“The prophecies were found after the fact, in a corrupted Bible”

The objection

“The prophecies were found after the fact, in a corrupted Bible.”

Stated in its strongest terms, it makes three charges.

• The silence of the copies. The Jewish and Christian copies already in use in the seventh century name no Arab prophet (Ameri, p. 15). Muslims, on this view, went looking for the prophecies after the fact, to prove the Qur’an right: the earliest known uses date from the eighth century, with Muqatil ibn Sulayman and Ibn Ishaq (research file v1, part 1).
• A borrowed method. Most of the passages put forward by Ibn Rabban al-Tabari already appeared in Christian lists of prophecies of Jesus (research file v1, part 1). Some connections are recent: Sami Ameri himself concedes that the Muslim use of Psalm 84 is one of them (Ameri, p. 159).
• A contradiction. Muslims call the Bible altered, and yet they look for proofs in it. Ali Ataie himself sets the standard that the objection turns against them: a Muslim cannot take from the text what suits him without justifying his choices (Ataie, p. 9).

It comes from the People of the Book (Ameri, p. 15), and missionaries see in it the weak point of the Muslims (Ameri, p. 11).

The answer

The Qur’an affirmed it first, and People of the Book recognised it

The prophecy did not come out of a search: it came before it. The Qur’an says of the People of the Book that they “find him written with them in the Torah and the Gospel” (7:157), and that Jesus announced “a messenger who will come after me, whose name is Ahmad” (61:6). The search came afterwards, to find again what the Qur’an affirmed (research file v1, framework).

And People of the Book recognised him, in his lifetime or just after him ﷺ:

• Waraqa ibn Nawfal, a Christian who copied passages of the Gospel in Hebrew, recognises in the angel of Hira the Namus sent to Moses (Bukhari 3).
• Abd Allah ibn Amr describes the Prophet ﷺ as the Torah portrays him: neither harsh, nor coarse, nor loud in the markets (Bukhari 2125). This is almost word for word Isaiah: “He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street” (Isaiah 42:2).
• Abd Allah ibn Salam, a rabbi of Medina, embraces Islam (Ameri, p. 45-46).
• Heraclius, having made his inquiries, tells the Romans that this is the awaited prophet, then draws back (Bukhari 7; al-Saqqar, p. 7-8).
• John bar Penkaye, a Nestorian Christian contemporary with the Companions, writes that the “prophecy of Moses” concerning Ishmael has been fulfilled (Ameri, p. 147).

The expectation is older than he ﷺ is

• Before Jesus, the Qumran manuscripts await the prophet of Deuteronomy 18:18, distinct from the Messiah (Ameri, p. 34).
• In the time of Jesus, John the Baptist is asked: “Art thou that prophet?” (John 1:21). The Greek article, which the King James renders “that prophet”, points to a prophet already known and awaited (Ameri, p. 33).
• The Sifre Devarim, a Jewish commentary older than Islam, connects Paran, named in Deuteronomy 33:2, with the Arabic language (Ameri, p. 117-120).

None of this was read into the text after the fact by Muslims.

The Qur’an points first to the original texts

According to Sami Ameri, the Qur’an points above all to what the prophets received and said: the covenant taken from the prophets (3:81), the prayer of Abraham (2:127-129), the words of Jesus (61:6). No verse requires the prophecy to be found in the copies of the seventh century (Ameri, p. 16, 19-20). Looking for it in the present copies is therefore an effort of interpretation, and their silence would not touch the Qur’an (Ameri, p. 20).

Altered, and yet quoted: the very position of the Qur’an

The Qur’an says both things at once. It confirms the Torah and the Gospel:

And it condemns those who write the Book with their own hands and then say, “This is from God” (2:79; Ataie, p. 8). The exegetes have read this alteration in two ways: the wording itself changed, or a meaning twisted within a text that remained sound; Ataie holds to the second, with al-Razi and al-Biqa’i (Ataie, lecture). Munqidh al-Saqqar puts it simply: to quote the Bible is not to endorse it, but to look in it for what remains of the words of the prophets, and what the Qur’an confirms has escaped alteration (al-Saqqar, p. 6).

This site quotes the present biblical text, the only one the reader can check, and invokes alteration only where it can be proved.

Alteration, moreover, is not an idea peculiar to Muslims. Textual criticism knows three divergent witnesses to the Pentateuch (the Hebrew, the Septuagint, the Samaritan) and resorts to conjecture where the original is lost (Ameri, p. 21-22). The Bible itself refers to books that have disappeared, such as “the book of Jasher” (Joshua 10:13; Ameri, p. 23-24).

What the objection gets right

The earliest known Muslim uses do date from the eighth century, some connections are recent, and the method of lists of prophecies is common to both traditions (research file v1, part 1). Some readings do not hold: this site sets them aside itself, with its reasons.

But the date of a reading is not the date of the text: the passages quoted precede Islam, whoever their reader may be. And the Gospels, too, read the Old Testament after the events, without always respecting its context: “Out of Egypt have I called my son” (Matthew 2:15) takes up a verse of Hosea that speaks of Israel, in the past tense (Hosea 11:1; Ameri, p. 57-58). Ameri therefore asks for the same measure for both (Ameri, p. 51), and holds himself to the most demanding rule: language and context (Ameri, p. 77, 84).

As for obscurity, it does not spare the prophecies of Jesus: the disciples understood only afterwards that Elijah meant John the Baptist (Matthew 17:13; Ameri, p. 49-50).

Further reading

• The method: What the Qur’an affirms, and how to read it.
• Waraqa and the other witnesses: The witnesses of the expectation.
• Why no single objection undoes the whole: The convergence.
• What the site sets aside, and why: The readings we do not use.

Sources for this page

• Qur’an: Tanzil text (Uthmani); translation of the meaning by this site.
• Bible: King James Version.
• Hadiths: Bukhari 3, Bukhari 7, Bukhari 2125.
• Sami Ameri, al-Bishara bi-nabi al-islam fi kutub al-yahud wa-l-nasara, Takween, 2nd ed., 2021, p. 11-24, 33-34, 45-58, 77, 84, 117-120, 147, 159.
• Ali Ataie, Finding Muhammad in the New Testament, master’s thesis, Graduate Theological Union, 2011, p. 8-9; lecture at Zaytuna College on Qur’an 7:157-158.
• Munqidh al-Saqqar, Hal bashshara al-Kitab al-Muqaddas bi-Muhammad ﷺ?, al-Huda wa-l-Nur series, 5, 2023, p. 6-8.
• Research file “Annonces du Prophète ﷺ”, v1.0, 14 October 2026, framework and part 1.