Return of the MasihEnd of the Masikh

A linguistic-historical inquiry into the Quranic ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (عيسى ابن مَريَم) and the Nazarene Jesus
English edition · translated from the Arabic original

Introduction

In Arabic writing a single dot separates the letter ḥāʾ from the letter khāʾ, and from that dot we took the image for the title of this book: the Masīḥ and the Masīkh. The Masīḥ is the one who was anointed with divine blessing and consecrated to it, and his reports are bound up with wandering and with healing. By the Masīkh we meant an image taken from that original, into which enough alteration then crept to change its meaning while leaving it a resemblance to the original. So the two words in the title stand close together, while the two images they point to, as we see it, stand far apart: the image of the bearer of the message, and the image that reached people in his name.

The conviction from which this book proceeds is that the memory in circulation about the Masīḥ has gathered the reports of two figures separated by centuries: ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, whose time we place in the sixth century BCE, and Jesus of Nazareth, who lived about five and a half centuries after him. This composite image was then loaded with doctrinal interpretations, and it settled in people’s minds through the force of teaching, authority and inheritance. It is this altered image that we call “the Masīkh” in our title. The man to whom it was attributed has his own story, and we owe it to him to treat that story justly.

The Question That Remained Closed

For nearly two thousand years people have disagreed over how to understand the person of the Masīḥ. Muslims know him as a monotheist prophet sent to the Children of Israel, calling them to “worship God, my Lord and your Lord”. The dominant Christian doctrine says that he is God incarnate, who was crucified and then rose again to redeem humankind. Judaism has not recognised him as the promised Messiah. This disagreement has entered the history of nations and has been bound up with wars, conquests, inquisitions and massacres, so that whoever examines the reports of this man is examining a great part of the history of the world.

The question of this book arose from returning to the origin of that difference: did all these reports speak of one man? Or were there two men behind them, whose names came close to one another, and whose lives then blended over the centuries, so that separating them now requires a new reading?

The Hypothesis in Three Degrees

The prophet the Qurʾān mentions is called ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, while the subject of the biography in the Gospels is called Jesus of Nazareth. For fourteen centuries readers have been accustomed to interpret the reports of the first through what they knew of the second, until in their minds the two became one man. We return to this very beginning and ask: on what basis were the two images joined?

The view we defend is that behind these two images stand two historical figures, and that the report of one became confused with the report of the other in the shared memory; the image of the Nazarene in the Gospels then came to determine for the reader the image of the prophet in the Qurʾān. We are not the first to glimpse this question. Its outlines have appeared before, among Muslims and among Western scholars, but they remained scattered, or in need of someone to set them out. So we gather the evidence here, and ask how far its parts support one another.

Once we adopt this distinction, another question meets us: in what time did ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, live? The evidence of this book takes us back to about six centuries before the first century CE, to the Semitic environment extending between Babylon, Persia and the north of the Peninsula. In this environment a man stands out whose report the documents preserve as king of Babylon: Nabonidus. We shall devote a chapter to these documents, in which we look at his biography and its connection with our subject.

Then we go further than identifying the environment and the era, and say that Nabonidus is ʿĪsā himself, peace be upon him: Babylon preserved the reports of his kingship, and the Qurʾān preserved the reports of his prophethood. Of all the book’s readings this has the widest consequences, because it changes the order of the reports of the Masīḥ and his time, and changes the links by which we have been accustomed to join those reports. We shall set it out in detail in its place.

On this reading, ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, is a prophet and king from the Children of Israel, and a teacher who returns people to God and joins them to the heritage of the prophets. Jesus of Nazareth, for his part, is a righteous man from a world that inherited something of that teaching. What we judge likely is that the reports of the first teacher passed into the biography of the man who came after him, that the overlap began in narration and remembrance, and that it then acquired the authority of official doctrine. We shall trace how this image was built, down to the councils and beyond, without making Jesus himself answerable for everything that was raised in his name.

The hypothesis then widens until it reaches the biographies preserved by India under the name of Buddha, by China under the name of Lao Tzu, and by Iran under the name of Zoroaster. We propose that these biographies may carry images of the story of ʿĪsā himself, peace be upon him, which each culture retold in its own tongue and as far as its memory had kept it. Perhaps the teacher himself travelled; perhaps his disciples did, and their reports blended with his. The evidence before us does not decide which of these routes it was. But what we have in view goes beyond a passing resemblance between sages far apart from one another: we mean that the figure these biographies narrate may be, at the origin, a single figure.

Each of these degrees has its own evidence. We shall present the evidence of each degree separately first and then bring them together, because each degree prepares the way for the next: if we separate the two figures, we can identify the first with Nabonidus, and if we identify him with Nabonidus, we understand how his story extended into other traditions. In this way the reader sees each piece of evidence in its place in the construction of the argument.

What we criticise in this book is the doctrinal structure that formed around the Masīḥ, and the path the image of the human, monotheist messenger followed over the following centuries until it became the image of the incarnate God. As for the prophets, God’s blessings and peace be upon them all, they are the bearers of the message whose meaning we seek to recover, and fairness requires us to distinguish between them and what was attached to their reports after their departure.

