intended meaning to something else while the outward wording remains unchanged.

As for how the Christians’ religion became corrupt through interpretation, the very first breach struck their doctrine of tawḥīd, the pillar of all faith. The earliest Trinitarians spoke of lordship in terms of a triad, expounding the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and the discourse of the three aqānīm (hypostases). Those who came after them then disagreed over the interpretation of their words, diverging from one another to the furthest extent (1), and this divergence arose solely from their false hermeneutics. The damage wrought on them by these unsound interpretations was even worse than what befell the Jews, for the latter never, by dint of interpretation, reached the point to which the worshippers of the cross went—attributing to the Lord, exalted be He, that which is utterly unbefitting Him. By means of yet more exegesis they proceeded to abolish the prescriptions of the Torah: they annulled circumcision, treated the Sabbath as permissible, declared swine lawful, and abandoned the ritual bath required after major impurity.

It was Paul who opened for them the gates of these interpretations. He beguiled a band of weak-minded people, who accepted those constructions from him; they then bequeathed (2) discord among themselves until their affair ended where it did—shedding Christ’s law in both creed and practice. Afterward the Ya‘qūbiyyah, followers of Ya‘qūb al-Barādh‘ī, advanced an interpretation of their own, and the Nestorians, followers of Nestorius (3), produced yet another.