MUHAMMAD: FAILED REVIVALIST OF JEWISH APOCALYPTICISM
by
John Harrigan
ICS 5020 – Introduction to Islam
Trevor Castor
December 7, 2015
Throughout history multitudes of Muslims and non-Muslims alike have sought to answer the question: Who was Muhammad? Orthodox Muslims view him as the par excellence of prophets, speaking the true message of God. Many modern liberals contend that he was primarily a social reformer. Sufi Muslims describe him as an esoteric mystic. Muslim Jurists view him as a legalistic pietist. Non-Muslim opponents often denounce him as a maniacal warlord. Of course, people can embody multiple realities, and they do change throughout their lives.
This study will approach Muhammad historically, analyzing the development of religious thought in the Middle East prior to the advent of Islam. Six centuries earlier, Jewish apocalyptic thought gave birth to Christianity. Though Judaism continued in its apocalyptic convictions, Christianity progressively moved away from its Jewish moorings. By the time of Muhammad, there were a variety of Jewish and Christian influences, not only surrounding the Arabian Peninsula, but also within Arabia itself. The development of Muhammad’s theology (as recorded in the Qur’an) will be analyzed and compared to this contemporaneous Jewish and Christian thought.
Religious Thought in the Middle East at the Time of Muhammad
Over a century ago, Samuel Zwemer outlined the primary influences on Arabia during the life of Muhammad: Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Arab polytheistic paganism. If we envision a map of the Arabian Peninsula at the time of Muhammad, we would generally see Christendom surrounding it. To the West across the Red Sea were the Christian kingdoms of Abyssinia, Axum, and Nubia. To the South was Yemen, Christianized under the intermittent vassalage of Abyssinia and Axum. To the Northwest was the Byzantine Empire, which systematically suppressed all religions except Christianity throughout Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. To the Northeast was the Sassanid (Persian) Empire, which was primarily Zoroastrian but also had a large Christian population.
Leading up to the life of Muhammad were the continual wars between the Byzantines and the Sassanids, and Muhammad’s ministry largely took place during the great War of 602–628. Between the Byzantines and Sassanids were the Arab vassal states of the Ghassanids (Byzantine) and Lakhmids (Sassanid). Muhammad and the Arabian Penesula were literally surrounded by Christian kingdoms, which trickled through Arabia by means of trade, nomadism, and desert monasticism.
In addition to the Christian influences were Jewish communities scattered throughout the Middle East, most prominently in Arabia itself. Sahaja Carimokam thus summarizes the environment:
Virtually every tribe in Arabia had members who converted to one of the major monotheistic religions or slaves who had come from a monotheistic background. Stories about Christian monks, priests, and Jewish rabbis abound in these early histories. After the suppression of the Jewish Kings of Yemen by the Christian Abyssinians, the gradual trend in Arabia was toward conversion to Christianity. F. E. Peters notes, “In CE 600 an observer might easily have predicted that within three or four decades the Arabs would be as Christian as the Celts or later Slavs.”
It this way, it seems that the advent of Islam came at the last possible moment in history. Muhammad galvanized the Arab people around a new revelation for the Arab people.
The Qur’an itself often acknowledges its dependence on the Jewish and Christian sources. For example, “So if you [Prophet] are in doubt about what We have revealed to you, ask those who have been reading the scriptures before you” (Q. 10:94). The Jews and Christians are commonly understood as the “people of the Book,” to whom Scriptures had previously been given—“We gave scripture, wisdom, and prophethood to the Children of Israel . . . Now We have set you [Muhammad] on a clear religious path, so follow it” (Q. 45:16–18). Thus, Muhammad understood himself in a direct line with the previous Jewish and Christian prophets: “you [Prophet] are not told anything that the previous messengers were not told” (Q. 41:43). Muhammad claimed that he was simply reviving the original “religion of Abraham” (Q. 1:130, 135; 4:125), purifying the religion of the Jews and Christians.
