Once again greetings and peace
this is part two of my questions to do with the People of the Book...
The quran has around 20 verses that are critical of the "People of the Book" and their handling and attitude towards their scriptures.
All of these verses (ie the critical ones) are dated after the ones I quoted earlier, that encourage Muslims to go and seek confirmation of the message from the "People of the Book."
These revelations are dated back to the time that Muhammad was in Medina and reflect the conflicts between jews and muslims there.
At this time, specific claims were made
1. that Abraham's Muslim character had been changed (2:140 cf 2:135 and 3:65-67
2. that the qibla had been changed, and yet the Jews refused to accept the replacement of Jerusalem by Mecca as the place to pray towards (2:144-146)
3. That they showed some manuscripts of the Torah whilst hiding others (6:91)
4. That they presented as divine revelation, scriptures they had written themselves for evil purposes (2:79)
5. Recited some religious writings in the same way as Holy Scriptures, so as to deceive listeners (3:78)
and
6. concealed parts of the Scriptures (5:15)
Now, can you confirm that the Qur'an uses a number of verbs to describe these actions...
akhafa (to conceal)
buddala (to substitue)
katama (to cover up)
nasa (to forget)
and in most cases, the strongest verb used regularly is to haffafa which means to give something a wrong direction. ... in other words to take worrds out of their context and therefore misread them.
This is my understanding of how the Qur'an teaches the People of the Book have changed their scriptures.. not by altering them, but by manipulating them and therefore changing their meaning.
Please could you confirm this for me?
thanks
Carol