That's what I said .. you think that the Qura'n is not a Divine Revelation .. you think it's the same as the Bible i.e. A collection of scrolls by different authors.
Nope. I believe the Bible is Revelation.
You are confusing what people claim, and what Almighty God claims in the Qur'an..
Er, I rather think you are reading what one person believes and what you believe as being substantially different. It's not.
I believe the Bible is Revelation because God says so.
You believe the Qur'an is Revelation because God says so.
See ... ?
No it isn't! How do you know that it has not been corrupted over time?
Science and scholarship has really disproved those who claim it has been. The comparison of the various texts in existence, the writings of the Church Fathers who quote extensively from Scripture, the Qmran finds ... in all this evidence, there is nothing that indicates a significant difference in the text, let alone signs of corruption ...
Now, you may say that the same could be said about the Qur'an, but it cannot
Actually, the idea that the Qur'an was edited by one person and the authorised version produced is not at all accurate and discreetly overlooks a number of issues regarding the source material. There is a huge amount of scholarship that challenges the given narrative of its origin (see wiki, for example).
In short, there is ample reason and evidence to doubt the Qur'an. I'm not saying it's fake, I'm not saying it's not Revelation, I'm simply saying in my belief, on evidence, that:
A) The Qur'an is not free of error, nor was its formation as clean and simple as Moslem PR would have us believe. That's not to say it's corrupted, but simply that the idea that it is preserved free of error (as Inerrant Christians assert of the Bible) is somewhat a romantic and rose-tinted view.
B) With regard to Christianity, two further points:
B1) The narrative stories of Jesus were spurious and dismissed by early authorities. Remember that Mary, His mother, was at the heart of the church (Luke got his narrative stories directly from her). These fictional narratives did not emerge until centuries later, and had no provenance.
B2) The Christians in the Prophet's (pbuh) world were Docetists, and the Docetists believed that it was not Christ, but another, who was crucified in His place. Again, science and scholarship has dismissed this error, but apparently the Prophet (pbuh) received this information from Docetic sources, which his followers assumed to be from the Angel.
There is evidence of material in the Qur'an that has pre-Islamic Christian origins. The selection and upbringing of Mary parallels much of the
Protovangelium of James, with the miracle of the palm tree and the stream of water being found in the
Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. In Pseudo-Matthew, the flight to Egypt is narrated similarly to how it is found in Islamic lore, and the infancy tales in the
Protoevangelium of James and
The Infancy Story of Thomas.
Regarding the Qur'an:
According to the Tradition, the Prophet recited perfectly what the archangel Gabriel revealed to him and this was memorised by his companions.
Muslims are taught that text today corresponds exactly to that spoken by the Prophet between 610–632.
Early Arabic script transcribed 28 consonants, of which only 6 can be readily distinguished, the remaining 22 can only be determined by context. It was only with the introduction of Arabic diacritics centuries later, that the authorised version of the text was issued.
The precise way to read the verses of the sacred text were not fixed even in the day of the Prophet. Two men disputing a verse asked a third to mediate, and he came up with a third reading. To resolve the question, the three went to Muhammad.
He asked first man to read out the verse, and announced it was correct.
He made the same response when the second alternative reading was delivered.
When he heard the third version, he pronounced it correct.
Noting their perplexity, Muhammad then told him, "Pray to God for protection from the accursed Satan."
So there is no 'authorised' reading of the text.
In Muir's
The Life of Mahomet the author was researching the 9th century Imam Al-Bukhari:
"Reliance upon oral traditions, at a time when they were transmitted by memory alone, and every day produced new divisions among the professors of Islam, opened up a wide field for fabrication and distortion. There was nothing easier, when required to defend any religious or political system, than to appeal to an oral tradition of the Prophet. The nature of these so-called traditions, and the manner in which the name of Muhammad was abused to support all possible lies and absurdities, may be gathered most clearly from the fact that Al-Bukhari who travelled from land to land to gather from the learned the traditions they had received, came to conclusion, after many years sifting,
that out of 600,000 traditions, ascertained by him to be then current, only 4000 were authentic!" (my emphasis)
According to contemporary sources, there was no single compiled book by the time of Muhammad's death.
I can't view your profile, but I assume that you are a Christian.
Worse than that ... Catholic!
I believe what Jesus is reported to have said as being the truth eg. the synoptic gospels
I was raised a Christian, and am very thankful for my education
So way I, and frankly am appalled by general Christian education. I embarked on years of the study of comparative religion, and later did a degree in Catholic theology.
I have no axe to grind with Islam, and I'm not saying the Qur'an is not revealed ... just not all of it ... my primary interest is in the human struggle towards God, and I see the Bible as a story of emergence along that path.
As a metaphysician I dispute 'successive revelation' — Truth is Eternal and One, and no amount of contemporary language will make it more accessible. It is the role of theologians to 'unpack' the message and bring it to life, as it were.
Pontius Pilate thought he was .. and so did Herod along with John the Baptist