Author’s note: This is the fourth segment of my review of Robert Spencer’s new revised and expanded edition of Did Muhammad Exist?. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here.
In Chapter nine, Spencer tackles the vexatious problem of the variants in the Koran, largely but not entirely, due to the ambiguous nature of the Arabic script. With his customary thoroughness, Spencer also looks at the problem of early manuscripts and their inconclusive dating.
Chapter ten deals with the question of the original language of the Koran, and the original sources for the various stories in the Koran. For example, “The story of the ‘Companions of the Cave and of the Inscription’ (18:9–26) is an Islamic version of the Christian account of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, which was well known in Eastern Christianity at the time that Islam was taking shape. And when the Qur’an writes of the child Jesus fashioning clay birds and then bringing them to life (Qur’an 3:49), it recounts something that is recorded in the second-century Infancy Gospel of Thomas.” Spencer discusses the important work of Christoph Luxenberg, who was possibly the first scholar to point out the Syriac underlying the text of the Arabic.
Spencer’s conclusion is worth quoting in full:
It may be, then, that the Qur’an’s foreign derivation is one of the primary reasons why the book takes pains to establish itself as an Arabic text. One reason for the Qur’an’s Arabic protestations, other than the charges that Muhammad was listening to a nonnative speaker of Arabic, may be that the Qur’an was not originally written in Arabic at all but was eventually rendered in Arabic as the new religion was being developed. Because the empire that it was designed to buttress was an Arabic one, it was essential that the new holy book be in Arabic. The political imperative was to provide the new and growing empire with a religious culture distinct from that of the Byzantines and Persians—one that would provide for the loyalty, cohesiveness, and unity of the newly conquered domains.
This was not done, and probably could not have been done, in a neat and orderly fashion, as is demonstrated by the startling number of variations in what is often affirmed to be an unchanging Qur’anic text.
Chapter eleven gives evidence for Spencer’s startling claim that the Koran was adapted from a Christian text, examining the work of Gunter Lüling and Luxenberg, while chapter twelve tries to establish who collected the Qur’an, and when this was accomplished. Chapter thirteen, “Making Sense of it All,” gives a wonderful summary of all the arguments, and their conclusions, to be found in this book:
- No record of Muhammad’s reported death in 632 appears until more than a century after that date.
- A Christian account apparently dating from the mid-630s speaks of an Arab prophet “armed with a sword” who seems to be still alive.
- The early accounts written by the people the Arabs conquered never mention Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur’an. They call the conquerors “Ishmaelites,” “Saracens,” “Muhajirun,” and “Hagarians,” but never “Muslims.”
- The Arab conquerors, in their coins and inscriptions, don’t mention Islam or the Qur’an for the first six decades of their conquests. Mentions of “Muhammad” are nonspecific and on at least two occasions are accompanied by a cross. The word “Muhammad” can be used both as a proper name and as an honorific.
- The Qur’an, even by the canonical Muslim account, was not distributed in its present form until the 650s. Contradicting that standard account is the fact that neither the Arabians nor the Christians and Jews in the region mention the Qur’an until the early eighth century.
- The Qur’an contains numerous characters and stories that have been taken over from Judaism, Christianity, and other sources.
- The Qur’an contains a great many words that make little or no sense in Arabic, but are clearly derived from Syro-Aramaic, or become clear when they are read as Syro-Aramaic. Even the Arabic words for the Five Pillars of Islam are derived from Syriac and Hebrew.
- During the reign of the caliph Muawiya (661–680), the Arabs constructed at least one public building whose inscription was headed by a cross.
- We begin hearing about Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and about Islam itself in the 690s, during the reign of the caliph Abd al-Malik. Coins and inscriptions reflecting Islamic beliefs begin to appear at this time also.
Wellington says
Fascinating. I have long thought of Islam as a giant con job even if what Muslims have said about their warped faith was accurate (minus all the Allah fiction), but if what Robert Spencer avers is the case then it is an even greater con job and one must stand in awe, in absolute awe, of how malignantly influential this religion has been and all along not just partial BS (e.g., Mohammed did actually exist) but total BS (e.g., Mohammed never existed).
mortimer says
Yes, Caliph Abd al Malik seems to have been your leading conman. During his reign, the Koran suddenly appears and is read for the first time in mosques 80 – 90 years after the death of Mohammed … whoever he was. There are only 4 places in the Koran where the name Mohammed occurs and modern scholars believed they are interpolations. The original prophet (or prophets) must have used a different name.
gravenimage says
Could the Qur’an have been adapted from a Christian text?
