InvestigateTruth
Well-Known Member
Well, that is the question in OP. In another words, if Bahaullah had education, it would have been mentioned in history, at least by His enemies and opposition, so they may refute His claim. For in formation, there are just many books written by the enemies of Bahai faith, trying to refute Bahaullah.I cannot make any comments of where he got his knowledge from or if he had any formal education etc because I have not come across solid documentation on that subject.
This is a separate topic, worthy of its own thread. If you wish, you can open a separate thread discussing it farther. But briefly, I give my view on that here, since you brought it up. The Quranic verse you are refering, does not name, which books(کتب) they wrote and claimed it to be from God. So, if you think, this is referring to Torah, you are reading more than what it says. The tense of the verse is present tense. It does not say," they wrote". It says "they write". So, that has to do with people who were present at the time. This means some Jewish leaders who lived at the time of Muhammad, wrote their own interpretations of Bible, saying this is what God is saying. Suppose today, a Muslim clergy writes a book, interpreting Quran, and saying this is what Allah says.But what I can and do say is that there are discrepancies in what he says or at least what I feel are discrepancies.
For example, Bahaullah speaks of "corruption of the text" which apparently Muhammed was told by Gabriel about the Jews and their scripture. He says that this was about the Jews who lived at his time who were misinterpreting their Pentateuch, not that the text itself is perverted.
The problem I have is that it was myth, and its still a myth that the Quran mentions anything about Jews perverting their text. What it says is that people wrote books( کتب ) by their own hands and claimed it was from God. Perverting a text is where you intentionally edit, cut and paste, infer and interpolate to change the story. Well, that has indeed happened in text. But what the Quran says is the foundational claim by people that what they wrote by hand was Gods work itself.
So this is a contradiction.
In my opinion this is a problem of lack of scholarship. Though Bahaullah had knowledge, his knowledge is not deep. It lacked scholarship. So he wrote down the myth that was circulating around at that time with apologists and non-muslim critics that Muhammed thought Jews and Christians perverted the texts, but scholarship has shown that its not the case. The Quran did not say anywhere they perverted the text which is a very much existing myth even today. It says people wrote them. Not God. People just claimed they were from God.
Thats not to offend anyone.
It is the same with the verse of Quran you are referring. Now, because at they time of Muhammad, no body had this presupposition that Bible was corrupted, no body misunderstood it to mean , as writing a corrupted Bible, saying this is from God. But some centuries after Quran the Muslims started adding this idea that, the Bible text was corrupted. Since you are reading this verse with a preconceived idea, it appears to you, it is talking about corruption in text of Torah. I hope what I am trying to describe here is clear.
I also, refer you to this site, which shows, the idea that Bible is corrupted, started some centuries after Muhammad.
Islam teaches the Torah is corrupted / tahrif, but what does that mean? | Judaism and Islam – comparing the similarities between Judaism and Islam
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