A Prophet Has Appeared

The Rise of Islam through Christian and Jewish Eyes, A Sourcebook

Stephen J. Shoemaker

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780520971271
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Vergleichende Religion

Early Islam has emerged as a lively site of historical investigation, and scholars have challenged the traditional accounts of Islamic origins by drawing attention to the wealth of non-Islamic sources that describe the rise of Islam. A Prophet Has Appeared brings this approach to the classroom. This collection provides students and scholars with carefully selected, introduced, and annotated materials from non-Islamic sources dating to the early years of Islam. These can be read alone or alongside the Qur'an and later Islamic materials. Applying historical-critical analysis, the volume moves these invaluable sources to more equal footing with later Islamic narratives about Muhammad and the formation of his new religious movement.

Included are new English translations of sources by twenty authors, originally written in not only Greek and Latin but also Syriac, Georgian, Armenian, Hebrew, and Arabic and spanning a geographic range from England to Egypt and Iran. Ideal for the classroom and personal library, this sourcebook provides readers with the tools to meaningfully approach a new, burgeoning area of Islamic studies.

1 The Teaching of Jacob the Newly Baptized (July, 634 CE)

This early seventh-century text, often known by its Latin title, Doctrina Iacobi nuper baptizati, purports to relate several lengthy debates that took place among the Jews of North Africa in response to their forced baptism under Heraclius in 632.¹ In it, the members of this community debate whether they should embrace the conversion to Christianity that has been forced upon them. Not surprisingly, then, most of its contents have nothing at all to do with Muhammad or his new religious movement. Nevertheless, as the dialogue progresses, recent events in Holy Land eventually intrude and give what is the earliest account of the emergence of Muhammad’s followers onto the world stage. The Teaching of Jacob is therefore one of the most important sources for understanding the earliest history of what would eventually become Islam. The text locates these alleged debates in July of 634, thus at the very moment when Muhammad’s followers had first begun to enter the Roman Near East. Specific concern with the recent forced baptism and numerous references to other contemporary political events seem to confirm that the text was indeed composed sometime very close to this date, a matter on which there is a strong scholarly consensus.²

The text’s author is a certain Joseph, who was one of the participants in the debates. Nevertheless, its central character is Jacob, a Jewish merchant from Palestine who, along with the others, had been forced to receive baptism while on an ill-timed business trip to Africa. As the text begins, Jacob addresses the other Jews who have been forced into baptism and declares that he has now come to recognize the truth of Christianity through a miraculous vision and careful study of the scriptures. Following an extensive instruction and dialogue with his audience, Jacob successfully convinces these “newly baptized” Jews to embrace with their hearts the faith that they had recently received through compulsion. Several days later, however, and about halfway through the text, a new character appears: Justus, the unbaptized cousin of one of Jacob’s pupils who has just arrived from Palestine. Justus is dismayed that his cousin and so many other Jews agreed to accept their Christian baptism, and he decides to debate the issue anew with Jacob before the group.

Not surprisingly, given that this is a Christian text, Jacob ultimately persuades Justus to convert as well. Yet, despite this rather predictable outcome, the text offers an incredibly rich source for understanding the history of the eastern Mediterranean at the pivotal moment just after the Sasanian occupation and the Roman reconquest of the Near East, and right as Muhammad’s followers were beginning to enter the region. Of course, Christian writing on Jews and Judaism is notoriously unreliable, frequently governed by caricatures and stereotypes with little relation to any historical reality. Accordingly, one might be tempted to discount this source along with any information that it purports to relate about the religious cultures of the Mediterranean world in the early seventh century. Nevertheless, easy dismissal of the text and its contents on such grounds would be unwarranted; to the contrary, by nearly every measure the Teaching of Jacob appears to be a trustworthy source on such matters. In contrast to many other contemporary Christian writings on Judaism, the Teaching of Jacob presents a knowledgeable and realistic portrayal of late ancient Judaism and Jewish life such that it is, as David Olster remarks, “the exception that proves the rule.”³ Indeed, Olster concludes that its depiction of late ancient Judaism is so accurate and nuanced that it must have been composed with a Jewish audience in mind by an author who was himself a converted Jew.⁴ Likewise, the Teaching of Jacob shows significant knowledge of Palestinian geography as well as contemporary events in North Africa, adding credibility to its purported origin within a community of Palestinian Jews who found themselves in North Africa at this inopportune moment.⁵

The main passage that concerns us occurs in the aftermath of Jacob’s debate with Justus, after the latter has converted. Here Justus relates the contents of a letter that his brother Abraham had recently sent him from Palestine with an update of current events. In it, Abraham describes the recent arrival of the Saracens who had entered the Holy Land under the leadership of a new prophet: obviously, this is Muhammad, although he is not specifically named. For good measure, Abraham tells us that he personally investigated these new developments and confirmed them by speaking with individuals who had met this prophet.

