What Does Islam Say About the Bible?

Because Islam distinguishes between the revelation God gave and the texts that came to be transmitted under those names. The Qur'an says that some of the People of the Scripture altered words, concealed parts of what they had been given, and wrote things with their own hands which they then attributed to God. It does not say every word of the Bible is false — it says the books, as transmitted, are no longer simply the revelation as it was sent down.

The Qur'an presents itself as confirming what remains true in the earlier scriptures, correcting what was altered, and — uniquely — being protected from the same fate.

Not that it is worthless: it contains much that Muslims recognise as true — the oneness of God, the prophets, the commandments, the teaching of Jesus on love of God and neighbour. Not that it is scripture in the Islamic sense: Muslims do not derive doctrine from it. The position is in between, and it is stated by the Prophet ﷺ himself: when the People of the Scripture relate something, neither affirm it nor deny it outright, but say 'we believe in what was revealed to us and what was revealed to you'.

The question of how the biblical text was transmitted is one that Christian and Jewish scholars study seriously themselves. The existence of textual variants among manuscripts, of differing canons between churches, and of debates about authorship is a matter of ordinary academic record — and it is not something Muslims invented. Islam's claim goes further than scholarship can: that the alteration reached the message itself. That claim rests on the Qur'an's authority, which is why — again — everything comes back to whether the Qur'an is what it says it is.