Jesus: Man, Messenger, Messiah · 6. Preservation

Preservation as a positive argument for divine origin

In short

• 1.The claim was made in advance, in the text itself [15:9], at a time when the community was small and vulnerable.
• 2.It was made by a man who could not have controlled the next fourteen centuries of history.
• 3.No earlier scripture makes and sustains such a claim.
• 4.The prediction is testable — and the manuscript and oral evidence together bear it out.
• 5.Preservation matters theologically: guidance that cannot be trusted to have survived cannot bind anyone.

The claim being examined

Preservation is usually treated by Muslims as a defensive point — the Qur'an merely survived intact.

The Islamic position

Islam presents it as positive evidence: a book that claimed at its revelation that it would be guarded, and then was, made a falsifiable prediction that held.

Analysis

This argument is strongest as a prediction rather than a boast. A seventh-century Arabian text stakes its own credibility on staying unaltered for good — an odd risk for a forger to take. So when the earliest manuscripts, the mass memorisation and modern critical study of the Uthmanic archetype (the single early written copy the surviving manuscripts descend from) all point to a stable text, that is evidence bearing on the claim, not just a statement of faith.

From the Qur'an

Sources

More in 6. Preservation

• The transmission of the Qur'an: memorisation first
• The problem of transmitting ancient texts
• Variants with theological consequences