The Teaching of Jacob the Newly Baptized V.16⁶

Justus answered and said, “Indeed you speak the truth, and this is the great salvation: to believe in Christ. For I confess to you, master Jacob, the complete truth. My brother Abraham wrote to me that a false prophet has appeared. Abraham writes, “When [Sergius] the candidatus was killed by the Saracens, I was in Caesarea, and I went by ship to Sykamina.⁷ And they were saying, ‘The candidatus has been killed,’ and we Jews were overjoyed. And they were saying, ‘A prophet has appeared, coming with the Saracens, and he is preaching the arrival of the anointed one who is to come, the Messiah.’ And when I arrived in Sykamina, I visited an old man who was learned in the Scriptures, and I said to him, ‘What can you tell me about the prophet who has appeared with the Saracens?’ And he said to me, groaning loudly, ‘He is false, for prophets do not come with a sword and a war-chariot. Truly the things set in motion today are deeds of anarchy, and I fear that somehow the first Christ that came, whom the Christians worship, was the one sent by God, and instead of him we will receive the Antichrist.⁸ Truly, Isaiah said that we Jews will have a deceived and hardened heart until the entire earth is destroyed. But go, master Abraham, and find out about this prophet who has appeared.’ And when I, Abraham, investigated thoroughly, I heard from those who had met him that one will find no truth in the so-called prophet, only the shedding of human blood. In fact, he says that he has the keys of paradise, which is impossible.” These things my brother Abraham has written from the East.

Commentary

Several things are especially important in this account, including reference to the murder of the candidatus Sergius of Caesarea by the invading Saracens, an event known also from other sources.⁹ More significantly, however, Abraham’s letter reports that this prophet is coming with the Saracens, suggesting that Muhammad is still alive at this time, and he is proclaiming the imminent arrival of the Messiah. This is the first of several witnesses from the seventh century reporting that Muhammad was still living and leading his followers as they first entered the Roman (and Sasanian) Empire. Lacking knowledge of the much later reports to the contrary from the Islamic historical tradition, one would certainly read this passage as indicating that Muhammad was indeed still alive and “coming with the Saracens.”¹⁰

As for the letter’s report that Muhammad was “preaching the arrival of the anointed one who is to come, the Messiah,” there is some question as to whether or not Muhammad may or may not have heralded the impending arrival of a Messiah who would follow him. Clearly, the Teaching of Jacob here mirrors the powerful apocalyptic charge that Muhammad’s message held as well as the eschatological expectations of his earliest followers. The Qur’an and other early materials from the Islamic tradition indicate quite clearly that imminent eschatology, a conviction that the end of the world was at hand, was central in Muhammad’s preaching and the faith of his followers.¹¹ Yet it is also possible that the Messiah’s promised advent reflects the Jewish context of this source, in which the apocalypticism of Muhammad and the Believers has been refracted through the lens of Jewish eschatological expectations. For a Jewish audience, the eschaton’s impending arrival meant that the Messiah soon would appear along with it.¹² As we will see, the Secrets of Rabbi Shimʿōn b. Yoḥai, a late ancient Jewish apocalypse also included in the present volume, similarly reports that Muhammad and his followers were expecting the Messiah’s immediate advent.¹³ Indeed, Muhammad’s new religious movement emerged within a religious landscape that was highly charged with eschatological expectations among Christians, Jews, and even Zoroastrians.¹⁴

