based on this verse which speaks only of one revelation or one law taking the place of another.
The other verse which is supposed to lend support to the theory runs thus: “Whatever message We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We bring one better than it or one like it” (2:106). A reference to the context will show that the Jews or the followers of previous revelations are here addressed. Of these it is said: “they say: We believe in that which was revealed to us; and they deny what is besides that” (2:91). So they were told that if a certain revelation was abrogated, it was only to give place to a better one. And there is mention not only of abrogation but also of something that was forgotten. The words “or cause to be forgotten”25 cannot refer to the Holy Qur’ān at all because no portion of it could be said to have been forgotten so as to require a new revelation in its place. There is no point in supposing that God should first make the Holy Prophet forget a verse and then reveal a new one in its place. Why not, if he really had forgotten a verse, remind him of the one forgotten? But even if it is supposed that his memory ever failed in retaining a certain verse (which really never happened), that verse was quite safely preserved in writing, and the mere failure of the memory could not necessitate a new revelation. That the Holy Prophet never forgot what was recited to him by the Holy Spirit is plainly stated in the Holy Qur’ān: “We shall make thee recite, so thou shalt not forget” (87:6). History also bears out the fact that he never forgot any portion of the Quranic revelation. Sometimes the whole of a very long chapter would be revealed to him in one portion, as in the case of the sixth chapter which extends over twenty sections, but he would cause it to be written down without delay, and make his Companions learn it by heart, and recite it in public prayers, and that without the change of even a letter, notwithstanding the fact that he himself could not read from a written copy, nor did the written copies, as a rule, remain in his possession. It was a miracle indeed that he never forgot any portion of the Holy Qur’ān, though other things he might forget, and it is to his forgetfulness in other things that the words except what Allāh pleases, in the next verse (87:7), refer.26 On the other hand, it is a fact that parts of the older revelations had been utterly lost and
25 Sale’s translation of the words is misleading and has actually deceived many writers on Islām who had no access to the original. He translates the words nunsi-hā as meaning We cause thee to forget. Now the text does not contain any word meaning thee. The slight error makes the verse mean that Almighty God had caused the Holy Prophet to forget certain Qur’ānic verses; whereas the original does not say that the Holy Prophet was made to forget anything but clearly implies that the world was made to forget.
26 The word “except” (illā) is sometimes used in Arabic to indicate istithnā munqaṭi‘, lit. an exception which is cut off, the thing excepted being disunited in kind from that from which an exception is made.