It follows, then, that the Sacred Scriptures—both the Old Testament and the
New—as possessed by the Christians in the days of Mahomet, are free
from any of those imputations, construed ever so widely; which the Mahometans
are in the habit of casting .upon the Scriptures which were in possession of the
Jews.
But, in the second place, the accusation in the text does not, even as
regards the Jews, impute any tampering with the copies of their Scriptures. We
have seen before (Art. XCVI.) that the very same words are used to mean no more
than that passages were interpreted inconsistently with their context; that
sentences were produced separately and disjointedly, so as to pervert their
sense; and that expressions were used with a wrong, or double, meaning: and
examples of such dislocation are actually cited in the Corân. Mahomet never
could have meant by these expressions that the Jews tampered with their
inspired books. For the whole tenor and scope of the frequent references
throughout the Corân to the Scriptures, as then extant in the hands of the
Jews, is to books authoritative, genuine, pure, divine.
As the Jews had "forgotten a portion of that whereby they were
admonished," Mahomet says, at the close of the above passage, that the
object of his mission was to "manifest much" of the same—that is, to
bring to light many of the doctrines and precepts which they had held back or
failed to unfold; as well as to "pass over much," i.e. to
permit the abrogation of many Jewish ceremonies or ordinances.
