In answer to the video "Muslim Problems? Muslim Polemics!"
The 2 processes are miles appart. There was never any canonization process and debates, revisions over what the Quran's contents had to be. This is exactly what occured with the Bible with different canons over time. Nothing in the history of the Quranic text, even by the furthest stretch of imaginaton and revisionist fantasies, can be compared to the tumultuous 400 years following Jesus' death, which marked the canonization process of the Bible. During that period numerous canons of the bible were produced, each combining different gospels, rejecting and adding things from the HB and adding to the NT. Even today, the Protestant, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Greek Orthodox, Coptic, Ethiopic, Syriac churches boast their different bibles as God's Word.
According to some estimates, early Christians wrote at least twenty gospels that weren't included in the bible. The apocryphal Gospels were rejected because of many reasons including doubtful authorship yet the canonized scriptures arent that much more authentic. Some books are considered apocrypha by the western church and scripture by the eastern church. When comparing the canonical and apocryphal writings, it isnt a case of first-hand versus second-hand information. It is merely a choice between doctrinal points of view, with the choice being made by men with a doctrinal bias. Some have been partially preserved such as the Gospel of Thomas. It is different than the infancy gospel of Thomas, and lacks any mention of crucifixion or resurrection. It is considered by some scholars to be the or one of the initial documents out of which developped the other more elaborate gospels. This Gospel of Thomas was for the first 2 centuries considered holy scriptures. The same with the gospels of Matthaias or the "The Twelve", Acts of Andrew or Acts of John, Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas. The last 2 books were still included in the codex sinaiticus, which is the earliest complete copy of the NT that is dated to around the year 350.
There is also the Didache and the Apocalypse of Peter. On the other hand rejected by the early church fathers were Paul’s letter to Philemon, the 2nd and 3rd letters of John, the 2nd letter of Peter and the General Epistle of Jude, all part of the canon after Christianity became the state religion. Nobody ever found the books from which the writers of the NT are sometimes quoting, as in Jn7:38,Lk11:49 or James4:5,Jude1:14-15.
The Book of Revelations was considered apocrypha for the first 200 years of the Christian Church and then suddenly became God-inspired. However even as late as the 4th-century, many Christians either rejected it in favor of the Apocalypse of Peter, or believed that they should both be included in the canon. Revelations is a book of warnings to the deviant churches that were being absorbed by paganism, and consolation to those that remained distinctively Christian, containing retrospective prophecies betraying its restricted historical context ie the Roman empire, using mythical and pagan symbolisms, sometimes gross caricatures in its references to heaven/hell, God, Jesus, the angels or Satan, as well as symbolisms from certain passages of the HB. It has no relevance to modern times or in predicting events that are still awaiting fulfillement, contrary to the countless fruitless attempts of later Christians who have all failed in taking the book out of the historical context for which it was meant in their bid to instill fear and hope in their congregations, as well demonize whoever was/is seen as a major threat.
The Epistle of St James was ignored for centuries until the Council of Trent put it in the canon in 1563. That book received a cool reception, obviously as it appeals greatly to JEwish scriptures, rejects the Pauline concept of "faith alone".
In the 2nd century, Marcion who claimed to have known Paul, composed the first NT, calling it "Evangelicon" which he attributed to Paul himself, and appended ten of Paul's epistles to it. He rejected all of Jewish scriptures, based on YHWH's cruelty versus Paul's loving god. One can argue he was right in a sense, nothing could be further in terms of similarities than the Gods and their plan for creation than the Gods of the HB and the NT.
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