Assorted Thoughts:
My evolving view is currently at:
Mount Sinai was a massive event, these things were scrambled to be recorded down with the book of Genesis itself being a preservation of something much older (and with it's connections with other middle eastern legends).
The "Torah" is in two parts, there are those five books but there is also the Talmud (within it the Mishna and Midrash, among others).
Jews did a fairly good job at trying to preserve all this history and revelation, although they were not perfect.
The figure of Jesus is far more complex. The physical historical person who taught the doctrine of the Gospel of the Kingdom, was one thing. His life is another thing.
The New Testament represents a lot of the competing views of him, as well as a much less pristine attempt to preserve him.
The Ebionites were definitely the closest to the actual early Nazarene community.
The Christian 'gospels' (reinvention of the term to mean books) are one thing, Gnostic 'gospels' are another. Like prior, we are dealing with the attempts at preserving oral tradition.
As the final verse of the gospel of John says: "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written."
This is itself a hint towards a validation of much of what is contained in 'gnostic' texts, because we are dealing with various groups spread around the middle east at the time who had different bits of this original oral tradition spanning what Jesus taught and his life.
(this is also why the Qur'an seems to reference some things about Jesus found in gnostic texts - such as making clay birds etc)
The main point is that Jesus is not limited to just those four books, just as Muhammad isn't limited to one hadith collection.
Then we have the case of Islam which is a state of finality, to however you interpret that.
Muhammad received and preserved that last revelation (Qur'an) which expounds all things.
From the very earliest period, everyone knew not to conflate the Qur'an with the sayings and life of Muhammad, that the two were connected but not the same (something that never happened with Jesus).
The oral tradition surrounding Muhammad and his life consequently amassed a very voluminous library of records. Unlike with the Christian gospels, these collections known as hadith have no explicit 'canon', there is rather methodologies of verifying authentic accounts from inauthentic accounts because of the wise practice of recording chains of transmission.
So out of Islam we get a much broader and prolific recording of the Prophet.
Unlike the previous two, the revelation itself (Qur'an) was standardized very early on and hasn't changed, it is not conflated with Hadith.
Basically we have three very different paradigms for recording history and revelations received by Prophets.
The Qur'an is expounding, refuting and unveiling light out of a very very complex situation prior. It is finding the diamond in the rough, re-establishing what was all along meant to be a universal revelation.
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Aspects of Our Apocalyptic Age:
I am slowly intuiting a kind of religio-phenomenological-sociological kind of map of how different religious movements/religions, esoteric movements and socio-political things all relate to each other.
History does seem to consist of a lot of really radical occultists who's revelations become split into parts of competing factions who crystallize into an embodiment of the age/era which appeals towards a wider-audience. There is a strange competing between the mainstream and the fringe/elite/initiated.
There is the visible and the shadow, in other words.
Every religious movement also has it's political parallel as there are political systems created, either directly related to it (such as the Catholic Church or the Sunni Caliphates, etc) or indirectly. Every century has it's own zeitgeists and 'currents' (to use Thelemic terminology).
The current period, seems to have this gradual shattering of a very bright and pristine esoteric light. It seems to have started at the revelation of Islam via the Ahlulbat and the Twelve Imams, passing through the Ismailis and the Sufis, then lingering in the dark for many centuries before becoming the highly occult doctrines and mysticism and magic of The Bab, who formed Babism/Bayani.
This was too arcane for the masses and would never become a world-religion.
There are other parallels with this zeitgeist, ones that would not be as influential however - things like the philosophical/political "enlightenment" era, Mormonism, Jehovahs Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Spiritualism, Blavatsky/Theosophy, Eliphas Levi.
Most notably though preceding The Bab and the rest by about two centuries was the very infamous/controversial Heretical Jewish Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi who also cast a shadow.
All the things that culminate with The Bab cause a splinter in his own movement giving rise to the Prophet Baha'u'llah who creates the only sect of Islam that successfully branched away from Islam and became it's own separate religion - that being Baha'i.
Baha'u'llah was succeeded by his own equivalent of the Apostle Paul, being Abdul'baha and Shoghi Effendi, who both promoted/propagated/evangelized the Baha'i message and created socio-political ties around the world with related organizations and movements with similar ideals.
