Syro-Arabic Christianity is most likely the source of Islam

Submitted by dhimmi no more, Aug 18, 2018 at 16:41

RM you wrote:

>The OT has laid out 613 commandments, how many of those does Christian teaching honor? I don't know but they honor a lot less than Islam.

A very interesting Christian Arab theologian once said (using Islamic terms): The NT Nasakha (abrogated) the OT. Not unlike the Qur'an where even verses abrogated by other verses are included in the text.

>In fact the Quran and the Old Testament are nearly identical in content (eg the story of Moses) as well as tone (the nature of God, the nature of laws concerning ritual purity/menstruation/etc, laws regarding adultery, commerce, etc).

Patricia Crone believed that the source of Islamic law (al-Shari'a al-Islamiyya) is not Jewish law but the Provincial laws, at least in the case of Egypt and Syria. Ignaz Goldziher believed that the source of Islamic law was Roman Law

BTW: The OT and NT are very well edited books. The Qur'an is a badly edited book. It is impossible to understand what the Qur'an says without reading the commentaries by the likes of al-Tabari written 3 centuries after the death of Muhammad in distant Mesopotamia and not al-Hijaz. And in the words of Peters: The Qur'an is text with no context. The narratives are confused and confusing and you will find a story in bits and pieces all over the text. Most likely the Quran is a collection of texts that came from clearly Christian Syriac Qeryana (even the word Qur'an is not an Arabic word. It is a Syriac word) and these texts were stitched together et voila we have the Qur'an

>The New Testament is a radical departure from the Old Testament.

And so is the Qur'an

BTW: The NT "abrogated" the OT and it is not a case of 'Atq (Naql in Arabic) It was indeed abrogation

>So much so that Christianity is considered a religion separate from Judaism.

Oh for sure and so is Islam

> In fact, if one thought of Islam as a sect within Judaism,

Not true. It was meant to be a sect of Christianity not unlike Nestorian Christianity or Arius of Alexandria brand of Christianity, and the Qur'an was most likely meant to be Kitab Wa'z (Lectionary) for Syro-Arabic Christianity in late antiquity.

And yes the so called Muslim Rabbis (Rabbis that converted to Islam the likes of Ka'b al-Ahbar, a famous Rabbi in Islam and Zaid ibn Thabit that was the secretary of Muhammad) must have tried to shape Islam in the image of their previous religion (Judaism) Case in point: replacing Ayat al-Rajm (for adultery) and including it in al-Shari'a instead of the Qur'anic Ayat al-Jald

>it could not be considered an unreasonable assumption.

The problem with the history of early Islam is that we really don't know for sure what happened or where it really happened Most likely Islam is the product of the far superior civilizations (Syriac speakers on top of the list) and it was created, as Wansbrough believed in Mesopotamia not al-Hijaz

>The fundementals of faith and law cannot be dimissed as "beyond the point".In fact, Maimonides' principles of faith are almost identical to that of Islam's, and very divergent from Christianity

Or could it be that Maimonides was looking for similarities between Islam and Judaism in-order to please Muslims? We will never know

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