I am an amateur in religion and know only a few things about many religions. My question was, since these are such important religious texts which were sent by 'God's and the preachers - Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Vyasa, Valmiki, etc - were such important people, there should be direct manuscripts from them, isn't it? Like direct documents written by Abraham, Jesus, Muhammad, Valmiki, etc, right? You know, preserved manuscripts of Koran, Bible, Mahabharata, written directly by Muhammad, Abraham/Moses/Jesus, Vyasa, etc.
My question is simple: where are they, if Historians have ever found them? If they haven't been found, how can Historians say for certain these guys existed at all?
This question came into my mind because whenever I have read any snippets from religious texts, it is always in third person in third person. Like someone is narrating about someone narrating someone. Why?
In the case of the Qur’an, it is written in third person because (according to belief) it is God speaking to Muhammad, hence the text is addressed from one speaker to another.
We do not have texts written in Muhammad’s hand as he was supposed to be illiterate. The traditional accounting of the Qur’an is that it was compiled into a definitive version under the second caliph, ‘Umar (634-644), whose daughter, Hafsa, had collected various pieces that were written down. (The Qur’an was originally transmitted orally, but the armies of Islam were expanding into new territory and there was a need for a definitive version; at any rate, because vowels are not written in Arabic slight variations occurred and there are seven accepted readings of the text.)
While we do not know for certain who compiled the text, a few years ago a manuscript was discovered in the library at Birmingham (UK) that dates (at least, the material it’s written on does) to around the time period that the Qur’an was said to have been compiled (or, rather, the material was dated and found to be older than previously thought—they obviously knew the book existed in the collection!). In the 1970s, when the Great Mosque at Sana’a, Yemen, was being renovated workers also found a cache of Qur’an manuscripts that date to within a few decades of Muhammad’s life. (There’s also one in Tashkent that is supposed to be the one the third caliph, Uthman, was holding when he was assassinated in 656, but the material has been dated to the 9th century. Good story though).
Part of the issue with trying to find the ‘originals’ is that the original material would have been parchment, which is animal skin, and decays easily if it’s not well preserved—maintaining them for the future wasn’t necessary a priority for the first copies which were sent out to the armies so that they could have a definitive copy of the text as they were on the march. There wasn’t a value placed on the physical text except for the fact that it contained what Muslims believe to be God’s word, and so procedures were developed on what to do with a text that’s worn out and needs to be retired—but it wasn’t until the writing of the text became an art form in itself a few centuries later that the actual copies were prized and considered worth keeping.
As for the question of Muhammad’s existence, he is attested in other sources. Check out this post in the FAQ.