Posted: Nov 29, 2010 11:00 pm
aakalim wrote:Hadiths are merely eyewitness accounts and reports of the sayings and actions of the Prophet, transmitted through chain of narrations, these may be right or wrong. In fact Muslim scholars themselves claim that many of these Ahadith are not authentic. The very mode through which they are transmitted leaves a lot of room for errors and fabrications to creep into the text. That is why Muslim scholars devised a whole new science of investigating the soundness of Hadith, and this is an ongoing process.
The Hadith you have quoted above are two different ahadith having different chain of narrators. Consider that these two do have minor contradictions in terms of small details i.e whit or brown color, but the basic story that both of them are narrating is the same. So we basically have two different persons, narrating from two different sources what they heard from the Prophet and they basically agree, except for some minor details.
The two Hadiths I quoted are from Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, the two collections considered most authentic by Sunni Muslims.
And I think those differences illustrate a problem with the whole Hadith "science". Jesus' appearance may not be significant in Islamic theology, but if such blatant narrative contradictions from the same supposed event can survive, then something is wrong. Both of those Hadiths are Sahih, yet at least one of them is incorrect.