Early Christianity and the Islamic Jesus

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Reply #90 - November 17, 2014, 06:33 PM

I think Arabia is a red herring - I am not sure why the location was moved to a couple of one horse towns in the desert unless it is to do with the kabaa, but I would propose Islam is made in Damascus.

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Reply #91 - November 17, 2014, 06:41 PM

I don't think it's helpful to call it "Jewish Christian" because that implies that (1) there is a direct membership or linkage with the sects called Jewish Christian; and (2) the members of the religion would consider themselves to be "Jews" who are also "Christian." The Qur'anic believers are plainly not Jews, the early Arab believers were not Jews, and Mohammed's followers, again not Jews. Rather they are (like Abraham) upright gentiles (hanifs).

So I prefer the term Semitic Christianity, which encompasses everything from the great Nestorian/Monophysite orthodoxies to the pious indeterminate monotheism that you see reflected in Arabic inscriptions prior to 685 AD ... which does not claim to be a distinct religion from Christianity, and which claims kinship with Judaism (although not being Jewish).

We are so used to thinking of the Crucifixion through the lens of Western Catholicism and its descendents that we artificially impute such views to the diversity of Semitic Christianity as it existed around 500-600 AD in peripheral regions of the Near East. Even within Orthodox European Christianity, there are wide divergences in what the crucifixion was and how it saved people, with the 'sacrificial' view being associated with Paul and Hellenism. But here's the Eastern Orthodox conception:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_of_Jesus#Theological_significance

"Among Eastern Orthodox Christians, another common view is Christus Victor.[205] This holds that Jesus was sent by God to defeat death and Satan. Because of his perfection, voluntary death, and Resurrection, Jesus defeated Satan and death, and arose victorious. Therefore, humanity was no longer bound in sin, but was free to rejoin God through faith in Jesus."

It requires little to move from this technical Eastern Orthodox doctrine of atonement to a theology where Jesus is 'victorious' through his total obedience, aka islam, to Allah, just as Abraham (a gentile, not a Jew) was a righteous believer who showed his complete submission to the will of Allah.

Again, I definitely do NOT think that the sectarian milieu that the Qur'an derived from was Judaeo Christian, but rather Semitic Christian, and this is a key distinction. It is a sort of Judaizing Christianity, free of orthodox doctrinal constraint, rather than Jews who took up Christianity. If you want to see what kind of environment it developed from, I think Nevo and Koren do a great job of summarizing the historical development of theological contents in the Arabic inscriptions in the Negev. What we know as "Islam" is but one branch that developed from this climate of indeterminate monotheism, and which overtook all the others through its adoption and promulgation by nascent Arab states, Mohammedism being the key development that they seized upon.
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Reply #92 - November 17, 2014, 07:14 PM

So to sum up the Emergence of the Believers movement and the emergence of the Quran according to Zaotar:

Semitic Christianity existed in Arabia (maybe not in Mecca and Medina as the traditional accounts portray it)
They were acquainted with Biblical texts which were probably written in Syriac, but probably knew them from an Arabic lectionary which explained and interpreted the texts in their native language. The word "Quran" derived from the Syriac word for lectionary
Muhammad was a member of this monotheistic community and was an influential preacher who believed he was supposed to usher on the Last Judgement by conquering Jerusalem
Muhammad died before this could be accomplished, leaving the Believing community distraught
The Arab empire continued to expand
The Ummayads decided to compile a religious document, the Quran, as a political endeavor to help unify and rule their empire
They compiled it from bits of anonymous Monotheistic preaching (some of it from the lectionary), from bits of what Muhammad had said, made some additions themselves, and then finally tried to smooth it over into one document and make it seem as if Muhammad was not just a preacher, but a prophet who was receiving revelation straight from God
The Quran in this form emerged at the end of the 7th century, but the shorter suras still were added later
The Quran found its current forms (with diacritical marks) around the time of Abd al Malik, yet divergent versions continued to exist

I know I probably messed up in representing your views somewhere. Please correct me if I am wrong. I just want to really want to make sense of all of this.

