>Thousands of people had the entire Quran committed to memory during the lifetime of Mohammad. //
Your comment doesn't address the claim.
Once the canonical written version of the Koran had been established memorising the entire text is relatively easy. Prior to that you would have had to be present when Mohammed revealed the narrations or had a precise rendition of that oration conveyed to you. At times Mohammed only spoke to one or two people when revealing surah. Having thousands of people memorise a number of separate orations exactly without any problem of conflicting versions is really impossible. Conveying the general meaning is within the realms of possibility; surahs revealed to large groups might even allow the preservation of some of the actual wording too.
Take an example - Armstrong's speech when stepping on to the moon, was it "one small step for a man" or was the "a" not spoken? This is probably the most pored over of all speeches ever, millions of witnesses. Did no camel ever brae in the tents of the Qureshi tribe in Mohammed's time?
Abrogation causes further problems to this claim as not only do all "thousands" have to remember the exact wording used but the exact order too, and they have only a couple of months from the end of Mohammed's narrations to learn the last of them. Not only do they need to know the order, for abrogation purposes (to learn the way to act) but they have to remember the narrations in the same non-temporal order as everyone else. I can believe even that many of Mohammed's followers remembered surah, mostly that they agreed on wording, but not at all that they remembered it in the "wrong" (ie not the delivered order) and that the order it was remembered in was identical (ie was "the entire Quran").
Doesn't 2:106 say that Allah causes ayats to be forgotten, those ayats must have been in the original - else they wouldn't have been narrated by Mohammed - but aren't now remembered and so are not in the "entire Quran".
Of course if surah 25:32 (http://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=25&verse=32) that says the Koran was revealed piecemeal is wrong and surah 2:185 is right then the whole Koran was passed on in one month (including future conversations) which makes it easier to attain unanimous agreement but also means that [if tradition that the Koran was passed on in 10 days is correct] the hearers were remembering > 600 ayats of prose each day for 10 days in a row; quite a feat for illiterate desert tribesmen regardless of whether they had a tradition of oral history or not.
I'm very interested in the Muqatta'at too - how were written character variations conveyed by the "thousands"?
Very fair argument. However there also existed a consistent, full-time effort by significant numbers of people, around 70 in number, (known as Ashab as Suffa or People of The Platform) whose sole job was to memorize the Koran (and learn its interpretations) during the lifetime of Mohammed. They lived in the mosque pretty much all day, and did nothing else. Their learning was regularly checked, and presumably feedback given by Mohammed, until his death. It is not impossible to imagine that they were able to memorize and organize the current canonical text in the right order, even though it was revealed piecemeal. After Mohammed's death, these people went on to travel all over the Islamic world and teach students, giving rise to the "thousands" of memorizers within the 2nd generation of Islam, with no recorded incidents of version conflicts among the 7 established dialects.
However even with that, it is understandably difficult to believe that no mistakes were made in transmission. That's why the Quran calls it a miracle, and calls it Allah's job, to safeguard the integrity the Quran. That fact there is an established canonical version today with zero conflicts among all major prints in all countries is somewhat of a miracle, considering the fact that Muslims across cultures argue and disagree about a lot of other things within the religion.
As for the Muqatta'at, they are a part of regular recitation - they are not simply written characters.
There is an established canonical version today because Uthman set about the task of destroying all texts except the one he preferred. It's obvious why Muslims would wish a standardized text, but from a secular perspective, this was no miracle, but a tragic loss of historical sources and artifacts.
> At times Mohammed only spoke to one or two people when revealing surah. Having thousands of people memorise a number of separate orations exactly without any problem of conflicting versions is really impossible.
And that's the point of why it is considered a miracle. Transmission of the Quran has always been orally and will continue to be. The general meaning is preserved within the text, however, the correct recitation(s) are not.
You can't pick up the Quran and expect to be reciting it correctly.
Your comment doesn't address the claim.
Once the canonical written version of the Koran had been established memorising the entire text is relatively easy. Prior to that you would have had to be present when Mohammed revealed the narrations or had a precise rendition of that oration conveyed to you. At times Mohammed only spoke to one or two people when revealing surah. Having thousands of people memorise a number of separate orations exactly without any problem of conflicting versions is really impossible. Conveying the general meaning is within the realms of possibility; surahs revealed to large groups might even allow the preservation of some of the actual wording too.
Take an example - Armstrong's speech when stepping on to the moon, was it "one small step for a man" or was the "a" not spoken? This is probably the most pored over of all speeches ever, millions of witnesses. Did no camel ever brae in the tents of the Qureshi tribe in Mohammed's time?
Abrogation causes further problems to this claim as not only do all "thousands" have to remember the exact wording used but the exact order too, and they have only a couple of months from the end of Mohammed's narrations to learn the last of them. Not only do they need to know the order, for abrogation purposes (to learn the way to act) but they have to remember the narrations in the same non-temporal order as everyone else. I can believe even that many of Mohammed's followers remembered surah, mostly that they agreed on wording, but not at all that they remembered it in the "wrong" (ie not the delivered order) and that the order it was remembered in was identical (ie was "the entire Quran").
Doesn't 2:106 say that Allah causes ayats to be forgotten, those ayats must have been in the original - else they wouldn't have been narrated by Mohammed - but aren't now remembered and so are not in the "entire Quran".
Of course if surah 25:32 (http://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=25&verse=32) that says the Koran was revealed piecemeal is wrong and surah 2:185 is right then the whole Koran was passed on in one month (including future conversations) which makes it easier to attain unanimous agreement but also means that [if tradition that the Koran was passed on in 10 days is correct] the hearers were remembering > 600 ayats of prose each day for 10 days in a row; quite a feat for illiterate desert tribesmen regardless of whether they had a tradition of oral history or not.
I'm very interested in the Muqatta'at too - how were written character variations conveyed by the "thousands"?