Historical Attestation of Muhammad: Difference between revisions

One fundamental problem with accurately dating the contents of the Qur'an is that the verses, even by traditional Muslim accounts, were not collected and put together into a single book during the lifetime of Muhammad. They were put together at least a decade after his death through a process of gathering and recording verses that had been etched upon scraps of papyrus, bone, and wood along with interviewing members of the early community who had committed parts of the Qur'an to memory.

If this narrative of the Qur'anic collection is true then we are left wondering how accurate was the collection of the book and is the current version of the [[Corruption of the Qur'an|Qur'an corrupted]]? It is possible that parts of the originally recited Qur'an were not included in the book or, worse, entire passages were included that came from an author other than Muhammad. There were countless [[Legends|legends]] and stories circulating at this time in the Middle East and any number of them could have been erroneously added to the Qur'an. Based on this information, we have to question whether the handful of verses we find in the Qur'an about Muhammad's life are actually authentic.  They may well have been fabrications that later found their way into the book we have today.