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Islam’s Tahrif And Rabbis’ Midrash – OpEd

4 0
21.07.2025

The many dozens of Prophets in the Hebrew Bible make only a few references to the religious texts of prior religions. The New Testament is an add on to the Hebrew Bible; which quotes the Hebrew Bible 302 times, and claims to be the Old Tenement’s fulfillment. The Qur’an is a stand alone text which mentions both Torah and Injil together 12 times, mentions Injil three times, and Torah six times by themselves; and quotes the Zabur only once (Psalm 37:9,11,29) in Qur’an 21:105. 

The term suhuf (scroll books Qur’an 20:133, 21:48, 87:19) is used for texts of Prophets Abraham, Aaron and Moses which were written separately, and later added in as part of the Oral Torah written down by the rabbis in the second century. (Qur’an 6:91) This was the original   meaning of Tahrif. 

At first it would seem that Tahrif (Arabic: تحريف, “distortion, alteration”) an Arabic term used by Muslims for the alterations which Islamic tradition claims Jews and Christians have made to their revealed books, specifically the Tawrat (Torah), Zabur (Psalms) and Injil (Gospels); is the direct opposite of Midrash. 

In the Zabur of Prophet David it is written: “One thing God has spoken; two things have I heard”  (Psalms 62:12). The rabbis in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 34a) asserted that this means there are multiple interpretations of each verse of Scripture that can be correct, and the word of God, even if they contradict one another. The Hebrew term for this concept of pluralistic interpretation of sacred scriptures is Midrash.

Midrash (מדרשׁ) is an interpretive activity of seeking answers to religious questions (both practical and spiritual) by plumbing the meaning of every word in the Torah. In the Bible, the root d-r-sh [דרשׁ] means inquiring into any matter, including seeking out God’s word. Midrash responds to contemporary problems and crafts new narratives, making connections between new Jewish realities and the ancient unchanging Hebrew text.

Midrash falls into two categories.When the subject is law and religious practice (halacha ), it is called Midrash halacha. Midrash aggadah, on the other hand, interprets biblical poetry, prophecy and narrative, exploring questions of ethics or theology, and creating lessons, new insights and different views all based on the ancient text. In some ways Midrash is like Islamic Tafsir which means fasara, meaning “to discover”;  the derived verb form fassara means “to explain, interpret, or to elucidate.” Tafsir is the explanation or interpretation of something “exposing its secrets.

Written by rabbis steeped in the Bible and absorbed by the many different questions that arise over the centuries, midrash occupies the meeting ground between reverence and love for the word of the fixed text of the Torah, and religious creativity in meeting new developments in society and culture. Midrash thus yields religious insights that have made Torah directly applicable to the later realities of Jewish life.

The best-known rabbinic midrash is the legend of Prophet Abraham, who as a young child in Mesopotamia smashed his father’s idols. Not just a simple morality tale about a national hero, the text in Midrash Rabbah for Genesis suggests that Abraham’s selection by God did not come out of nowhere,........

© Eurasia Review