The Deliberate Mistake

On the subject of the Torah and the Gospels being copied with mistakes put into them on purpose, there is a tradition among the scribes of the Torah, which are always handwritten, always to put a mistake into the Torah, to show man's imperfection. It would be arrogant for a Hebrew scribe ever to try to say: this is perfect. It is only God who is perfect. It is a guard against the sin of arrogance.

That is a very good point, and a very pertinent one. For the Muslims believe that the Qurʾān is the divine word of God, and therefore they believe that to put a mistake in it would be of the greatest transgression. In other words, it is a sacred trust. And in fact the Qurʾān says that We offered this trust to the heavens and to the earth and to the mountains, and they refused to bear it, but the human being bore it:

It is interesting, because according to the Qurʾān the Jews and the Christians were given the task themselves of protecting their books, and they fell short — that is what the Qurʾānic version is. But then it says about the Qurʾān, because it is the final one, and because there would be no prophet after the Prophet (peace be upon him) to clarify that there were mistakes, that God alone has taken it upon the divine to protect this book. So the Muslims actually believe that it is divinely protected for that very reason.

As a postscript to that: when the Arabs do their carpet work, they make a deliberate mistake in it. A carpet with a mistake is worth a lot more than a carpet that is made by a machine in Belgium.