‘b al-Aḥbār brought an old book, with its edges torn, and he showed it to ‘Umar. He said: ‘In this we have the Torah. May I read it?’ ‘Umar said: ‘If you know fully well that it is the Torah God revealed to Moses on that day at Mount Sinai, then read it day and night.’38
This claimed Torah depicts God with a shaped form, particularly in Genesis and Exodus, making God Almighty look like His creation. Some of our scholars maintain that depicting such an image of God is allowed in Judaism. Indeed, this Torah shows God in different places as weak, a liar, oblivious of things, regretful and tired.39 He might change His decision due to circumstances,40 and all that applies to humans applies to Him as well. Far is God from all that they describe.
Genesis contains even worse allegations about God’s messengers and prophets. Noah, for example, is described as drunken, (9:20–29). Abraham is described as a man who would trade his wife’s honour for some material gain, (12:10–20). A more horrific story is concocted about Prophet Lot who is alleged to have been drunk and engaged in illicit sexual relations with his two daughters who then gave birth to Moab and Ammon, (19:30–38).
These and other stories show the great extent of distortion that has been introduced into the Old Testament, changing its character and stripping it of holiness. Indeed, such distortion takes it away from the truth and from all logic and propriety.
2.2 The New Testament
The New Testament comprises three sets and two books. The first set includes the four gospels; the second includes fourteen letters by St. Paul; and the third includes seven Catholic letters. The two books are the Acts of the Apostles by St Luke and the Revelation of St John, also known as the Apocalypse.
The most important of these sets is that of the four gospels, which take up close to half of the New Testament, because they are thought to be related to Divine revelations, or to the Gospel that was revealed to Prophet Jesus, son of Mary (peace be upon him). Moreover, these four gospels are central to Christianity. Shaykh Muhammad Abū Zahrah said:
Since the person of Jesus and all that has been associated with him are the essence of Christianity, these four gospels include all the information about this person, right from the time of his conception to the time of his alleged crucifixion, his rise from the grave three nights later and his being raised to heaven forty days later. As such, they include the belief in Jesus Christ’s claimed divinity and the belief in the crucifixion and atonement. In other words, these four gospels contain the essence of Christianity, as they perceive it, and its meaning.41
The four gospels are:
Matthew: This was written by Matthew, the Apostle, one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, whom the Church calls apostles. It is the oldest gospel, thought to have been written around year 60 CE. Although it was written in Hebrew, it was only known in Greek, and its translator remains unknown.
Mark: This gospel was written by St Mark, whose real name was John, and he was one of the seventy disciples. According to more reliable sources, it was written in Greek around 63–65 CE. Patriarch Eutychius (Ibn al-Baṭrīq), the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria (877–940 CE), says that it was, in fact, written by St Peter himself who attributed it to Mark, his disciple.
Luke: This was written in Greek by St Luke around the same time as Mark, i.e. 63–65 CE. ‘Scholars differ over its true author, his profession, the people for whom he wrote it and the date of its writing. They only agree that it was written in Greek by an author who was neither a disciple of Jesus nor of any of Jesus’ disciples.’42
John: This is attributed to St John, one of Jesus twelve disciples, also known as John son of Zebedee. According to more reliable accounts, it was written in Greek around year 90 CE. As such, it is the most recent of the four Gospels, coming around thirty years after them. It reflects the most serious distortion in all the gospels, as it begins with a statement that imparts divinity to Jesus. It says:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people (John 1:1–4).
It was the belief in Jesus’ divinity that required the writing of this gospel. According to the Church, some people believed that Jesus was not Divine. Many Eastern groups were stating the fact, and therefore John was asked to write a gospel that established his divinity and so he wrote this gospel.43
The attribution of this gospel to St John, Jesus’ disciple, was questioned by several Christian groups late in the second century, as well as many past and contemporary scholars of Christianity. The editors of entries on Christianity in the Encyclopaedia Britannica also question its authorship, stating: ‘The author of John’s gospel is undoubtedly someone other than the well-known Apostle John, son of Zebedee. Doubters of such authorship also include the authors of the French Encyclopaedia Larousse Twentieth Century. They stated that ‘this gospel and four other books of the New Testament are attributed to St John, but recent research in matters of religion does not take this for granted.’44
This outline makes clear that these gospels were not revealed to Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him). Needless