Quote from: Maseehullaah on October 16, 2010, 07:03:42 PM
What I'm saying is that Allaah preserved His Word through the effort of men. Did Allaah drop the Quraan with all its Surahs and Ayats arranged in the right order? did it come down from the clouds as a book between two covers?
Or was it revealed upon the tongue of the Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم? Was it not compiled during the caliphate of 'Uthmaan رضى الله عنه, some two or three decades after the passing away of the Prophet?
So the exact same objection you raise against the Hadeeth can also be made about the Quraan. There is a saying, "Don't throw stones at someone's house if your own house is made of glass"
The earliest complete manuscripts we have of the Quraan are in fact found to be compiled at least a century after the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم passed away:
John Gilchrist states: "The oldest manuscripts of the Quran still in existence date from not earlier than about one hundred years after Muhammad's death." [Gilchrist, "Jam' Al-Qur'an", p. 153]
Even the first hadith compilation we have, the Saheefah of Hammaam ibn Munnabih is dated to earlier than that, the mid-first century of the Islaamic calendar. It contains 138 narrations or Hadiths, 98 of which can be found in Sahih al Bukhari and Sahih Muslim!
Peace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sana'a_manuscripts
This looks like a personal copy and it's older than what the historians you have cited have said. It could even be contemporary to the Prophet's time.
Of the conclusion that we are throwing stones from a glass house, the Hadith are running about 250-300 years after the prophet's death in terms of actual written actualization. That is far more than any estimate for the dating of the Quran and the written actualization I have offered, which clearly gives a solid edge in authenticity to the Quran if we are rating by age. Key word here is "written actualization." I do not know of manuscripts containing the safeehah of hammaam ibn munnabih actually being dated back to 100 years post prophet. That is based on historical accounts. If you relied on that same cocktail of historical accounts concerning the Quran (written down much later than they occurred), you would come to the conclusion that the Quran existed either during the prophets time or at the time of Umar, which is again much earlier than the same contemporary oral accounts of hadiths.
Further, the Quran is much smaller than the hadith so it is theoretically easier to maintain it.
It would be silly to argue that the Quran didn't rely on man made transmission because all Muslims at least believe that the Quran came through the prophet. Yet, the man made process of accumulation that the hadith went through are far more prone to suspicion due to lack of authenticity than the Quran. I think the confusion here is that some think Quran only followers only discount the hadith because of historical uncertainty. In fact, I believe that a nice yet uncertain general story can be made from the hadiths yet the uncertainty of the story we find in the Quran. Hence the appeal to uncertainty as a way of pointing to Quranic superiority.
...I have memorized most of the Quran in Arabic Maseelulah and I'm a Quran only follower. I can recite a lot of verses in English too.
Independent of that though I am shocked at how illiterate concerning the Quran most traditional Muslims actually are. Even people I know who have memorized the Quran do not actually know what it means. This included my self back in the day when I was memorizing the book in Arabic. Don't take this as a generalization because the most intelligent Muslim I know actually memorized the Quran in arabic, but still, we spend our time understanding the verses on this website instead of reciting something we don't understand (which does have its own beauty).
Peace