Was Torah Corrupted or Changed?
Question
Shalom Aleichem rabbi, As a noachide, planning to convert to Judaism. I sometimes feel myself questioning atheist and Muslim claims. Most atheists are claiming that the text of Tanakh is changed over time and it is not historically accurate. And Muslims also claim that Jews corrupted The Holy Torah over time.
I made a research online but never found any response to these claims. What is the proof that the Torah we are reading now is the same Torah, Moshe Rabeinu recieved in Mount Sinai?
Answer
The Torah text is not only word for word but even letter by letter identical in all of the ancient and modern Hebrew Torah scrolls of all of the various Jewish communities, despite the fact that the Yemenite (Asia), Ashkenazic (western) and Sefaradic (far eastern) communities were separated from each other on 3 different continents for almost 2,000 years (with only a handful of small spelling differences, like "daka" (Dvarim 23, 2) being written with a silent heh or a silent aleph at the end). There is no "paraphrasing" whatsoever, and the text is unchanged since dictated to Moses 3,333 years ago. This is due not only to Divine providence, but also to the ingenious sofrim (literally: "counters") system, who's job is to count each and every letter in every scroll, and if even the most minor mistake is found, the scroll is deemed un-kosher and forbidden (!) to read in public until that letter is fixed.