Did Sheikh Rahmatullah al-Hindi mean that the old versions of the Injil, such as "the Alexandrian, Vatican, and Ephraemite versions," were written after the death of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and not before his mission in the fourth or fifth century CE, in response to the claims of Christians?
A Muslim is not obliged to believe that a specific version of the Gospel was written before or after the advent of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. There is no evidence to accuse all versions of the Gospel of being written after his advent, as the Gospel was available in the Arabian Peninsula before his advent. Sheikh Rahmatullah confirms that distortion and deficiencies affected these books before the advent of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and that they existed without a continuous chain of transmission (isnad), and that distortion was certainly present in them before his advent.
The Sheikh's aim is to investigate the authenticity of the existing manuscript copies to confirm that the Torah and the Gospel were not transmitted with continuous chains of transmission and authentic documents, but rather experienced periods of discontinuity or disturbance. He indicates that the oldest complete Hebrew manuscripts that reached the correctors were from the tenth or eleventh century, and that there is no definitive proof of the writing date of the three ancient Greek manuscripts (Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, Ephraemi), and conjecture and speculation cannot be considered as evidence.
Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026
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