Most books of the New Testament that were included are blasphemous to Muslims, so what's your point here?
I must have mistread Jihan's post when she stated, "the world may never know...or do they already?" I thought she was saying that maybe some of the non-canonical books may have contained the true teachings of Jesus (pbuh). I was trying to make the point that its unlikely, since what is contained in them, for the most part, doesn't fit in with Islam either.
This comparison, however loose, is way out of line.
Loose? Yes. Out of line? I don't see how so. The comparison was that there were criteria for both. Hadith is more like a science, whereas the selection of the canon was more personal preference of chosen by what would benefit the church most, but there was still a list of criteria that they came up with. The point is that, as careless and self-motivated as they were, the council didn't just lay the books out, closed their eyes, and picked whatever one they landed on. There was at least some rough guideline.
excluding the Apocrypha would have been like excluding all of sahih Muslim volumes.
A lot of the books have some pretty far out there ideas. If one book is vastly different from many, it makes sense that one would come to the conclusion that that one different book is wrong. Maybe thats not the correct conclusion, but I think its easy to see how someone could come to it.
Now, that wouldn't apply to all the books, and its hard to tell what the "majority right" is on it because there's no right or infallible set of books to start with among them. But there are some cases where you could say that "one of these books just doesn't belong".
Not true and please correct me if I'm wrong. Books by Peter and James, for example, were written about the same time if not earlier than some of the books currently found in the New Testament. There hasn't been any scientific proof that the Gospel of Barnabas, for example, was not written at that early period. That of course is the Gospel that clearly states that Jesus was not God, not son of God, not crucified and foretold of the coming of Muhammad, peace be upon him. Peter's book (I don't know its official title) also stated that Jesus was not crucified. Gospel of the Children told the miracle of Jesus speaking in his cradle to defend his mother's honor.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't trust people who throw away books written by native disciples and constant companions of Jesus but include books written by a Roman, self-proclaimed convert who never saw or heard Jesus.
The general criteria was that it had to be written by an apostle, was used frequently in current church services, was consistent and had no contradictions, it had the same basic rules of faith, was written during the apostolic period, and those that were accepted by more churches were given more weight than those accepted by fewer churches.
Like I said, when it comes to hadith it is a science, but when it comes to choosing the canon it was very little science and a lot of personal preference. But still, there was some guideline, no matter how corrupt or imperfect. They had a reason to throw some books out, no matter how self-serving it was.
