Duvduv

I should note that I also have been unable to find another forum online that discusses these issues about the origins and emergence of Islam that are similar to the threads here on FRDB. As I mentioned before, the Abrahamic forum here has not shown interest in these discussions. That's why I was hoping that our participants here would be interested in it.

I should also add that it can be frustrating here the way threads get hijacked onto unrelated subjects, chatting and bickering, and the like, as I have mentioned.

sotto voce

There's no-one there who needs to be edified, perhaps. Or who needs to submit to officialdom.

Sheshbazzar

Duvduv, I respect your input and views more than those of most others who post in this Forum.

But I must say that it really saddens me to see you wading out into the cesspool of Islamic religious insanity, wasting your time and effort in trying to grasp and examine what are no more than floating turds.
Shoveling through the heaping excrement of Judaism and Christinsanity is more than enough to have to deal with.
I do hope that you will have enough sense to wade back out of that stinking pit before you are drowned in it.

Chili

Good observation made with colorful speech.

Better just watch another inspired Muslims get his ticket to heaven and wonder where all those virgin come from.

Duvduv

Can we get away here from rhetoric and chatting and get back to the issue at hand, at least of the thread under consideration?

Sheshbazzar

Just reaching out a hand, and a word of concerned advice. But I'll not be one following you in that direction.

Duvduv

Some scholars of Islam have described the world of pre-Islamic Arabs as being that of monotheists of a sort, not pagans as usually claimed, i.e. an Abrahamic religion that Patricia Crone calls Hagarism.

Isn't it interesting that Galatians chapter 3 addresses the attachment to Abraham and the promise to his children by way of Hagar?! And in Galatians we also learn about "Paul's" trip to "Arabia,"whatever that is supposed to signify.

Of course it isn't possible to be certain that the environment in which Islam emerged was limited specifically to the Hejaz that included the non-existent city of Mecca, as opposed to a part of "Arabia" much further north.

sotto voce

The promise to Hagar, Paul writes, is for children of slavery. So it's no wonder that Muhammad made no mention of Paul. Though there is no shortage of other reasons.

It signifies that Paul did not get any instruction about the gospel from other apostles, but by apokalupsis, revelation; which meant that the Galatians were bang out of order.

Duvduv

No wonder Muhamad made no mention of Paul? Why would one non-existent person make mention of another non-existent person? Besides, the Arabs always identified themselves with Ishmael who was the son of Hagar, and everyone knew that the Bible described her as the handmaiden/servant. It was no secret, even among the Abrahamist monotheists among the Arabs known as Saracens or Hagarites.

sotto voce

Muhammad, or whoever wrote that cheap re-write, that would be treated as such were it not for the bit about Jesus not dying. Very popular, that, due to 'the offence of the cross'. Any fool could write it, 600 years afterwards, in a land of desert tribes. Almost predictable.

As we know.

Evidence?

A female of the servant/slave class. An Egyptian, significantly. Not as Sarai was. Hagar was always the 'property' of Sarai, not Abraham.

So if we don't have the right idea, if we perhaps need edifying, I don't suppose many Arabs of the time knew much about anything at all. Ripe for mental rape, probably. Or for any tall story, at the least.

That you just invented.

So why were the Galatians so far away from the truth, in Paul's view? Circumcision was a long-established tradition, that Paul had strongly advocated, for neonate Jews, if not for others. But Paul, along with the other apostles, realised that for an uncircumcised Christian to be circumcised in order to be acceptable to deity totally negated the value of Christ as perfect atonement, and in effect made such a person a non-Christian. The people who still advocated this practice, even after their Messiah had made it redundant, he described as the children of Hagar, being slaves to Mosaic Law that could only condemn. He elsewhere called them 'dogs', the very word that many Jews had used of unspeakable Gentiles; a very strong expression.

Now Muhammad, or whoever fabricated the Islamic belief, agreed with these circumcisers in alleging that Jesus' death was of no significance, if it had even occurred; and agreed with them that the way to acceptance by deity was by doing good works. So Muslims have, in the Bible context, made themselves the children of Hagar, slaves to law, even if they bear no genealogical relationship to Ishmael, which seems probable.

The violent Arabs went the same way as Jews, who had lost all their might and their signs of divine favour, and as vile, corrupt and violent Rome and Byzantium had done. All shamelessly claiming to be in some way related to Abraham, they would have slaughtered this man without a moment's compunction had they met him. Though, because Abraham, justified as the friend of deity by just his faith, would also have called such people 'dogs', there is no surprise in that.