78 Preface وَمِنهُم أُمِّيّونَ لا يَعلَمونَ الكِتابَ إِلّا أَمانِيَّ وَإِن هُم إِلّا يَظُنّونَYusuf AliAnd there are among them1 illiterates, who know not the Book, but (see therein their own) desires, and they do nothing but conjecture.The argument of 2:76 is continued. The Jews wanted to keep back knowledge, but what knowledge had they? Many of them, even if they could read, were no better than illiterates, for they knew not their own true Scriptures, but read into them what they wanted, or at best their own conjectures. They palmed off their own writings for the Message of God. Perhaps it brought them profit for the time being: but it was a miserable profit if they “gained the whole world and lost their own souls” (Matt. 16:26). “Writing with their own hands” means inventing books themselves, which had no divine authority. The general argument is similar. Unfaith erects its own false gods. It attributes things to causes which only exist in its own imagination. Sometimes it even indulges in actual dishonest traffic in the ignorance of the multitude. It may pay for a time, but the bubble always bursts.