CIRA International find the true savior; Ezra the scribe?

In answer to the video "Yusuf 12:111 - The Quran Affirms the Bible"

Ezra's contribution in compiling, innovating and re-instating the forgotten Bible to the Israelites is undisputed, as shown from a few examples earlier. 

He was the founder of the "Great Assembly", the institution that provided religious guidance to the Jews during the second temple era (520BCE – 70CE). These 120 men are said to have "finalized" the Hebrew Bible and enacted many laws, under the prophet Ezra's authority who was divinely inspired. They, after much debates, decided what to include in the final canon of the Tanakh/Hebrew bible. This era however is covered in darkness and not much is known of what was happening with the Jewish community. The identity of these “Men of the Great Assembly” isnt even known.

In fact Israelite tradition isnt even sure in which language the Torah was given to them originally, whether it was ancient Hebrew, Assyrian, or Samaritan or whether it was later changed to Samaritan as a punishement (Sanhedrin 21b,22a,Y'rushalmi M'gillah 10a - chapter 1 halachah 9). In the process, they even forgot how to pronounce God's name hence the use of the tetragammaton. 

What is agreed upon is that upon his return from the Babylonian exile and into Israel, Ezra rewrote the HB in Hebrew but using the Aramaic alphabet (the lingua franca of those days). 

Their level of forgetfulness, as reflected in the issue of the language of revelation also reflects in their forgetfulness of the correct forms of certain ending letters, which made it impossible for them to recall the laws of Moses alluded to earlier until the intervention of Otniel son of Kenaz (Shabbat 104a). The Talmudic rabbis basically just decided on the letter forms to use, giving the current meaning to the text. Even though all Jews and rabbis agree to the rule which forbids the innovation of anything not said at Sinai, things can be recalled through discourse or any other means available, and the conclusion will be considered as having been given at Sinai.

The result is a Torah text nowadays far from being monolithic. There are 3 different Torah editions (Koren, Adi/Leningrad, Mosad HaRav Kook) each meticulously proofread from dozens of Torah scrolls on parchment then reproduced based on majority concordances between these scrolls. These 3 editions however have over 100 letter differences among them, which leaves one wondering as to the number of differences between the scrolls which were used by the proofreaders, if after all their efforts there were still 100+ letter differences.

That is without even getting into the issue of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, words of the midrash and the Zohar, showing that the Torah scrolls the Tanaaim (10-220CE) and Amoraim (200-500CE) had before them were different from the texts we have. This, as a side note, discredits the modern phenomenon of seeking Torah codes in a text whose original is unknown: one who works codes according to the Leningrad text or the Zohar text or according to the text used in the Talmud and the midrash will find, in each text, different results.

It is an undisputed fact that;
- there are parts of the Torah that must have been written long after Moses' death (Burial, Dan, etc)
- that Ezra at least re-introduced the people to the Torah (see Nehemia8) if not added rituals to festivals such as "Sukkot" that the Jews never knew about until he showed up Neh8:17 while the details of this ritual are found in Lev23 which was supposedly written by Moses.
- that Ezra is known as "the scribe", compared to none other than the one who received the Law, ie Moses who is seen as the greatest of prophets in the Talmud Sanhedrin 21b-22a
- that even in the mainstream Jewish tradition there is acceptance that Ezra at least made minor edits to the Torah
- that there is an entire book from 2,000 years ago (albeit a few hundred years after Ezra's time) that claims Ezra wrote the current version of the Torah (2Esdras14). The Talmud states:

“Reish Lakish said, ‘at first the Torah was forgotten by Israel; Ezra came from Babylon and established it'” (Sukkah 20a).

- that Ezra initiated the particulars of the prayer ritual

Medieval rabbis could not counter Muslim polemics regarding the corruption of their scriptures as there exists no foundational narrative to the genesis of the text, how these Scriptures came into being and were shaped as a book. There is no explicit “transmission chain” self-referentially described in the Hebrew Bible or in post-biblical canonical literature. Medieval Karaites, Jews that only adhered to the written Torah, exposed the embarrassing traditions which the rabbis hid in these interfaith discussions with Muslims. Karaism was in fact born in Muslim lands. By interacting with Muslims Jews became aware of the problems related to the preservation of their HB, as is reported in their rabbinic traditions. 

Thus in answer to Muslim polemics, they would primarily attack these Jewish traditions, in an effort to blot out the embarrassing parts and re-write the transmission history of the text. Qirqisani, the leading Karaite theologian and exegete of Baghdad said 

"They (the Rabbanites) assert that the Torah which is in the hands of the people is not the Torah which Moses – on whom be peace – brought, but was composed by Ezra, for they say that the Torah brought by Moses perished and was lost and disappeared. This amounts to the destruction of the whole religion. Were the Muslims to learn of this, they would need nothing else with which to revile and confute us, for some of their theologians argue against us, saying: “Your Torah is not the Torah brought to Moses.” Against one who makes this claim we proclaim that he is lying out of a desire to contradict, and that they are reduced to this because they have nothing to say and need an argument. But were they to discover this teaching of the Rabbanites – may God forgive them – the field would be open to them and they would need nothing else". 

To this, he offers the poor reply that 

"There are two implications to this (claim) – one is that he who changed this (the text of the Bible) and altered it was wiser and more knowledgeable than the prophets who wrote it; and it is extremely implausible that Ezra and Nehemiah were wiser than Moses, may he rest in peace,..and wiser than the Creator..and if it were so that he changed Scripture and altered it and took out of it what was not found to be of benefit, would the shamefulness remain in its place and the disgracefulness not be removed? All the more so if what they say, namely, that the Torah which is in our hands was collated and composed by Ezra – if this were so, and there was no one besides him that would have compelled him to say that this was so and (to say) “I am the one who has changed it and fashioned it in this way”– he could have just (re-)written it in the way he wanted and left the matter hidden, without informing anyone that he had changed it!" 

Karaites deflected Muslim accusations of tahrif of their Hebrew Bible, by implying that if there is a form of falsification in Judaism, it only occured in the oral Torah, the books of the Mishnah and Talmud. It was necessary to them to reject the oral Torah's preservation so as to deny the information it contained as regards the written Torah's corruption. Eventually Karaism was declared a heresy by the rabbis, due to its denial of the authenticity of the oral tradition. The movement failed gaining dominance due to several factors; the Jewish people's turbulent history of oppression and exile, raised their rabbinic authorities as heroes of preservation and survival in the face of the complete annihilation of their identity. That mentality of the layman perdured in time due to Judaism's position as a minority religion, forcing it to dilute ideological dissent so as to retain a sense of community and survive. Also, Jewish Karaism had a strong zionist ideology. The demolition of their Jerusalem center by the Crusade of 1099 proved this ideology unattainable and brought about their dispersal and absorption in the Karaite pockets of Egypt, Byzantium and Spain.