Home > Surah 3 - The Family of Imran
This verse moves from a general rebuke of disbelief to a specific accusation regarding how the People of the Book handle their revelation, making it a "bread and butter" verse for the Christian polemicist because of the specific verbs used.
Surah 3:71:
O People of the Scripture, why do you confuse the truth with falsehood and conceal the truth while you know?
If you mix dirt into a glass of water, you haven't "destroyed" the water; you’ve just made it hard to see clearly. Surah 3:71 accuses Jews and Christians of mixing or covering the Truth.
If the Truth (the original Torah/Gospel) were physically changed or lost, there would be nothing to "mix" it with.
This verse confirms that the pure "water" of the Word was still in the glass during the 7th century.
If the Bible had been textually corrupted centuries before Muhammad, there would be no Truth left to conceal. By accusing them of hiding the Truth, the Quran inadvertently certifies that the Truth was physically present in the libraries and synagogues of 600 AD.
Christianity can point to the Codex Alexandrinus or Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (5th century). If the Jews and Christians of the 7th century were "knowing" and "concealing" the Truth, they were doing so using the very manuscripts they possess today.
If those manuscripts contain the "Truth" that the Quran says they were hiding, then the message of those manuscripts (the Deity of Christ, the Atonement) is the Truth validated by the Quran.
Surah 3:71 frames the "corruption" of the Bible as a behavioral sin (hiding and mixing) rather than a textual failure. By confirming that the Truth was still known and available to be "mixed" or "hidden" during Muhammad's time, the Quran effectively guarantees the integrity of the 7th-century Bible.
This forces the Muslim apologist into the Dilemma: if the Bible was the Truth back then, and we have that same Bible now, then the Quran is wrong for contradicting its message.