robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)

cultural milieu is well known. These sources include not only the Bible but other material as well. In the
Qur'an's story of the creation and fall of Adam and Eve (2:30–39, 7:11–25, 15:28–42, 20:115–126, and
38:71–85), Allah creates Adam and then orders the angels to prostrate themselves before him (2:34, 7:11,
15:29, 18:50, 20:116). Satan refuses, saying: “I am better than he; Thou createdst me of fire, and him
Thou createdst of clay” (7:12, 38:76; cf. 15:33, 17:61). Allah thereupon curses Satan (38:77–78) and
banishes him from Paradise (7:13, 15:34). The order to the angels and Satan's refusal is not in the Bible
but is found in Jewish apocryphal and rabbinic literature. 16
Similarly, in the Qur'anic account of Cain and Abel (5:30–35) comes the celebrated Qur'anic
prohibition on the murder of innocents: “Therefore We prescribed for the Children of Israel that whoso
slays a soul not to retaliate for a soul slain, nor for corruption done in the land, shall be as if he had slain
mankind altogether; and whoso gives life to a soul, shall be as if he had given life to mankind altogether”
(5:32). This may also be taken from Jewish tradition, from the Mishnah Sanhedrin, which states: “As
regards Cain who killed his brother, the Lord addressing him does not say, ‘The voice of thy brother's
blood crieth out,’ but ‘the voice of his bloods,’ meaning not his blood alone, but that of his descendants;
and this to show that since Adam was created alone, so he that kills an Israelite is, by the plural here
used, counted as if he had killed the world at large; and he who saves a single Israelite is counted as if he
had saved the whole world.” 17
The Qur'anic account of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (27:16–44) contains material that was likely
derived from another Jewish source, the Targum of Esther. The historian W. St. Clair Tisdall notes that
“the story of Balkis, Queen of Saba, as told at length in the Koran, corresponds so closely with what we
find in the II. Targum of the Book of Esther, that it was evidently taken from it, as heard by Mohammed
from some Jewish source…. In respect of the Queen of Saba, her visit to Solomon, the letter sent by him
to her, etc., there is a marvellous resemblance between the two, excepting this, indeed, that in place of the
Lapwing of the Koran, the Targum Speaks of a Red-cock,—Not a very vital difference after all!” 18
There are Christian influences in the Qur'an also. The story of the “companions of the Cave and of the
Inscription” (18:9–26) is an Islamic version of the Christian account of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus,
which was well known in Eastern Christianity at the time that Islam was taking shape. And when the
Qur'an writes of the child Jesus fashioning clay birds and then bringing them to life (Qur'an 3:49), it
recounts something that is recorded in the second-century Infancy Gospel of Thomas. 19
All this dependence on non-Arabic sources indicates that the Qur'an in its original form was something
quite different from what Muslims have always taken it to be, and that its very character as an Arabic
book is the product of later development, not a feature of the original text.
In fact, there is evidence that the Qur'an was not originally an Arabic book at all.
Incomprehensible
One element of that evidence is the Qur'an's manifest lack of clarity, despite its boasts to the contrary.
Many words in this self-proclaimed clear Arabic book are neither clear nor Arabic. Philologist Gerd-R.