The article, as you may have guessed, doesn’t actually consider whether or not Muhammad ever existed. The real article is entitled, “5 reasons to suspect that Jesus never existed,” by Valerie Tarico, and was published in Salon on September 1, 2014. It’s a ridiculously counter-factual piece of the type that frequently appears in Salon: it asserts, for example, that “even the gospel stories don’t actually say, ‘I was there.’ Rather, they claim the existence of other witnesses, a phenomenon familiar to anyone who has heard the phrase, my aunt knew someone who . . . .” In reality, John’s gospel claims to have been written by the apostle John himself: “This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true” (John 21:24). And St. Luke’s doesn’t present itself as a product of casual “my aunt knew someone” hearsay, but of a diligent compilation of eyewitness accounts: “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.” (Luke 1:1-4)
Whether or not such claims are true is another matter, but it is patently dishonest to assert flatly that “even the gospel stories don’t actually say, ‘I was there'” when there is this clear evidence to the contrary. But that’s Salon for you. The mainstream media eagerly publishes articles like that one, and other deconstructions of the gospel accounts of Jesus, but would never dare subject Muhammad and Islam to the same critical scrutiny. Salon, for example, wouldn’t be caught dead discussing my book Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam’s Obscure Origins, except possibly to sneer at it or call it “Islamophobic.” The idea that religious claims can and should be subjected to rational and historical analysis for the Left applies only to Christianity, never to Islam. This is partly because for the media, Islam and Muslims are always the victim, and must be accorded special privileges as a result, and also because of an “Islamophobic” fear that Leftist media outlets would never admit to, but is nonetheless real — that if they question Muhammad’s historicity, they could end up being killed by an adherent of what they tenaciously believe to be the Religion of Peace.
Nonetheless, for stouter hearts and clearer minds, Did Muhammad Exist? has just been published in paperback by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. This edition is not only handy, portable, and paper-bound, but it also contains a brand new Foreword by Ibn Warraq, in which he surveys the reaction to the book, compares it to Reza Aslan’s Zealot, and chides the mainstream media for its eagerness to deconstruct Christianity but carefully respectful, even reverential, stance toward Islam. Don’t miss this one. You can get it at Barnes and Noble here and at Amazon here — as well as at any self-respecting brick-and-mortar bookstore.
A sampling of critical reactions:
“A well-written, sober, and clear account . . . The revisionist account is no idle academic exercise but, as when Judaism and Christianity encountered the Higher Criticism 150 years ago, a deep, unsettling challenge to faith. . . . May the revolution begin.” —National Review Online
“Without indulging in polemics or pushing a partisan political agenda, the author simply investigates the question of whether we can really trust the traditional Islamic accounts for the life of Muhammad and the supposed early days of Islam. . . . For too long, the topic of Islamic historiography has been confined to highly specialized academia, with the growing problem of Islamist intimidation. Thus, an accessible primer on the subject as we have here is most welcome. In addition, the project of translating this book into Arabic is to be commended. In the years to come, it would be good to see Spencer’s book prescribed as introductory reading for courses on Islam in schools and universities.” —American Spectator
“Careful, detailed, well-reasoned survey and analysis . . . [A] brave book.” —FrontPage Magazine
“[Spencer] has engaged in concerted detective work of a scholarly nature. His book is no polemic. It is a serious quest for facts. The ones wrapped up in the Muslim canon are, alas, elusive. . . . Well-written and moves right along.” —Washington Times
“In an impeccably researched book, Spencer shows that all our Arabic sources for the life of Muhammad are very late, tendentious, and unsupported by any archaeological or epigraphic evidence, while the non-Islamic sources are scant and ambiguous. Thanks to this book, skepticism regarding what we can know about Muhammad must now and forever be taken seriously.” —Ibn Warraq, editor of What the Koran Really Says
“This will send shockwaves through Islamic communities.” —The Blaze
“A surprising and eye-opening new book . . . Quite a convincing job.” —PJ Media
“Robert Spencer has displayed brilliant scholarship and fierce courage in his previous books. In this one he perseveres and confronts with deep erudition the most topical problem of our century.” —Bat Ye’or, author of The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam
“A super detective service for the West . . . Spencer leaves few rocks unturned in his search for the truth about Islam and Muhammad.”
—Capitalism Magazine
AnneM says
Could it be that even now, the liberals are starting to wake up?
joeb says
No, it couldn’t.
It will take many more dead bodies in western countries – many more – before governments will think “hmm…maybe we need to do something about this?”
I’m talking many years from now.
Julian says
Well said Robert. Although I am still yet to read your book (which I will get to I promise), I remember watching your debate on Muhammad’s existence again David Wood of all people, and your arguments were much more convincing then his. Reaching the rational conclusion that Muhammad doesn’t exist would make you an “Islamophobe” in the cultural psyche. It’s truly staggering that so many people can think Jesus didn’t exist. To deny Jesus’ existence is to deny the existence of every single ancient figure who has ever been documented, since the evidence for Jesus’ existence is probably more than the evidence for most of the other important figures put together.