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This certainly could have been the initial basis. And this view is not new–previous scholars have opined that Islam may have started as a Christian heresy. I was going to note Christian apochrophal stories like Jesus and the clay birds.
But note that no fringe interpretation of Christianity–of which there were many in circulation in the seventh century, especially around the fringes of Christianity such as in Arabia–has embraced horrifying violence as Islam was to do. Most of these ‘heresies’ involved such matters as varying interpretations of the trinity and other points of doctrine, some quite obscure.
At most Christianity–of any sect–was a jumping off point, then toss in large amounts of brutal Arab tribal customs and values–raids, enslavement, revenge, and mass murder.
mortimer says
In the 7th century, there was a folk religion among the Arabs prior to their victory over the Persians and Romans, but this cult did not have a ‘man’ to be its exemplar. It was simply a folk religion without a clerical organization.
The caliph Abd al Malik created Mohammed and the Koran to fill in the need for a state religion.
Islam was created in the Levant (Shams in Arabic).
Islam copies Judaism, but claims it’s theirs, Mel says!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysOvpon6Cyc
gravenimage says
Certainly one likely possibiity, Mortimer.
mortimer says
The Koran was likely a collection of sermons by different Arabian preachers along with various poems and copyings and plagiarisms from Christian liturgical books … plagiarisms that were greatly changed in translation, mischaracterized in meaning and substantially reworked for the purpose of creating a liturgical book for use in the mosques in the presence of Arab troops.
Caliph Abd al Malik seems to have caused the Koran to be concocted as a TROOP MOTIVATOR. Most of the earliest manuscripts of the Koran are from the 8th century and written in Kufic handwriting, the normal script used for official purposes in Abd al Malik’s empire.
Jim says
It seems as though Islam was created to fill a niche in the religious spectrum. It gives adherents the right to destroy, get revenge, exploit and abuse enemies. This is the opposite of Christianity, which requires people to suppress their base impulses. Perhaps the stories of Muhammed’s life were not drawn from historical records, but were rather constructed as the opposite of the stories of Jesus’ life and preaching.
ralph Ellis says
The Koran came from Saba.
The Sabeaean in Saba (Yemen) were renagade Jews from the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem. In the 6th century AD the Marib dam broke, and the people fled north. Muhummad initially helped the exiled Sabearans, but then destroyed them.
It is highly likely that Koranic Torah-style manuscripts came from the Sabaeans. Koranic texts are Torah texts that have a different flavour to the normal Torah – and the Sabaean texts would have been exactly that, because they had been separated from the Torah for a thousand years.
This is why the Koran speaks about the Sabaeans so much.
Ralph
Mike Ramirez says
Ralph, you are really onto something here regarding the Quranic-Torah texts. Torah law aka Mosaic law is explained in the Talmud with citations referencing specific Scriptures. This applies to the 613 mitzvot (laws) which Orthodox Jews are to follow. However, not all Torah laws can be enforced because there is no longer a Jewish Temple which housed the judicial court of the Sanhedrin. For example, the four methods of capital punishment are: Stoning, Burning, Beheading and Strangulation. Child marriages were allowed as were honor killings for children who were unruly toward their parents. Google 613 Jewish laws and it will show how close Sharia law is to the Torah law. The Advent of Jesus (Yeshua) fulfilled Jewish prophecies of a New Covenant explained in Jeremiah Ch. 31 and other prophecies. The point is that Sharia law is patterned after the Torah Mosaic laws. Reference the Talmud for more details.
gravenimage says
Actually, Judaism had long since abandoned most of these practices by the 7th century–in fact, there is a Hadith where Muhammed condemns Jews for no longer stoning adulterers.
Moreover, there is no practice of Judaism like this now–nor any such movement for it. The implication that Islam can be blamed on the Joooooos is just more baseless antisemitism.
