historica muhammad and jesus

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The Historical Muḥammad and the Historical Jesus:A Comparison of Scholarly Reinventions and Reinterpretations1

HERBERT BERG & SARAH ROLLENS IntroductionScholars of Christian origins and scholars of Islamic origins 2 rarely meet and share their thoughts.

While some early modern scholars of Islam were trained in biblical source criticism, few today areconversant with Kloppenborg’s stratification of Q (1987), for instance, or even the many books byCrossan, Borg, and Ehrman intended for the more lucrative non-specialist audience. Less surprising,however, is that Christian origins scholars, particularly those who quest after the historical Jesus, areunaware of the work on the historical Muḥammad. Our goal is to show that the two sets of scholarshave much in common and to teach each other, with a weakness of one often being the strength of theother.

Obviously, it is not possible to do an exhaustive survey, but a comparison of three aspects of research in both scholarly traditions, namely the sources, the methodologies, and the conclusions,reveals several parallel theoretical concerns. We will argue that historical reconstructions of Jesus andMuḥammad are equally problematic. For both traditions, these problems are rooted in the literary andtheological nature of the sources. Moreover, the endeavours of the scholars, whether religious or not,

are also often overtly or covertly theological in their methodological framework. That is to say, theyare theological in their need to see each of these two “founder” figures as the unique and central raisond’etre of the respective movements that claim them. Similarly, the need to see the extant sources ashistorical texts, albeit ones in which the historical facts lie hidden, shares the worldview of thebelievers—and hardly seems befitting those who consider themselves sceptics.

The SourcesThe sources for the historical Jesus are diverse, including canonical documents and extra-canonicaldocuments, as well as archaeological, numismatic, and other physical evidence. Scholars also utilizeaccounts from presumably non-Christian historical sources (such as Josephus), which are presumablyfree of Christian bias3 and compare them with the sources produced by Christians, in order to assessthe historicity of canonical and extra-canonical documents. The task is to “strip” the theologi

accretions from the underlying historical facts. There has been a refreshing insistence in recentresearch that socio-cultural reconstructions must accompany historical reconstructions of founderfigures, given that the texts often reflect obvious parallels from the surrounding society.

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4 Such a widevariety of sources from which to draw historical data forces scholars to create criteria of historicity (or

1 We would to thank Dr. William E. Arnal for reading an earlier version of this paper and for hisextremely helpful comments and suggestions. This article was first presented the Scripture & Skepticism: The Uses of Doubt in Biblical and Qur ʾanic Studies conference at the University of California Davis, January 25-28, 2007.

2 Very few scholars of early Islam use the term “Islamic origins.” Even the use of the phrase “historicalMuḥammad” is uncommon, unless a conscious effort is being made to parallel “historical Jesus” scholarship(Jeffrey 1926; Peters 1991; Ibn Warraq 2000). The tacit assumption is that Muḥammad is a historical figure whose

traditional biography is a reasonably accurate account of his life. Muḥammad, therefore, is the historicalMuḥammad in no need of this superfluous adjective.3 However, scholars recognize that even “historians” such as Josephus cannot always be trusted to be

entirely accurate in their records. Crossan lists and accounts for several types of bias obvious in Josephus’accounts (1991: 92–100).

4 See for example, Crossan’s The Historical Jesus, in which he exhaustively describes the socio-culturalcontext within which Jesus would have interacted. Drawing from non-Christian sources, he constructs the mostlikely profile of the first century Mediterranean peasant (1991). Or see Mack’s specific example of comparing theparable of the seeds (see Mark 4:13-20, Matthew 13:1-23, Luke 8:4-15, and Thomas 9) to other similar Hellenisticdocuments in order to demonstrate its origins in the wider cultural context (1988: 159).



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criteria of “authenticity”5) by which to judge these data. Also, textual criticism is used to discover theearliest form of the documents, and form criticism and other techniques are used to establish evenearlier oral or pre-textual forms of stories and sayings within those documents. Then, scholars applyadditional criteria of authenticity. For example, these criteria have included such things as thenumber of times a saying or event has independent attestation among several sources; or, if a passagehas a more “difficult” reading, it has been claimed to be more likely to be authentic, because, it is

argued, the editors (that is, ancient scribes and manuscript copyists) had not yet taken the time tocorrect the difficult reading.6 These various sources of information and criteria are generally thoughtsufficient for scholars to determine the true characteristics of the historical Jesus.

Historical Muḥammad scholars have a considerably smaller set of sources and are thereforeforced to depend more heavily on the criteria of authenticity—but one that they borrow almost intactdirectly from Muslim tradition itself. The Qurʾān, though it is considered by Muslims to be the eternalspeech of God, is also thought to address specific situations in the life of Mu ḥammad and hiscommunity. For non-Muslim scholars, Muḥammad is often thought of as the conscious or unconsciousauthor of the Qurʾān. Either way it should serve as a valuable source for reconstructing the historicalMuḥammad. The major source of details about the life of Muḥammad comes from the sī ra, thebiography of Muḥammad. While it is preserved in many recensions, those of Ibn Isḥāq via Ibn Hishāmand that of al-Ṭabar ī are considered the most authoritative. An additional source of information

comes from the Sunna (the example of Muḥammad as preserved in thousands of short reports knownas ḥadī ths). Most of these ḥadī ths have legal implications and are often devoid of significant historicaldetail or context. Nevertheless, at first there appears to be a wealth of material—much larger than thatof early Christianity. However, there are numerous serious problems. The Qurʾān (as sceptical scholarshave suggested) may have been canonized much later than Muslim tradition claims. The materials thatcame to be in the Qurʾān predate their canonization, but may originate in a different (non-Meccan,non-Medinan) milieu (Wansbrough 1977: 1–52). Even if one were not to accept this “radicallysceptical” position, the problems with the other materials suggests one should approach the claim thatMuḥammad is the author of the Qurʾān with the same scepticism as the claim that John the disciple isthe author of the Gospel According to John. Since Goldziher (1889–1890) and Schacht (1950), scholars of the Sunna have spent their efforts trying to confirm whether the chain of transmitters ( isnāds) attachedto ḥadī ths are reliable or not. 7 In fact, sceptics maintain that the very presence of an isnād is not an

indication of the transmission of the report, but an indication of the late fabrication (that is, after thefirst century of Islam) or reworking of the report to which it is attached to make it look authentic.8

5 The term “authentic” is problematic in its own right. For general discussion of the problems of “authenticity” in the study of religion, see McCutcheon (2003). More specifically, when referring to Jesus andearly Christianity, the term “authentic” is usually permeated with the insider perspective. Crossan at least hasnoted that this terminology is problematic and has opted to view the differing materials as “compositionaldevelopments” (1991: xxxi). Nevertheless, he is merely substituting “historicity” for “authenticity.” For how thisplays out with Crossan, see notes 43 and 44 below.