Every time we think that the liberal secular leftists can’t get any more stupid, they prove us wrong. The same mindlessness that would result in one reaching the conclusion that Jesus didn’t exist is the same as what would be required to say that Islam is a religion of peace.
Champ ✞ says
Julian wrote:
It’s truly staggering that so many people can think Jesus didn’t exist. To deny Jesus’ existence is to deny the existence of every single ancient figure who has ever been documented, since the evidence for Jesus’ existence is probably more than the evidence for most of the other important figures put together.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I agree, Julian, and you find this information from “Got Questions” very interesting …
Question: “Did Jesus really exist? Is there any historical evidence of Jesus Christ?”
Answer: http://www.gotquestions.org/did-Jesus-exist.html
Bamaguje says
In all probability, neither Jesus nor Mohammed existed.
But I couldn’t careless whether Jesus actually existed… Christians don’t pose the same existential danger to humanity that Islam does.
Champ says
Well, evil does exist in the world, and in many forms; but most notably it exists within islam.
Champ says
…yeah if only islam were a myth.
john spielman says
excellent article as usual Robert: this rubbish that Tarico has written has been refuted countless times in the past. Her saying that Paul NEVER mentioned the original 11 discipals of Jesus ( the 12 minus Judas Iscariot) is simple false. In various letters to the churches, Paul argues with some of his local church plants that he is an apostle of Jesus just these ” super apostles-( NIV transslation) were! And he mentions Peter and John by name plus James the half brother of Jesus, who was head of the Jerusalem church. Apostle Peter mentions Paul by name in the second letter of Peter in the Bible.
As to the chrages that there are gnostic inlences in the Bible is false as well as the whole theme og the Gospel (good news) of Christ Jesus is that there is NO SPECIAL wisdom that a select few can have.
john spielman says
excellent article as usual Robert: this rubbish that Tarico has written has been refuted countless times in the past. Her saying that Paul NEVER mentioned the original 11 discipals of Jesus ( the 12 minus Judas Iscariot) is simple false. In various letters to the churches, Paul argues with some of his local church plants that he is an apostle of Jesus just these ” super apostles-( NIV transslation) were! And he mentions Peter and John by name plus James the half brother of Jesus, who was head of the Jerusalem church. Apostle Peter mentions Paul by name in the second letter of Peter in the Bible.
As to the chrages that there are gnostic inlences in the Bible is false as well as the whole theme og the Gospel (good news) of Christ Jesus is that there is NO SPECIAL wisdom that a select few can have.
vlparker says
This hands off islam nonsense, when it is what is driving a lot of the evil in the world is nonsense. And attacking Christianity, (I’m a Deist) when there is no worldwide violence driven by Christianity, shows how out of touch with reality the left is.
Even in the past, when the Christian leaders were burning people at the stake for heresy, they were going against the teachings of the founder of their religion. Muslim terrorists are following the example of the founder of their religion.
It really doesn’t matter if mohammed existed or if Ibn Ishaq made him up in the 700s. He is very real to 1.5 billion muslims today. And he is driving the evil that is taking over the world while leftists worry about whether or not the Prince of Peace, who has never been the source of anything evil, existed. Liberals are nuts and their stupidity will be the downfall of everything good in this world.
Stanton Cordray says
I haven’t read “Did Muhammad Exist?”, but, that aside, I believe it is a minority opinion among scholars of Middle Eastern history or the history of Islam that Muhammad may never have existed.
I HAVE read Bart Ehrman’s “Did Jesus Exist?”, and he explains very well why it is a minority opinion among Biblical scholars and historians of the ancient world that Jesus never existed. In fact, he pretty much proves that he did. I take it Valerie Tarico does not mention that, and gives no sign of having read it?
Ehrman explains that he was moved to write his book because it came to his attention that, while almost no scholars in relevant disciplines consider Jesus a mythical creation, the idea that he was that is alive on the ground among what might be called militant atheists. Ehrman is an agnostic personally, but he has a professional’s awareness that that is an untenable contention.
I am aware that the origins of Islam have come under serious scrutiny in recent years, and that Western historians are less likely than they once were to accept Islam’s traditional account of its own origin as history, but I haven’t heard that the non-existence of Muhammad has formed a part of that, to any great extent.
I suppose it could, though, and I’m sure Robert Spencer’s book is a good place to begin to find out about it.
Marken says
DEWDDS just curious did you read Did Muhammad Exist? This is not about embellishments, this is a question of existence.
SallyA says
@ Stanton Cordray – Fascinating that you’d mention Bart Ehrman. His scholarship is impeccable. He’s correct on the historicity of Jesus. Yet I have found his other books on textual scholarship invaluable in reaching opposite conclusions to his on following Jesus instead of agnosticism.
