mundi points out to me ...
1). Moshe recognises the lateness of the sources..
2). . But he mentions Sophronius who is an eye-witness.
3). You ahve to deal with what there is, not with what you wish you had.
4). The article is not about the genesis of the Quran.
5). I placed it here to show there is no need for 2;125 to have been read and acted upon seen the LA context.
Well Moshe Sharon did exactly what you did in point 5 of your post dear mundi ., He took Sophronius words that were published by some one else and he took Islamic stories from 9th/10th/11th centuries and wrote his paper .,
The difference between you and Moshe Sharon is .,
you came to the right conclusion that 2;125 is NOT necessary to build a building by SO_CALLED MUSLIMS.. and Moshe Sharon is trying to show Early Islamic onslaughts (BEFORE SAY YEAR 700) were brutal and Arabic nomads who came from Mecca/Medina ran over all of middle east from Arabia , Syria, Jerusalem, Jordan, Iraq.. all those lands using the book Quran..,, actually No..No Hadith stories....
please read carefully the story that Moshe Sharon tells about Sophronius, in the publication itself.. for e.g.,
Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, had by then lost all hope of relief from Constantinople, seeing that all the major cities of Syria, Damascus included, hadopened their gates to the invading Muslim armies. (See Busse 1986: 150 and n. 2 for bibliography; Sharon 2007: 300–301.) Most of these armies had already moved either to the north or to the south, subjugating whatever remained of the Syrian and African provinces of the Byzantine – East Roman Empire. The Arabic sources report that Caesarea remained the only city on the Syrian littoral that refused for along time to follow the example of the other major urban centres of Syria, and was brought under siege. This cut it off from the Palestinian hinterland but not from the marine lines of communication with the centre of the empire. It was, however, only a question of time before it fell into Muslim hands....
..Sophronius was witness to the new situation where Bedouin and their flocks were scattered all over the environs of Jerusalem and even the journey to nearby Bethlehem was fraught with danger. His sermon was, perhaps, one final plea to the Emperor to come to the aid of the Holy Land and the Holy City in repulsing the nomad invaders. It is clear from both his testimonies however, that the Arab presence around the city was not a real siege, and that the decision to capitulate was made not out of distress but rather out of despair. There was no point in refusing to follow the lead of the other major Syrian cities that sometimes even welcomed the invaders.When the decision to capitulate was taken, Sophronius had only this one minor Arab commander on the spot to whom he could offer the Holy City. (The story reminds us of a similar event that occurred in 1917 when the keys of the city of Jerusalem were offered to two cooks from General Allenby’s army, whom thenotables of Jerusalem mistook to be the representatives of the victorious British army.)
Look at those highlighted words at the end... that is silly comparison... please read that publication carefully ., Any way you are right here
3). You have to deal with what there is, not with what you wish you had.
Off course we have to deal with what you have dear mundi.. but we can put little more detailed investigation and little more thought process in to what happened in those early Islamic times by negating unanswered questions ((or those questions that are difficult to answer)) by our own self generated questions using the same existing ancient literature, archaeology and other proofs...
with best wishes
yeezevee
Topic: Qur'anic studies today