6 See, for example, Ehrman (1999). In general, historical Jesus research has suffered serious criticismdue to its lack of unity on these authenticity criteria. Each scholar seems to be quite rigorous in laying out his or

her methods before proceeding in their study, but they lack any standard criteria of judgment or textual base fortheir sources. See Mack (2003: 34–35). 7 For an extensive survey and evaluation of this ḥadī th criticism, see Berg (2000: 6–64). A sharp critique of

Berg’s sceptical depiction is made by Motzki (2003: 211–257).8Wansbrough argues as follows:

The supplying of isnāds, whether traced to the prophet, to his companions, or their successors, may beunderstood as an exclusively formal innovation and cannot be dated much before 200/815. That Shāfiʿī ’sstringent standards with regard to prophetical ḥadī ths were not applied in the fields of history andexegesis is an impression derived from a wholly artificial classification of their contents. The substanceof history, of exegesis, and of law was identical … (1977: 179).



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Nevertheless, non-sceptics suggest that careful analysis of the transmissions and comparisons of recensions of a particular report can allow the scholar to discern the authenticity or even the originalversion of the report.9

As for the sī ra, most of it comes in the form of ḥadī ths too (as do the reports of the actualrevelation and ultimate collection of the Qur ʾān). Consequently, the doubts about legal ḥadī th-literature naturally extend to all these “historical” ḥadī ths.10 Therefore, even in the unlikely event that

ḥadī ths did contain historically accurate material, sceptics would maintain that the deeds and activitiesof Muḥammad cannot be discerned from them. As for the claim that the Qurʾān as intimatelyconnected with Muḥammad and that one need only read the sī ra to see constant references,11 asWansbrough pointed out, much of the sī ra appears to be narrative exegesis of the Qurʾān. The Qurʾānserved to provide concepts, but not historical facts. So, what we have is not historical evidence of Muḥammad, but evidence of the historicization of the figure of Muḥammad.12

For an isnād to work as a legitimating device, it must conform to certain standards. Once those standards areknown, however, they can be used to fabricate isnāds fairly easily by copying purportedly authentic isnādswholesale or in part (by branching off a generation or two earlier). And just as Paul is associated with lettershe did not write because of his reputation, so particular scholars of legal, historical, or exegetical ḥadī ths wereascribed materials that could not have originated with them. For a discussion of how this ascription of

materials was made with Ibn ʿAbbās, the earliest, most prominent, and most prolific Quranic exegete, seeBerg (2004).

9 Motzki has made the most concerted effort to defend ḥadī ths in general (1991).10 At least for sceptics, Juynboll who tried to demonstrate that historical ḥadī ths are different from legal

ḥadī ths, is unconvincing (1992: 685–691). Juynboll had tried to make a distinction between the structure of isnāds.Watt, the pre-eminent historical Muḥammad scholar of the previous generation, similarly claimed a distinctionbetween legal and historical beliefs without any justification (1953: xiii). For an evaluation of their claims andothers, see Berg (2000: 29–30 and 106–11).

In addition to Wansbrough, scholars who are sceptical of the historical sources (in very different waysand to different degrees) include Burton (1977), Calder (1993), Cook (1981), Crone (1987), Crone and Cook (1977),Crone and Hinds (1986), and Hawting (1999). Most historians, however, see the sources as reasonablytrustworthy. Watt, for instance, suggests that the reports may have suffered from “tendential shaping”, by whichhe means that the motives ascribed to characters may have been altered by later writers and transmitters for

religious or political reasons. The actual events described, however, are trustworthy. That is to say, “and theadmission of ‘tendential shaping’ should have as its corollary the acceptance of the general soundness of thematerial” (1953: xiii). Even self-professed sceptics such as Rodinson, who introduces his study of Muḥammadwith:

How can we distinguish the true from the false? There is no indisputable criterion. Those who forgedthe traditions had an undeniably literary gift. They endowed their inventions with that vivid, easy,familiar character that gives them their charm. They filled them with animated dialogues, with detailsthat have every appearance of being drawn from life, with colloquial expressions and humorous strokes;and they sprinkled the whole with archaic words. In short, they expended a great deal of literary talent.But there is nothing of which we can say for certain: This dates back to the time of the Prophet.

just a few sentences later states, “In spite if all the difficulties, we can start with the text of the Koran, which is afirm and authentic base,” and then largely accepts the account in the sī ra (1971: xi–xii).

11 See, for example, Welch who stated:

A distinctive feature of the Qurʾān that cannot be ignored if the Muslim scripture is to be understoodfully is its close relationship to the life of Muḥammad and his contemporaries. … [T]he Qurʾān is ahistorical document that reflects the prophetic career of Muḥammad and responds constantly to thespecific needs and problems of the emerging Muslim community. It abounds in references and allusionsto historical events that occurred during the last twenty or so years of Muḥammad’s lifetime … (1980:626).

12 The relationship between the sī ra and the Qurʾān logia is more complex. While the former appears toserve as a narrative exegesis of the latter at times, at other times Qurʾānic verses are rather arbitrarily assigned tonarrative accounts. However, in general, the sī ra uses connected or isolated Qurʾānic passages as an outline for itsnarrative. And sometimes it merely employs paraphrases, diction, and imagery of passages from the Qurʾān.



