The Christian Encounter with Muhammad

How Theologians have Interpreted the Prophet

Charles Tieszen

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781350191259
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350191235
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Cristianismo

This book offers a fresh appraisal of Muhammad that considers the widest possible history of the ways in which Christians have assessed his prophethood.

To medieval Christian communities, Muhammad-the leader of a religious and political community that grew quickly and with relative success-was an enigma. Did God really send him as a prophet with a revelation? Was the political success of the community he founded a divine validation? Or were he and his followers inspired by something evil?
Despite their attempts, modern Christians continued to be puzzled by Muhammad. The Qur'an provided a framework for understanding and honouring Jesus; was it possible for Christians to reciprocate with regard to Muhammad?

This book applies the same analysis to both medieval and modern assessments of Muhammad, in order to demonstrate the continuities and disparities present in literature from the two eras.

1

Muḥammad as a Christian catechumen

Sergius-Baḥīrā and a legendary counterhistory

We begin with the narrator of a story concerning the apocalyptic visions of a Christian monk named Baḥīrā (or sometimes Sergius). The monk appears in a great many Christian and Muslim texts, some as early as the eighth century.¹ In the Islamic tradition, he is an important figure in the life (sīra) of the Prophet Muḥammad where he purportedly saw a miraculous cloud above the young Muḥammad’s head and a tree bow to Muḥammad in order to shade him. In conversation with the boy, the monk recognized a mark – the seal of prophethood – between Muḥammad’s shoulders.² The story, in Islamic tradition, is meant to demonstrate that Christians acknowledged and foretold the special prophethood of Muḥammad. This rooted the Prophet in a lineage of pre-Islamic monotheism.

The story also had a long life among Christian communities.³ It circulated in various manuscripts among East Syrian (Nestorian), West Syrian (Jacobite or Miaphysite), Melkite (Chalcedonian or Greek Orthodox), Coptic and Maronite Christian communities.⁴ For these readers, it was a part of apocalyptic visions, anti-Muslim polemic and counterhistory. Though the story’s earliest forms likely originate in the early ninth century,⁵ it was added to here and there over time and used to explain the rise of Muḥammad and the rapid spread of Muslim rule. The ways in which it framed the Prophet and accounted for Islam would nourish beleaguered Christian communities by clarifying a past that now seemed like a deceit and a future that suddenly felt insecure.

The Christian story of Baḥīrā

The events of the story, as they are narrated, are situated in the early seventh century. As the story goes, a traveller wandered into the desert where he saw ‘the people of the Sons of Hagar who are barbarian and primitive like wild desert asses’.⁶ The reference is, of course, to the Christian Old Testament and God’s words to Hagar in which he promised that her son, Ishmael, would be like a wild donkey (Gen. 16.11-12). For Christians, and indeed for the traveller, the Sons of Hagar were Arabs and, eventually, Muslims.

Among the Sons of Hagar the traveller encountered an old Christian monk named Sergius, otherwise known as Baḥīrā. The monk had a story to tell. When he was younger the idea of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem appealed to him. So he travelled there and stopped at Mount Sinai afterwards to stay in the monastery. When an opportunity presented itself, he ascended the mountain, knowing that whoever spent a night atop it would receive a divine revelation. And that is just what happened. Baḥīrā saw a vision of imminently rising kingdoms. Of particular interest was the coming rule of Arab kings. Some would be peaceful, some would not, but in the end they would pass and be replaced by the Byzantines before the end of time.

Baḥīrā descended Mount Sinai and eventually found himself among the Arabs who, according to his description, were ‘primitive and simple-minded and led an awful life’.⁷ Even more, they were polytheists – ‘everyone worshiping whatever he liked’ – and rather foolish. As a result, Baḥīrā ‘prophesied concerning them whatever they liked and … handed down to them this book which they call “Qur’ān”’.⁸ The Qur’ān, then, was not a divine revelation sent down from God but Baḥīrā’s creation. For his creation and the gift he made of it to the Arabs, the monk was given a place of honour among them, and when he died his bones were allegedly the source of great miracles.

After Baḥīrā’s death, another character appeared in the story, a learned Jew named Ka’b. He is described in unseemly terms and accused of corrupting Baḥīrā’s teachings by changing what he taught in the Qur’ān. Chief among these alterations was the confused notion that Muḥammad was the Paraclete promised by Jesus in the Gospels. In one version of the story, Ka’b is even said to have prophesied that Muḥammad would rise again three days after his death. When Muḥammad did die, his followers prepared his body, placed him in a room, shut the door and waited to see what would happen. After three days, they opened the room only to find a rotting, stinking corpse.⁹ In turn, when Ka’b died he was ‘buried like a donkey’¹⁰ because of his false prophecy. Nevertheless, the Arabs continued to follow the corrupted teachings. In other words, Islam – the religion followed and propagated by Arabs – comprised a Christian monk’s teachings that were later tainted by a scheming Jew.

At this point in the story, Baḥīrā’s tale is retold, this time from the perspective of one of his disciples. Accordingly, Baḥīrā prophesied on more than one occasion that God would raise up from among the Arabs a great man named Muḥammad. Then one day a group of Arabs came to the well that was near where Baḥīrā lived. One young Arab stood out to Baḥīrā and he saw a vision above the boy’s head. Baḥīrā knew this was Muḥammad. He told the others about Muḥammad and blessed the boy. He prophesied that Muḥammad would become a great king and lead his people ‘from the worship of idols to the worship of the one true God’.¹¹ This prophecy prompted a discussion between Baḥīrā and Muḥammad about the basics of Christian doctrine and what those who worship the one true God believe.

