Answering Christianity Research Center

Wa Alaikum As'salam Wa Rahmatu Allah Wa Barakatuh dear brother Idris,

Wow.  May Allah Almighty bless you, dear brother.  Ameen.  Certainly, Rabbi Ben Abrahamson is a very important source that could insha'Allah benefit Islam.  He is an expert in Jewish Scriptures and he speaks very positively about Islam.  May Allah Almighty continue to guide him to Islam.  Ameen.  And may Allah Almighty continue to strengthen your faith and advance your knowledge and fruitful research.  Ameen.

Take care,
Osama Abdallah

As-Salam aleikum wa rahmatullahi wa baraketuh,

thank you dear brother Osama. Yes, Sir Ben Abrahamson is a friendly and good Rabbi from which we can learn many interesting things connected with the early Jewish teachings, Torah and its prophecies fulfilled in Islam and Prophet Mohammed (pbuh)! He states for example that the expression אישׁ חמדות (Ish Hammudot) found in Daniel 10:11 is a reference to Prophet Mohammed (pbuh). May Allah bless him and guide him to Islam, Ameen!

As to the topic, more informations are coming insha’Allah

Take care, and salam
Ahmed (Poland, Warsaw)

Salam aleikum,

It is a fact also that many manuscripts of the Torah were burned and many of them were censored, so we don't know what has been lost, read the book The Censorship of Hebrew Books by William Popper:

Link: https://archive.org/details/censorshiphebre00poppgoog

As-salam aleikum wa rahmatullahi wa baraketuh,

dear brother Ramihs97, it is a long subject to discuss here all of the details, so I will try to explain it you briefly:

1. In regards to the word etmak in DSS (Isaiah 42:1), there are strong cases which indicates that it is an altered form of ahmad. Kab al-Ahbar (d. 652), a learned rabbi from Yemen was quoted by Ibn Asakir as saying:

I find in the Torah: Ahmad, My Chosen Servant (in another narration: My Servant Ahmad, The Chosen). Verily, he is neither rude nor harsh. He would not yell or scream in markets. And he will never award an ill deed with an ill deed, rather, he will always award ill deeds with forgiveness.

Notice that he was quoting Isaiah 42:1-3. In LXX the name Jacob appears first, and then “My servant” so it refers to the first variant narration mentioned by Kab i.e. “Ahmad, My servant”. In Masoretic Text, the chapter begins with [Behold] My servant, and then etmak, so it refers to the second variant narration mentioned by Kab, i.e. My servant Ahmad…. Now, the fact that Kab mentioned two different variant of the first fragments from Isaiah 42:1 indicates that there were different manuscripts containing different variants of reading, as I've said above in the case of Septuagint and Hebrew text we have today. In LXX, the Jews must have inserted the words Jacob and Israel instead of Ahmad, since it does not appear neither in Masoretic Text, neither in Aramaic Peshitta, nor in 1QIsaa. There are too possible way to explain the origin of etmak:

