What does the Qur'an say about the scriptures that preceded it?
The Qur'an recognizes all the scriptures that had been revealed
before its own time. However, the Qur'an does not, in an explicit
fashion, state the total number of all such revealed scriptures. There
is only the mention of the names of four other scriptures in the Qur'an.
These include the Taurat which was revealed to the Prophet Moosa
(a), the Zaboor which was revealed to the Prophet Dawood (a) the
Injeel which was revealed to the Prophet Isa (a) and the Qur'an itself
which was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (e). The Qur'an further
highlights the fact that besides these four scriptures, other edicts, too,
were revealed by the Lord Creator.
“Say : We believe in Allah and what is revealed to us and
what was revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob
and the tribes, and what was entrusted to Moses and Jesus and
the prophets from their Lord.†(3:136)
“And this is in the Books of the earliest (Revelations),
The Books of Abraham and Moses.†(87:18,19)
The Qur'an attests the truth of all the previous scriptures. “It is
He Who sent down to thee (step by step), in truth, the Book,
confirming what went before it; and He sent down the Torah (of
Moses) and the Gospel (of Jesus).†(3:3)
It is the compulsory duty of the Muslim to believe in all the
scriptures that were revealed by Allah. Indeed, the Qur'an views the
disbelief in the divine nature of any of the previous scriptures as a
gross perversion.
“O ye who believe! Believe in Allah and His Messenger, and
the scripture which He hath sent to His Messenger and the
Scripture which He sent to those before (him). Any who denieth
Allah, His angels, His Books, His Messengers, and the Day of
Judgment, hath gone far, far astray.†(4:136)
Are the Tauraat, the Zaboor, and the Injeel the Torah (Pentateuch),
Psalms and the Gospels mentioned in the Bible?
Tauraat is the scripture that was given to Moosa (a). Similarly,
the Zaboor and the Injeel are the books that were given to Dawood (a)
and Isa (a). The Qur'an introduces the scriptures as those that were
revealed by the Lord Creator Himself. “It was We who revealed
the Torah (to Moses): therein was guidance and light.†(5:44)
“And in their footsteps We sent Jesus the son of Mary,
confirming the Torah that had come before him: We sent him the
Gospel: therein was guidance and light.†(5:46)
From this it is abundantly clear that these scriptures were all in
fact, revealed by the Lord Creator Himself. But this is not the case
with the books of the Bible. They were all written centuries after the
messengers. Indeed, there is not even a single book in the Bible
which can reasonably be believed to have been revealed to the
messengers. It is the traditional belief of the Jews that Moses (a),
himself, had written the Pentateuch (Torah); not that it was revealed
by God. However, modern research indicates that even the traditional
belief that Moses had written the Pentateuch is, in itself, baseless. It
is the opinion of the scholars that since the death of Moses, and the
events that followed his death, have been described in the Pentateuch
(Deuteronomy 34:5-10), it can never be that Moses (a) had written
the book himself. Similar is the case of the Book of Psalms. In actual
fact, there is not in it, a single Psalm that can be authoritatively said to
have been written by David. In the Gospels, too, although there is
mention, therein, of the true Gospel of God which Jesus had actually
preached (Mark 1:14,15), there is no clear picture about this Gospel
in the four accounts in the Bible. As for the Gospels in the New
testament, it was written at least five decades after Jesus. The gospels
give but vastly differing and contradictory accounts of the life of Jesus.
It is now clear that none of these was the true scripture that was revealed
to Jesus. In short, therefore, even though the various books of the
Bible do quote certain ideas from the Tauraat, the Zaboor and the
Injeel, it cannot be said that they are present in the Bible in all their
fullness and purity.