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What this briefest of surveys already highlights is that for both Christian and Islamic originsalmost all this source material is literary.13 Basing historical reconstructions on literature alone canseem somewhat speculative. For example, Mack, using only early Christian literature, hasreconstructed at least five distinct Jesus movements, three of which are evinced from material in Markalone.14 The proliferation of Jesus communities and Jesuses should alert us that using literature aloneto hypothesize a movement is problematic. 15 Fortunately, the work of recent historical Jesus scholars

emphasizes the need for a historical, social, and economic background against which to place theliterature. For instance, Crossan’s exhaustive reconstruction of the Mediterranean socio-economicworld provides a general context within which the texts can be read (1991). 16 A more specific exampleis seen in Arnal’s use of numismatics in order to support his conclusions about the (non-itinerant)activity of Galilean scribes who produced Q1.17 These scholars and others like them maintain that isnot enough to extract a social group out of a product of literature; it must be supplemented with othfactual material, be it other historical documents or archaeological data, which confirm the assertionsthat these communities actually existed with distinct identities. Obviously, simply using criteria of authenticity not rooted in other factual material, will lead to circularity (as we will discuss below).Historical Muḥammad scholars have not yet begun the type of comparisons promoted by Arnal

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18 andCrossan.19

Given what we have said, it would seem that Christian origins scholars are far ahead of Islamicorigins scholars. However, the problem that both scholars share is not only that their sources areprimarily literature, but also that they are primarily theological literature—and this, we will see, causeshistorical Jesus scholars far more difficulties. Arnal argues:

Consequently, it is hardly surprisingly that the Qurʾān seems to confirm the biographical details of Muḥammad’slife (Wansbrough 1977: 56).

13 This is precisely the point Wansbrough makes: “[If] what we know of the seventh-century Hijaz is theproduct of intense literary activity, then that record has got be interpreted in accordance with what we know of literary criticism” (1987: 14–15).

14 Mack extracts (1) itinerants in Galilee, (2) the Pillars in Jerusalem, (3) the family of Jesus, (4) thecongregation of Israel and (5) congregations of the Christ; these all, in his opinion, represent separate groups of

early Jesus movements (1988: 83–102).15 Clearly texts alone allow for some kinds of reconstructions. We can assume the existence of a writer orwriters and mostly likely readers. Often texts also tell us about the groups that preserved, used, and transmittedthem. In the case of religious texts, careful analysis often permits theological or ideological agendas to beextracted as well. However, without some other evidence, too much of the reconstruction is based on thescholar’s imagination. At the very least, other material evidence makes the reconstruction seem more plausible.That is not to say that we disagree with Mack’s hypotheses, just the conclusiveness with which he states them.

16 However, as valuable as it may be to understand the socio-cultural context of early Christianity,describing the historical Jesus as a “Mediterranean Jewish Peasant” is far too vague. It contributes little inestablishing the historical Jesus. This characterization is much too broad because there were thousands of Mediterranean Jewish peasants at the time of Jesus. And, most of these peasants did not come to be seen asfounders of a religion. Furthermore, describing Jesus is in this way does not help scholars understand theproductions of the texts, the communities’ social formations, etc.

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Arnal scrutinizes what exactly was happening in the everyday lives of ancient Galileans: What weretheir means of subsistence? What was the economic structure? What modes of travel prevailed? What were thetypical social relations? According to Arnal, previous assumptions about the authors of Q1 being radicalwandering itinerants were not supported by archaeological, numismatic, and other economic evidence (2001).

18 It is noteworthy that Arnal’s study on the Galilean scribes does not, and we would assume he wouldargue that it cannot, have anything to do with the historical Jesus. His methodology is being used here as anexample of a sceptical, rigorous and consistent approach to the study of a religion’s textual origins.

19 To be fair, the opportunities for archaeological investigations in the presumed birth places of Islam,Mecca and Medina, are almost non-existent. Therefore, a Crossan-like reconstruction of the context of Muḥammad is impossible.



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… the nature of the sources for Jesus exacerbates the situation. While the object of our supposedly“historical” inquiry keeps transforming into a theological entity in front of our very eyes, the mainsources on which we base our reconstructions present him as a theological entity in the first place.Whether Jesus himself existed as a historical figure or not, the gospels that tell of him are unquestionablymythic texts. The Gospel of Mark, for example, is a narrative that includes a cast of characterscomprising, inter alia, God, a son of God, angels, the devil, demons, holy spirits, evil spirits, and what seemto be the ghosts of Moses and Elijah. It is a story that features miraculous healings and exorcisms, as wellas walking on water, feeding thousands of people with a handful of loaves and fishes (twice!), face-to-faceconversations between people who lived centuries apart, spooky prognostications, trees withering at Jesus’ simple command, a sun darkening in the middle of the day, and a temple curtain miraculouslytearing itself in half.

It is worth interjecting here the observation that, were such elements present in suchquantities in the sī ra as they are in the canonical gospels, no reasonably sceptical scholar of Islam would likely be looking there for kernels of history.20 Arnal continues:

Investigations into the historical Jesus require by contrast, that the gospels be used as historical sources,and in fact the main difference between “conservative” and “liberal” scholarship revolves around howmuch legendary accretion is stripped away in order to arrive at the “historical core,” not whether there

is any historical core to be found at all. In seeking to find the real, historical person behind thesenarratives, we are using these texts as sources for a figure that they themselves show no interest in at all. Just as myths and legends about Herakles are simply not about a historical person, so also the gospels arenot about the historical Jesus (2005: 75–76).21

Given what Wansbrough has pointed out about the connections between the Qur ʾān and the sī ra, itseems that the sī ra suffers from exactly the same weakness that the gospels do: their agenda istheological, not historical. That does not mean that the texts are not of use for historical research. TheAdam and Eve creation story is also an extremely valuable historical text, just not for reconstructingthe historical Adam.22 No matter how complex the criteria of authenticity, no matter how thorough

20 That is not to say that Ibn Isḥāq’s sī ra is devoid of miracles or fantastic elements—quite the contrary.However, they are not present in the quantity that they are in the gospels, nor do they play such a prominentrole. Were one to argue that each revelation of the Qurʾān constitutes a miracle, then the miracles in the sī ra would increase greatly. Of course, then every single action and word uttered by Jesus would also have to beconsidered a miracle. Lest we be misunderstood, we are not claiming that the sī ra is any more historical or anyless theological. In fact, the historical kernels, if there are any in the sī ra, are no less obscured than they are in thegospels. Peters comes to a similar conclusion (though he is more optimistic about recovering a historical Jesusfrom the gospels). He concludes that historians of Muḥammad must rely on sources that were recorded long afterthe memory of the events had faded and which were “embroidered rather than remembered, and [were] invokedonly for what is for historians the unholy purpose of polemic” (1991: 314).

