Is there any proof that the Torah is a corrupted text?

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central to Islam's claim to divinity is the claim that previous revelations, such as the Gospels and the Torah, have been altered or misinterpreted, and the Qur'an will never be corrupted..... except I think ahmadiyya dont hold this view, saying that previous prophets had seperate laws and that muhammad was the final law bearing prophet but there are more prophets to come who will revive the faith, such as mirza ghulam ahmed (or at least the qadianis say he is a prophet, the lahoris say he is the just the messiah). is there any proof that the Torah has been altered or misinterpreted?

The problem with that idea is easily to come along after the fact, then assert you have the immutable faith.

The reality is the Torah has actually become more concrete. There were several historic prototypes to the Torah. The archaeology supports that Judaism formed out of a Cannaite subculture and even retains some characteristics of the pre-Abrahamic faiths, and was originally polytheistic.

This evidence affect the understanding of not just Judaism but Christianity and Islam too.

Having said that Paulist Christianity is what modern Christianity is. Jewish Christianity effectively died out.

The Gospel are individual accounts anyway, each one is different that is the idea. The council of Nicaea also decided which ones would be retained.

The problem Islam has is is account of Christianity isn't consistent with any of the various contemporary first century including those by non-Christian.

The Christian period is a weakness of the Quran becuase it shows lack of knowledge of the time and place, and it is also quite light on detail.

I would say Islam is more influenced by Judaism than Christianity. Much more Old Testament than New.

The idea of one of the Abrahmic faiths calling the other less pure shows lack of awareness of how these beliefs came to be.

Last edited by 0_equals_true on 04 Nov 2015, 7:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.

What you should know about Judaism and Abrahamic faiths is this: It was very much about location and people.

It wasn't really seen as a global faith like today, and even the interpretation of God was a God for these people, this idea continued even in the early Christian period.

The modern interpretation of monotheism, if we look at the archaeological records is quite different.

Monotheism in Judaism was a reaction to their emeny's Gods, and particularly kicked in after the Babylonian campaigns.

Early Christians, like Jews, believed that the Temple Mount was literally closer to God. Gods divine presence would be manifested there more than any other place.

Personally I believe the Christianity was a political movement more than a religious one.

Religious scholar and Muslim Reza Aslan points out that during the Roman Rule, they knew that access temple would would be the key to power in the region. They monitored the religious appointment, despite not be Jewish. They also controlled access to the religious scrolls.

There was complicity between elite Jewish Rulers and the Roman Administrators. So ordinary Jews didn't get either access to the temple, and were marginalised.

Christianity was reaction against that. However that Christianity was very much a Jewish movement and Paulist Christianity is a departure from that.

Also Christianity wasn't the only Messiah movement at the time. Nor was it the most popular, it became popular after.

It also wasn't the only one associated with resurrection.

Islam disputes resurrection, but this one of the most consistent aspects of Christianity throughout its history.

I'm not saying either account is factual, however so far as a movement that emerged as it did this is only disputed 7 centuries after the fact in another place.

There is an incentive to superseded Christianity, as that is what derivative religions tend to do.

No. Neither is there proof that any religious text is either corrupted or perfect - especially considering that they were all written by men who had a vested interest in keeping slaves, subjugating women, and/or conquering other cultures through intimidation, terror, and/or genocide.

Fnord, if you're not going to contribute to this discussion in a meaningful, productive way, and you don't have anything to meaningful to say, I suggest you stop wasting your time and stop trying to get off topic and insult my faith.... what exactly do you plan to achieve by insulting my faith, anyway????!???? you're just going to make me more defensive and MORE assured of my beliefs... so, what up?

I could imagine the Gospels being a corrupted text, but not the Torah or the Qur'an.... In Judaism, they are not even allowed to change a single LETTER of the Torah.... and same with the Qur'an

You are indeed not allowed to change a single letter in the Qu'ran or the Torah; but they are copied by humans (i'll ignore the discussion on the origins of the original), so mistakes happen.

Even in the Qu'ran, there are slight differences that snuck in before photocopying became possible. Not intentional, but simple and honest mistakes.

