How can it be said that Sahih al-Bukhari is the most authentic book after the Book of Allah, when Abu Hatim and Abu Zur'ah preferred Muslim over him in knowing the authentic from the Hadith, and is the consensus on that limited by a specific time?

Abu Zur'ah and Abu Hatim al-Razi favored Imam Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj over the scholars of their era in their knowledge of sound hadith, including Al-Bukhari. This was due to a doctrinal tribulation Al-Bukhari faced concerning the issue of the utterance of the Qur'an, which led them to refrain from narrating from him and praising him.

However, the majority of scholars agreed on preferring Al-Bukhari over Muslim in the sciences of hadith and the knowledge of sound and defective narrations, and that Muslim was his student. Sahih al-Bukhari is the soundest book after the Qur'an, followed by Sahih Muslim. Al-Nawawi and Ibn Hajar transmitted the consensus of scholars on this, and that any preference some scholars expressed for Muslim was in terms of the beauty of his arrangement and organization, not in terms of authenticity.