ABSTRACT
Like its monotheistic cousins, Islam is a religion of the divine revelation. For the Christians, the divine revelation is embodied in the personality of Christ, who is nothing less than the divine word made flesh. The Christian holy book, the Gospel, is based on personal reminiscences, albeit divinely inspired, of its human creators. They document the life, words, and acts of the founder of the Christian movement. The authors of these accounts are clearly identified by the Christian scripture as Mark, Luke, John, and Matthew. 1 By the fourth century of the Christian era, it had been decided which of these accounts should be included in the authentic, or canonical, scripture, while others were dismissed as noncanonical, or apocryphal. 2 In Islam, as we remember, the canonical version of the Qur’anic text was established early on the orders of the caliph ‘Uthman, and its noncanonical versions were destroyed.