Kepha says
The Jews ceased stoning wrongdoers because they lost political power. Executing someone guilty of a capital crime was left to whoever ruled them. I’m not trying to call the Jews any more evil than the rest of us born in sin (Psalm 51); but merely noting historical fact, and being far from alone in this.
As for “child” marriage, the practice of much of the world throughout much of history was to marry off girls not too long after puberty; and a teenaged male “child” would also probably be well on his way to being a trained and useful worker–hence, ready to start supporting a family. And I recall an early 19th century socialist writer decrying how capitalism forced delaying marriage for too many people.
@Mike: I’m not so sure that Shariah echoes the Old Testament. Consider that the Mosaic law prescribes, for theft, that a thief recompense the wronged party five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep (Ex. 22) while Shariah amputates hands. This shows that the underlying orientations of the two systems–restoration v. mere punishment–are quite different. As for the harshness of both towards adultery, that’s most of the world before the 20th century. After all, your family is supposed to be the first circle of trust.
Further, my impression of people who write about the “Old Testament severity of Islamic law” don’t really know the Old Testament, and are aiming their rocks at Jesus Christ as well as Moses. I’m old enough to remember when my younger self’s elders and betters understood that they were supposed to have some knowledge of the Old and New Testaments (even when their knowledge was, a t best, a few early Sunday School platitudes), and hence tried to fake such “knowledge” when dealing with us kids.
gravenimage says
Kepha wrote:
The Jews ceased stoning wrongdoers because they lost political power. Executing someone guilty of a capital crime was left to whoever ruled them. I’m not trying to call the Jews any more evil than the rest of us born in sin (Psalm 51); but merely noting historical fact, and being far from alone in this.
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Kepha, the idea that Jews *really* wanted to stone women to death but simply were not allowed to by random Gentiles makes no sense.
Here is one Hadith from Bukhari:
Narrated ‘Abdullah bin Umar: The Jews brought to the Prophet a man and a woman from among them who had committed illegal sexual intercourse. The Prophet said to them, “How do you usually punish the one amongst you who has committed illegal sexual intercourse?” They replied, “We blacken their faces with coal and beat them,” He said, “Don’t you find the order of Ar-rajm (i.e. stoning to death) in the Torah?” They replied, “We do not find anything in it.” ‘Abdullah bin Salam (after hearing this conversation) said to them. “You have told a lie! Bring here the Torah and recite it if you are truthful.” (So the Jews brought the Torah). And the religious teacher who was teaching it to them, put his hand over the Verse of Ar-rajm and started reading what was written above and below the place hidden with his hand, but he did not read the Verse of Ar-rajm. ‘Abdullah bin Salam removed his (i.e. the teacher’s) hand from the Verse of Ar-rajm and said, “What is this?” So when the Jews saw that Verse, they said, “This is the Verse of Ar-rajm.” So the Prophet ordered the two adulterers to be stoned to death, and they were stoned to death near the place where biers used to be placed near the Mosque. I saw her companion (i.e. the adulterer) bowing over her so as to protect her from the stones. (Book #60, Hadith #79)
In complete contraditiction to your claim the Jews here clearly did not want the victims stoned to death–why would this be the case if they desperately wanted to do so?
An aside, but this last passage in the Hadith is the *only* compassionate thing I have ever seen in Islamic texts–and it was the compassion of one victim of Islam for another.
More:
As for “child” marriage, the practice of much of the world throughout much of history was to marry off girls not too long after puberty; and a teenaged male “child” would also probably be well on his way to being a trained and useful worker–hence, ready to start supporting a family. And I recall an early 19th century socialist writer decrying how capitalism forced delaying marriage for too many people.
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Yes, girls got married at younger ages in the pre-modern world–they began working at younger ages, as well. Given that life expectancy was so much lower than today, this should not surprise.
That being said, nine years old was *never* post-pubescent–surely you don’t believe the Muslim lie that Aisha had reached puberty? Besides, Muslims continue to rape little girls now on just this basis. Not sure why you inclued sneer quotes here. Surely you consider nine-year-old girls to be children?
And I don’t think I’d laud the thought of socialists–the truth is that free trade has overall benefitted people greatly. I have no desire to live in a commuist or Islamic land instead of the free west.
