therein. Accordingly, it remains entirely possible that some manuscripts contain descriptions of the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—that are absent from others.

The third line of argument:

There is no doubt that tampering at the level of interpretation has occurred, and it is through such interpretive distortion that the desired objective in this discussion is achieved. We know with absolute certainty that the mention of Muhammad—peace and blessings be upon him—was written in the Torah and the Gospel that were extant in his own time, as the Exalted One says:
“those who find him written with them in the Torah and the Gospel” (al-Aʿrāf 7:157).

Nor is there any question that, during his lifetime, copies of the Torah and the Gospel were numerous and widely dispersed throughout the East and the West. One of two possibilities must therefore be true:

1. Either the wording was altered in some manuscripts and the altered copies became widespread; or
2. His mention remained in every single manuscript, just as many scholars—some of them former rabbis of the Jews and Christians, and others who never belonged to their clergy—have extracted his name and the glad tidings of his coming from numerous, varied passages of the Torah, the Gospel, and the prophetic books, as has been set out elsewhere in detail.

And if someone claims that his mention occurs therein even more often and more explicitly in certain copies, these people cannot dismiss him by saying, “We have examined every single manuscript in…"