The textual copiests of those early biblical manuscripts had no reason ever to know their textual additions and/or minor changes to the canonical Bible would be found out by scholars of our era. When they were copiests, all but the priestly caste were largely illiterate and Bibles weren’t published for the people to read. The value of our knowing today about the biblical textual errors through modern scholarship is that as Christians we can let go of man-made inerrancy theories and start letting God’s divinely loving plan and power unfold directly in and for us, as Jesus taught. If there was ever a time to need to do this in the face of Islamic jihad, it’s now. Salon won’t cover that story!
When Ehrman identified what for the ancient times were relatively few but still obvious differences in the hand-copied copies of post-Jesus biblical texts (there being no autographs in original languages still existent), he lost his Christianity at the same time he lost the fantasy of an inerrant inspired “Word of God” confined to a book’s pages. I reached a different conclusion, not subscribing to “inerrancy” of anything human, be it book, leader or otherwise. Ehrman’s textual scholarship proved to me only that those who followed Jesus as biblical text copiests so loved Him as to fudge a little and make the written record seem more compelling to those who weren’t already believers. All the better to witness to a good thing! (But still a misguided and wrongly inspired idea.)
Ehrman, for Christians, has done the good work of disproving the false 19th century Protestant doctrine of biblical inerrancy which is unnecessary to faith, was used to justify slavery in the 19th century American south and today still hamstrings too many females’ gifts of the Holy Spirit in too many churches. The Bible is a useful and instructive book. But Jesus Himself is the living Word of the Abba Father and the Jesus-dispensed Holy Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh, the feminine set-apart Spirit of God by the Hebrew and Aramaic languages Jesus necessarily used) informs us in our daily lives consistent with the character of God shown in the Bible as a whole.
I’m not a professional theologian, only a lifelong Jesus follower who reads a lot and notices trends. Especially I’ve appreciated the archives of the theologically minded commenters at JW. I’ve also noted that Christians are arguing among themselves about man-made doctrine all the time on the internet, when only God is inerrant. We may not always understand it, having a limited human perspective, but He is working always to sort out evil from good in this earthly life which is merely a testing ground for what’s to come eternally.
Bart Ehrman and his faith was victimized by his early exposure to a black-or-white, all-or-nothing biblical inerrancy version of Christianity that brainwashed him with the man-made doctrine that every word in the Bible is inerrant or literally true. When he found some clearly evident biblical textual discrepancies as a scholar, the “biblical inerrancy” black-or-white pinnacle of his faith crumbled. Ehrman had been socialized by Christians who made of the Bible a paper Pope. If Ehrman had instead been taught not to worship the Bible as if a Pope instead of God, he might have remained a follower of Jesus, with his name still in God’s own book of life. Ehrman obviously still has a fascination with Jesus. I still have hope for him.
Marken says
I really recommend Robert’s book to you, one the best reads of my life. The Jesus argument in my opinion after 160 years of critical research is settled, but there is a lack of the same type of research about Mohammad and Islam. It seems as if most everyone held to the Islam narrative.
Clearly in everyday speech we say, Mohammad did or said this or that to expose Islam, after reading ‘Did Muhammad Exist?’ it would be more truthful for me to say, muslims believe the historical composite called Mohammad did this or that, something that would make it clear I no longer buy into that contrived narrative.
Paul says
How did you do on the quiz at http://exchristian.net/3? It really is enjoyable, provided that one has a sense of humor. Perhaps some former Muslim will set up, or has set up already, a similar quiz for the Koran.
Aardvark says
I didn’t expect to do well, as I’m not a Christian, but I did get a bit suspicious after a dozen wrong answers…
A fun quiz!
Anon says
I wonder how people’s “moral equivalence” will help them out when at the point of breathing their last breath. “In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves being thrown out. ” Luke 13:28. Gee I bet now someone thinks that’s a “violent verse.” FYI Your existence in this world is extremely temporary whether it be one year or one-hundred years, STILL TEMPORARY.
The liberal mentality is a very mouth-oriented ideology. They spend more time “saying” things than examining their own temporary existence. “Thus says the LORD of hosts, “Consider your ways!” Haggai 1:7.
Kepha says
While I’ve read Robert’s _Did Muhammad Exist_, and consider a thought-provoking book, I can’t say I’m convinced that there was no 7th century Arab leader named Muhammad.
