Prophethood & Succession in Religions 
Wherefore? For What Avail? 
Apostasy is the Root of Change 

النبوة والخلافة في الأديان.ما فائدتها ؟الارتداد سبب التغيير

Written by: Izapilla Penijamin 
Translated by: Ni'ma Sharaf 

“Everyone of them has retraced, they have altogether become filthy; there is none who does good, no, not one.' (The Book of Psalms, 53:3)
The oldest known religious texts tell us that every prophet has someone to accompany him in life and succeed him after death, while in the same vein, the major Heavenly Messages convey that Allah (SWT) had chosen per each prophet a number of successors whose count is equivalent to the months of the year. The successors can be either prophets too, but not universal, or have a lower-grade status than prophethood, but they are favoured with strong leadership qualities, i.e. knowledge, bravery, patience, wisdom, generosity, religious devotion, and foresight.
These seven pillars are often the key characteristics of the prophet's successor with the exception of the eighth one, i.e. the Divine Revelation, which pertains to the principal prophets. With the 'Revelation', the intermediary medium between The Lord and His Messengers, we attain the eight perceptions which hold the Throne of God. The successor, otherwise known as the Imam draws his knowledge from the prophet, or directly hears the Revelation without seeing Him. That being so, whoever owns these seven perceptions: 'his tongue shall be flawless from the mortals' idle talk, his intellect consummate and his soul linked to the Kingdom of Heaven' (by the writer). In other words, he has immunity from error, fully-fledged wisdom and affiliation with the transcendental and metaphysical via a medium.

Moreover, every prophet has two books; firstly, a holy one dictated by the Revelation, e.g. the Torah, Bible and Qur'an. Secondly, a book based on recording the Sunnah , i.e. the prophet's acts, sayings or tacit approvals and disapprovals on other's actions, and this is basically what the Jews dub as the Hebrew Oral Law.

Cornerstones of each religion
Judaism: The law in Jewish tradition is twofold: 
Written: the Torah and Old Testament, 
Oral Law: the Mishnah, a major canonical document which comprises the Madarish, i.e. the exegesis book, deemed superior to the Torah by the Jews.

Christianity: the Holy Book (missing) and Jesus' sayings:
From a host of more than seventy parables, only four are chosen to represent the legacy of Christ: historical accounts of his life, his deeds, sayings and approvals of other's actions, as recorded by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. However, Jesus hinted at the fact that his legacy dwells on two cornerstones: the Holy Book and his sayings in: “When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.” 
(The Book of John, 2:22)

Islam: The Holy Qur'an and the Sunnah.

As regards the successors, Judaism had not handed down explicit accounts in respect of the twelve tribes , neither had Christianity in respect of the twelve disciples, while in Islam, the vision around the twelve Imams has been greatly blurred by some traditionists and historians. 

As far as this research is concerned, only the nearest to the lifetime of the prophet and the era immediately after will be dealt with. Hereunder, an overview is given primarily on Judaism, but a few fragments on the other two religions are given intermittently in the body of the text.

With the death of Moses, a dismal phase loomed over history. The senior rabbis and the Sanhedrin Council in power prohibited the recording of Moses legacy and his verbal acts, proclaiming that any utterance and word of Moses should remain oral and strictly confined within the rabbis' circle. This convention was kept live for a long stretch of time; the Sunnah of Moses was circulating in chambers, and only as their position was secured and their stronghold fastened; as they excessively distorted, modified and added, they relaxed their grip to initiate the recording.

During the lifetime of Moses, Aaron was his official guardian and successor. He started the mediation with The Lord and received the statutes of the Old Testament, and he had eleven Levi tribesmen accompanying him: 
“And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel.” (The Book of Exodus, 24:4)

The written law of Moses, the Torah, provides the main guidelines on the worships and rituals for the children of Israel, but for details it refers them to the authoritative source of the successors who rose to the task of clarification, interpretation and elaboration of religious observances, each according to the arising needs of his era. Yet this jurisdiction is not unconstrained; it has to be within the statutes of God, as dictated by the Torah:

