The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 3) — Page 517
PT. 14 AN-NAHL began to be translated into other languages. The study of the Commentaries of the Quran by Muslim scholars also shows that Arabic versions of the Bible were not available to them, because when in their Commentaries they quote the New or the Old Testament they make very serious mistakes. They ascribe to these books stories which are not found in them. This clearly shows that Arabic versions of the Bible did not exist in their time, otherwise they would not have made such blunders. Traditions also show that in the time of the Holy Prophet the Gospels were to be found only in Hebrew or Greek. In Bukhārī we have the following about Waraqah bin Naufal; "He had become Christian in the days of ignorance and he used to write the Gospels in Hebrew. " True, another tradition gives Arabic in place of Hebrew, as the language in which Waraqah wrote the Gospels but preference must be given to the tradition quoted from Bukhārī because if the Arabic versions of the Bible could be available in the days of the Prophet many Muslims would have read them. But no such scholars of the Bible among early Muslims were to be found. We are inclined to the view that the reporter had, by mistake, substituted the word "Hebrew" for "Greek" in the above tradition, because only Greek versions were current in those days and Hebrew versions had almost ceased to exist. That the Christian Scriptures had not been translated into Arabic by the time of the Prophet receives further support from the fact even CH. 16 that even the Jewish tribes of Medina had not translated the Torah into Arabic by that time, and whenever he needed a reference to this book, he consulted 'Abdullah bin Salām, a great Hebrew scholar. This view is also supported by the following testimony of a well-known Christian writer, Dr. Alexander Souter, M. A. , LL. D. , who writes in his book, "The Text and Canon of the New Testament" (Second Edition, 1925 p. 74), under the head, 'Arabic Versions': "These come partly and directly from Greek, and partly through Syriac and partly through Coptic. Mohammad himself knew the Gospel story only orally. The oldest manuscript goes no further back than the 8th century. Two versions of the Arabic are reported to have taken place at Alexandria in the 13th century. " In short, there is no doubt about the fact that the Gospels had not been translated into Arabic at the time of the Prophet and those who had to consult them used the Greek or 1725 Hebrew version. Thus it is clear that when Jabr, the Christian slave, read the Gospels, he must have read the Greek or the Hebrew version. And how could the Holy Prophet benefit by listening to a book in a language which he did not understand? The fact seems to be that when disbelievers saw the Prophet standing at Jabr's shop they imagined that he must have learnt something from him. The Quran removes these doubts by saying, the tongue of him to whom they unjustly incline in making this insinuation is foreign, while this is Arabic tongue plain and clear, meaning that the man from