At the very minimum, the theological agenda evinced by the supernaturalism of so many events in thegospels and the sī ra demands that the burden of proof be transferred to these texts. In other words, scholarscannot begin with the assumption that the texts must contain some historical facts and that the sceptic needs to

prove that an event or saying is not historical before it is treated as such. Rather, scholars must begin with theassumption that the texts do not contain any historical facts. Outside corroborating facts are needed before anyevent or saying is deemed historical.

21 Mack echoes this sentiment, saying, “[The texts] are not the mistaken and embellished memories of thehistorical person, but the myths of origin imagined by early Christians” (2003: 40). This realization is not new, forBornkamm argued in a similar vein decades ago: “We possess no single word of Jesus and no single story of Jesus,no matter how incontestably genuine they may be, which do not contain at the same time the confession of thebelieving congregation or at least are embedded therein” (1960: 14).

22 As Mack points out, early scholarly assumptions maintained that “the gospels were the confusedattempts of early Christians to write a biography, and that the task of modern scholars was to correct their



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the reconstruction of the social, economic, political, or cultural life of the Ancient Near East, we willnever be able to establish a single historical fact about this first Christian “son of God” or Muslim“messenger of God”.23

The MethodologiesWe cannot go into all the methodologies used by Christian origins scholars, but perhaps the mostfruitful method of analyzing Christian sources is to consider those that have given us Q. Any criticalscholar reading the canonical gospels notes immediately the similar passages within Mark, Matthew,and Luke. Matthew and Luke tend to follow the narrative structure of Mark. However, they also shareover 200 verses with one another that do not appear in Mark. These verses, mostly sayings ascribed to

Jesus, often share similar terminology and phrasing in each gospel. These sayings are arranged indifferent organizational patterns in each gospel, and accordingly each reflects a different editorialinterest. Thus, it does not appear that Matthew “copied” these verses from Luke or vice versa. Toaccount for commonalities between Matthew and Luke, a “sayings source” known as Q is hypothesizedto have circulated in some of the earliest Christian communities. Q was then used along with Mark tocompose Matthew and Luke. Although the authors of Matthew and Luke attached these sayings todifferent events, their differing order of the sayings reflects a shared sequence, which has allowedscholars to reconstruct Q. Once it was painstakingly reconstructed,24 interest arose about Q’s internalcomposition. Kloppenborg’s theory on the stratification of Q has been taken most seriously amongseveral proposals in recent years. His interest in stratifying the compositional layers of Q comes from adesire to understand Q’s genre (and not, as some misunderstand, from a desire to find the historical

Jesus). Using the literary organization patterns, Kloppenborg was able to isolate three quite distinctand self-standing redactional interests, which did not interpenetrate to any significant degree: (1)aphoristic and proverbial clusters, (2) judgment sayings, and (3) a temptation narrative. Additionally,each theme presents itself in unique literary forms: aphorism or imperative, chreia, and narrativeforms (respectively). The temptation narrative reflects a strong christological development, making itan obviously late addition; the wisdom and judgment sayings prove more difficult to place. However,the main piece of evidence for placing the aphoristic material in the earliest strata is that the judgmentmaterial often supplements or expands upon wisdom material, but never vice versa. Thus it appearsthat judgment materials were a secondary development after wisdom materials, and the temptationnarrative postdates both.25 Given then that Q1 is presumably the earliest editorial layer of material,scholars inevitably fall into a theoretical trap when working with it. Q1 can be dated to an early groupof Jesus people, perhaps within a generation of the historical Jesus, and so scholars leap to theconclusion that Q1 has preserved the original teachings of Jesus.26 When scholars assume that thecommunity that produced Q1 was any less theologically motivated than the later “biographers” of Jesuswho employed Q, their scepticism gives way to a mere pretence to scepticism.

The most recent methods used to reconstructing the sources for the historical Muḥammad willsound very similar to historical Jesus scholars. Instead of two or three gospels that share enough

mistakes by reconstructions and rearrangements” (2003: 27). More recent scholars do not yet seem to haveabandoned this hope of correcting the early Christians.

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Luke 2:37, and coincidentally, Qurʾān 2:37.24 The most accepted reconstruction was produced as a result of the International Q Project. To thoseChristian origins scholars who still deny that Q ever existed or that its contents can be known, Cameron responds“We do have a text of Q; what we do not have is a manuscript” (1996: 352).

25 Kloppenborg (1987), but adapted from Arnal (n.d.). The term “postdate” describes the editorialprocess and should not be misconstrued as suggesting the material in Q1 is necessarily older (therefore, more“authentic”) than Q2 and Q3. See note 27 below.

26 For example, Allison, writes, “Q1 remains such a good source for the historical Jesus not only becauseit remembers his words, adding little to them, but because it preserves something of their original context. Mostof the sayings in Q1 were no doubt spoken by Jesus” (1997: 61).



