Section: Establishing that the manuscripts of the People of the Book contain discrepancies and alterations

The answer to their objection has now become clear. They ask, “Who could possibly have spoken in seventy-two different tongues? Who could have exercised authority over the whole world—over its kings, bishops, and scholars—issuing a decree that reached every corner of the inhabited earth so that he might alter the Scripture, even supposing he could gather every copy, or even some of them?”

Such a scenario is impossible, for all the Scriptures constitute a single speech, a single text, and a single creed.

The reply to this charge becomes evident from several angles.

First: We have never claimed that the alteration occurred after the books had already been translated into these various languages and the manuscripts had spread. In fact, we do not assert post-publication tampering even in the case of writings that are not prophetic—such as works on grammar, medicine, mathematics, and even the hadith collections and sunan transmitted from the prophets—when they were originally conveyed by solitary reporters and only later multiplied into numerous, widely disseminated copies. No one would claim that, once these copies had become widespread and scribes were producing them throughout East and West, a single person then ruled over the entire inhabited world and gathered up all the manuscripts