Should Muslims Use Jeremiah 8:8 To Demonstrate The Old Testament or Torah Is Corrupt?

Jose made a really interesting post about Muslim appeal to the Gospels and Disciples below and showed how it backfires to assume the Disciples wrote the Gospels and documented their own misunderstandings. I thought a similar argument could be used about Muslims appealing to Old Testament sources.

The same argument can be applied to Muslim usage of Jeremiah 8:8. If the Old Testament is corrupt, then Jeremiah 8:8 must also be corrupt and Jeremiahs teachings and book must have been distorted, unless of course Muslims cherry pick supposed "authentic verses", yet if Jeremiah 8:8 is right about this corruption what independent evidence is there that this verse is authentic and to be trusted? We cannot assume the Old Testament is corrupt and this one verse is authentic since that would be special pleading.

And what evidence is their in Muslim tradition to suggest that Jeremiah was a true prophet, whose teachings do not fully reflect the original teachings of Jeremiah yet some remain intact? They must be agnostic about Jeremiah as a valid prophet and source thus his comments cannot be taken as a valid authority. The only sense in which Muslims could appeal to this reference would be as a historical reference then or as an appeal to Christian scriptures.

If they argue the (8:8) verse doesn't need evidence to be authentic since they are just quoting from the Christian Bible to appeal to your own scriptures in order to show you something, then Christians are not obligated to accept Muslim interpretation of Jeremiah 8:8 since the Christian presupposition is ALL of Jeremiah's and Daniel's teachings are fully intact and authentic reflections on what Jeremiah and Daniel actually believed.


If they argue Jeremiah 8:8  is a valid historical reference, then they must show how conservative/liberal Old Testament Critical Scholarship views this is as a valid historical reference. But they must show it is interpreted as a reference to say there is some truth but some falsehood in the Torah of Moses otherwise all we have is a corrupted Torah. 

So what we are essentially left with is the only way for the Muslim argument to work is if they appeal to the authority of the Qur'an as the criterion to determine truth/falsehood in the Old Testament and Jeremiah 8:8 matches completely with what the Qur'an says. Yet to do this they must:

• A) Establish Qur'an is FULLY divine and valid judging criterion sent by God
• B) Establish the Qur'an and other Islamic sources teach Jeremiah was a true prophet that can be relied upon whose teachings were partially distorted, yet some valid elements remain
• C) Prove the Qur'an accuses Old Testament of having some corruption and some truth and the Quran determines the truth hood therein.

There are obvious various problems with this. Skipping (A) for now there is no explicit verse in the Quran that says some parts of previous scripture (or the Old Testament) is corrupt and other parts that agree with the Qur'an are valid.

In fact the only explicitly reference to corruption in the Qur'an is Chapter 2:79 which doesn't suggest some parts of the Book are valid and some parts are true, rather 2:79 suggests wholesale corruption by ungodly manipulators and perverters of Gods word selling revelation, thus leaving the Book completely untrustworthy. However this contradictions various other places in the Qur'an like 5:41-43;7:157 which suggest the Torah is the valid and binding word of God for the Jews to trust in and judge by.

An additional problem is that the Qur'an never explicitly identifies "the book(al kitab) or the tawrat" as the Old Testament scriptures. In fact the Quran refers to Al Tawrat (the Torah/Law) as a revelation GIVEN to Moses. Which means the Quran doesn't even REFERENCE the Old Testament least we accuse the Qur'an of making a historical error and saying the entire Old Testament was given to Moses.

Thus what we are left with is the Qur'an never mentions the Old Testament or the Book of Jeremiah, nor does it mention Jeremiah as a prophet. Therefore in conclusion there is not a single verse in the Qur'an that can be taken to mean the Qur'an is the criterion of what is true and false in the book of Jeremiah or the Old Testament in general, thus Muslims must only appeal to Jeremiah as a historical source. Yet according to Muslims much of history is not reliable (e.g. the crucifixion of Jesus), thus how do we know if Jeremiah 8:8 is a reliable historical source? Muslims must also be agnostic about that!

Hopefully this compliments and supplements Jose's post.