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material, Islamic scholars are faced with numerous different but apparently related historical ḥadī thsfor each incident in the life of Muḥammad. The best candidate for the Islamic “Q1” would be thehypothetical corpus of the first “biographer” of Muḥammad, that of ʿUrwa b. Zubayr (d. 93/711-712).27 Ḥ adī ths—that according to their isnāds—originate with him are preserved in at least a dozen latersources. The scholars most engaged in reconstructing this corpus are Schoeler and Görke.28 Schoeler,for example, has taken two sets of ḥadī ths, one about the first revelation of the Qur ʾān and another

about the incident in which ʿĀʾisha, the wife of Muḥammad was accused of adultery. He has alsopainstakingly compared every version of the ḥadī ths in terms of themes, motifs, and vocabulary withthe isnāds’ common links—where same transmitters appears in different isnāds. By so doing, Schoelerconcludes that the former incident was probably invented sometime at the court of the Zubayridcounter-caliphate some three decades after Muḥammad.29 The main features of the second incident,however, he thinks go back to ʿUrwa b. Zubayr, who heard them directly from ʿĀʾisha. And for Schoelerthere is no reason to doubt that she spoke to her nephew ʿUrwa concerning these matters and thereport “seems” like an eyewitness account. 30 The inconsistencies are not taken as evidence against thegenuineness of the story, but merely products of transmission. Clearly, Schoeler’s criteria of authenticity are based on a rather sanguine approach to the reliability of the information in theisnāds.31 The closing the 200 year gap between the purported event and its extant reports to well under100 years by reconstructing earlier redactions, allows Schoeler to suggest the following rule of thumb:“The report of the event at least in the main features is correctly transmitted for most events inMuḥammad’s Medinan period” (1996: 166). However, Schoeler believes that in some cases he has closedthe gap perhaps even as close as twenty years. Görke had done similar studies on other events inMuḥammad’s life. In their most recent co-authored article on Muḥammad’s emigration from Mecca toMedina (i.e., the ḥijra), they conclude:

As to the historicity of this report, we of course should not take the tradition at face value. But ʿUrwawas a son of one of the earliest Muslims, al-Zubayr, and nephew of the Prophet’s wife ʿĀʾiša; he thereforewas very close to the events and the persons involved therein. Even if his reports are by no means

27 In terms of contents, it might be best to say an “Islamic Mark” as opposed to an “Islamic Q1.” However,Q1 was chosen because of how it is employed by many historical Jesus scholars. That is to say, the use of “Q1” is

not meant to suggest that Q1 is the earliest material. Editorial priority does not imply historical priority. In otherwords, within the context of Q, Q1 is seems to have editorial priority over Q2 and Q3, but that does not mean itrepresents earlier and more authentic material. However, many scholars of the historical Jesus do in fact equateeditorial with historical priority. It is precisely for this reason that we use the term “Islamic Q1.” When thecorpus of ʿUrwa is reconstructed, it seems very likely that the same mistake will be made; it too will be treated bymany historical Muḥammad scholars as a more authentic historical source for the life of Muḥammad.

28 They believe the corpus consisted of the first revelation, the reaction of the Meccans, the Abyssinianemigration, the meeting at al-ʿAqaba, the ḥijra, the battles of Badr, Uḥud, and the Ditch, the treaty of al-Ḥudaybiya, the slander of ʿĀʾisha and the conquest of Mecca (Görke and Schoeler 2005: 213).

29 The complexity of Schoeler’s analysis is evident in his reconstruction of the original source. He arguesthat the two main versions both originally had the same source. The motifs were likely combined in the firstcentury A.H. and emerged within the Zubayrid family. ʿUrwa cleansed the report of its blatant storyteller (qāṣṣ)elements, reworking it into ḥadī th-format. Based on the biographical information and the isnāds, the original

report is that of the qāṣṣ, ʿUbayd b. ʿUmayr, who built the story out of various components while with theZubayrid court. Significant changes were still introduced afterward: it was paraphrased, shortened, adorned, andrearranged. These changes decreased as time progressed, but came to an end with the redactions of Ibn Hishāmand al-Ṭabar ī .

30 Reconstruction of the original ʿUrwa recension is possible only for short passages, because thetraditions from al-Zuhr ī and Hishām which cite ʿUrwa have too many differences. However, for Schoeler there isno doubt that the reports were transmitted by ʿUrwa.

31 After having used isnāds to prove the general authenticity of the materials in the ḥadī ths of which theyare a part, Schoeler also wants to argue that his conclusions about the authenticity of the materials prove thereliability of the isnāds. The circularity of this argument is clearly problematic.



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eyewitness reports and even though his materials are based on first-hand reports only for the last yearsof Muḥammad’s life, there is no reason to doubt that they do reflect the general outline of the eventscorrectly (Görke and Schoeler 2005: 220).

Chronological and geographical proximity, therefore, are likely to produce historicity.This sentiment should seem familiar to many historical Jesus scholars. As Allison says, “Q1

remains such a good source for the historical Jesus not only because it remembers his words, addinglittle to them, but because it preserves something of their original context. Most of the sayings in Q1were no doubt spoken by Jesus…” (1997: 61). However, one need only read the writings of Paul—whichare also within 20 years of Jesus—to see that chronological proximity can be completely unrelated tohistoricity. Historical Muḥammad scholars seem completely unaware that a few decades are noguarantee, while historical Jesus scholars often forget this at least when it comes to Q1 and even Q2. Aspointed out above with regard to the sources, theological agendas of the first writers, whether Paul,Mark, ʿUrwa, or the writers of Q1 are just as likely to have obscured the historical facts as preservedthem.32 And, in the case of early Muslim “historians,” the political and sectarian agendas of the“author” and all of the transmitters further obscure any historical facts that may or may not have beenrecorded.

The Conclusions DrawnCertainly, in terms of sophistication, detail, and effort, historical Muḥammad scholars are behind theirhistorical Jesus counterparts, and the former have much more to learn from the latter than vice versa.However, when it comes to the conclusions drawn from the sources and the methodologies employed,the reverse is true. One of the most significant differences between the study of Muḥammad and Jesusis the attitude towards the figures. Much of this may have to do with the fact that most critical studiesof Muḥammad have been done by non-Muslims, whereas most of those about Jesus have been done byChristians or former Christians.33 As a result, Jesus is reimagined in ways that would never bepermitted with Muḥammad, ways that seem, if not overtly theological, then covertly so.