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Reply #93 - November 17, 2014, 08:45 PM

That's actually pretty close to my view. Although I'd emphasize a couple points, such as:

(1) there was no specific 'community' exactly, but rather you had indeterminate monotheism in the sense of monotheists who did not belong to a specific confession (in other words, they did not define themselves exclusively ... the exclusivity in Islam seems to have arisen more from *not* being Jews and *not* being members of an orthodox ecclesiastical church, rather than an original exclusivity). Think of it like this, in our current American society, probably only half of Americans belong to a specific religious confession, in the exclusive sense. But many more believe in the generalities of Christian religion, and everybody has heard and 'knows' many different sort of folk beliefs and claims about Christianity and Jesus. Those who fall into this non-orthodox confessional group, who believe generally but do not define their belief through association with a specific group (rather through their belief) are similar to the environment that birthed Mohammedanism, although the Arabian prophet was originally just one thread of a much larger milieu. So it is wrong to think of the 'believers' as a very specific and exclusive group with closely defined beliefs.

(2) I don't think Mohammed himself was a 'preacher' so much as he was claiming to act as God's representative, and was divinely appointed a political/military leader, in connection with the Arab military expansion. He surely claimed that the believers who he claimed leadership over were entitled to seize Palestine, and particularly Jerusalem, and that the end times were near. Insofar as he had a theology, it is a theology that rejected political/theological subordination to Byzantine or Sassanian Christian orthodoxies in favor of his own authority.

It is this tradition of claiming divine leadership over the believers that later made it so attractive for the Umayyads and Zubayrids to claim succession to Mohammed's right of divine command -- the core of early Mohammedanism was the claim to have divinely appointed leadership over the believers, including bitter post-death disputes over who was the legitimate heir of that leadership.

The so-called constitution of Medina probably reflects a survival of this original Mohammedanism, albeit it is a composite document (made from at least two other texts) that has been secondarily Islamicized. But its component parts were pre-Qur'anic, in my book, and thus very interesting for me (just as Donner takes it to be central to his thesis).

(3) I don't think Mohammed himself necessarily had much to do with the conquests -- he was just one aspect within them, not the spearhead. I haven't read Hoyland's new book, but my expectation is that the Arabs were seizing power outside the Arabian peninsula LONG before the events of 630 or so. Mohammed was just one opportunist within a much broader phenomenon, the slow and systematic rise of Arab political power in the vacuum of Sassanian/Byzantine exhaustion. In other words, this is an example of taking a complex historical process and misinterpreting it as the product of a single person's actions. I think Count Julian has read Hoyland's new book, and I'd be curious what he thinks on this.

I think the earliest layers of the Qur'an are monotheistic preaching derived from Christianity, but I think they had little or nothing to do with Mohammed, who was never a poor itinerant preacher delivering a message amongst pagans. That is an artifact of Mohammed being 'read into' pre-existing texts which came from such a tradition of monotheistic preaching.
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Reply #94 - November 17, 2014, 09:20 PM

Awesome! You do think at least parts of the Quran come from the mouth of Muhammad though right? If not, how would you explain passages giving him permission to marry his step sons wife or making sure guests don't overstay their welcome in his house?

And these verses seem to be formulated as revelation from God. Do you see Muhammad as merely a political/religious leader or do you think he actually declared himself a prophet and claimed to be receiving revelation? Of course, these verses could have been edited to make it seem like they were intended as revelation.

