Quran 42:53 · Ash-Shuraa

In the present world, no human being can directly talk to God. Man’s humble position is the hindrance to such dialogue. Therefore the revelation of God’s words to the prophets was made in an indirect manner. There are many methods of indirect revelation. Examples of these are found in the lives of the various prophets. When a scholar writes a book or a thinker delivers his discourse, he has a scholastic background which may account or offer an explanation for his later successful academic or intellectual achievement. But the case of the prophet is entirely different. A prophet’s life after attaining prophethood is entirely different from what it was before that event. The present work of a common man appears to be a continuation of or stems from his past life. But, in the case of a prophet, his utterances after the attainment of prophethood are so distinct from those of the earlier period, prior to prophethood, that they cannot be accounted for or explained on the basis of his past. This is a clear indication that a prophet’s words are, in reality, divine in origin and not an ordinary human discourse. What is special about the Prophet Muhammad is that the Quran (the divine message) conveyed by him and his own personal utterances have both been preserved and still exist in their original form. If one who knows Arabic makes a comparative study of both, he will find an obvious difference between these two. The language of the Hadith (sayings of the Prophet) is clearly that of Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah, while the language of the Quran is clearly that of God.