Mike Ramirez says
Yo, gravenimage, are you saying that my comments are anti-Semitic for stating facts about Torah laws of Orthodox Judaism? That’s like saying that if you quote verses from the Qur’an and Ahadith that you are a bigot and Islamophobe. I have been called those names as well. The points I made reference to are documented in the publication titled “The Talmud, a Reference Guide, the Steinsaltz Edition (Random House, New York) copyright 1989 – by the Institute for Talmudic Publications and Milta Books. As a born-again believer in Yeshua, aka Jesus, I am of Jewish ancestry, a Messianic Jew, not anti-Semitic at all but also not Orthodox. What Orthodox and anti-Semites fail to understand is that the Crucifixion of Yeshua was meant to be. He really was the Jewish Messiah and is Savior of mankind for those whom believe. That’s why He cried out from the Cross of Calvary, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34)
gravenimage says
More from Mike Ramirez:
Yo, gravenimage, are you saying that my comments are anti-Semitic for stating facts about Torah laws of Orthodox Judaism? That’s like saying that if you quote verses from the Qur’an and Ahadith that you are a bigot and Islamophobe. I have been called those names as well.
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Actually, I just cited a few reasons why I thought that this claim is unlikely, including the fact that Jews were not carrying out these actions 1400 years ago, nor is there any serious movement to impose them today. I never said that Mike Ramirez was antisemitic for broaching this idea. I have no idea why he would say such a thing–save that he appears unable to counter anything I have to say on a factual basis.
More:
The points I made reference to are documented in the publication titled “The Talmud, a Reference Guide, the Steinsaltz Edition (Random House, New York) copyright 1989 – by the Institute for Talmudic Publications and Milta Books. As a born-again believer in Yeshua, aka Jesus, I am of Jewish ancestry, a Messianic Jew, not anti-Semitic at all but also not Orthodox. What Orthodox and anti-Semites fail to understand is that the Crucifixion of Yeshua was meant to be. He really was the Jewish Messiah and is Savior of mankind for those whom believe. That’s why He cried out from the Cross of Calvary, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34)
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Of course I am familiar with the Talmud–that is *not* the same thing as an implication that Jews are either trying to impose such laws today or that their having supposedly done so in the 7th century created Islam.
And of course Christians consider Jesus the Messiah–but mainstream practicing Jews do not. Jews have no problem with practicing Christians, though, even if they disagree with them–would that you could say the same for pious Muslims.
mortimer says
Ralph mentions the Jews in Babylonia. If a Saracen ‘prophet’ were to argue controversially with Jewish theologians, it would be in a large city in Iraq where the Jewish academies were, rather than in a small village of Yemen.
Kepha says
This, Mortimer, is why I believe that Islam was indeed created in the Arabian Peninsula rather than in Syria or Mesopotamia. Had the framers of Islam, a religion which I do not defend, interacted with rabbis in Iraq, they’d have gotten points of contact with Judaism far more extensively and accurately. Had they framed Islam in contact with the Christian theologians of Syria and Mesopotamia, they’d have gotten the Christian material more accurately.
As it is, they Jewish and Christian elements in the QUr’an, and the Qur’an’s account of Jewish and Christian beliefs, have all the hallmarks of the sort of “village polemics” you might expect in a cultural backwater. It is more credible that Muhammad, or the compilers of the Qur’an (if there was no Muhammad–a point Uncle Kepha is not ready to concede) picked up bits and pieces of Jewish and Christian oral lore from the marketplaces, caravan stops, and similar places in Arabia and the Fertile Crescent where ordinary believers of these religions might meet. Maybe a causal “listening in” on a synagogue or church may have contributed something.
More later.
gravenimage says
Good points, Kepha.
gravenimage says
Ralph, there are only a handful of references to the Sabeans in the Qur’an–in fact, they are mentioned somewhat more frequently in the Bible.
They did make pilgrimage to the Ka’aba, and continued to stone adulteresses, as orthodox Jews of this period did not. They were not a conquering creed, though.
They may have had an influence on Islam–but it so, it was likely fairly minor.
Francis says
This is the weakest part of DME. Both Lulling and Luxenberg simply don’t have a solid methodology. They have even been panned by the Revisionist Gerald Hawting (from whom Jay Smith got many of his ideas). The work on Semitic Rhetoric (Michel Cuypers, Raymond Farrin) and the Quran’s structure by Islahi rule out the Christian substrate idea. The idea that the Quran is disorganised has been in vogue for a long time because Muslim commentators preseved no memory of its compilation (the Bukhari story is just that).
