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Abstract

Majority of the Muslim scholars is of the view that the Torah was revealed all at once. Hence, the Muslim tradition of criticism on the Torah generally remains confined to pointing out contradictions and other forms of corruption in the text of the first five scriptures of the Bible, i.e., the Pentateuch, which the Judeo-Christian tradition considers as the Torah. Contrary to this, the Western tradition of Biblical criticism developed in the last three centuries has resulted in expounding various theories regarding the authorship, compilation and redaction of the Pentateuch. The most important of these theories is the so-called "documentary theory", which has generally been accepted by the Western scholars as the starting point for critical study of the Bible. This theory supposes the existence of at least four different sources behind the text of the Pentateuch and suggests that the Pentateuch attained its present form many centuries after the death of Musa (peace be on him). While this conclusion strengthens the Muslim view about the corruption and interpolation in the text of the Torah, this theory has many other implications which are certainly not acceptable to Muslims. These include, inter alia, negation of revelation, denial of miracles and predictions, presuming that religion evolved from polytheism to monotheism and moral indifference. Hence, instead of relying solely on the Western tradition of Biblical criticism, Muslim scholars should come up with a theory (or theories) of their own for criticism on the Pentateuch and determining the authentic text of the Torah. The present paper highlights this issue and contends that the Muslim approach towards the Torah is altogether different from the Western tradition of Biblical criticism even if the two sides sometimes agree on certain conclusions.