aa5874

Your presumption is highly irrational. You put forward the absurd notion that the existence of Jesus as human does NOT require any evidence once a person believes some other character existed.

It is unheard of that the existence or non-existence of Muhammed is the evidence for the existence of a human Jesus.

If people take for granted that Muhammad existed without evidence then based on your absurd presumption you MUST admit that Adam and Eve and the Angel Gabriel were figures of history.

So how come Ehrman wrote such an awful book--A Failure of Facts and Logics??

And how come HJers are on a QUEST for a human Jesus??

HJers have ALREADY Admitted that NT Jesus is a Myth for hundreds of years.

HJers are LOOKING for HJ.

Please, get familiar with the QUEST for HJ.

Who are looking for an HJ???

It must be HJers.

Please, help them find HJ.

Muhammed was NOT described as the Son of a Ghost and God the Creator that walked on water.

ApostateAbe

The name of the cult is neither here nor there. Did I communicate the wrong idea? Well, it is late at night, at least in my time zone. I think I better hit the sack. Darn insomnia.

aa5874

You need some sleep.

It is most absurd that Muhammad's existence is the evidence for an historical Jesus.

Steven Carr

Christians are named after Jesus?

Jesus was never called Christ while he was alive. For one thing, that is a Greek word.

As for the early religion being a 'personality cult' - 'What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas ”; still another, “I follow Christ.”'

Of course, we must remember that Paul is 'silent', so Abe does not have to listen to any of this direct trouncing of any idea that early Christianity was a personality cult based on the personality of Jesus.

Isn't it great when historicists just declare the Bible to be silent whenever it contradicts them?

Duvduv

So far this thread does not even discuss the substance of the issue it describes. I raised substantive issues in another thread but apparently almost no one was interested.
The Quran says virtually nothing about Mohammed and mentions the name with no context only four times.
Everything about him is from hadiths and later biographies.

ApostateAbe

I would love to discuss the substance of this stuff. I would expect that the arguments against the existence of Muhammad are cut from the same knife as the arguments against the existence of Jesus, and that introduction makes the cut. The evidence for Muhammad doesn't make the cut in terms of quantity and quality. The name with no context only four times? I am trying to imagine no context; like maybe "Muhammad" on a blank page, or "Muhammad" somehow floating in the void of space, but even those would count as contexts.

sotto voce

A translation of a Hebrew word, though. One that was used of Jesus before he had even started his mission:

'The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, "We have found the Messiah" (that is, the Christ).' Jn 1:41 NIV

That of course demonstrates that Christianity was not to be a personality cult. Presumably that's what you meant.

Funny how threads on Islam end up on something entirely different.

Steven Carr

SO you think random fishermen calling Jesus the Messiah is historical?

I guess they knew Jesus was the Messiah because he was gathering an army to overthrow the Romans, which we are always told is the only Messiah that a Jew could have imagined existing.

sotto voce

What is a random fisherman? One with my luck, I expect!

I agree, there.

I haven't told you that. So you haven't been told it, have you.

Duvduv

Apostate Abe, I am not advocating personally for or against the interpretations or approaches of Robert Spencer. However points he has raised in his book "Did Muhammed Exist?" are not his original inventions and are very useful, as well as other points:

a) The Quran itself only mentions the name "Muhammed" four times with no context at all except involving the term messenger. Jesus is mentioned 36 times, and Moses over 100 times.

b) In one chapter Jesus prophecies the coming of someone else called AHMAD.

c) Nothing is really known about Muhammed until the appearance of biographical material in the name of Abu Ishaq in several histories a couple of hundred years after Mohammed was said to have died around 632.

d) There were apparently many Arabian/Syrian/Persian SYNCRETIST sects that adopted elements from Judaism and Christianity, gnosticism, Manichaeism.

e) The Quran appears to be a composite of writings from various sources, and there is just as good a reason to see "orthodox Islam" as emerging at the time of the Baghdad caliphate from among the various sects.

f) One should also question whether the conquests of the Muslims actually involved anything to do with the canonical Quran or Muhammad at all, but instead involved some generic or non-"Muslim" monotheistic sect or sects. Indeed, the term Muslim (one who surrenders to God) is so general that it is possible that it referred to many monotheistic Arabian sects.

g) Non-Islamic sources refer to some obscure conqueror named MHMT among Sarcens with no mention of a Quran or holy book. A coing was discovered with a person holding what appears to be a cross on one side and the word MHMD on the other. Of course the name could be Muhammad or Mahmud.

h) The conflict with the followers of Ali and Hussein could well have been a conflict between emerging orthodox Islam and a sect or sects of gnostic Imamists which eventually adopted ideas from Islam including the canonized version of the Quran and became what is called Shia Islam, which itself is divided into the Twelvers and Ismailis, who both have a very strong commitment to the idea of the infalliable imam, which does not exist among the non-Shia.

i) Some believe that even what is known as mainstream Sunni Islam has differences from what existed a thousand years ago before the advent of the Ottoman caliphate.