a) NON-INTENTIONAL CHANGE - The Jewish scribe could have misread the original form אחמד (ahmad), because in general, the Hebrew letter ת (tav) is visually very similar to ח (chet), and the letter ך (kaph) looks very similar to ד (dalet). The later one i.e. kaph and dalet are especially similar to each other in the old Aramaic alphabet.
b) INTENTIONAL CHANGE - The Jews could have changed the name of Ahmad when they acknowledged that Prophet Mohammed is an Arab not Israeli (6th century AD). In fact there Ibn Saad in his Kitab Tabaqat al-Kabit related a narration from which can be concluded that immediately after their acknowledgement of prophet's Mohammed Arabic roots, Jews deliberately changed the name Ahmad. It says that this Jew changed Ahmad by covering or hiding it not removing it entirely. The natural consequence of such argumentation is that till Prophet’s Mohammed time there were no attempts to corrupt his second prophetic name Ahmad, so the pre-Islamic Torah would have not made any modification. You will ask: but what about DSS ? The Great Isaiah Scroll does not mentioned Ahmad, but etmak right ? You should know that before DSS were discovered, the earliest manuscript of the Hebrew Bible were Aleppo Codex and Leningrad Codex (10th century AD). So it was easy for Muslim to claim: Mohammed was mentioned in the original Torah (i.e. from ancient times), but you Jews do not possess such one, you have only those one dated back to 10th cent. so how we would know whether your rabbis does not changed the Torah after the time of Mohammed ? So what was the plan ? They must prepare some kind of proto-Masoretic Text which would agree their Masoretic one from 10th cent. (but in order to eliminate a possible suspicions from intelektualists they gave a multiple variations of textual reading so to keep scholars constantly working on formulating new theories, resolving puzzles etc.). Can you believe in this fairy, stupid story about a Hebrew text from 2 cent. BC which perfectly agrees in chronological order of chapters and verses, and with no significant departure from its Masoretic version ? I will never believe in such a crap. There was different arrangement of whole chapters in Isaiah. Frankly, there are serious reasons to think that this so called Great Isaiah Scroll which has been claimed to come allegedly from 2 cent. BC. is not an ancient autograph (at least in part). This Isaiah Scroll in many passages shares the same textual variant as the Hebrew MSS from medieval period collected by Kennicott and de Rossi.

Let us return to the subject of mentioning Ahmed in DSS.

If you recall Matthew 12:18 you will see that his quotation is unique, i.e. is not similar as in Old Testament Hebrew Isaiah or Greek Septuagint:

Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved (agapetos) with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.

According to early church tradition, the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew, and then it was translated into Greek. Notice that in Matthew you will not find such word as whom I uphold/I support for Hebrew etmak. Why ? Here is the answer… the Greek term ἀγαπητός (agapetos) for my beloved which occurs in the text of Matthew 12:18 is actually an equivalent for Hebrew חמד (chamad) found e.g. in Joshua 7:21 under the form אחמדם which can be read as ahmadam or echmedem. The point I ’am going to is that the Hebrew scroll from which Matthew quoted Isaiah 42:1 must have contain the word composed with the root חמד (chamad), yet it cannot be found in today’s Masoretic Text ! Beside this, there are many other details which supports the view that the name Ahmad indeed was mentioned in the original text of Isaiah 42:1.

2. In regards to the Zohar book, it is a great possibility that it talks ocasionally about Ahmed, notice the words occurring around it: through him in ancient of days, Isaiah, sent etc. I ’am simply guessing that it is about prophet Ahmad who was foretold in Isaiah and from ancient of days. I currently waiting for the answer of some certain rabbi. The text of Zohar is specifically in Aramaic, not in Hebrew as I previously thought.

Take care, and salam
Ahmed (Poland, Warsaw)

As-Salam aleikum wa rahmatullahi wa baraketuh,

Yes brother khdrb, I know that Zohar is a kabbalistic work, but it contains a commentary to the Torah which according to Rabbis was written in intention to reveal the hidden meaning of the verses. What is interesting is that the same author of this book Zohar, i.e. Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai (80-160 A.D.) wrote a book called nistarot (secrets) and he described in it the apocalyptic vision he had in a cave, according to which God will arise a prophet among the Ishmaelites, who will bring Kingdom of God, and his succesors will deliver Israelites from the wicked kingdom of Edomites (Romans). Speaking honestly, for me it will be not suprising if Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai would have mentioned prophetical names Ahmad and Mohammed in his esoterical commentary to the Torah. However at the same time, I 'am fully aware that the Jews will NEVER admit the truth, as I've said in one of my earlier posts, they would rather die that to tell you about Mohammed in their scriptures, especially if it is a pre-Islamic document!

Take care, and salam
Ahmed (Poland, Warsaw)

Salama aleikum,

here is an article dealing with question of reliability of the Hebrew Bible text:

August 17, 2011
Scholars: The Torah We Have Today Is Not The Torah Our Ancestors Had

Jerusalem scholars trace Bible's evolution
Hebrew University researchers have been quietly at work for 53 years on one of most ambitious projects attempted in biblical studies – publishing authoritative edition of Old Testament

Jerusalem (AP) – A dull-looking chart projected on the wall of a university office in Jerusalem displayed a revelation that would startle many readers of the Old Testament: The sacred text that people revered in the past was not the same one we study today.

