The heavenly books “ the Torah and the Bible” - is there an original copy of them in our time or are they all distorted ?

 May the peace, mercy, and blessings of Allah be upon you. May Allah reward you. Allah has entrusted the preservation of these books to their people, as He, the Almighty, said: (Indeed, We sent down the Torah, in which was guidance and light. The prophets who submitted [to Allah] judged by it for the Jews. [So did] the rabbis and the scholars [of Islam], by what they were commanded to preserve of the Book of Allah.) This is because it is temporary, i.e. its validity is limited to a specific time, not forever, unlike the Qur’an, which Allah has undertaken to preserve, as He, the Most High, says: {Indeed, it is We who sent down the Qur’an and indeed, We will be its guardian.} Imam Al-Qurtubi said: The statement of Allah, the Most High, {Indeed, it is We who sent down the Qur’an and indeed, We will be its guardian.} means the Qur’an, {and indeed, We will be its guardian.} Qatadah and Thabit Al-Bunani said: Allah preserved it from the devils adding falsehood to it or subtracting truth from it. So He, the Most High, took charge of preserving it, and it has remained preserved. And He, the Most High, said elsewhere: {Because they were entrusted with preserving it.} So He entrusted its preservation to them, but they changed and altered. Then he narrated with his chain of transmission on the authority of Yahya bin Aktham that he said: Al-Ma'mun, who was the emir at that time, had a council of consideration, and a Jewish man with handsome clothes, handsome face, and pleasant scent entered among the people. He said: He spoke and spoke well and articulated. He said: When the council ended, al-Ma'mun called him and said to him: Are you an Israelite? He said: Yes. He said to him: Convert to Islam so that I may do and do with you, and he promised him. He said: My religion and the religion of my fathers! And he left. He said: Then after a year, he came to us as a Muslim. He said: He spoke about jurisprudence and spoke well. When the council ended, al-Ma'mun called him and said: Are you not our companion from yesterday? He said to him: Yes. He said: What was the reason for your conversion to Islam? He said: I left your presence and wanted to test these religions, and you see that I have good handwriting, so I went to the Torah and wrote three copies, adding to them and subtracting from them, and brought them into the church and they bought from me. I went to the Gospel and wrote three copies, adding to them and subtracting from them, and brought them into the church and they bought from me. I went to the Qur’an and made three copies, adding to them and subtracting from them, and brought them to the copyists who looked through them. When they found additions and subtractions in them, they threw them away and did not buy them. I knew that this was a preserved book, and this was the reason for my conversion to Islam. Yahya ibn Aktham said: So I performed Hajj that year and met Sufyan ibn Uyaynah, and I mentioned the story to him, and he said to me: Is this confirmed in the Book of Allah, the Almighty? I said: In what place? He said: In the words of God Almighty in the Torah and the Gospel: (Because they were entrusted with the preservation of the Book of God), He left its preservation to them, but it was lost. And the Almighty said: (Indeed, it is We who sent down the Qur’an and indeed, We will be its guardian), so God Almighty preserved it for us, so it was not lost. End quote.

What indicates that distortion occurred in the previous books is that they were not transmitted with correct chains of transmission to the prophets. Rather, the chain of transmission is one of the characteristics of this nation, because its religion is the Seal of the Judges, and its book is the Seal of the Books, so it abrogates them and dominates them.

Ibn Hazm said: Much of the transmission of the Jews - indeed, it is the highest of what they have - except that they are not as close to Moses in it as we are to Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace. Rather, they stop, without a doubt, where between them and Moses, peace be upon him, there are more than thirty eras in more than one thousand five hundred years. Rather, they only reach through transmission to Hilal, Shammani, Mar’qimah, and their likes. I think that they have only one issue that they narrate from a rabbi of their rabbis from a prophet of their later prophets who took it from him orally about a man marrying his daughter if his brother dies. As for the Christians , they do not have from the description of this transmission except the prohibition of divorce alone, and its source is from a liar whose lie has been proven.

Sheikh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah said:

The evidence of the truthfulness and falsehood of the reporter is many and varied, and this is not the place to elaborate on them. However, what is meant here is that the Muslims have transmitted from their Prophet the words of the Qur’an and its meanings that are agreed upon, and the transmitted Sunnah, and they have from their Prophet many reports that are known to be true through various methods, such as the belief of the infallible nation, and the indication of customs and other things. They memorize the Qur’an in their hearts and do not need a written book to memorize it. If the copies of the Qur’an were to disappear from the earth, that would not detract from what they have memorized, unlike the People of the Book, for if copies of the books were to disappear, they would not have transmitted it in a transmitted manner with its wording, since only a few memorized it - if they memorized it - and their memorization was not reliable. For this reason, after the cessation of prophethood from them, the People of the Book would have changed the books , either changing some of their rulings and meanings, or changing some of their wording, unless they were able to verify it. For this reason, the chain of transmission that the Muslims have is not found among them, nor do they have any say in the transmitters of knowledge. And their modification and their criticism, and knowledge of the conditions of the transmitters of knowledge that the Muslims have, and there is no evidence, whether auditory or rational, that they do not agree on error, rather it has been known that they agreed on error when they denied the Messiah, then denied Muhammad, so if the books transmitted from the prophets are of the same type as the books transmitted from Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, and they were not transmitted from them, and the belief of the non-infallible was not an argument, then they would not have had the knowledge of distinguishing between truth and falsehood that the Muslims have. End quote. Allah the Almighty has informed us about the distortion of those books, as He the Almighty said: {They distort words from their [proper] usages} and He said: {They distort words from their [proper] usages, saying: If you are given this, then take it; but if you are not given it, then beware}. Ibn ‘Atiyyah said: Allah the Almighty’s statement: {So woe to those who write the Scripture with their own hands} necessitates alteration. End quote. Since those books had been distorted and altered, the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) said: Do not believe the People of the Book and do not disbelieve them. Narrated by Al-Bukhari. In any case, even if we assume for the sake of argument that it has not been distorted, then it is abrogated and cannot be acted upon, because God Almighty says: (And We have sent down to you, [O Muhammad], the Book in truth, confirming that which preceded it of the Scripture and as a criterion over it) And God knows best.