The essay argues that Qur’anic tahrif originally meant misinterpretation or selective concealment of references to Muhammad rather than wholesale corruption of the Hebrew Bible and Gospels, a view held by early tafsir scholars who affirmed the Torah’s written integrity.

Using the Aqedah narrative, it highlights the rare Arabic-linked verb ʿaqad and the Septuagint’s “beloved” reading of “only son” as evidence of minor ancient manuscript variants, not systematic falsification.

Both extremes—total corruption of prior scriptures and absolute textual perfection—are rejected; the Qur’an is said to correctly note the small variations expected in a manuscript tradition already fifteen centuries old by Muhammad’s time.

One of the most complex, controversial and misunderstood concepts in the Qur’an is Tahrif. The  term Tahrif does not occur in the Quran, but there are four verses claiming that some people have tampered with the sacred texts (Qur’an 2:75; 4:46; 5:13; 5:41). 

The term Tahrif is also used to refer to Shi’a charges that parts of the Quran in which Ali ‘s authority is given divine sanction, have been removed.

Most Muslims today think that tahrif implies that Jews and Christians had, in pre-Prophet Muhammad decades, consciously changed the written text of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Gospels. But the earliest and most credible Tafsir scholars explicitly state that the written text of the Torah is intact, but Banu Yisrael misinterpreted it.

In the Qur’an tahrif is generally understood as a specific charge that previous religious communities, through actual textual alteration; or through false interpretation, specifically  expunged........

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