In the West, various modern non-Christians have claimed Jesus. Voltaire wrote of Jesus as ahumanist and deist and Shelley tried to reimagine him as an atheist. Few seem to feel the need to

32 As Järvinen explains:What I have had to say is not to suggest that there would be nothing useful in Q for a serious quest of the“Historical Jesus.” But it may appear difficult if not impossible to methodologically penetrate behind theskilful texture of early Christian ideology that we have evidenced at work behind the formation of Q.The interactions of generic expressions for the purpose of producing a paraenetically impressive text-world hardly allows one to find a trace of what might be an older core – and subsequently, perhaps,dominical. I conclude with what is more of a question that a statement, as I find myself rather puzzled ashow to react toward the use of Q, or some part of it, as a basis for a portrayal of ‘Jesus the Man.’ Giventhe observable tendencies for the Q authors to hermeneutical reflections, is [ sic ]there any sufficientlyverifiably criteria left to ensure the credibility of reconstructions of the life of Jesus, based on Q?” (2001:521).

33

The most notable exception to this is the relatively long tradition of Jewish scholarship on thehistorical Jesus. Geiger, a leader in the establishment of Reform Judaism, is an early and noteworthy scholar inthis regard. Not only did he pioneer the view of “Jesus the Pharisee” (Heschel 1998), but also of Muḥammad asthe imitator of Jews (Geiger, 1833). In both cases Geiger’s motivation seems to have been theological: Jesus andMuḥammad were not religious innovators, but rather both Christianity and Islam were products of Judaism.“Jesus the Jew,” a characterization also put forth by later Jewish scholars such as Klausner (1925 [1922]), Flusser(1998 [1965]; 1988), and Vermes (1973; 1983; 1993; 2003), is very widely accepted by non-Jewish historical Jesusscholars (Arnal 2005:20–38). This monolithic reinterpretation of Jesus by Jewish scholars suggests that they maybe no less theologically motivated than other historical Jesus scholars. For an evaluation of Jewish interest in Jesus since the 19th century, see Hoffmann (2007).



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reimagine Muḥammad in these ways.34 The best he could get at the same time was “epileptic.” 35 Recent scholarly versions of the reimagination of Jesus include “Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet”(Sanders 1995; Allison 1997; Ehrmann 1999), “Jesus the Cynic-Like Philosopher or Wisdom Sage” (Mack1988; Crossan 1991), “Jesus the King of the Jews” (Fredriksen 1999), “Jesus the Magician” (Smith 1978),“Jesus the Man of Spirit” (Borg 1994; Johnson 1996), “Jesus the Radical Itinerant” (Crossan 1991;Theissen 1998), “Jesus the Feminist” (Fiorenza 1983; Klassen 1984), and so on. 36 Many of these

depictions seem disturbingly like reflections of scholars’ own self-images. 37 Be that as it may, thismultitude of reinventions and reinterpretations reflects a deeper problem. When scholars use thsame sources and the same methodologies, one hopes that a consensus about the conclusions wouldresult.

e

at least some reproducibility.38 The study of religion is not a hard science, but we should expectThis proliferation of conclusions is a product of the aforementioned problems with sources and

methodologies. Nearly every article and book about this historical Jesus includes a section or chapterthat attempts to convince the reader of the credibility of the methodology employed and hence theconclusions drawn. As Braun points out, “By applying complex value judgments and evidentiary

34 Of those few, some scholars depict Muḥammad as an adroit political leader or a progressive socialreformer, especially with regard to women. See, for example, Watt (1956) and Mernissi (1991). Both the quantity

and quality of redescriptions of Muḥammad pale in comparison to those made of Jesus. Nevertheless, perhaps aproliferation of Muḥammads has begun.

35 A Christian monk, Theophanes (752–817) suggested that Muḥammad suffered from epilepsy. A littleover a century ago, many scholars, even Muir in his Life of Mahomet (1894) reiterated that charge and others.Fortunately, more recent scholars have sought to redress these earlier ad hominems. See, for example, Rodinsonwho,, despite being an atheist, goes so far as to state “I am studying the founder of a religion, a man who wasprofoundly, sincerely religious, with an acute sense of the immediate presence of the Divine” (1971: xiii). Watttoo spends time defending Muḥammad’s moral character (against essentially Christian polemics) (1953: 324–333).Since 9/11 many Western Muslims in an effort to dissociate Islam for Islamic terrorism have tried to reinventMuḥammad as a man of peace. Fortunately, these new Islamic apologists have not come from the ranks of historical Muḥammad scholars. Likewise, these scholars are not among the new polemicists of Muḥammad,whose portrayals of Muḥammad in books, blogs, and cartoons is a disturbing trend (that appears to be largelyreligiously and politically motivated).

36 This assortment of Jesus profiles is problematic in at least two ways. First, several portrayals aremutually exclusive and clearly early Christian texts cannot contain all these profiles. Some of these depictionsmust be wrong. Second, these appositive titles are all very impressive. They reflect, as we argue below, the sameneed the believer has to see Jesus as a remarkable and wholly unique individual, and the same need to have arelevant Jesus.

37 This accusation was first made by Schweitzer (1968). With regard to the Cynic-Jesus, see Arnal (2001:59–65). Some of these reinventions of Jesus, particularly the aforementioned “Jesus the Feminist” and moreobviously “Jesus the Homosexual” may indeed bring new possible interpretations of Jesus to light. For thelatter,,seeJennings (2003). Jesus may indeed have cared for women and for men in these two ways. Nevertheless,in both cases modern socio-political issues have been strategically projected onto the figure of Jesus. The otherreinventions do so too, just a little less obviously. Thus, we agree with Lincoln: “If myth is ideology in narrativeform, then scholarship is myth with footnotes” (1999: 209).

