I've read many Muslim authors raising the point that Ahmad Deedat once wrote "In His life time, Jesus never wrote a single word, nor did he instruct anyone to do so." (Ahmad Deedat, Is the Bible the Word of God? (Durban: Islamic Propagation Centre, 1982)
Now, this is true.. but then again is that sufficient enough for us to therefore discount the credibility of the Christian Scriptures?
Muhammad himself could not write according to Islamic history and he didn't instruct Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman to collect and compile one official Qur'an, from what I have read. In fact, Buhari states that when Zaid Bin Thabit was asked by Umar and Abu Bakr to collect and compile the first Qur'an, he said "How would you do something, that which Allah's apostle did not do?" It was Abu Bakr, not Muhammad, who replied, "By Allah it is a good project." (Sahih al -Bukhari, Vol 6, p477.
Now, please remember the words of Jesus before His crucifixion in John 14:26- 16:13. .. He promised them that the Holy Spirit would remind them of all things he had said and done, and after His resurrection, he instructed them to spread the message to all nations. (Matthew 28:18-20).
Now, the Qur'an was collected into a fixed form after Muhammad's death, as were the Gospel narratives after Jesus' ascension. If Muhammad's companions are said to have remembered what he told or narrated to them in order that the Qur'an could be written down, then it's every bit as possible and credible to believe that Jesus' disciples remembered what Jesus said to them and wrote down His very words.
It's equally interesting, that rather than combine all the memories into one book and call it the Gospel, the Disciples kept their memories separate and this explains why we have four complementary Gospels today.
We call them the Gospel, but really we should say "the Gospel according to John" or the Gospel according to Luke, which is how the Greek titles each of the Gospels.
The Qur'an itself has at least two narratives of Jesus' birth and several narratives of some stories of Abraham, Adam and Noah within its one collection. Yet Muslims still accept that it is reliable scripture. Accordingly, it should not be a problem to find four narratives of what Jesus said and did in the Christian Scriptures.
and from my understanding.. The Qur'an states that all these Scriptures were revealed by God: "...confirming that which was (revealed) before it, even as He revealed the Torah and the Gospel" (Qur'an 3:3). and
"If thou art in doubt concerning that We reveal unto thee, then question those who read Scripture (that was) before thee" (Qur'an 10:94).
Let's discuss this more. For me, it makes interesting discussion.