A common argument lodged by critics against the New Testament’s integrity is that it was wildly unstable in its earliest stages. That is, our copies of the New Testament do not reflect the content of the original autographs (the original written documents of the biblical authors). Muslim polemicists adopt these arguments to support their accusation of taḥrīf. However, the critical challenges to the New Testament are not as well supported as they might seem. Currently, we have sixty manuscripts of the New Testament from the second and third centuries, a sizeable number for ancient documents.

“Your Bible has been corrupted!” Talk with Muslim neighbors, friends, or family about your Christian faith for any amount of time, and this accusation is likely to arise. The Islamic accusation that the Bible has been corrupted is called taḥrīf. Sharing God’s words with people is an essential element in making disciples, as demonstrated by Jesus’ command to teach others all that he commanded (Matt 28:20). Given the enduring relevance of taḥrīf, it is necessary to learn how to respond to this accusation when talking with Muslims. This old, but relevant, accusation has two prongs: 1) the Bible has been misinterpreted, and 2) the textual basis of the Bible has been corrupted.[1] In this article, we will address this latter contention by giving the origins of taḥrīf, exploring some medieval Christian responses to taḥrīf, and by defending the Bible’s textual authenticity.[2] 

Origins of Tahrīf

Accusations of textual corruption first appear in writing during the initial century of the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate (750–850).[3] This was a period characterized by an increasing number of Christians speaking and writing in Arabic, which gave Muslims swelling access to Judeo-Christian religious texts.[4] The Christian use of Arabic aided in revealing to Muslims contradictory claims presented in the Qur’ān and the Bible. The accusation of textual corruption attempts to explain why the Qur’ān appears to affirm the previous scriptures (i.e., Torah and Gospel) (Q 2:41, 89, 91; 3:3–4, 93; 5:43, 46–47, 68; 7:157; 10:94; 16:43; 21:7; 28:52–53; 46:10) which contain claims that directly oppose beliefs and principles espoused by the Qur’ān.[5] Scholars connect the origins of the accusation of taḥrīf with Muslim anxiety that earlier scriptures attest to Muhammad’s advent.[6] For instance, Hava Lazarus-Yafeh writes that, “The contradictions between the Kur’ānic and Biblical stories, and the denial of both Jews and Christians that Muhammad was predicted in their Holy Scriptures, gave rise to the Kur’ānic accusation of the falsification.”[7] Eighth and ninth century Muslim sources attest to an upsurge in accusations of taḥrīf.[8] So, this raises the question: How did Christians answer these charges of taḥrīf?

Medieval Christian Responses to Taḥrīf

As the accusation of taḥrīf arose during the early medieval period (c. 500–1000), it is instructive to see how Christians from this era addressed it in their conquest to explain the Christian faith and present the gospel to Muslims.[9] Medieval Christians used theological and rational arguments in response to taḥrīf. Such an approach is evident in the eighth-century dialogue between Timothy I, Catholicos of the Church of the East (779–823), and the Muslim caliph al-Mahdī (r. 775–785). Using his biblical knowledge, Timothy references the collective witness of the Torah and Prophets about Jesus’s divinity and prophesied advent.[10] In light of this Christological witness, he reasons that Christians had no cause to alter the previous Scriptures.

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1. Ryan Schaffner, “The Bible through a Qur’ānic Filter: Scripture Falsification (Taḥrīf) in 8^th– and 9^th–Century Muslim Disputational Literature,” (PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 2016), ii.
2. See Martin Whittingham, “The value of taḥrīf ma‘nawī (corrupt interpretation) as a category for analysing Muslim views of the Bible: evidence from Al-radd al-jamīl and Ibn Khaldūn,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 22, no. 2 (April 2011): 209–222 for an explanation of how medieval Muslims re-defined terms and took passages out of context to support their view that Christians misinterpret certain biblical teachings.
3. Schaffner, “The Bible,” passim.
4. Schaffner, “The Bible,” 295.
5. Q 10:94 states, “So if you [Prophet] are in doubt about what We have revealed to you, ask those who have been reading the scriptures before you. . .” Yet, John 1:1–3, for example, clearly declares Jesus’ divinity, directly contradicting Q 4:171 and 5:75, which state He was only a messenger.
6. Gordon Nickel, The Gentle Answer to the Muslim Accusation of Biblical Falsification (Calgary: Bruton Gate, 2015), 79.
7. Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, “Tawrāt,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 10, New Edition, eds. P. J. Bearman et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 394; also see Camilla Adang, “Torah,” Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān, vol. 5, gen. ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 304.
8. Schaffner, 295; see Muḥammad ibn al-Layth, A Medieval Case for Islam’s Superiority: The Letter of Ibn Al-Layth to the King of the Romans, ed. Ayman S. Ibrahim and Clint Hackenburg (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2025), 293, where al-Layth’s omission of references to God’s fatherhood, Jesus’ sending of the Paraclete, and how the Paraclete’s testimony about Jesus from John’s Gospel pertaining to the coming Paraclete imply his belief in the Bible’s textual corruption.
9. After offering answers to a variety of topics related to Christianity and Islam, Christian theologian ʿAbd al-Masīḥ Ibn Isḥāk al-Kindī (d. 850), concludes by appealing to his Muslim interlocutor to leave Islam and believe the gospel. ʿAbd al-Masīḥ Ibn Isḥāk al-Kindī and William Muir, The Apology of Al Kindy, Written at the Court of Al Māmūn (circa A.H. 215; A.D. 830), in Defence of Christianity against Islam (London: Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, 1887), 121.
10. Clint Hackenberg, “An Arabic-English Translation of the Religious Debate between the Nestorian Patriarch Timothy I and the ‘Abbāsid Caliph al-Mahdī (Master’s thesis, The Ohio State University, 2009), 136.