Originally posted by snowinscotland
Thanks for all that - it is interesting to hear it from a different point of view. As you rightly say, there are some 'books' that were not part of the Christian canon - the 'list' if you like of books that made it into the New Testament. One of these was the Gospel of Judas, another set are the gnostic gospels.
Suppose we took only one of these, s ...[text shortened]... would be any 'discrepancies'?
How many books were written by those around Mohammed?
I'm sorry for that long delay: I was busy:
Suppose we took only one of these, say the gospel according to Luke (and note the title even says it is 'according to' ie a witness perspective). Now if there had been no others there, and Luke's writing were all we had to go from, do you think there would be any 'discrepancies'?
The statment
"the gospel according to Luke" imply that it is written by a man. So to accept this as a word of GOD you have to show me:
1- Who is Luke?, and
2- his relation to Jesus because the Gospel is supposed to be given to Jesus, and also
3- how this Book reached us today?
I don't think there is an answer to these questions. Or some of them.
I didn't talk about the contents but each one of the 4 gospels has a different problem independant of the others.
How many books were written by those around Mohammed?
I hope to answer your question , and I hope my language help me:
There are two main source for Islamic Law:
1- Quran, and I said before there is only one Quran all Muslims belive in, including the 10% I talked about before. So you can't compare to the Gospels, because it has nothing to do with the prophet life. Allah (GOD) is the one who is speeking in Quran.
2- Suna (Hadith) , this is every thing the prophet said or did. Suna is given to us in the form Hadith. Hadith is a text range from 1 line to many pages, give something the prophet said , or something the prophet did. Each hadith is attached with something we call
Isnad. Isnad is simply the history of this hadith. It lists every person who share transfereing this hadith to us,in a chain form starting from the Prophet.
According to the Isnad we can accept or reject Hadith so if you tell me that the prophet said or did something I will ask you about the Isnad, which give us the following:
1- There is no Isnad for your Hadith , so I will not accept it and no Muslim will.
2- You give me Isnad: In this case there are specific books study people who shared in transfaring hadith. So every person is known untill the time Hadith is collected, there are several studies for Isnad, because it could happen that Isnad say X tell Y that Z said, but X , Y were not alive at the same time, so there is a problem in Isnad:
a- Every person in the Isnad is trusted and authenticated, then the hadith accepted.
b- One person in the Isnad is not trusted , or the Isnad has a problem. Then the Hadith is rejected.
Hadith is collected with its Isnad in many books(6 are most important) . But hadith without Isnad doen't mean anything.
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Hadith is not a biography of the prophet , and the Hadith is not ordered in a specific time line. So they can't be compared to Gospels.
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Some Muslims wrote books that act as biography to the prophet, it is based on Hadith too. They tried to order the events mentioned in Hadith to give a view of the prophet life. These books make use of hadith and usually refere to Hadith books. So the rules of Isnad is applied to them. Besides they are not used as a source of Islamic law.