The quran was supposedly recited by Muhammed throughout his life.
Supposedly? There is voluminous authentic proof of this fact. The Qur’an is recited by every single Muslim every single day. Every year the entire thing is recited over the period of a month, a little every night. The entire thing has been memorized by countless Muslims throughout history, and is memorized today exactly the same way. Supposedly recited? Sheesh.
Verses of the quran were written down on bark and scraps of paper.
True! The Qur’an was revealed in pieces, a little at a time. It was revealed to Muhammad, and he recited it to his followers–they memorized it and they wrote it down on whatever they could find.
When Muhammed died there was not codified collection of these pieces make and reviewed by muhammed.
This is also true! However, before Muhammad died he recited the entire Qur’an to the angel Gabriel TWICE to check it for accuracy. Literally HUNDREDS of Muslims had the entire Qur’an memorized–word for word, in order. There was no compilation of the Qur’an, however all the Muslims knew the Qur’an for their prayers and many like I said had the entire thing memorized–including the order, beginning to end.
Right there should raise alarms.
As has been pointed out, this isn’t necessary. We don’t have a record of ANY of Christ’s sayings being written down in his lifetime, much less an entire text preserved from God.
There is no evidence that the book called the quran today would be recognized by Muhammed.
There is, in fact, abundant evidence for this fact.
After his death there immediately started arguments over the various pieces of text floating around and people were essentially following various forms of islam based on the version or type of the text they had. The 3rd caliph named Uthman decided to remedy this.
Your starting statement could be true, but when you mention Uthman you’ve gone off track because you missed the compilation of the Qur’an, which happened long before Uthman! Let me explain.
There was a battle while Abu Bakr was caliph (and he was only for two years after the death of Muhammad!) during which many of the people who had memorized Qur’an had been killed. So, it was Umar’s idea (notice, Umar, not Uthman) to have the Qur’an written down in one single volume because the memorizers were being killed. Abu Bakr was leary of doing that, because that hadn’t been done before, to compile the text, but eventually agreed. So it was while Abu Bakr was the caliph, within two years after the death of Muhammad, that the Qur’an was compiled. The scribes did use some of the written pieces but they were writing down anew, and every single verse had to be verified by at least two people who had memorized it before it was written down and included. And may I remind you that there were still many many people who had the entire Qur’an memorized. The volume which arose from this effort was kept with Abu Bakr until his death and then it was kept with Hafsah, who was the daughter of 'Umar and widow of Muhammad.
Now, this was the single existing compiled volume which had been crosschecked and everything this way. While 'Uthman was caliph, people started teaching the Qur’an incorrectly (because by then Islam had spread to lands which were not so well versed in Arabic, and the Qur’an is in Arabic) so to preserve the Qur’an, five COPIES were made of the original volume, and sent out to the major Muslim cities. The same scribes made these copies as the original, as far as I know. It was then, to make sure that nobody would confuse the actual authentic COPIES with those random pages, bark, etc., which hadn’t been verified or compiled, that everything else was burned.
He sent around for all the scraps that the quran verses were written on. he then codified it into a single book. Unfortunately he burned all the scraps so we have no idea if the book he created was the exact thing (or even close) to what muhammed supposedly recited.
This is your mistake, which I have clarified above. It was not Uthman who compiled the Qur’an, it was scribes, and it happened before Uthman was caliph. So he didn’t codify it–he only had it copied.
The Qur’an is really a major interest of mine, and there is an excellent book in English which explains all this in further detail, and the Arabic scripts used and how manuscripts are dated and also finer points on understanding the Qur’an and manuscripts which survived. It’s called “'Uloom al-Qur’an” (i.e., Sciences of the Qur’an) by Ahmed von Denffer. Islamic Awareness (
islamicawareness.org) also has tons and tons of information about compilation of the Qur’an and manuscripts, which can clarify all those poor misconceptions you learned at answering-islam.