Jewish and Christian Thought Prior to Muhammad
If Muhammad understood himself as a revivalist of the true Judeo-Christian religion, what was he reviving? In other words, what was he reverting back too? The Qur’an describes it as the “religion of Abraham,” which the biographies describe as the pure monotheism originally held by Abraham (who also supposedly built the Ka‘aba with Ishmael). These stories are, of course, legendary, since the Abraham and the ancient Israelite religion had not developed the apocalyptic framework employed by Muhammad to describe such a faith. In order to understand Muhammad’s revivalism, it is thus necessary to survey of the development of Jewish thought.
Jews of the Old Testament understood the universe in terms of “a three-storied structure, with the earth in the centre, the heaven above, and the underworld beneath.” Within this structure, God ruled from the height of the heavens, administrating divine blessing and cursing. After the fall, the underworld (Hb. sheol, Gk. hades) was the abode of the dead, good and bad alike (cf. Job 21:13; Ps. 9:17; Eccl. 9:10). The goal of existence was righteousness before God unto the inheritance of divine blessing (cf. Gen. 1:26; Deut. 29; Ps. 37:22). The bulk of Old Testament thought concerns covenant faithfulness and the present life, with all of its accompanying struggles.
In broad terms, the prophetic literature of the Old Testament began a shift in Jewish thinking toward the ultimate end of divine-human interactions. This initiated the “apocalyptic” approach to life, history, and the Scriptures, which was fundamentally eschatological in nature. In this way the basic questions concerning theodicy and Israel’s covenant were answered: How would God end the struggle between the wicked and the righteous, both on earth and in the heavens? How would God’s faithfulness to the Patriarchs ultimately unfold? How would the order of sin, death, and sickness ultimately be overturned? The prophetic writings thus take on a progressively eschatological tone.
During and after the exile, the Jews increasingly developed their eschatological views. With this development came phraseology which summarized their hopes. The most prominent example is the “resurrection of the dead” (which Muhammad would later latch onto). The Old Testament literature only refers to the event explicitly in Isaiah 26:19 and Daniel 12:2, which has led many scholars to conclude that the resurrection was an intertestamental invention. This view seems short-sighted. Concerning life and death, the hope throughout the Old Testament was deliverance from Sheol, unto living forever (cf. Gen. 3:22) in “the land of the living” (Job 28:13; Ps. 27:13; Isa. 53:8; Ezek. 26:20). It is God alone who can ransom a person’s soul: “that he should live on forever and never see the pit. . . . God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me” (Ps. 49:9, 15; cf. Ps. 56:13; 116:8–9). This deliverance from Sheol, taken to its ultimate end, is the theological framework within which the language of resurrection is developed.
Similarly, the punishment of the wicked is projected eschatologically. The valley of Hinnom (Gk. gehenna) outside of Jerusalem was prophesied to be “the Valley of Slaughter” (Jer. 7:32; 19:6), ultimately being filled with divine fire (Isa. 30:33; 66:24). The New Testament reflects this literalistic understanding of Gehenna (Matt. 5:22, 29, 30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47; Luke 12:5) and its accompanying “eternal fire” (Matt. 18:8; 25:41; Jude 7).
The single largest theme (by quantity of writing) concerned God’s anger and judgment. Taken to its conclusion, there would be an eschatological judgment that would rectify all sin and resolve unrighteousness upon the earth. This final judgment revolved around an eschatological day—“the day of the Lord” (Isa. 13:6; Joel 1:15; 2:1; 3:14; Amos 5:18; Zeph. 1: 14; Zech. 14:1; Mal. 4:5). Thus, divine judgment concluded on the “day of judgment,” or simply “the judgment.”
Finally, themes of Israel’s deliverance and vindication are developed around the language of “messiah” and “kingdom”. Derived from the Davidic covenant (cf. 2 Sam. 7; Ps. 89), a descendant would be anointed by God to act as the agent of divine judgment and resurrection (Isa. 9:7; Jer. 30:9; Ezek. 37:24), ruling from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Ps. 72:8; 132:13–17; Zech. 9:10). The phrase “kingdom of God,” ubiquitous in the New Testament, was simply an apocalyptic summary phrase for the Jewish messianic kingdom, which would be ushered in by the eschatological day (cf. Lk. 10:11f.; 21:28–31).