Before setting out the evidence, it is well to identify the environment to which the Qurʾān says ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, was sent. We read that he was sent to the Children of Israel, and then, most of the time, we gather under this phrase the Children of Israel, the Jews and the bearers of the Torah, as though they were identical names. When we do that, we picture the time of ʿĪsā in the form of the Judaism we know, with its synagogues, rabbis, sects and Talmud. But the Qurʾān, when read together with the archaeological evidence, calls us to distinguish between these meanings, and to consider the centuries in which Judaism’s institutions and literature took shape. The picture we propose of the Masīḥ can be understood only through this distinction.

The Children of Israel, the Law and Judaism: Three Distinct Layers

In this book we distinguish between two things: the prophetic heritage of the Children of Israel, and Judaism as a historical movement with institutions and schools of thought, which took successive forms. We hold that this movement crystallised at the heart of the Hellenistic and Hasmonean transformations, especially from the second century BCE. The research of Yonatan Adler helps in understanding this transformation from one specific angle, for he asks: when does the evidence appear that the observance of the Torah spread among the common people? This is a different question from the date of Mūsā, and different again from the date of each report or law in the books.

Common usage gathers three layers under a single name. Let us begin with them, and set out what we mean by each designation and how it relates to the others in history and in the reading of the text:

The first layer is the Children of Israel, the people among whom the heritage of prophecy passed from generation to generation, from Ibrāhīm, Isḥāq, Yaʿqūb, Yūsuf, Mūsā, Hārūn, Dāwūd and Sulaymān to Zakariyyā, Yaḥyā and ʿĪsā, peace be upon them. In most of its occurrences in the Qurʾān the name is a historical description of this people. We read its origin in its connection with those saved with Nūḥ, so that their lineage widens, in our view, to what lies before the line of Yaʿqūb; the Qurʾān itself mentions Ibrāhīm among the party of Nūḥ: ﴿وَإِنَّ مِن شِيعَتِهِ لَإِبْرَاهِيمَ﴾ (wa-inna min shīʿatihi la-Ibrāhīm) (“and indeed of his party was Ibrāhīm,” al-Ṣāffāt 37:83). The Children of Israel in this sense are older than the time of ʿĪsā by centuries.

Tracing the name back to those saved with Nūḥ is one of the readings of this book, and we rest it on two things. The first is that the verse cited above (al-Ṣāffāt 37:83) joins Ibrāhīm to Nūḥ, which allows us to follow the prophetic inheritance back to the company of the Ark, instead of confining it to a father who came after it. The second is that when the Qurʾān addresses the Children of Israel, it addresses a people who carry a covenant and are reminded of a favour, as in the appeals that begin from verse 40 of Sūrat al-Baqara. The address turns on the covenant of the community and its report; it does not define the people by a genealogical column in the manner of the well-known lists of the Old Testament. On these two points the book departs from the conventional interpretation.

Yaʿqūb, peace be upon him, keeps his place in this prophetic chain, for the Qurʾān joined him with Ibrāhīm and Isḥāq when it mentioned revelation (al-Nisāʾ 4:163). All we are saying is that the origin of the people is wider for us and the reach of its lineage longer, so we do not confine all of its heritage to the descendants of Yaʿqūb alone.

The second layer is the revealed Law, with its commandments, ethics and legislation, and its rules of purity and obligation. This people inherited it from its prophets, and in it we understand the words of the Exalted: ﴿إِنَّا أَنزَلْنَا التَّوْرَاةَ فِيهَا هُدًى وَنُورٌ﴾ (innā anzalnā l-tawrāta fīhā hudan wa-nūr) (“Indeed We sent down the Torah, in which is guidance and light,” al-Māʾida 5:44). The Law is as ancient as the prophecies, and its teachings extend across the ages. In our reading it was present in the time of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, who held to it and reminded his people of its meanings, as every prophet joins what lies between himself and the one who came before him.

The third layer is Judaism, a movement that took an institutional form. We connect the crystallisation of this form with the crisis that arose when Antiochus IV imposed pagan Greek culture by force, and then with the Maccabean revolt in 167 BCE. It is in this period that we place the emergence of the movement in the sense meant here, and we distinguish it from the people older than it and from the Law that people carried. In this way we see how it arose in its circumstances, and what those circumstances added to the inheritance that preceded it.

The First Book of Maccabees relates what Antiochus commanded in Judah (1 Maccabees 1:41–64). He commanded that each people should give up its own customs, that burnt offerings and sacrifices in the sanctuary should cease, that the Sabbath should be profaned, that sons should be left uncircumcised, that the books of the Law should be torn up and burned, and that anyone found with a book of the covenant or following the Law should be put to death. When matters reached that point, the book itself became the sign of belonging, and carrying it became a charge for which its owner was killed; and it was under this pressure that the boundaries of the community were drawn.