An ancient version of one book has an extra phrase. Another appears to have been revised to retroactively insert a prophecy after the events happened.

Scholars in this out-of-the-way corner of the Hebrew University campus have been quietly at work for 53 years on one of the most ambitious projects attempted in biblical studies – publishing the authoritative edition of the Old Testament, also known as the Hebrew Bible, and tracking every single evolution of the text over centuries and millennia.

And it has evolved, despite deeply held beliefs to the contrary.

For many Jews and Christians, religion dictates that the words of the Bible in the original Hebrew are divine, unaltered and unalterable. For Orthodox Jews, the accuracy is considered so inviolable that if a synagogue's Torah scroll is found to have a minute error in a single letter, the entire scroll is unusable.

But the ongoing work of the academic detectives of the Bible Project, as their undertaking is known, shows that this text at the root of Judaism, Christianity and Islam was somewhat fluid for long periods of its history, and that its transmission through the ages was messier and more human than most of us imagine.

The project's scholars have been at work on their critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, a version intended mainly for the use of other scholars, since 1958.

"What we're doing here must be of interest for anyone interested in the Bible," said Michael Segal, the scholar who heads the project.

The sheer volume of information makes the Bible Project's version "the most comprehensive critical edition of the Hebrew Bible in existence at the present time," said David Marcus, a Bible scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, who is not involved with the project.

But Segal and his colleagues toil in relative anonymity. Their undertaking is nearly unknown outside a circle of Bible experts numbering several hundred people at most, and a visitor asking directions to the Bible Project's office on the university campus will find that many members of the university's own staff have never heard of it.
 
Only 3 books published in 5 decades

This is an endeavor so meticulous, its pace so disconnected from that of the world outside, that in more than five decades of work the scholars have published a grand total of three of the Hebrew Bible's 24 books. (Christians count the same books differently, for a total of 39.) A fourth is due out during the upcoming academic year.

If the pace is maintained, the final product will be complete a little over 200 years from now. This is both a point of pride and a matter of some mild self-deprecation around the office.

Bible Project scholars have spent years combing through manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, Greek translations on papyrus from Egypt, a printed Bible from 1525 Venice, parchment books in handwritten Hebrew, the Samaritan Torah, and scrolls in Aramaic and Latin. The last member of the original team died last year at age 90.

The scholars note where the text we have now differs from older versions - differences that are evidence of the inevitable textual hiccups, scribal errors and other human fingerprints that became part of the Bible as it was passed on, orally and in writing.

A Microsoft Excel chart projected on one wall on a recent Sunday showed variations in a single phrase from the Book of Malachi, a prophet.

The verse in question, from the text we know today, makes reference to "those who swear falsely." The scholars have found that in quotes from rabbinic writings around the 5th century A.D., the phrase was longer: "those who swear falsely in my name."

In another example, this one from the Book of Deuteronomy, a passage referring to commandments given by God "to you" once read "to us," a significant change in meaning.

Other differences are more striking.

The Book of Jeremiah is now one-seventh longer than the one that appears in some of the 2,000-year-old manuscripts known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some verses, including ones containing a prophecy about the seizure and return of Temple implements by Babylonian soldiers, appear to have been added after the events happened.

The year the Bible Project began, 1958, was the year a priceless Hebrew Bible manuscript arrived in Jerusalem after it was smuggled out of Aleppo, Syria, by a Jewish cheese merchant who hid it in his washing machine. This was the 1,100-year-old Aleppo Codex, considered the oldest and most accurate version of the complete biblical text in Hebrew.

The Bible Project's version of the core text – the one to which the others are compared – is based on this manuscript. Other critical editions of the Bible, such as one currently being prepared in Stuttgart, Germany, are based on a slightly newer manuscript held in St. Petersburg, Russia.         

Considering that the nature of their work would be considered controversial, if not offensive, by many religious people, it is perhaps surprising that most of the project's scholars are themselves Orthodox Jews.