38 Yet “that stunning diversity [of conclusions] is an academic embarrassment” (Crossan 1991: xxviii).

There is, however, not only a consensus, but also repeated efforts to demonstrate that Jesus was a Jew—which isodd since no one seeks to deny that he was. Arnal argues that scholars are motivated by, among other things, aneed to claim Jesus as part of the entirety of Judaism, which was a forerunner to Christianity. By accepting Jesusas identifiably Jewish, scholars (and readers) are able to symbolically affirm the legitimacy of Judaism at the sametime. Jesus becomes a symbol for inner attitudes of scholars and their audiences (2005: 49-50). The onlyequivalent is creating an Arabian Muhammad. But the situation is different. Wansbrough suggested that theQurʾān’s logia may have emerged in a Judeo-Christian sectarian milieu outside of Arabia and that the sī ra represents an effort to make an Arabian prophet to whom this material was revealed in Arabia. HistoricalMuḥammad scholars who accept the basic historical claims of the sources are reacting against Wansbrough’stentative suggestion.



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standards, these items [texts, sayings, events, etc.] are counted as evidence or assigned factual status”(2005: 30). But clearly these scholars do not make the same judgments nor employ the same standards.

This diversity is problematic in three ways. One, methodologies can be created that confirmone’s position. For instance, if one wants Jesus to be the founder of a wandering missionary movement,Q can be restratified in such a way that the statements presumed to be addressed to missionaries arepart of Q1.39 As argued above, using any such version of Q1 as a historical source seems a bit naïve.

However, in this example, it also seems that the conclusions have shaped the methodologies, not theother way around. Circularity of the arguments is well disguised, but still clearly there. Second,almost every historical Jesus scholar maintains there is some hidden secret history of the real Jesusburied within the sources that only his or her methods can reveal. 40 Crafty indeed were the writers of the gospels to so cleverly hide the truth that even they themselves were unaware of its presence.What our sarcasm is meant to highlight is that perhaps it is time to employ Occam’s razor: the texts arenot arcane puzzles that only the modern Da Vinci Code-esque scholar-detective can solve. We cannotimagine that such a multitude of hidden, secret, even esoteric Muḥammads would be tolerated byscholars.

The third way in which this diversity of conclusions is problematic has been noted before.There is a tendency to view the sources for precisely what they are not. Instead of seeing them asthoroughly theological products, they are seen as historical ones—though scholars remain adamant

that they do not mean “historical” as fundamentalists do. This is a distinction that is difficult tomaintain. Mack writes, “[The texts] simply do not contain the secrets of the historical Jesus for whichscholars have been searching. Early Christians were not interested in the historical Jesus” (2003: 40).Therefore, the distinction between seeing the sources has literally or cryptically historical is arelatively arbitrary one. Both the believer and most historical Jesus scholars ultimately share the samepremise—a theological one: the sources contain (or more emphatically, must contain) historical factsabout Jesus. And so it is at this juncture that historical Muḥammad scholars can assist historical Jesusscholars by acting as foils. Would the latter feel comfortable if the former made the same diverseclaims about Muḥammad that are made about Jesus?41 Would not a proliferation of mutually exclusiveMuḥammads who have not only lain hidden for over a millennia, but were also hidden from (andironically by) early Muslims raise a sceptical eyebrow?

39 See, for example, Allison, who restructures Q in a different way in order to find a historical Jesus in itspresumed earliest layer. He begins with Zeller’s assumption that kernels of Q’s original sayings were composedand transmitted by “wonder-working” missionaries. At a later stage, the itinerant preachers addressed thesesayings to communities (1997: 8). His stratification of Q reflects the assumption that the earliest materials arethose that appear to be addressed to small groups of missionaries, while the secondary materials are those thatappear to address established communities. He makes further assumptions about which material should be readtogether and who the intended audience was. Thus, whereas Kloppenborg’s stratification avoids circularity byestablishing a redactional critical methodology, Allison’s form-critical or tradition-historical approach does notavoid it. Regardless of whether Allison’s or Kloppenborg’s stratification is correct—perhaps neither are—Allisonhas taken a methodological step backward.

40 The authors are well aware that the socio-political environment of research expectations in theacademy forces each generation of scholars to develop something new. Therefore, by necessity each generation

of scholars must claim that previous scholars have missed something or gotten something wrong. Furthermore,in competition for grants, positions and promotions (not to mention getting one’s research published), it isnecessary to claim some unique conclusion which, normally, means also claiming that one’s colleagues aremistaken in their conclusions.

41 There is a greater danger associated with historical Jesus scholarship than with historical Muḥammadscholarship. Unlike Muslim scholars, Christian scholars permeate the academy, often teaching Christianityinstead of Christian origins. While many historical Jesus scholars present a depiction of Jesus that theirconservative Christian students do not recognize, that depiction is often still cryptotheological. That is to say, itshares the same theological fixation on the uniqueness, importance, and continued relevance of Jesus. See ourdiscussion below.



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This last problem raises one final difference between the studies of the historical Jesus andMuḥammad. Rare indeed is the non-Muslim scholar who subscribes to Muḥammad the success of Islam. As Arnal points out:

… the ultimate goal of historical Jesus studies is to uncover the origins of Christianity itself, toreconstruct the Jesus who is assumed somehow to lie behind this movement as its root cause.

The problem here is that the whole enterprise thus conceived, rests on an exceptionallyprecarious set of assumptions. The notion that individuals cause or found religious movements isitself open to question on theoretical grounds. But at an even more basic level, the idea that theChristianity that came to dominate the Roman Empire and thence the world was the movementthat Jesus himself caused or founded—as opposed to a movement revolving around an image of Jesus that was itself the product of mythmaking and legendary accretions—cannot be sustained,in part because of research into the historical Jesus himself. The discontinuity between thebehavior and teaching of the historical Jesus as he is normally reconstructed and the beliefs anddoctrines of what became the Christian religion is so vast as to make the assumption of anycausal link between the two an instance of especially disgraceful special pleading (Arnal 2005:76–77).42