“If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within thy gates: then shalt thou arise, and get thee up into the place which the LORD thy God shall choose; And thou shalt come unto the priests the Levites (i.e. the twelve tribes of Israel), and unto the judge (i.e. the Imam) that shall be in those days, and inquire; and they shall show thee the sentence of judgment: And thou shalt do according to the sentence, which they of that place which the LORD shall choose shall show thee; and thou shalt observe to do according to all that they inform thee: According to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do: thou shalt not decline from the sentence which they shall show thee, to the right hand, nor to the left. And the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest that standeth to minister there before the LORD thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die.” 
(The Book of Deuteronomy, 17:8-12)

'Shall die', that is, to execute those who do not comply with these twelfth tribesmen. Consequently, on account on this right to execute, the Oral Law acquired sacredness parallel to that of the Torah, and by virtue of Moses Law, Aaron and his descendants were commissioned with supreme political and religious authority: 

“The LORD spake unto Aaron, saying… it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations: And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean; And that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the LORD hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.”
(The Book of Leviticus, 10:8-11)

It follows that, upon the demise of prophet Moses, his guardians and their progeny from the future generations, were required to run the errand of evangelists protecting, teaching and preaching the faith, as well as recording the religious principles and maxims.

But with the party that retraced after Moses and turned against God's recommendation, the dishonest and devious party, a new statute was enacted according to which a layman is entitled to call himself a tribesman or the minister of God. 

“…..after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.” (The Book of 2nd Peter, 2:21)

This way, those retracers have seized the powers of the clerics and nation-leaders, assumed the roles of successors and guardians, normally mandated and sanctioned by God to His chosen servants. Henceforth they developed new methods to interpret the holy words of God throughout some vague allusions, unfamiliar codes and strange symbols in a manner that corroborates their new twisted version of the Scripture, and they made themselves strongly grounded in religion so that they have full authority over it, and it never departs them to another faction. They tailored some conventions from the dark ages of ignorance to religion, then they laid down new foundations to the faith, a host of novel statutes and heresies which sounded fanciful to them. In the meantime, they endeavoured to bestow more legitimacy on their schemes and vile activities claiming they were the natural heirs of Moses Law and guardians of Moses himself. The two pioneering figures who took the lead in this artistry were Johanan ben Zakkai and Gamaliel II, who slyly decided not to circulate the Torah only orally, and to confine Moses words by small margin to the two of them. Whatever they schemed was fruitful, and since then the body of Rabbinic Jews gained great importance and power. Afterwards, a fresh problem arose; as death was snatching the carriers of Moses Law, there was a counter growth of the number of masters, and every master used to teach the faith in his unique way fashioning the laws variably, thus the sturdier would be obliged to memorise and store myriads of traditions amid a flux of confused information. Eventually, Judah the Prince (a.k.a. Yehudah Ha Nasi) the leading rabbi among the retracers, committed himself to compile the Oral Law of Moses, and for this purpose he summoned a large number of scholars, and recorded heaps of traditions in the first formal redacted text and rabbinic literature, dispersed in nine books known as the Mishnah. 
Professor Ephraim E. Urbach states in this respect: “there has been no book which had a warm approval and strong favourable opinion like the Mishnah, save for the Torah itself.”

Allah (SWT) ordered that those retracers be executed, but as the nation of Moses abstained from that, they were down stricken for the whole eternity.

“If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him. And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the LORD thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee.”
(The Book of Deuteronomy, 13:1-5)

This way, only because of the two who retraced their steps, the nation of the Israelites was shredded into seventy one factions:

“…… because ye are turned away from the LORD, therefore the LORD will not be with you.” (The Book of Numbers, 14:43)

“……. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.” 
(The Book of Revelation, 19:20)

“And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” (The Book of Revelation, 20:10)

ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
The Imam: the spiritual and political leader in Islam, a.k.a. The Caliph.
According to Islamic glossary.
The twelve Israelites tribes: descendants of the Jewish forefather 'Jacob', a.k.a. Israel, viz. the tribes in their capacity as the successors and ministers of God. 
See: 'The Mishnah or theTorah', Ephraim E. Urbach, (distinguished scholar of Oral Law), Hebrew edition, Jilad, Tel Aviv, 1974.