These themes are all part of the apocalyptic hermeneutic, which sought to understand the “big picture” of history during the tumultuous times of the Second Temple period. Most historical scholars of the twentieth century simply summarized this approach as “Jewish apocalypticism.” Recently some have specified it as “Jewish restoration eschatology.” Whatever the case may be, the New Testament fits comfortably within this worldview, and it represents well Jewish thought at the time. Jesus and the apostles simply assumed these themes to be true (cf. Matt. 19:28; Luke 22:30; Acts 1:6). There is little evidence that they sought to spiritually reinterpret, reimagine, or realize them.
Early Christianity was simply a “sect” (Acts 24:5, 14; 28:22) within Judaism, which held to “the same hope” (Acts 24:15, niv) as apocalyptic Pharisaism. The epistolary material of the New Testament is primarily concerned with attaining righteousness (cf. Rom. 9:30ff.; Gal. 2:16; Phil. 3:9). Little is said about the resurrection, kingdom, and last day, because Jewish eschatology was the commonly understood end of redemptive history (cf. 1 Thess. 4; 2 Thess. 2; 2 Pet. 3; etc.). Jewish scholar Daniel Boyarin thus describes Judaism and early Christianity as “a territory without border lines.” Even the divinity of the Messiah was an acceptable Jewish belief at the time. However, as time passed, Christianity began to drift from its Jewish moorings, increasingly adopting Hellenistic ideas of salvation and eschatology.
By the fourth century, the Jewish salvific narrative was commonly mocked as carnal and asinine, in contrast to the superior heavenly destiny of Christians. Princeton scholar J. Christiaan Beker calls this change “a fall from the apocalyptic world of early Christianity to Platonic categories of thought.” Following the lead of the catechetical school in Alexandria, the church throughout the Roman Empire began to fiercely persecute the Jewish eschatological hope, as well as the Jews themselves. Beker elsewhere summarizes the rejection of Jewish eschatology throughout Christian history:
The history of futurist eschatology in the church has been one long process of spiritualization and/or ecclesiologizing or institutionalizing, especially under the influence of Origen and Augustine. From the condemnation of Montanism in the second century and the exclusion of chiliastic apocalypticisrn at the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431) through its condemnation by the reformers (in the Augsburg Confession) and until today, future eschatology was pushed out of the mainstream of church life and thus pushed into heretical aberrations.
By the time of Muhammad, Christian theology had widely abandoned its Jewish apocalyptic roots. Its new salvific hope, as articulated by the figurehead Augustine, involved a twofold progression: the manifestation of divine sovereignty in this life (i.e., “church militant”) unto an immaterial heavenly destiny after death (i.e., “church triumphant”).
This new “Christian” vision for life’s purpose and end (i.e., eschatology) effectively superseded the old Jewish vision. This transition of thought and hope lies at the heart of what is known as “supersessionism,” “replacement theology,” “displacement theology,” “fulfillment theology,” etc. Once the salvific and eschatological narrative is changed, the arrogation of identity simply follows. The imperial church was the new and true “Israel” leading the new humanity into its spiritual promised land. Some scholars have hinted at the similarities between Christian and Islamic supersessionism, but a detailed relationship between the two seems lacking in the literature.
The development of Jewish thought after the first century is less dramatic. Three events determined the trajectory of rabbinical tradition: the first Jewish-Roman war (66–70) in which the temple in Jerusalem (the heart of Jewish life) was destroyed, the Kitos War (115–117) in which Jewish insurgents slaughtered over half a million Roman citizens before being crushed by the Roman general Lusius Quietus (i.e., “Kitos”), and the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136) in which the Jewish commander Simon bar Kokhba was widely acclaimed as the promised Messiah (by the populous and Jewish leadership alike). After two years of independence, Bar Kokhba’s kingdom was ruthlessly crushed by Emperor Hadrian (r. 117–138), who dedicated the final years of his life to eradicating Judaism, something he saw as an intrinsic and incessant root of rebellion.
