The Quran

وَقالَت طائِفَةٌ مِن أَهلِ الكِتابِ آمِنوا بِالَّذي أُنزِلَ عَلَى الَّذينَ آمَنوا وَجهَ النَّهارِ وَاكفُروا آخِرَهُ لَعَلَّهُم يَرجِعونَ

Muhammad Asad

And some of the followers of earlier revelation say [to one another]: "Declare your belief in what has been revealed unto those who believe [in Muhammad] at the beginning of the day, and deny the truth of what came later,¹ so that they might go back [on their faith];

Most of the commentators, relying on views current among some of the tabi'un (i.e., the generation that came after the Companions of the Prophet), understand this passage thus: "Declare at the beginning of the day your belief in what has been revealed unto those who believe in Muhammad, and deny the truth [thereof] in its latter part." This rendering would imply that the Judaeo-Christian attempts at confusing the Muslims, to which the above verse refers, consisted in alternatingly declaring belief and disbelief in the Qur'anic message. On the other hand, the rendering adopted by me (and supported by Al-Asam, whose interpretation has been quoted by Razi in his commentary on this verse) implies that some Jews and Christians have been and are hoping to achieve this end by admitting, however reluctantly, that there may be "some truth" in the early Qur'anic revelations ("that which has been revealed at the beginning of the day"), while they categorically reject its later parts inasmuch as they clearly contradict certain Biblical teachings.