Guest blogger Samuel Green has researched and written many articles which have come from his desire to understand Islam and from the many questions that Muslims have raised with him or he has heard Islamic leaders comment on. His desire is that we all try and work through our differences and agree on God’s will. Here is an extract from his February Newsletter (permission granted).
I would like to talk to you about a new way I have been talking to Christians and Muslims about the Qur’an.
When Christians and Muslims talk it is important to have some similar concepts so that we can appreciate what each other is saying. I think such a concept is that of the synoptic Qur’ans. This helps Christians to understand better the nature of the Qur’an and it helps Muslims to understand the nature of the New Testament.
So what do I mean when I talk about the synoptic Qur’ans?
Muhammad never made a collection of the Qur’an; it was his companions who did this and he allowed variation in the way they did it.
Muhammad’s companions made their collections from their own material and a variety of other sources. These Qur’ans were highly similar yet different. Some had 111 chapters, others 116. The chapters were arranged differently and there were differences in the verses themselves.
These different Qur’ans were consistent but each had its own unique character. In the early history of Islam there were synoptic Qur’ans.
However it was decided that only one of these Qur’ans would be preserved and the others were destroyed and so Islam has one Qur’an today. It is as if the church got rid of Mark, Luke and John and kept Matthew.
This action of the early Muslims may have made Islam simpler, there is only one Qur’an, but it has made it all the poorer. Not preserving all these other authentic synoptic Qur’ans removed the testimony of significant companions and how they understood the content and presentation of the Qur’an. Again, imagine how much poorer Christianity would be if it had only preserved the Gospel according to Matthew?
Also, the more evidence you destroy the less confident you can be. Removing the testimony of the other authentic synoptic Qur’ans means we have less material to work with and this can only led to less confidence.
Finally, Muslims have said to me, “There were 30 Gospels and Christians only kept four. What about the others?” The early Christians had good reasons for keeping the Gospels they did; these were the authentic Gospels, but this question can equally be asked of the Muslims. There are over a dozen different Qur’ans from which only one was selected; what about the others? But the situation is actually worse for Islam. Christians preserved what was authentic, four Gospels, while Muslims destroyed what was authentic and just kept one version of the Qur’an.
Speaking about the Qur’an in these synoptic categories is advantageous because it is an accurate descripts of what happened and it also provides categories to help Christians and Muslims understand better the nature of their scriptures.
A fuller version is available at: http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2014/01/jesus-gospels-and-synoptic-qurans.html
Your brother in Christ, Samuel Green
More information on Samuel’s work is available at: http://www.answering-islam.org/Green/
