What the Qur’an says about the Bible is more generous than many expect. The Qur’an names three earlier scriptures: the Tawrāh (ٱلتَّوْرَاة, Torah) given to Moses, the Zabūr (ٱلزَّبُور, Psalms) given to David, and the Injīl (ٱلْإِنجِيل, Gospel) given to Jesus. It also speaks of the scrolls of Abraham and Moses.1 Belief in all of them is an article of Muslim faith. Muslims therefore approach the Bible with respect and with care: respect for the revelation it carries, and care to distinguish that revelation from what the Qur’an says was added to it.
In this article
Guidance and light
The Qur’an describes the Torah as guidance and light, by which the prophets who submitted to God judged for the Jews, together with the rabbis and scholars entrusted with it.2 It says the same of the Gospel, and calls the Qur’an itself a confirmation of what came before it. No other scripture speaks of earlier revelations with such honour.
إِنَّآ أَنزَلْنَا ٱلتَّوْرَىٰةَ فِيهَا هُدًى وَنُورٌ ۚ يَحْكُمُ بِهَا ٱلنَّبِيُّونَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَسْلَمُوا۟ لِلَّذِينَ هَادُوا۟ وَٱلرَّبَّـٰنِيُّونَ وَٱلْأَحْبَارُ بِمَا ٱسْتُحْفِظُوا۟ مِن كِتَـٰبِ ٱللَّهِ وَكَانُوا۟ عَلَيْهِ شُهَدَآءَ ۚ فَلَا تَخْشَوُا۟ ٱلنَّاسَ وَٱخْشَوْنِ وَلَا تَشْتَرُوا۟ بِـَٔايَـٰتِى ثَمَنًا قَلِيلًا ۚ وَمَن لَّمْ يَحْكُم بِمَآ أَنزَلَ ٱللَّهُ فَأُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْكَـٰفِرُونَ ٤٤
Indeed, We sent down the Torah, in which was guidance and light. The prophets who submitted [to Allāh] judged by it for the Jews, as did the rabbis and scholars by that with which they were entrusted of the Scripture of Allāh, and they were witnesses thereto. So do not fear the people but fear Me, and do not exchange My verses for a small price [i.e., worldly gain]. And whoever does not judge by what Allāh has revealed – then it is those who are the disbelievers.
Qur’an 5:443
Confirmation and guardianship
The Qur’an honours the earlier scriptures as revelation and also stands over them as guardian and criterion, and it speaks of those who changed words from their places.4 Muslims therefore affirm that God revealed the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel, and read the Bible that has come down as containing much of that revelation alongside later human writing. See The Islamic Dilemma answered.
The verse of the Torah shows the spirit of the whole. It praises the prophets who judged by the Torah, calls them those ‘who submitted’, and so counts them among the Muslims in the Qur’an’s sense of the word. Every revelation, on this view, came from one God and called to one submission.
Of the three, the Psalms receive the least attention, yet the Qur’an quotes them directly. It says that God wrote in the Zabūr, after the reminder, that the land is inherited by His righteous servants, words that answer closely to the Psalm promising that the righteous shall inherit the land and dwell in it for ever.5 It is one of the few passages of the Bible that the Qur’an echoes so closely, and Muslim commentators have long drawn attention to it as a sign of the continuity of revelation from David to Muhammad.
What the Qur’an says about the Bible, in brief
What the Qur’an says about the Bible is that God revealed the Torah to Moses, the Psalms to David and the Gospel to Jesus, all guidance and light; that it confirms them and stands as their guardian; and that some who held them changed words from their places.
Further reading: The Islamic Dilemma: the argument and the answer, Sacred texts.