Tahrīf
Tahrīf ( Arabic تحريف, DMG Taḥrīf 'conversion, modification, forgery') is a term which in Islamic theology denotes the alleged falsification of the holy scriptures of Judaism and Christianity . Based on certain statements in the Koran, it is assumed that Jews and Christians made changes to the original revelation of God in the scriptures. A distinction is made between “falsification in the wording” (taḥrīf bi l-lafẓ) and “falsification by Ta'wīl ”.
Falsification allegations against Jews and Christians in the Koran
Islam accepts Torah (Taurat, توراة) and Gospels ( Indschil ) as authentic divine revelations. However, Jews and Christians would have modified this revelation in their own writings. The Koran describes such a distortion in several places, for example:
"Among those who belong to Judaism, some distort the words [of the Scriptures?] [By taking them] away from the place where they belong."
In a similar, somewhat broader sense, next to Ar. kitmān ("hide", "hide"), also the term tabdīl ("modification", here in particular "word exchange") used. It appears in the Koran in sura 2:59, 7: 162, 30:30, as well as in later Islamic literature.
The allegation of forgery has been a widespread polemical motive since ancient times, and it was used by pagan authors, Samaritans, and Christians as early as pre-Islamic times to discredit their opponents. This is a central theme in the Medinan suras and is apparently used to explain the contradictions between the Bible and the Koran and to designate the arrival of the Prophet as well as the rise of Islam as predictions of the "real" Bible.
Tahrīf in later traditions
The Koran does not mention where and how exactly these changes were made. Later commentators name contemporaries Moses or Israelite kings and priests, especially Ezra , or Byzantine kings as the authors . The accusation that Muhammad's Jewish contemporaries hid certain elements of the Bible, such as the stoning of the adulteress or the prophecy of the arrival of Muhammad, is also interpreted as Tahrif .
In the first centuries of Islamic history, Tahrif was a well-known but not an essential topic. In hadith and the first comments the gaps were filled, which arose from ambiguities in the Koran verses. Some early Muslim authors understood Tahrif only in terms of changing the meaning of the text. Ibn Khaldun rejects the idea of deliberately falsifying Jewish and Christian scriptures.
Since the 11th century, the Islamic side has been accusing Jews and Christians of having deliberately forged the text of their holy scriptures. The oral Jewish tradition, which was later recorded in writing in the Talmud , is viewed from an Islamic point of view as an illegal addition and is also considered part of this forgery. The same is true of the biblical canon of Christianity. In this context, Islamic authors refer to the differences in the Tanakh , the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint to prove the presence of a forgery. The argument of forgery is already rejected in an old polemical text, which the Byzantine emperor Leo III. is attributed. The writings of Ibn Hazm , an 11th century Andalusian scholar, had a great influence on Islamic polemics .
Since the 19th century, some Islamic authors see modern European biblical criticism as support for the theory of Tahrif , for example Rahmatallāh al-Kairānawī (1818-1891).
Falsification allegations against the Schia
Tahrif is also used as an argument in the disputes between Sunnis and Shiites . Sunni authors accuse the Shia of believing that the Koran was forged.
literature
- Hava Lazarus-Yafeh: Art. In: Encyclopaedia of Islam , 2nd A., Vol. 10, Brill, Leiden 2000, pp. 111f. (1st A .: Ms. Buhl, vol. 7, p. 618f)
- Rainer Brunner: The Schia and the Koran forgery . Ergon Verlag, Würzburg 2001, ISBN 3-933-56367-4 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sura 4:45 in the translation by Rudi Paret
- ↑ See Brunner 2001.