Jeffrey Gibson

You are. He is mentioned five times. He is addressed by God more times than that.

If and only if the subject of the Koran was the messenger and not the message, part of which is how Allah has always been gracious to humankind by sending them a series of warners and prophets among whom was Jesus.

And is not Abraham (as well Moses and angels) mentioned in the Koran more times than Jesus? If so, what, using your logic, does that suggest?

Jay, did the classwork you must have taken to earn your PhD in philosophy include a course in Logic?

Jeffrey

Net2004

the qur'an says that jesus makes a prophecy about a prophet to come after him and his name is ahmad.the "ahmad" could possibly be an abbreviation of muhammad

“And remember, Jesus, the son of Mary, said: ‘O Children of Israel! I am the Messenger of All�h (sent) to you, confirming the Law (which came) before me, and giving Glad Tidings of a Messenger to come after me, whose name shall be Ahmad.’ But when he came to them with Clear Signs they said, ‘This is evident sorcery!’” [61:6]

PhilosopherJay

Hi Net2004,

In the Gospel of John, Jesus promised to send the paraclete after him, so this Ahmed could just as plausibly be taken as a name for the paraclete.

Here are all the direct references to Muhammed in the Koran as translated on the electronic text center at the University of Virginia library.http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng...c/HolKora.html

3.144
And Muhammad is no more than an apostle; the apostles have already passed away before him; if then he dies or is killed will you turn back upon your heels?

33.40
Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but he is the Apostle of Allah and the Last of the prophets

47.2
And (as for) those who believe and do good, and believe in what has been revealed to Muhammad, and it is the very truth from their Lord, He will remove their evil from them and improve their condition.

48.29
Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah

50.1
Qaf. I swear by the glorious Quran (that Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah.)

This tells us very little about Muhammed. It tells us simply that he is the apostle and last of the prophets, and something has been revealed to him.

Note this:
4.171
So according to the Koran, Jesus is no more than an apostle of Allah and Muhammed is no more than an apostle of Allah. This suggests that the writers may indeed be using Muhammed (the praised one) as simply another name for Jesus.

We also find some symmetry between Jesus and Muhammed in the Koran when it states (33.40) that Muhammed is not the father of any of your men. We might relate this phrase to this passage:

4:171
This verse denies that Allah [God] had a son, while 33.40 denies that Muhammed is a father (to any of you men).

We would expect to find the Koran saying something about Muhammed that could not be said about Jesus if they were two separate personalities in the minds of the writers. This seems to reinforce the hypothesis that the term Muhammed [the praised one] was simply being used as a name for Jesus at the time that the Koran was cobbled together.

Net2004

what about the companions and muhammads wives? are they in reality jesus's deciples? the qur'an instructs Muhammad on how to do battle with enemy polythiests, jewish and christian forces .shall we assume that when qur'an instructs muhammad on how to do battle it in reallity is instrcuting moses?the quran also talks about muhammad and his wives misunderstanding each other (66.1)

Net2004

being no more than an apostle of Allah is a theme in the qur'an repeated in different words in different surahs for all prophets and messengers

Net2004

here is one other thing i thought about.if the qur'an was created by christians then why does it not go into old testament and decontextualise ot predictions and assume they are refering to jesus?

Malachi151

I think what the OP is talking about is a much more indirect dependency. It's talking about how Islam evolved out of Christianity, which really should be obvious to everyone in the first place.

Muhammad having evolved out of Messiah is like talking about how Jesus "the Son of God" evolved out of the "son's of God" in the Jewish scritpures.

No one is claiming that you can take instances of Muhammad in the Koran and replace them with the name Jesus and have that make sense, what is being claimed is that over time, as splits within the Christian communities of the Middle Eastern took place, in a process over hundreds of years, Jesus evolved into Muhammad as continuing new stories were written and as new cultures took the Jesus figure and merged him with stories from their local traditions.

Thus, tribes in the Middle East who already had warrior cultures integrated the Messiah a.k.a. Muhammad into their stories of warrior leaders, producing the Muhammad figure that came to be associated with the Islam religion, or something to this effect.

the_cave

OTOH we can't assume that all of the Quran was composed simultaneously in the 7th century. Certainly portions of it could indeed date from a time when the historicity of Muhammad was taken for granted.

ynquirer

I can’t catch the point. Does anyone mean that a Christian sect unified Arabia, conquered Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and Spain, entered southern France as far as Poitiers where it was checked by Charles Martel, and that it was not until later, about the end of the eighth century that it became “a separate religion”, namely, Islam proper?

Net2004

greetings the cave

if muhammad is the developed literary clone of the main source ( jesus), then why the arabs did not omit the main source from the qur'aan? and why is it that 61:6 above is the only occasion in quran that puts prophecy in jesus's mouth about an ahmad to come? don't you think that multiple authors would put more prophecies about ahmad/muhammad in jesus's mouth, mimicking gospel style prophecy claims?i think there is also the problem of etnicity and location.how were the arabs able to transform a palestinian jew into an arab prophet? early surahs of the qur'an say they were revealed in locations such as yatrib medina and mecca. which christians sources attach jesus to those locations or which christian sources attach their version of muhammad to jerusalem?