The Bible and the Injīl
What the Qurʼān says about previous scripture, what classical Muslim scholars wrote about taḥrīf, and what manuscript and historical evidence shows about the Bible Muslims read in Muhammad's time.
The most common Muslim objection to Christianity is that the Bible is corrupted. The strongest Christian response is to know the Qurʼān's own statements first.
Pages in this hub
- The Islamic Dilemma
If the Bible was corrupted, why does the Qurʼān keep appealing to it? The classic Christian-Muslim dilemma in its simplest form.
Dilemma
- Did Muhammad confirm the Bible available in his time?
The Qurʼān repeatedly tells Muhammad and his contemporaries to consult the Torah and Gospel they had on hand. If those scriptures were already corrupted, this becomes very difficult to explain.
Answer page
- Can the Qurʼān deny the crucifixion while affirming previous revelation?
The Qurʼān calls the Torah and Gospel guidance and light, then appears to deny the central event the Gospel proclaims. The tension cannot be wished away.
Answer page
- What does the Qurʼān say Christians should judge by?
Q 5:47 commands the people of the Gospel to judge by what Allah has revealed in it. Read carefully, that command is hard to square with the claim that their Gospel had been corrupted.
Dilemma
- Can Allah's word be changed?
The Qurʼān says no one can alter the words of Allah. If the Bible was corrupted, that statement becomes hard to defend on its own terms.
Dilemma
- What does it mean that Jesus is the Word of God?
The Qurʼān calls Jesus a Word from Allah. Classical tafsīr usually means the creative command 'Be.' John calls Jesus the eternal Word who was with God, was God, and became flesh. The same phrase opens a careful bridge and a real difference.
Answer page
- Is Muhammad mentioned in the Bible?
Modern dawah popularizers point to several Bible passages — [Deuteronomy 18:18](source:bible:deu:18:18), [Song of Songs 5:16](https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/sng/5/16/p1), [Isaiah 42](https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/isa/42/1/p1), and the Paraclete sayings of [John 14-16](https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/jhn/14/16/p1) — as foretelling Muhammad. Each reading is well-intentioned but historically and exegetically strained. Christians can engage these claims fairly without contempt.
Answer page
- The biblical tests for a prophet
The Bible gives three explicit tests for whether a prophet is from God: their predictions come true ([Deuteronomy 18:21-22](source:bible:deu:18:15-22)), their teaching does not lead Israel to other gods (Deuteronomy 13), and their gospel agrees with the apostolic gospel ([Galatians 1:8](https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/gal/1/8/p1); [Matthew 7:15-20](https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/mat/7/15/p1)). These tests are biblical commitments, not Christian inventions. They are also where Christian triumphalism is most tempting — and most damaging.
Answer page
- Was the crucifixion foretold in the Old Testament?
Yes — and this is one of the most important things a Christian can show a Muslim friend who is open to read the Hebrew prophets seriously. Centuries before Jesus, Isaiah 53 describes a suffering servant pierced for transgressions; Psalm 22 describes a righteous sufferer mocked, with hands and feet pierced, whose garments are divided; Zechariah 12 describes the people of Jerusalem looking on the one they have pierced; Daniel 9 dates the cutting off of an Anointed One.
Answer page
- Why we trust the Bible
Christians do not believe the Bible because it is old or because their parents told them. They trust it because of an unusually strong manuscript record, internal coherence across two languages and forty authors over fifteen centuries, and a canon that emerged early and visibly. This is the positive Christian case.
Answer page
- New Testament manuscript transmission — what the textual critics actually do
When dawah quotes Bart Ehrman's *Misquoting Jesus* — *there are 400,000 variants, more than there are words in the New Testament* — most Christians have no answer. The honest answer requires understanding what textual criticism actually is: how Greek manuscripts are catalogued, what kinds of variants exist, why P52 (~125 AD) and the great codices matter, and what the Editio Critica Maior is doing right now to settle the remaining genuine questions. This page walks the discipline as practitioners actually practice it.
Answer page
- The Old Testament hard texts: slavery, ḥerem, and the imprecatory psalms
The Old Testament contains texts most Christians wish weren't there. The slavery laws of Exodus and Leviticus. The ḥerem (devotion-to-destruction) commands of Deuteronomy and Joshua. The imprecatory psalms — *Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock*. A serious Christian apologetic in 2026 cannot pretend these are not in the canon. This page walks each carefully — what the texts actually say, what the modern Christian Old Testament scholarship has answered, and how to engage them with a Muslim friend without surrendering the doctrine of God.
Answer page