One in question is the evolution of Theosophy, the controversial author Alice Bailey who had her own aspirations towards world-unity.
Then we have a lot of events in the 20th century and organizations form, and political alliances such as the United Nations (who themselves have their fair share of conspiracy theories).
History itself does seem to be a constant commentary on the past, as well as the splintering and projection of shadows onto a wall. Ideas are evolved in such a manner that give rise to new forms out of old bodies of ideas.
Islam is the finality of the Abrahamic Tradition (no Prophets after Muhammad), Baha'i is the distillation of the Quranic message and a proper universalization of it's message. It is an expansion of the central Muhammadun focal point.
We have surrounded by it growing socio-political and philosophical interest in a unification of systems towards a point.
Thelema has it's aspects though it remains always fringe (no matter how much Crowley and Parsons are referenced in pop-culture), Blavatsky and Alice Bailey have their aspects too and remain hefty influence on a lot of political structures (U.N. being the most notable, E.U. being semi related).
We have further occult strands dating very far back as well, such as that of John Dee who gave rise to the English Empire, with his connections to Plato's Atlantis which from Francis Bacon was a further influence on the concept of America or the United States (of America), which is a prototype for the further expansion of the United Nations.
There is a lot of back and forth ideas played with here.
Then furthermore there is the conceptions (wrongly misinterpreted, misunderstood and demonized by the conspiracy crowd) of Freemasonry, which takes the concept of the Hermetic "Great Work" to a massive scale. Being that a man lives for 70 years (generally) and is only capable of so much through his labor in that amount of time, so an organization stretching over centuries is capable of far more with the transformation of human consciousness than a single person - therefore creating an egregoric entity that can produce so much more profound change to humanity over the span of millennia.
Freemasonry itself containing a lot of the same kinds of traits and having it's own esoteric teachings (to do with death and the soul), but most notable concepts being the equality of humanity, the One God and bridging the differences between cultures etc.
Basically though, we are living in a massive construct that has both it's divinely revelatory aspects, as well as it's secular aspects. In many ways, as others before us have already noted, there is a clear sense that all fields of human endeavor will eventually become one. It is an inevitability.
Things that couldn't happen in Islam (although the 9th-13th century were certainly flowing with scientific inspiration) were then leeched into things like Masonry which further leeched into Baha'i, Theosophy, Thelema and even the New Age movement.
These things are all nodes that are connecting towards something else.
Furthermore so much things in popular media seem to be indicating towards something of this nature (albeit conveyed fictionally). These is something going on and I don't think it's to be feared.
Also I will add that it is fascinating how all the major world religions are awaiting some kind of messianic figure yet we've already had the biggest known change in human civilization in the late 19th century, of which we're living through the results of such radical changes right now in the internet-age of the 21st century.
The chaos of the modern age however certainly hasn't dissipated and in fact continues to increase in intensity and hostility. On one side of things, the Thelemic Aeon Of Horus is more than obvious in it's manifestation. Humanity is in a 'new age' and is more childlike than ever in history, we are like the child Horus (the crowned and concurring....)
It is chaos and destruction, the war between Horus and Set?
Thelema is definitely one useful lens to view things.
Interestingly, in Baha'u'llah's text the "Kitab i-Aqdas" (one of the central texts of the Baha'i religion), it says that God will not send another Prophet in the next 1000 years.
In 1904 however we have Crowley receiving Liber AL Vel Legis from Aiwass, not God but an entity or angel nonetheless. Seems like Crowley is a shadow of the Baha'i "revelation" at least in the religious aspect of Thelema.
Both like Theosophy of course both espouse a kind of union between Science and Religion, and also Philosophy. (for Thelema it includes Magic of course)
I see patterns everywhere personally.
We have Crowley and the Golden Dawn before him leaking all of this ancient Occult knowledge to the public, we have before that the Baha'i religion externalizing Islamic (Shi'ite) Esotericism.
We have Theosophy bringing eastern religions into the limelight in a much more complex manner than the Baha'i's as well.
Then we've got movements in the mid 20th century such as Chaos Magic and our beloved Discordianism, both playing around with the nature of symbol, mind, perception, propaganda, philosophy and praxis.
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