"A believing Jew claims that the source of the Bible is prophecy," said the project's bearded academic secretary, Rafael Zer. "But as soon as the words are given to human beings - with God's agreement, and at his initiative – the holiness of the biblical text remains, even if mistakes are made when the text is passed on."

Taken from: http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2011/08/the-tanakh-as-it-was-the-evolution-and-change-of-the-hebrew-bible-456.html


Scholars seek Hebrew Bible’s original text — but was there one?
By Anthony Weiss - May 13, 2014 4:39pm   

The text of today’s Torah scrolls differs from the versions of the biblical books that existed millennia ago. (Konstantin Goldenberg/Shutterstock)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — According to Jewish tradition, the Torah is so sacred that even a single error made on a single letter renders the entire scroll unusable.

And yet the Hebrew Bible — including the Torah, its first five books — is riddled with corruptions and alterations that have accrued and been passed down over the millennia.

Read the whole article: http://www.jta.org/2014/05/13/news-opinion/united-states/scholars-seek-hebrew-bibles-original-text-but-was-there-one.

Early rabbinic sources, from around 200 CE, "mention several passages of Scripture in which the conclusion is inevitable that the ancient reading must have differed from that of the present text [...] Rabbi Simon ben Pazzi (third century) calls these readings "emendations of the Scribes" (tikkune Soferim; Midrash Genesis Rabbah xlix. 7), assuming that the Scribes actually made the changes.   [The Jewish Encyclopedia, I. Singer, Ph.D., C. Adler, Ph.D. [General Editors], vol. 8 (NY: KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1901), p. 366, entry: Masorah]

Take care, and salam
Ahmed (Poland, Warsaw)

Salam aleikum,

No, its not about Mirza Ghulam, the Jews knew only one Ahmed from "ancient days" and in their hope they called him Messiah by which they undestood the Last Prophet of God who will establish the kingdom of God on earth (Islam). The Hebrew term מָשִׁיחַ (moshiach) means “anointed." In Biblical Hebrew, this expression precisely was bestowed on a person who had attained a position of nobility, greatness, someone who acquired a high status of authority. In Rabbinic literature the title Moshiach is reserved for the chosen leader who will be a savior to Israel in the Last Times. That long awaited Messiah in Jewish eyes is not Jesus (pbuh) as some could argue, since this Messiah was to be a powerful Messenger, a warrior who will take victory over all his enemies.

Take care,
Ahmed

As-salam aleikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakeuh,

In regards to the alleged crucifixion of Jesus (pbuh), it is true that there is no hadith coming directly from Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) telling about this event, but there is one hadith from Ibn Abbas of which isnad is sahih, and from what I have remarked, his narration contains some specific detail confirmed by an authentic saying of Prophet Mohammed (pbuh), namely Ibn Abbas says that before Romans went to arrest Jesus (pbuh), he entered to the room in which were waiting his disciples, and it is said that his hair were flowing with water, and this is interesting because in an authentic hadith related by Sahih Bikhari and Muslim, when Prophet Mohammed met Jesus in heaven (in Isra wa al-Miraj) he described him by saying that his hair dripping water, i.e. that he had wet hair, and it clearly confirms the particular detail related by Ibn Abbas, so his whole narration that he was raised when he was in that room could be true. And by the way there is another authentic hadith from Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) that Jesus (pbuh) will descend from heaven by laying his hands on the wings of two angels, so how author from the website linked above can claim that Jesus (pbuh) already died in earth ?

CD....



Reference: The Asatir: The Samaritan Book of the Secrets of Moses, together with the Pitron or Samaritan commentary and the Samaritan story of the death of Moses, introduction, translation and notes by M. Gaster, Ph.D. (London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1927), p. 262.

As-Salam Aleikum again,

I forget to tell you that in the image above there is an error in writting: instead of "neading" read "reading", the same is with "nead" which stands of course for "read". and "preservad" for "preserved", but these spelling errors are not so much significant since every English reader should not have a problem to understand the text.

Take care, and salam
Ahmed (Poland, Warsaw)