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Reply #95 - November 17, 2014, 09:37 PM

The Zayd verse is one of the latest interpolations in the Qur'an, and was awkwardly jammed in as part of the fight over Mohammed's status as prophet vis a vis widely circulating traditions about his family and the right of successorship. It is one of three (3!) instances where the Qur'an clearly uses a proper name of a contemporary person, the other two being uses of the name "Mohammed." This is the very last layer of Qur'anic interpolation, interpolations about Mohammed as a specific named prophet and his status as the 'seal' of the prophets with no male children to inherit that lineage (specifically, Surah 33:40). David Powers has written two books about this issue.

http://www.amazon.com/Zayd-Divinations-Rereading-Ancient-Religion/dp/0812246179/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416259685&sr=8-1&keywords=zayd

http://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Not-Father-Any-Your/dp/0812221494/ref=la_B002S08188_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416259698&sr=1-2

The verses about guests staying in the house, also appearing in Surah 33:53, are again some of the most late and Mohammedan interpolations in the entire Qur'an. There seems to be some sort of elaborate attempt to justify a particular tradition, surely widely circulating at that time, when it had become very embarrassing or problematic. 33:52 goes as follows:

"Not lawful to you, [O Muhammad], are [any additional] women after [this], nor [is it] for you to exchange them for [other] wives, even if their beauty were to please you, except what your right hand possesses. And ever is Allah , over all things, an Observer."

Okay, so Allah prohibits Mo from marrying any more women. Then 33:53:

"O you who have believed, do not enter the houses of the Prophet except when you are permitted for a meal, without awaiting its readiness. But when you are invited, then enter; and when you have eaten, disperse without seeking to remain for conversation. Indeed, that [behavior] was troubling the Prophet, and he is shy of [dismissing] you. But Allah is not shy of the truth. And when you ask [his wives] for something, ask them from behind a partition. That is purer for your hearts and their hearts. And it is not [conceivable or lawful] for you to harm the Messenger of Allah or to marry his wives after him, ever. Indeed, that would be in the sight of Allah an enormity."

It is very unclear wtf this is all about, except that it seems to be incredibly elaborate argument about the prophet's family circumstances, and family law in general, all to defend the prophet against charges of excess salaciousness and to establish that he is the Seal of the Prophets in the sense that he "is not the father of any of your men." Also there seems to have been bitter battles over defining the prophet's family and its succession. What circulating traditions this was reacting against, we cannot exactly know, but it's likely that there were many stories about Zayd (the beloved) which the composers of Surah 33 were trying to tame and bring within their Mohammed=FinalProphet position, then just one position amongst many.

It's pretty sad that so much of the earliest traditions were lost, not only because it wasn't written down, but because later Muslims (like Bukhari) deliberately jettisoned all but the miniscule fraction of traditions that they encountered (I believe Bukhari says he selected 5,000 hadith out of 600,000 that he reviewed), doubtless rejecting those that now seemed too scandalous, contradictory, or inconsistent with what had emerged as Islam.
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Reply #96 - November 17, 2014, 10:28 PM

Could it not just be a tradition that originated with Muhammad when he wanted people out of his house and to stay away from his wives? You sure you're not overthinking this one?

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Reply #97 - November 17, 2014, 10:43 PM

Certainly early Jews and Christians mocked Mohammed for this part of the Qur'an ... why so petty, why is Allah handing out revelations about who Mohammed is allowed to sex and why is the eternal Qur'an telling people not to marry Mohammed's wives and such.

After all, in 33:53 we are told Mohammed is allegedly shy about telling people not to come by, or to leave soon, but apparently Mohammed isn't equally shy about reporting a sudden revelation from Allah that they should not stop by uninvited and are overstaying their welcome.

There are two ways to read this. One is as genuine Islamic comedy, Mo receiving 'Psych' style revelations because the mighty Arabian warlord and leader of the peninsula couldn't bear to tell people not to stop by his house, and so he promulgated a revelation on that subject. This is possible, I admit, but I generally lean against the Qur'an being so inane.

The other is that these revelations relate to some sort of complicated debate that had arisen about Mohammed's family and wives. I take it that the purpose of 33:53 is not just because Mohammed was annoyed, but more to *protect the sanctity of his wives* from some sort of offense; what offense, we don't quite know. Same as the story about Zayd, which is unbelievably ridiculous, but which Powers has (to my mind correctly) explained as part of polemic among the early believers about Mohammed's family and its relation to his emerging disputed status as last prophet.

