Quran Wa Sunnah
Qur’an is not the same as the Sunnah as far as the preservation is concerned because it’s in the hearts of millions of people (memorized) and also Allah has promised to protect it as you have correctly mentioned
You see this is not a ‘who knows’ . This practice of salah and transmission fo Quran tk this date is not based on some (Quran) old manuscript that we dig up and find. The same way all Muslims have been praying five times a day since the beginning not six or seven. Imagine today trying to make the daily prayers six. The same way it is impossible now it was impossible back then. Same is for method of the prayer
Firstly, Hazrat Esa (AS) didn’t get a chance to actually revive and portray that Sunnah the way Prophet Muhammad (SWS) got the chance to do that. He didn’t get leadership of a state, neither were there any considerable number of followers to actually perpetually transfer that religion to a level where it reaches to the level of Ijma and Tawatur starting from the source point i.e. Esa (AS). Secondly, Bani-Ismael were following tradition of Hazrat Ismael (AS) which did have amalgamation of certain religious innovations in them as well (a glimpse of which can be seen in the Quran when it mentions innovation of Quraysh during Hajj). Among other things, Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon Him) was ordered to revive that tradition of Abrahamic religion and He revived and disseminated it to a level where its dependency on historical narrations became irrelevant through Ijma and Tawatur. Thirdly, the verse that you mentioned (8:35) is referring to Salah-tul-Bait which refers to tawaf of Kaaba. Even if you take it in the meaning of regular Salah, it would still mean that they were perfectly aware of the concept and word of Salah, it is the same reason Prophet was sent to put an end to all these innovations and revive it back to original Abrahamic way. Fourthly, If corpus of Ahadith according to you contains all the Sunnah among other things, there is not a single Hadith where prophet has gathered people and initiated any such thing like Salah, Zakah, Hajj, Saum etc. All ahadith refer to either application instances and to situations where some questions had arisen in between the application of those Sunnah. Had ahadith been the source of religion, they should contain explicit narrations of Prophet (sws) ordering initiation of these Sunnah. Lastly, there are also issues related to mode of transmission of Hadith. Their veracity to Prophet Muhammad (sws) can never be established with 100% confidence. That is why it is always termed as ‘Zanni ilm’ / ‘Zanni-us-saboot’ ilm in terms of usool-e-Hadith and fiqh. People who tried to establish its 100% veracity used very vague arguments like Ibn-e-Salah, for example, used the current ijma of ummat and ‘masoomiat’ (innocence) of ummat argument to establish the veracity of Bukhari and Muslim. From an academic standpoint, what we can do is to analyse all the corpus of ahadith rigorously and apply rules of rijal to establish health of narrators and then analyse the same corpus in the light of Quran and Sunnah to reach to a level of confidence as to present those words as words of Prophet (sws). Even after doing that, I haven’t come across any Hadith myself according to my limited research where it adds something to the religion. Even if this still doesn’t make sense to you, please keep following the series on “Response to 23 Questions” by Ghamidi Sahab, according to my understanding, Hadith and Sunnah will be discussed in detail in the coming sessions Insha’Allah. Hopefully those sessions might clear the point we’re trying to purport.
Also, pls. note the hadith in question ” I have left two things in you Qur’an and Sunnah” has another variant which suggests the 2nd weighty thing is Ahl-e-Bayt not Sunnah. In the authentic Sunni books like Sahi Muslim, it says Ahl-e-Bayt. Hassan Ilyas sb. has worked on this narration, based on his research the original narration only says Quran (neither Sunnah nor Ahl-e-Bayt).
Thank you.I will read it more carefully
Jazakallahu khair Umer bhai..