The Jewish-Roman wars changed Jewish thought in a number of ways. First, the Jewish leaders had to practice their Jewish faith without its central fixture, the temple in Jerusalem. This problem, however, had already been worked out substantially during the Babylonian exile and the subsequent diaspora. After ad 70, the diaspora synagogue system simply became the norm.
The greater change concerned Jewish messianic hope. Later rabbinic tradition emphasized the division within first century Pharisaism between the preeminent teachers Shammai and Hillel (both lived c. 60 bc – ad 20). As a general rule, Shammai was much more rigid and harsh in his observance of the Law than was Hillel, and it is assumed that the zealot movement was born out of the Shammaite milieu, supposedly beginning in ad 6 with Judas of Galilee and Zadok the Pharisee.
After the back breaking failure of Bar Kokhba, zealot hopes died and with them the Shammaite school. The rabbis who organized the early rabbinic material (i.e., the Mishnah) were Hillelites, which became the tradition that defined subsequent rabbinism. Moreover, zealot oriented messianic hopes were generally quelled within the Jewish community (proof of this lies in the fact that there are no known Jewish messianic claimants for the next 300 years!). What is left is a generally legalistic tradition, broadly framed within an apocalyptic approach to redemptive history, deemphasizing messianic and nationalistic elements. This Jewish faith is roughly what Muhammad encountered on the Arabian Peninsula at the dawn of the seventh century.
The Development of Muhammad’s Religious Thought
In approaching Muhammad’s beliefs, we are confronted with a historical problem: most of the relevant material (the Qur’an, Hadith, and biographies) was collected and redacted long after Muhammad died. The earliest Hadith (sayings of Muhammad) and biographies were written nearly two hundred years after his death, and the age of the earliest texts of the Qur’an are highly debatable. For this study, the Hadith and the biographies will play a secondary role in understanding the person and thought of Muhammad, since they exhibit clear characteristics of later dogmatic revision (i.e., they have been sanitized for the purposes of propaganda). Though the Qur’an contains little historical information, it is the only source that can be traced back to Muhammad himself.
The Qur’an is composed of suras from four significant periods: the first three in Mecca and the last in Medina. In the earliest Meccan period, Muhammad’s message is highly apocalyptic, emphasizing almost exclusively the eschatological “Day,” the judgment of the wicked in “Hell,” and the rewarding of the righteous in a paradisal “Garden.” Quite akin to Jewish apocalypticism, human history is understood as moving unidirectionally toward a final cataclysm between God and humanity in which divine recompense is ultimately meted out—“the Day of Judgment” (Q. 1:4; 56:55; 74:46; 82:15; 83:11), or simply “the Judgment” (Q. 51:6; 95:7; 107:1). This approach to redemptive history creates the two age dichotomy (Q. 53:25; 75:20f.; 79:25; 87:16f.; 92:13), the classic litmus test of apocalyptic thought.
The second Meccan period continues the same apocalyptic themes, only now Muhammad begins to incorporate Old Testament and Jewish apocryphal material to justify his own political agenda. Just as the prophets of old proclaimed the coming divine judgment, so also was Muhammad a “warner” (Q. 50:2; cf. 27:92; 38:65; 67:26). And conversely, just as the prophets of old were commonly rejected, so also were the Meccans rejecting Muhammad: “Messengers before you [Muhammad] were also ridiculed, but those who mocked them were overwhelmed in the end by the very thing they had mocked” (Q. 21:41).
The third Meccan period is bookended in the biographies by two emigrations (hijras): the first involving a group of about eighty Muslims who fled for refuge in Christian Abyssinia and the second involving the entire Muslim community moving to Mecca. This period continues the same apocalyptic themes of the eschatological judgment, Hell, and Paradise with a similar amount of biblical and apocryphal material as in the second Meccan period. The biographies, however, tell of two events at the end of this period that shake Muhammad to the core: the death of his wife Khadija and his uncle Abu Talib died. Khadija was the first person to encourage Muhammad in his revelations, and Abu Talib functioned as a Muhammad’s protector, restraining the incessant religious persecution of the Meccans. Immediately following their deaths, Muhammad received his revelation to fight:
The apostle had not been given permission to fight or allowed to shed blood before the second ‘Aqaba [treaty]. He had simply been ordered to call men to God and to endure insult and forgive the ignorant. . . . When Quraysh became insolent towards God and rejected His gracious purpose, accused His prophet of lying, and ill treated and exiled those who served Him and proclaimed His unity, believed in His prophet, and held fast to His religion, He gave permission to His apostle to fight and to protect himself against whose who wronged them and treated them badly.