At the same time, however, we should not rule out the possibility that the report is accurate, and that Muhammad and his early followers were in fact awaiting the arrival of some sort of messianic figure. In such a case, their expectation of the imminent second coming of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, emerges as a likely possibility. Jesus is regularly named the Messiah in the Qur’an (e.g., 3:45, 4:157, 171–72, 5:17, 72, 75, 9:30–31), and the Qur’an itself expects Jesus to return just before the Hour, as one of its signs. The most important passage associating his return with the Hour’s arrival is 43:57–61. According to its canonical vocalization, the final verse of this passage proclaims that the subject of the Qur’an’s revelation is nothing less than “knowledge of the Hour [i.e., the eschaton]; doubt not concerning it” (43:61), a reading that, in its own right, seems to highlight the imminent eschatology that prevailed within Muhammad’s teaching and his new religious movement. Yet, according to an early alternative vocalization, the canonical form “knowledge (ʿilm) of the Hour” should instead be read as “a sign (ʿalam) of the Hour.”¹⁵ Since Jesus is the subject of the immediately preceding verses, by this reading he remains the subject of verse 61, so that Jesus the Messiah is identified as “a sign of the Hour; doubt not concerning it and follow me.”

As Sean Anthony and Muhammad Ali Amir-Moezzi have both noted (among others), there is good reason to suspect that this alternative vocalization was in fact the primitive one.¹⁶ This variant reading not only makes better sense of the passage, but it also comports with our understanding of the early development of the Islamic apocalyptic tradition. Elsewhere, for instance, the Qur’an portends that Jesus will be present for the Final Judgment, when he will serve as a witness against the people of the Book (4:159), a passage that seems to confirm the variant reading. Moreover, this noncanonical reading’s dissonance with the later Islamic tradition and its agreement with major tendencies identified by David Cook in the early apocalyptic tradition also vouch for its antiquity. Christ’s return at the eschaton is attested in a number of early ḥadīth, whose antiquity is highly probable, since it is unlikely that later Muslims would have successfully forged traditions so discordant with other orthodoxies of what eventually became “classical” Islam.¹⁷ Indeed, as David Cook observes, Jesus was in all likelihood the first messianic figure in Islam. Otherwise, it is once again difficult to understand why his return occupies such a prominent role in Islamic eschatology to this day. The fact that the later tradition shows significant concern to diminish his primary eschatological role further seems to indicate the antiquity of this tradition.¹⁸ Accordingly, it appears that expectation of Christ’s return at the eschaton was likely proclaimed in the Qur’an and was a part of the primitive kerygma of its community’s faith. Thus, Abraham’s report that this prophet was preaching the Messiah’s arrival appears to find confirmation in the Qur’an and the early Islamic apocalyptic tradition.

Abraham also indicates that he consulted “an old man who was learned in the Scriptures” for his opinion on this new prophet. The sage replied that “he is false, for prophets do not come with a sword and a war-chariot,” and he encouraged Abraham to look into the matter himself more carefully. Abraham then continues to relate the results of his inquiry: “When I investigated thoroughly, I heard from those who had met him that one will find no truth in the so-called prophet, only the shedding of human blood.” For good measure, Abraham also reports that this prophet “says that he has the keys of paradise, which is impossible.”¹⁹ As Sean Anthony recently explains, Muhammad’s alleged claim to possess the keys of paradise also seems to reflect an important belief held by Muhammad and his earliest followers, as Cook and Crone first noted in Hagarism.²⁰ Obviously, as Anthony notes, this claim is eschatological, yet no less important is its strong association with the military campaigns of the Umayyads in the early Islamic historical tradition. Several traditions link the Umayyad conquest ideology with the keys of paradise, which suggests that this motif in the Teaching of Jacob offers “an early testimony to the doctrine of jihād procuring believers access to paradise.”²¹

On the whole, then, this testimony would appear to be a very high-quality witness to the earliest history of Muhammad’s new religious movement. It is contemporary with the events that it describes, and it purports to derive its information from an eyewitness source in Palestine who had confirmed what he writes with followers of Muhammad who had met him. To be sure, we cannot be entirely certain that all of this is indeed factual, but nevertheless, on the face of things, this is one of the best sources that we have for understanding the beginnings of Islam, and much that it relates can be confirmed in one fashion or another by other sources, both non-Islamic and Islamic. On the basis of this source, then, Muhammad’s earliest followers appear to hold the belief that they were living in the end-times, and that the eschaton would soon arrive, along with the Messiah, most likely understood—on the basis of comparison with early Islamic materials—as the second coming of Christ. It is a new religious movement that, moreover, seems to be deeply intertwined with elements of the Jewish and Christian traditions and was also intent on conquest. Therefore, we have in the Teaching of Jacob evidence that as the Believers l...