If one substitutes Muḥammad for Jesus, Islam for Christianity, Arab Empire for the Roman Empire, etc.,

we doubt historical Jesus scholars would quibble with Arnal’s argument.And so again historical Muḥammad scholars can help their historical Jesus counterparts bypointing out that many of them treat Jesus as an utterly unique person, and as such they evince acryptotheological perspective. No one spends time in the research of Islam showing how Muḥammadis somehow still relevant or revolutionary for people of today. 43 Nor are Islamicists expending anyeffort to prove every activity Muḥammad engaged in—especially the most improbable—is true, at leastsymbolically. To show that every purported miracle of Jesus (which the sceptical scholar dismisses asnot literally true) is still symbolically true in that Jesus, for instance, broke the ritual purity lawsassociated with illness as part of his “social program,”44 not only seems to do violence to the text, butalso continues to accept the hegemonic views of the Christian believer.45

42 Even Arnal, perhaps one of the most sceptical Christian origins scholars, may have succumbed to this

fixation on Jesus. His first book, Jesus and the Galilean Scribes , describes the social-economic and political milieuthat led the Galilean scribes to produce Q1. Quite correctly, little is said of the historical Jesus, for he was notinvolved in the production of that text. Nevertheless, Arnal’s book features Jesus’ name in the title.

43 Perhaps most odd is Crossan’s hypothetical mini-dialogue with Jesus at the beginning of his popularbook (1994). Jesus commends him on his reconstruction, yet chastises him for not following the Christianprogram Jesus enacted in ancient times. Does Jesus really have the academic credentials to assess Crossan’sscholarship? In our hypothetical conversations with Muḥammad and Jesus, both heaped much praise on thisarticle—after their initial annoyance at having been conjured. Jesus lamented that despite having ears, most“scholars of the historical me” would be unlikely to hear. Muḥammad, on the other hand, cautioned us againstmocking others. Most poignantly, both agreed that our conversation once again seemed to portray them as mereciphers for the authors who had “recorded” their words.

44 For example, Crossan reinterprets the meanings of the healings and miracles stories in the gospels bymaintaining, “I presume that Jesus, who did not and could not cure that disease [in this specific case, leprosy],

healed the poor man’s illness by refusing to accept the disease’s ritual uncleanliness and social ostracization”(1994: 82). By interpreting “healing” in this way, he has “saved” the significance of the story and of Jesus. Even if such miracles are symbolic, why would they suggest any thing about the historical Jesus? All that we couldestablish is that the community that first produced and preserved these texts believed these symbolic things.

In fact, Crossan says as much, but then contradicts himself; for instance, about some miracles, he writesthat the early Christian community “symbolically retrojected their own activities into the life of Jesus” (1991:328). However, just a few pages later, he also states “Jesus was both an exorcist and a healer. I take … A LeperCured [story] … as not only typically but actually historical ”(1991: 332; our emphasis). Thus, sometimes Crossansuggests that the same stories are traceable to the historical Jesus and simultaneously traceable to Jesus-as-concept in the imagination of later followers. Overall, he is fixated on the former, since this same book is



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2. Our sources (especially ones produced with such an ideological or theological agenda) tell usmore about those who actually wrote them—what they believed, what they wanted tobelieve—than they do about what they purport to be about.

3. Regardless of any historical facts uncovered by historical Jesus scholarship or historicalMuḥammad scholarship, these individuals did not cause or found the religious movements thatclaim them as founders.48 To make that claim is to make the same claim the early communities

that produced our main sources did, and so to share in large measure their theologicalperspective.

4. To recast the historical Jesus or Muḥammad as somehow uniquely relevant to contemporaryworld may sell more books, but it also participates in the same theological activity that theauthors of the sī ra, Q, Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, the letters of Paul, etc. did. It is not our taskto create a new gospel49 or a new religion.

5. We must recall Lincoln’s statement: When one permits those whom one studies to define the terms in which they will beunderstood, suspends one’s interest in the temporal and contingent, or fails todistinguish between “truths”, “truth-claims”, and “regimes of truth”, one has ceased tofunction as historian or scholar. In that moment, a variety of roles are available: someperfectly respectable (amanuensis, collector, friend and advocate), and some less

appealing (cheerleader, voyeur, retailer of import goods). None, however, should beconfused with scholarship (1996: 227). 6. In a similar vein, when sceptics are faced with inadequate evidence, it is acceptable to say, “We

don’t know.” In other words, it may not be possible to recover the historical Jesus or thehistorical Muḥammad.50 The efforts to create one regardless may still be termed scholarship,but it may not be termed sceptical.

48 Those predisposed to a Weberian “charismatic theory of religious innovation” will likely take issue oureffacing of founder figures. Weber’s theory “kept the question of causality or determination from being phrasedin relation to social interests and the interactive relations among religious, economic and political practices. Andit had the effect of shifting attention away from questions about the social origins of religion, or even from issuesof religion’s effect upon society, to fall instead upon analytic and historical descriptions of cultural conventions”(Mack 200: 286). The texts of the early Christian and Muslim movements were products of mythmaking forpurpose of social formation. Both mythmaking and social formation are processes for constructing andauthorizing social identities (McCutcheon 2000: 202) and as such are group activities, not founder activities.

Furthermore, as Arnal pointed out above with respect to Jesus, if historical Jesus scholarship has taughtus anything, it is that whatever Jesus may have said or done bears no resemblance to the movements that later

claimed him as founder. The only remaining question is why did those earliest groups select Jesus as the centralfigure in their mythmaking as opposed to the thousands of other ancient Galileans.49 All attempts to find origins using myths (by treating them as objects of knowledge instead of objects of

discourse) are also, ironically, discourses of origins (Lincoln 1999: 95). However, Robert Funk, co-founder of the Jesus Seminar, defends the Seminar’s reconstruction of the Gospel of Jesus as follows: “In constructing a gospel inthis fashion, we have done no more than imitate the practices of the first evangelists” (1999: 1). Funk is correct,ironically.

50 This is not meant to be an expression of “resignation or despair” (Peters 1991: 314). Nor is it meant tostifle research into the historical Jesus or the historical Muḥammad. Rather, it is meant to avoid both wishful-thinking and circular arguments that seem to prejudice so much of this research.

historica muhammad and jesus

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