Surah 33 is *really fricking weird*. Just think of how it begins. This is the first full verse, after the usual intros:

"Allah has not made for a man two hearts in his interior. And He has not made your wives whom you declare unlawful your mothers. And he has not made your adopted sons your [true] sons. That is [merely] your saying by your mouths, but Allah says the truth, and He guides to the right way."

...... uhhhh ..... okay?
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Reply #98 - November 17, 2014, 11:01 PM

Quote from: justperusing on November 17, 2014, 10:28 PM
Could it not just be a tradition that originated with Muhammad when he wanted people out of his house and to stay away from his wives? You sure you're not overthinking this one?

That’s pretty much how I interpreted it. Prophetic perks, and all that.
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Reply #99 - November 17, 2014, 11:50 PM

Quote from: Zaotar on November 17, 2014, 08:45 PM
That's actually pretty close to my view. Although I'd emphasize a couple points, such as:

(1) there was no specific 'community' exactly, but rather you had indeterminate monotheism in the sense of monotheists who did not belong to a specific confession (in other words, they did not define themselves exclusively ... the exclusivity in Islam seems to have arisen more from *not* being Jews and *not* being members of an orthodox ecclesiastical church, rather than an original exclusivity). Think of it like this, in our current American society, probably only half of Americans belong to a specific religious confession, in the exclusive sense. But many more believe in the generalities of Christian religion, and everybody has heard and 'knows' many different sort of folk beliefs and claims about Christianity and Jesus. Those who fall into this non-orthodox confessional group, who believe generally but do not define their belief through association with a specific group (rather through their belief) are similar to the environment that birthed Mohammedanism, although the Arabian prophet was originally just one thread of a much larger milieu. So it is wrong to think of the 'believers' as a very specific and exclusive group with closely defined beliefs.

(2) I don't think Mohammed himself was a 'preacher' so much as he was claiming to act as God's representative, and was divinely appointed a political/military leader, in connection with the Arab military expansion. He surely claimed that the believers who he claimed leadership over were entitled to seize Palestine, and particularly Jerusalem, and that the end times were near. Insofar as he had a theology, it is a theology that rejected political/theological subordination to Byzantine or Sassanian Christian orthodoxies in favor of his own authority.

It is this tradition of claiming divine leadership over the believers that later made it so attractive for the Umayyads and Zubayrids to claim succession to Mohammed's right of divine command -- the core of early Mohammedanism was the claim to have divinely appointed leadership over the believers, including bitter post-death disputes over who was the legitimate heir of that leadership.

The so-called constitution of Medina probably reflects a survival of this original Mohammedanism, albeit it is a composite document (made from at least two other texts) that has been secondarily Islamicized. But its component parts were pre-Qur'anic, in my book, and thus very interesting for me (just as Donner takes it to be central to his thesis).

(3) I don't think Mohammed himself necessarily had much to do with the conquests -- he was just one aspect within them, not the spearhead. I haven't read Hoyland's new book, but my expectation is that the Arabs were seizing power outside the Arabian peninsula LONG before the events of 630 or so. Mohammed was just one opportunist within a much broader phenomenon, the slow and systematic rise of Arab political power in the vacuum of Sassanian/Byzantine exhaustion. In other words, this is an example of taking a complex historical process and misinterpreting it as the product of a single person's actions. I think Count Julian has read Hoyland's new book, and I'd be curious what he thinks on this.

I think the earliest layers of the Qur'an are monotheistic preaching derived from Christianity, but I think they had little or nothing to do with Mohammed, who was never a poor itinerant preacher delivering a message amongst pagans. That is an artifact of Mohammed being 'read into' pre-existing texts which came from such a tradition of monotheistic preaching.

I am still reading it now, I have only had time to skim it (I work 60+ hours a week right now, unfortunately, and I am also studying for a technical certification in Cisco equipment and trying not to forget my Arabic) but this correct from what I have read of it, he pains the initial "Islamic" conquests as being a piecemeal affair that advanced at different rates in different places depending on local conditions. I will give more details when I get home tonight.

