Home > Surah 3 - The Family of Imran
Surah 3:50:
Confirming what was before me of the Torah and to make lawful for you some of what was forbidden to you. And I have come to you with a sign from your Lord, so fear Allah and obey me.
This verse can bridge the gap between the time of Jesus and the time of Muhammad. If Jesus confirmed the Torah "before him," we can look at the Dead Sea Scrolls (which date from 250 BC to 68 AD). These scrolls match the Hebrew Masoretic Text used in Bibles today.
If Jesus confirmed that specific text, and the Quran confirms what was "between its hands" in the 7th century (which also matches those manuscripts), there is no chronological window for the "corruption" of the Torah to have occurred.
The command "obey me" (ati'un) is a standard Quranic phrase usually reserved for prophets. If the Quran commands people to obey Jesus, and Jesus's own confirmed message (the Gospel) teaches His divinity and His sacrificial death, then the Quran is essentially commanding its readers to obey a message that contradicts Islamic Unitarianism.
Muslim apologists often confuse abrogation (God changing a law) with corruption (man changing a text).
Surah 3:50 clearly shows Jesus performing abrogation—changing what was forbidden to what is lawful. This proves that any "differences" between the Torah and the Gospel were intended by God, not the result of "corrupt scribes."
This undermines the common argument that the Bible is "unreliable" simply because the New Testament differs from the Old.
Surah 3:50 shows Jesus as a "confirmer" of the Torah. This creates a historical "lock":
By telling followers to "obey" Jesus, the Quran inadvertently points them toward a Gospel that claims Jesus is more than just a prophet.