The issue between Muhammad and his opponents was not doubt over the language in which the message was being revealed. The Meccans did not believe the subject of the message and accused Muhammad of importing unoriginal stories. Muhammad countered by stressing the authority of his message based on it being in Arabic and not in the language of other books: an Arab messenger to Arabs speaking in Arabic with a message specifically for them (from my 2021 book on Kindle ‘Did Muhammad Exist? A Counterblast to the Revisionists.
gravenimage says
Francis wrote:
The idea that the Quran is disorganised has been in vogue for a long time because Muslim commentators preseved no memory of its compilation
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Francis, the Qur’an *is* disorganized. Scholars have determined the likely chronological order of the Suras:
https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Chronological_Order_of_the_Qur%27an
Mateen Elass says
Unfortunatlely for your thesis, Ralph, the Sabaens are only mentioned three times in the Qur’an. That hardly justifies your statement that “the Koran speaks about the Sabaens so much.”
One would expect that had the Sabaens been so influential in the life of Muhammad and the development of the Qur’an, they would have received a bit more airtime in the book itself.
gravenimage says
True, Mateen.
Kepha says
The Sabaeans were and ancient nation of southern Arabia. The Queen of Sheba, who visited Solomon of Israel, belonged to that nation. The identity of the Sabians mentioned in the QUr’an is an unresolved issue, although that Mandaeans of southern Iraq and Iran claim that identity (they hold ideas close to 2d century Gnosticism, and see John the Baptist as Messiah). It’s more than likely that the Biblical Sabaeans and Qur’anic Sabians were unrelated.
Kepha says
While I’m intrigued by the possibility that the Qur’an might have begun as a reworked [heretical–possibly late surviving Arian/] Christian text, my own impression is that it is a collection of ad hoc messages meant to either fire up believers, shame Quraish unbelievers, or both. The biblical and Midrashic material in the QUr’an (and I admit it’s there) is just too scattered and garbled for me to accept that the Q might be a reworked lectionary. The logic of the Q simply evades me. It’s clear that Muhammad was impressed by the ideas of a single supreme God, the resurrection of the dead, and the final judgment; it is far from clear that he had any deep acquaintance with serious Jewish or Christian theological tradition.
This being said, I can buy the argument in DME that the early Islam that came out of the Arabian Desert in the 7th century may have been closer to some kinds of heretical Christianity [some kind of Ebionitism or Arianism that survived?] than to what later became normative Islam. I would never discourage inquiry into this possibility.
Further, if drawing on earlier texts from a tradition or traditions which it claims to continue appears in Islam, this intertextuality per se is not something I would hold against Islam. The New Testament often references the Old, and as soon as Christians developed the skills of making codices, they bound both Testaments together (probably starting sometime prior to the 4th century–Indeed, the Scillitan Martyrs of the late 2d century seemed to have a bound codex of their Scriptures with them when arrested). My complaint against Qur’anic intertextuality is that the author doesn’t seem to know what’s Scripture and what isn’t, and so often gets things wrong.
I’ve said before that I still believe in the historicity of a successful Arabian warlord named Muhammad ibn Abdallah; I’ll add that like a number of other autodictats I’ve known–and maybe M didn’t quite deserve the title autodictat–he also had a too-high opinion of himself.
reX says
Mohammad claims that the contents of his spiritually received message were already there all around him.
Mohammad claims that Islamic Torah and Gospels were already there with him at his time already confirming his very exact message. Yet we see the Muslims of his day running around frantically, in a frenzied reverence just to go about scratching and etching upon stones, bark, wood and animal skins, just to etch and scrawl something down that was already written in the Torah and Gospels.
All they had to do was go to a village or a city just a few miles away and make a copy and translate the scriptures.
Yet, Islam goes through this entire process of processing all of this information through another spiritual entity called Gee – briel “ an angel “ all of this information that was already written down and with them in the very same exact land where they lived.
How is this the revelation of a prophet or how is this prophecy
– everything Mohammuds claims to be revealed and prophecy – he also claims is already written in the Torah and Gospels that he is discussing with the Jews and Christians around him