إطلب العلم ولو في الصين

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Der mutige Springer erreicht sie doch.

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Reply #100 - November 18, 2014, 12:09 AM

Let me know if it's good. I'm tempted to buy it, even though Hoyland's completely unnecessary insistence on trying to jam everything within the traditional Muslim biography of Mohammed is annoying.
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Reply #101 - November 18, 2014, 12:13 AM

You can say that again! My jaw hit the floor when I saw how he trashed the conquest narrative but then related everything back to "the prophet's career at Mecca." How can anyone still maintain that Muhammad was ever based in or conquered Mecca? Nonsense.

إطلب العلم ولو في الصين

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Reply #102 - November 18, 2014, 01:30 AM

It's really bizarre, Hoyland is very critical about most aspects of traditional Islamic history ... except for the Prophet's life, including its earliest stages, at that point suddenly we can totally rely on traditional Islamic history, precisely where the story is most theological and laden with blatant myths and artifice.

Muslim literature on the conquests should be seen as the gold-standard of historical veracity compared to the Prophet's biography, particularly its earliest stages.

The strange thing is it seems to cause Hoyland little cognitive dissonance. He writes a whole article on Jewish inscriptions in the Hijaz, noting that there are almost none (despite the fact that the Qur'an clearly was written in an environment suffused with Jews), but he's just sure there must be some vast unattested reservoir of Hijazi Jews that were swarming the area.

He writes a whole article on pre-Islamic Arabic epigraphy, in which every one of his cited sources is an inscription located in Syria or the Transjordan, and then this is his conclusion:

"In conclusion, I would like to challenge the widely held view that Arabic was
scarcely used before Islam except for orally transmitted poetry. The hackneyed
image of the iceberg that is 90 percent hidden beneath water is worth adducing in
this content, for the small number of currently known pre-Islamic Arabic texts are
indeed but the visible tips of a now invisible, though nonetheless substantial
tradition of writing and speaking Arabic. And this tradition needs to be more fully
taken into account if we are to make better sense of the historical and linguistic
context in which the Qur’an was revealed."

Somehow it does not strike him that perhaps the historical and linguistic context in which the Qur'an 'was revealed' is the exact same context of Arabic usage that he has just been prattling about ad nauseam over the preceding pages. No, this evidence is totally revealing of the context in which the Qur'an was revealed, unless it conflicts with the traditional account, in which case then it's not revealing about the context.
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Reply #103 - November 18, 2014, 02:12 AM

Is Hoyland a Muslim? The use of the word "revealed" would be considered an "NPOV" violation on Wikipedia lol.

إطلب العلم ولو في الصين

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Reply #104 - November 18, 2014, 02:13 AM

BTW is that article online?

إطلب العلم ولو في الصين

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Reply #105 - November 18, 2014, 06:03 AM

No he's not a Muslim, and yet he is totally in the grip of the traditional narrative ... except after Mohammed dies, then suddenly he becomes critical. I can't hate on the guy either, he puts out some great material, it's just really odd that he has this huge blind spot. I don't necessarily expect him to be making hardline revisionist arguments, but he seems genuinely perplexed, over and over again, about how badly the evidence he is talking about stacks up against 'the revelation.' Like he just can't seem to get that synapse to fire and generate doubt.

The article is available online in the "Quran in its Historical Context," a phenomenally great book overall, opening with two classic essays by Reynolds and Donner. But tbh the Hoyland article isn't that great for me. Its sophistication level is infantile compared to Al-Jallad's stuff on early Arabic epigraphy.

http://www.academia.edu/4673572/The_Quran_in_its_Historical_Context_-_Reynolds_et_al
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Reply #106 - November 19, 2014, 03:29 AM

The whole book for free! Whoo hoo!

Thanks Zaotar!

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Reply #107 - November 19, 2014, 05:31 AM

Wow I thought that was a review. That's awesome!

إطلب العلم ولو في الصين

Es sitzt keine Krone so fest und so hoch,
Der mutige Springer erreicht sie doch.

I don't give a fuck about your war, or your President.
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