Non-automated multiplication introduces errors and changes, almost by definition; take a modern and an ancient Torah and the same with 2 Qu'rans, and compare them side-by-side (take both in the original language, if translations even exist); you will see slight differences.
This is all the evidence you need that the books are likely corrupted in one way or another (for example: infidel/infertile could be mixed up in modern english, ancient language likely had similar "almost-but-not-quite-the-same words with highly different meanings)

MonsterCrack, why are you constantly trying to get people on the PPR forum to validate your beliefs? It's not going to happen. If you want that, post in a forum that doesn't have a bunch of people in it who don't have religious feelings. How many more fights do you want to get into?

One person's religion is another person's blasphemy. Why are you not seeing that you are offending other people's religious beliefs by dissing their religious texts? Fnord is just doing to you what you are doing to others.

Religious belief is a matter of choice. There is no rational explanation for it. People have debated this question for centuries, which should give you an idea of how futile it is.

If you are interested in religious topics, read Kant, Spinoza and Kierkegaard. All of these philosophers are pro-religion in their own ways.

You are very young. That is an excellent opportunity to learn a lot. Do you want to be humored, or to be taken seriously? If you want to be taken seriously, you have to roll with the punches.

Before posting, it might be smart to ask yourself whether the question you are posing has been answered before. With religious questions, the answer is very often that the problem was widely debated in the early 1300s or so, and that the debate has since moved on.

One of my professors did talk about differing texts. In the King James version of the Bible Moses performs miracles in front of the Pharoah, but in some ancient texts Moses turns to his brother and his brother does the conjuring tricks. Not enough of a difference to effect theology, but it show textual variation has crept in.

The question you're asking is the wrong question to ask.

The question to ask is not "Is the Torah corrupt" its "how much external proof is there for the sacred ancient texts of any religion?".

The Koran derives from, and references both Testaments of the Bible, but disagrees with details in both.

So by definition a believer in the Koran has to pick the Koran's version over other versions. And Jews by definition have to pick the OT version. The "proof" for either a Jew or Muslim (or a Christian) is the same one thing. That one thing is faith. Not objective scholarship.

But if you're going to step out of the box of faith and try to find objective proof via secular science/scholarship of the purity (or lack thereof) of ancient texts then you have to go all of the way, and do that for the texts of your own religion as well as for that of other religions.

You have to ask "how much proof is there for the purity of ANY religion's sacred texts?" and subject those of your own religion as well as that of other religions to the test in order to be truly scientific.

If you embark on that you will probably find that all religions (including your own) are glass houses. If you throw a secular scientific stone at the Jewish version of the Torah/Old Testament, you may well shatter it. But you will also probably end up cut up, bleeding, and homeless, yourself because the Koran is likely just as brittle as any other ancient text. So be aware of that.

Exactly.
If there is one difference, there are bound to be more; some of them "might" have theological implications (although most won't, but that wasn't my point)

equal, Islam is much closer to Jewish Christianity, which is an extinct early form of Non-Trinitarian Christianity (a transitional phase between Judaism and Paulist Christianity you mentioned).

"Al Nassarah" (look up also for "Ebionite") mentioned in the Quran are not the same modern Christians we know today, those were Non-Trinitarian Christians, and there were many of them in Arabia.

Islam considers Trinity as polytheism which is considered as one of the greatest sins; so there's no way the Quran would call Trinitarian Christians as "People of the Book", this latter refers to Jews and to Non-Trinitarian Christians.

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 05 Nov 2015, 7:35 am, edited 3 times in total.

No one is insulting your faith. We're just pointing out the inherent fallibility of religious texts written by men - which they all were - and the inherent biases that men of patriarchal and territorial cultures have with regard to slavery (cheap labor), women (more cheap labor), and taking other people's land by force. These texts were all about finding justification for keeping people ignorant and under control of the religious leaders in order to maintain the status quo, that's all.

Wasn't Muhammed's first wife a Christian? I am unsure whether this is a myth or history, but the story I heard was this: That Muhammed had his revelation, and then crawled home on his hands and knees in a horrible state. That he put his head in his wife's lap and that she tried to calm him down. He was trying to explain his revelation to her, but not making sense, so she called her cousin, who was an educated man, to come and make sense of it all.

She was Ebionite (A nontrinitarian christian sect), her cousin was an Ebionite priest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebionites#Islam

Fundamental Islam places Trinitian Christians (those who believe in Jesus as son of God) at the same level of poly pagans.