As for Tarico’s piece in salon, the idea that Jesus never existed has been a commonplace in certain circles for some time–and a view that Uncle Kepha finds utterly unconvincing. John speaks of how Jesus “sat thus on the well” (John 4:6–Greek and KJV, if not RSV) smacks of a witness miming what he reports to his audience. The general consensus is that John’s details on Jerusalem and ‘Eretz Yisroel terrain fits rather nicely with what’s known from the pre-A.,D. 70 arachaeology. Richard Baukham notes that John is far closer to the actual practice of first century historiography than the Synoptics (who fit more the bios-model). The last straw for the possibility that the Gospels were way later than the events came in Mark 15:21, where Simon of Cyrene, who carried Jesus’ cross, is so casually mentioned as the father of Alexander and Rufus. This is just the sort of thing which, for me, lent great credibility to Papias’ statements that Mark reflects Peter’s witness to the early Roman church. I guess I’m satisfied that the mysterious Q document is probably just Matthew’s lecture notes.
I can’t share other posters’ enthusiasm for Bart Ehrman. He gets headlines, for sure, but I’ve read others as good or better (F.F. Bruce; C.E. Hill; Richard Baukham; Martin Hengel; even J.A.T. Robinson) who have not won the MSM’s sympathy by jettisoning a traditional faith. I own and use Ehrman’s edition of the Apostolic Fathers, but chiefly for the Greek and English texts, not for the introductions (and also hold that Kirsopp Lake’s earlier edition for the Loeb Classical Library, which I used as a student, is marginally better). Too many of Ehrman’s comments in his introductory pieces (and in other works of his which I’ve read) suggest he’s acutely embarrassed that the early Christian literature wasn’t written in a nice, leafy, liberal, civil, postmodern American suburb.
I’m also utterly unimpressed with the dusting off of the Gnostic and other non-canonical “Gospels”. It shocks me that these good feminists and post-modernists want to make Coptic [pseudo-]Thomas a “fifth Gospel”, when it says Mary has to become male in order to enter the kingdom. I frankly can’t find a line in the canonical Scriptures that suggest that the holy women will not be women in Heaven. I won’t bother to read Reza Aslan, for reviews of his book on Jesus lead me to guess it’s a reworking of S. G. F. Brandon’s 1960’s zealot thesis.
For the record, I also accept the historicity of Kong Zi, Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, and Sakyamuni Gautama Buddha.
SallyA says
@ Kepha – Appreciate your erudition and names of scholars whose work I hope to read! Gnostic gospels didn’t belong in the canon, agreed. Jesus loved and valued women and children as much as men and taught to improve relational standing, clearly, for the place and time, without trying to make women into men or vice versa.
The negative implications of feminism as theory are to reverse male privilege and give it instead to females, which smacks of all the identity privileging movements that groups like CAIR and ACLU are so fond of promoting when they conflate “Islamophobia” with “Homophobia” for instance in the PC MC mindset. Jesus by the Bible’s red letters came equally for all who accept Him, without exceptions and without privileges. But humans always fall short in the translation.
Jesus did reportedly say, about our bodies eternally: “When people rise from the dead, they will not marry, nor will they be given to someone to marry. They will be like the angels in heaven.” Matthew 22:30 (NCV). “All the angels are spirits who serve God and are sent to help those who will receive salvation.” Hebrews 1:14 (NCV). Sounds like eternal bodies that are neither male nor female to me, but spiritually alive for a remade heavens and earth in a beyond-gender manner we cannot currently comprehend. (Much as God is depicted as Father but Isaiah also prophetically speaks of God’s maternal qualities, indicating overarching tender love as well as the more tough-love paternal attributes that are probably just the only way we limited humans can understand it presently.)
NCV’s an easy-to-understand translation but controversial, so here are other translations: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” Matthew 22:30 (NASB). “For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” Matthew 22:30 (KJV). “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” Hebrews 1:14 (KJV) “Surely the angels are no more than spirits in the service of God, commissioned to serve the heirs of God’s salvation.” (PHILLIPS).
Kepha says
Thanks for the kind comment, Sally. But I only said that I expect the holy women to be women in Heaven as on earth. Since I’m not a Mormon, I don’t believe in marriage after death parts a couple. As for the NCV, I’ve never read it.
gravenimage says
While anyone who knows me knows I am *no fan of shoddy historical scholarship*. But I am also aware that there is apt to be a great deal of it floating around.
The main point, as always, is that devout Jews, and Christians, and Buddhists may well be irked if anyone questions the historicity of Moses, or Jesus, or Gautama Buddha, especially if it is done sloppily, as here—but they are *not* going to lose it as Muslims are.
And further—historical research is an accepted part of the civilized world—and is fully accepted by most religious people. In fact, in a large number of cases they are one and the same—both Jews and Christians, certainly, are frequently involved in archeology and historical research.
Not so pious Muslims, of course—who will threaten and attempt to murder anyone who criticizes or even questions the “Prophet” and the tenets of Islam.
Paul says
Hmmm. Could be that Islam is pure faith and, hence, more likely than Christianity to attract anticognitive personalities. For this and other reasons I predict that Islam will become very popular among Americans, esp. its business people and its white trash.