The Sayings and Unwritten Sayings of Jesus from Muslim Sources
Not all that Jesus said and did was recorded in the Gospels, nor written down elsewhere, since "the world itself could not contain the books that would be written" (Jn 21:25). The Gospels are a selection—and a divinely-inspired one—but only a selection. Even Paul goes outside that selection: "It is better to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35) is found nowhere in the Gospels. Early Christian tradition has passed down a number of non-Scriptural sayings of Jesus, such as "Wherein I find you, there I will judge you," and "He that is near Me is near fire. He that is far from Me is far from the Kingdom." (For a collection of these early agrapha , "unwritten sayings," see Montague Rhodes James, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 33-37.) The farther we go from the earliest Fathers, the more tenuous any reported saying will be. Yet that doesn't stop traditions from being claimed. So it is that many Muslim a...