In the course of Baḥīrā’s explanation, Muḥammad interjected and inquired, ‘How will my people believe [these things], since I cannot read a book and I do not know anything?’¹² His question led to an exchange in which Baḥīrā arranged for the best way to pass Muḥammad off as a teacher leading his people to monotheism. Baḥīrā would instruct him in everything he needed to know. Muḥammad would claim that his knowledge was revealed to him by the angel Gabriel and would tell his followers that God would send it to them in a book from heaven. Baḥīrā would write this book, but he would place it on the horn of a cow and send the cow to Muḥammad and his followers. Muḥammad could secure his followers’ commitment to these instructions by promising them a sumptuous heavenly paradise and by easing the extent to which they must devote themselves to pious religious acts, such as prayer. Another apocalyptic vision follows, but the story of Baḥīrā and Muḥammad ends with a description of the young Muḥammad:

He was a humble, simple boy, [he] liked the daily teaching of Mar Sergius. And he wrote for them this book which they call ‘Qur’ān’, at the hands of Muḥammad. They studied it every day of their lives until the death of Baḥīrā, he who prophesied to them.¹³

Muḥammad is also described as ‘great and exalted’¹⁴ as well as:

good-natured, bright and eager to learn. He received knowledge from Baḥīrā, memorized it and devoted himself to it day and night, until the day that the Qur’ān was written. He continued to visit Baḥīrā frequently and to consult him about his affairs and to do what he said. And he visited him every day and he continued that consistently until Baḥīrā died.¹⁵

Redacting Baḥīrā’s story and the making of a legend

Baḥīrā’s story comes to us in four main versions: two Syriac recensions – an East Syrian one and a West Syrian one – and two Arabic recensions – a short one and a long one. There are also Latin and Armenian translations.¹⁶ I have summarized above the material that the recensions have in common. One of the intriguing features of the story is the points where the versions deviate.¹⁷ These are likely the result of copyists and redactors who were interested in using the story, but wished to incorporate other elements – many of them topoi of anti-Muslim polemical literature – for the benefit of their communities.¹⁸

One of the most significant of these points of divergence is the means by which Baḥīrā’s message to Muḥammad is contaminated. In the Syriac and short Arabic recensions, a learned Jew named Ka’b took the Qur’ān that Baḥīrā wrote for Muḥammad and corrupted it. In effect, Ka’b reshaped instructions meant to draw the Arabs towards monotheism, resulting in elaborate falsifications such as the notion that Muḥammad was the Paraclete Jesus promised to his followers in the Gospels.¹⁹ In the short Arabic recension, Ka’b remained responsible for the qur’anic corruption, but Baḥīrā also elaborated on the contents of the Qur’ān he wrote. Baḥīrā confessed these elaborations as a sin and he described some of what he wrote.²⁰ For example, Baḥīrā admitted:

Then I wrote for him: ‘Jesus son of Mary, did you say to the people “take me and my mother as two gods, next to God?” He said “Praise be to You. I do not say that to which I have no right. If I had said it You would have known it. You know what is in me and I do not know what is in You. Praise be to You. You are the Knower of the mysteries”’ (Q 5:116). I wrote this in reply to them as a reproach to them.²¹

For Muslims, this revelation functioned as a reproach of Christians for allegedly and idolatrously worshiping Jesus and Mary. According to the qur’anic text, Jesus made no such claims. For Baḥīrā, the text became a reproach of Muḥammad and his followers for their polytheism.²²

Baḥīrā also admitted to writing portions of the Qur’ān that justify Islamic marriage practices that Christians found repugnant. Preeminent among these was Q 33:37 where Muḥammad’s marriage to Zaynab bint Jaḥsh, the wife of Zayd, is justified. In many Christian polemical texts, this event – Muḥammad’s attraction to Zaynab, Zayd’s subsequent initiation of divorce and the qur’anic revelation justifying Muḥammad’s marriage to her – was used to demonstrate the unseemliness of Islam and draw into question the Qur’ān’s status as sacred text.²³ In the short Arabic recension of the story, Baḥīrā confessed to creating the passage as a means for permitting Muḥammad’s desire for Zayd’s wife. ‘And I made many things for [Muḥammad]’, Baḥīrā disclosed, ‘that do not resemble prophecy nor befit the chosen of God.’²⁴ In this version of the story, then, a Jew was not to blame for the inception of Islam. Instead, Baḥīrā accepted responsibility.

In the long Arabic recension, Ka’b disappears completely and any Jewish influence on Islam vanishes along with him. Muḥammad is less a promising, malleable youth than he is a leader who requests that Baḥīrā condense the essential points of Islam for the sake of dim-witted Arabs.²⁵ This not only reflects the supposed mental aptitude of Arabs in general but is also meant to indicate the limited extent to which Muḥammad was able to grasp the details of what Baḥīrā taught him. So, while Muḥammad was capable of greatness, he remained a slightly dim-witted catechumen only able to retain the most basic of doctrinal matters.²⁶

Most importantly, Ba...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Dedication Page
• Also Available from Bloomsbury
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Muḥammad as a Christian catechumen
• 2 Muḥammad as a prophet of inferior monotheism
• 3 Muḥammad as a retrograde Moses of minimal significance
• 4 Muḥammad as a carnal warrior and scheming ruler
• 5 Muḥammad as an anti-saint
• 6 Muḥammad as a tainted vessel of Christ
• 7 Muḥammad as a vanquished anti-hero
• 8 Muḥammad as a powerless Prophet to the Arabs
• 9 Muḥammad as a Prophet and colonial goad for persecutors
• 10 Muḥammad as a redundant Gabriel and missionary conscript
• 11 Muḥammad as a signpost for fellow pilgrims
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright Page