Is there historical/scientific evidence that Jews and Christians altered the original message of God?

Question

Muslims claim Jews and Christians changed the original message of God.

Is there historical/scientific evidence that, as claimed by Islam, the Bible (both Old Testament [the Jew bit] and New Testament [the Christian bit]) altered the original message of God in, by definition, everything that contradicts the Quram?

Types of evidence I can think of (not-exclusive list):

• manuscripts dated before the official ones with a version not contradicting the Quram.
• written evidence that the message of Jesus was different from the one reported by the New Testament. Notice the Gospel of Barnabas (which some claim to be closer to the original message of Jesus) was mentioned first as late as the 6th century and the oldest manuscript is from the 18 century, much later than the rest of the documents.
• Paul is often regarded as a distorter but he is pretty much in line with the rest of the apostles of Jesus. So perhaps we are looking at evidence of Apostles' early writings with a different message?
• But if apostles were also corrupted from the beginning, any writing that gives evidence of this.

I am sure you understand that anyone can come with a allegedly "true word" of God and claim that, by definition, anything from before that contradicts this new word has been altered from the "original message", which was "naturally" fully in line with this "corrected" word of God.

Also, from a mere logical point of view, the lack of this evidence of course does not invalidates the claim of Islam regarding the Bible, but it does put a very heavy burden of proof on Islam for such claims.

Answer 1

First of all, no, I do not think or at least have not seen that there is too much historical evidence to that effect. This is simply because there is very little record of Jesus (AS)'s life in general except for the Gospels themselves (which are being accused of corruption).

But, to put emphasis again, the lack of historical evidence is not a demonstration that there was no corruption, but it is a demonstration of the lack of historical records themselves.

It is similar to me giving you a few books from, for example, South America all of them written by priests of a certain religion in the year 300. Those books all claim that the "sun god" came down to Earth in 280 and built a temple there. What would you believe of these books in this scenario?

If you say, you do not believe it, then what if a follower of this religion asked you if you had any historical record to prove that the books were corrupted by later followers?

If these books were given to me, I would automatically disbelieve in the story simply because it makes no sense. Then, I would conclude that the books either completely made it up (i.e. it is completely corrupted), or that a king or prophet really did exist who built the temple but the claim that he was a sun god was a corruption by himself or his followers (i.e. half corrupted). I would believe this regardless of the lack of evidence. Absence of evidence is, after all, not evidence of absence. In the presence of a largely undocumented story except for one perspective it is not at all far-fetched to believe that the one perspective is corrupted or false when it goes against all reason.

In other words, the absurdity of the claims is itself evidence of corruption.

In this case, Muslims are given the same thing except with Christianity. Jesus (AS) teaching that he himself was the son of God or even the concept of anyone being the son of God is as absurd to us as a sun god building a temple in South America.

Allah says in the Quran:

The disbelievers say, ‘The Lord of Mercy has offspring.’ How terrible is this thing you assert: it almost causes the heavens to be torn apart, the earth to split asunder, the mountains to crumble to pieces, that they attribute offspring to the Lord of Mercy.

It does not befit the Lord of Mercy [to have offspring]: there is no one in the heavens or earth who will not come to the Lord of Mercy as a servant- (19:88-93)

Answer 2

Unlike engineering and positive sciences, historical phenomenon cannot be experimented in a laboratory setting. History, though, has its own means to reach at facts one of which is reliable documentations. As stated by another answer, Christianity unfortunately lacks a documentation tradition until the 2nd century. The situation is the exact opposite for Islam. Quran have been memorized by hafiz's and was also written by the companions of Rasulullah (PBUH) as new verses were revealed to him. Even the order of the verses were revealed to Rasulullah and companions memorized Quran cover to cover according to this order.

After Rasulullah (PBUH) passed away, due to many hafiz's being martyrized at the battle of Yamama and similar incidents, it became imperative to collect all the verses in a single book, ie. mus'haf. This happened at the time of Abu Bakr (RA), the first caliph of Islam. So there is no time gap between the revelation, Quran being memorized and scribed and then eventually collected in a single physical book.

When the authenticity of Quran, Bible and Torah are considered, Quran is unmatched. If Quran is taken as the point of reference, any book with its even single word is changed, is distorted.

Answer 3

As I mentioned previously, "Tiqqune Sopherim" i.e., "Corrections by Scribes" is one example of Judeo-Christian tampering of their religious texts (the debate being mostly over how many times this has occurred) to "fix" issues that they thought existed in the religious texts. This alone supports the Islamic description of corruption.

But for some reason, you're asking for an answer that excludes all examples of corruption except those that specifically contradict the Qur'an, only. (Note: Even if things added by scribes coincidentally agreed with the Qur'an or were neutral [not in agreement or disagreement] but were not inspired by God, it would still be corruption and rejected by Muslims). Nevertheless, there are examples of that as well. Two significant examples that come to mind:

• Qur'an says God is One Alone, not three. Some Biblical texts contain a passage called Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7-8) which contains wording (" the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one"). Some preliminary research would show you that this wording was a later addition not found in earlier Greek texts.

"The presence of the Comma Johanneum in Greek manuscripts is actually quite rare until the 15th century A.D." (...) "Some ancient scribe, either intentionally or accidentally added it to a Latin manuscript, and then that addition was copied thousands upon thousands of times." (Source).

• As per Islam, adulterers are stoned to death. Biblical texts contain a widely circulated story (aka pericope adulterae) of Jesus forgiving an adulteress despite the law being that she be stoned. John 8:1-11. Preliminary research also shows that this was an addition.

"The Greek manuscripts show fairly clear evidence that John 7:53—8:11 was not originally part of John’s Gospel. Among the manuscripts that do contain the section, either wholly or in part, there are variations of placement." (...) "somewhere along the way, a scribe added this story of Jesus into John’s Gospel in a place he thought it would fit well." (Source)

In both cases, the conclusion is... a scribe added things to the Bible. This is what Islam said 1400+ years ago and it was God who said it, not Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) who had no ability to read Biblical Greek/Latin texts, let alone study them.