Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

Reflections after a Breakfast
“THE ARABS have their Bible,” King Alfonso X advised
his Castilian subjects in the mid–thirteenth century,
“which was translated from the Hebrew.” The
king, salva majestate ejus, was wrong, but his intentions
were good, and his information in one respect
was not so very far from the truth. The Quran was
indeed “from the Hebrew,” although not translated, in
the ordinary sense of that word, either by or for
Muhammad. But some manner of translation had assuredly
taken place between the Scripture of the
Hebrews and the audience that heard Muhammad proclaim
the Word of God in Arabia in the seventh century
of our era, a transfer of the spiritual goods of one established
monotheist community into another that was
struggling to come into being. Muhammad was aware
of the transfer, as were some of his audience, and a
number of them accused him of spiritual larceny.
In 1832 a German Jewish scholar, Abraham Geiger,
reopened the question in a more secular mode. “What
Did Muhammad Take from the Jews?” was the title of
his doctoral dissertation, and the same provocative
question has been asked from his day to this. The answers
have varied from “nothing,” as most Muslims
would vigorously contend, to “a great deal,” as many
non-Muslims would equally vigorously argue. But
none would say “everything.” Muhammad’s putative
Jewish teacher would hardly have instructed him on
the exalted status of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, which