These events seem to mark a major transition in Muhammad’s life. The emigration to Medina, which marks the initiation of the Islamic era, was inaugurated by deep tragedy and a revelation of retaliation. Ibn Ishaq continues, “When God had given permission to fight and this clan of the Ansār had pledged their support to him in Islam and to help him and his followers, and the Muslims who had taken refuge with them, the apostle commanded his companions, the emigrants of his people and those Muslims who were with him in Mecca, to emigrate to Medina and to link up with their bretheren the Ansār.” Thus, Muhammad’s migration to Medina was framed within the “permission to fight” the unbelievers of Mecca.
After the migration to Medina, Muhammad’s revelations take on a much more militant tone. They also become quite polemical against the Jews and Christians, now simply referenced as the “people of the book.” The Jews and Christians often claim to receive Muhammad as a prophet, but they are actually “hypocrites,” a term only used during the Medinan period. Ibn Ishaq describes, “when Islam appeared and their people flocked to it they were compelled to pretend to accept it to save their lives. But in secret they were hypocrites whose inclination was toward the Jews because they considered the apostle a liar and strove against Islam.” Thus the revelation was received: “Fight those of the People of the Book who do not truly believe in God and the Last Day” (Q. 9:29).
As contentions between Muhammad and the people of the book (especially the Jews) escalated, Muhammad progressively turned away from the roots of his own religion. After many disputations with Jewish rabbis and raids on neighboring Jewish villages, Muhammad received a revelation to stop praying toward Jerusalem and begin praying toward Mecca. After this Muhammad expelled the Jews from Medina (because they would not convert) and received the revelation, “O you who believe, take not Jews and Christians as friends. They are friends one of another. Who of you takes them as friends is one of them.” Muhammad went on to expel the neighboring Jewish tribe of Banu Nadir, slaughter the Banu Qurayza, and subjugate the Jews of Khaybar. These events seemingly sealed Muhammad’s trajectory away from the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Comparisons between Jewish, Christian, and Qur’anic Thought
How much Muhammad borrowed from the Judeo-Christian tradition is debatable. There is, however, no question that Muhammad believed his revelations to be the continuation (or correction) of Judaism and Christianity. The paradisal Garden was understood to be the “true promise given by Him in the Torah, the Gospel, and the Qur’an” (Q. 9:111). Muhammad believed his message to be completely congruent with the (unadulterated) message of the Jews and Christians: “Step by step, He has sent the Scripture down to you [Prophet] with the Truth, confirming what went before: He sent down the Torah and the Gospel earlier as a guide for people and He has sent down the distinction between right and wrong” (Q. 3:3–4).
Muhammad seems to have understood himself as a revivalist of true Judaism and a corrector of errant Christianity. When we compare the development of Jewish and Christian thought, it seems that Muhammad’s thought roughly aligns with late Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. All three emphasized the eschatological Day, two ages, resurrection of the dead, restored Edenic paradise, and fiery hell. Muhammad, however, stripped from such thought everything explicitly Jewish, creating a generic apocalypticism, so to speak. This same process of “de-Judaization” was seen in Christian theologians preceding Muhammad (though they rejected both Jewish election and apocalypticism). Muhammad also generally rejected the concept of vicarious atonement, which was a prominent theme in both Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. No atonement and no Jewish election; just God, his messengers, and the Day of Judgment. On the whole, it seems that Muhammad fell short in his attempted revival of Jewish apocalypticism. However, his desire all along may have been to create a new generically apocalyptic movement. If so we must deem him one of the most successful men in history.
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