Language itself bears witness to this birth. The first place where the word Ἰουδαϊσμός (Ioudaïsmos), “Judaism,” appears is the Second Book of Maccabees, where it describes those who fought for it and held fast to it (2 Maccabees 2:21; 8:1; 14:38), and the Arabic translation renders it “the religion of the Jews.” The book sets two words of the same formation against it: Ἑλληνισμός (Hellēnismos), “Hellenisation,” and ἀλλοφυλισμός (allophylismos), the adoption of foreign ways (4:13), the passage the Arabic translation renders “inclination to the customs of the Greeks and conformity to the manners of foreigners.” So the name that later became the label of a religion was born in the confrontation with Antiochus, and its first meaning was that a man should adopt the customs of the people of Judah in the face of the customs of the Greeks. Steve Mason (2007) reads the word as “Judaizing,” that is, siding with the law and culture of Judah, and holds that the Greco-Roman world knew neither “Judaism” nor “religion” as a category in the modern sense; it knew the Judeans as a people among peoples, with its own laws, customs and god. Daniel Boyarin (2018), for his part, holds that “Judaism” as the name of a religion understood as a system of belief was formulated by Christian theology, and that the Jews did not adopt it as a name for themselves until the modern period.

In this period and after it there arose sects, institutions and literatures that differed from one another. The Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes appeared, the dispute over the Law went on, the literature of visions came into being, and then, in later ages, came the Mishnah and the Talmud. What concerns us here is that these layers accumulated one on top of another. A reader who forgets this will transfer the whole late image to the time of the earlier prophets, and read the ancient with features that came together only after it.

In The Origins of Judaism (2022) Adler gathered the archaeological and textual evidence he found for the observance of the Law by the common people, and concluded that there is no convincing evidence for the spread of this observance before the middle of the second century BCE. What we take from his research is the distinction between the inherited Law and the time when its observance was made general and acquired institutions. In Appendix 9 we present the effect of this distinction on the reading of the history of the Children of Israel. (Yonatan Adler, The Origins of Judaism)

Shaye Cohen reaches the same conclusion from another direction, that of identity, in The Beginnings of Jewishness (1999). He holds that until the second century BCE, belonging to the Jews was belonging by descent to a people and a land, and that in that century it became descent and religion together, which an outsider can enter if he Judaizes. Josephus relates that John Hyrcanus allowed the Idumaeans to remain in their land on condition that they be circumcised and adopt the laws of the Jews, and that Aristobulus imposed the same on the Itureans (Antiquities 13:257–258, 318–319). It was the Hasmonean state, then, that made the practice of the Torah the boundary of the community.

Lines of inquiry that are independent of one another meet at the second century BCE. Adler arrives there from the archaeological evidence, Cohen from identity, Steve Mason from the word, Seth Schwartz from the state’s patronage of the Torah, Israel Finkelstein from the Hasmonean background of the books of Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles, and Reinhard Kratz from his reading of the Elephantine papyri. Appendix 9 presents their evidence.

This distinction has a basis in the usage of the Qurʾān itself. The phrase “the Children of Israel” comes there as a description of the prophets and their people, while the word “the Jews” refers for the most part, on our reading, to the doctrinal movement after it had crystallised. So if the two designations differ in the language of revelation, it is because one points to the people and its inheritance, and the other to the historical form of the movement.

Once we distinguish these layers, we find the place of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, in the first two: he is a prophet from the Children of Israel, who bears the revealed Law and calls to it. His time, as this book reads it, precedes the crystallisation of “Judaism as a movement” by more than three centuries. That is why his Qurʾānic report is free of the disputes of the Pharisees and Sadducees and of the debate the Mishnah presents, since these are features that accumulated in the Hasmonean and Pharisaic period and after. The Gospels, on the contrary, portray Jesus of Nazareth in the first century CE debating with those sects and colliding with their priests. The religious environment in which each of them lives is not the other’s, and this is one of the ways in which we distinguish the two figures.

How the Word Is Lost

We shall rely heavily on comparing the texts of the Torah, the Gospels and the Qurʾān, so it is well to know first how these texts reached us, and what befell them as they were written, read and translated; for the witness we draw from a text cannot be fully understood until we know the condition of that text.

What befell the texts in transmission can be followed in four layers, which overlap one another. The first is the difference between the sounds of the tongue and the symbols of writing. Arabic kept ancient phonetic distinctions that the twenty-two-letter Hebrew alphabet does not separate, among them ḥāʾ and khāʾ, ʿayn and ghayn. When two sounds share one letter, that does not mean the speakers immediately forgot the difference between them; but whoever wants to recover the pronunciation afterwards sometimes has to compare among languages. The second layer is the passage of texts between the Hebrew and Aramaic scribal traditions, together with what the biblical account ascribes to Ezra, that he gathered the Law and taught it. At this layer the book separates the ancient heritage of the prophets from the spread of adherence to the Torah in society, the question Yonatan Adler has re-examined through the archaeological remains, concluding that its widespread evidence appeared in the Hasmonean age. The third layer is the Greek translation known as the Septuagint, on which work began in the centuries before the Common Era. It preserved many meanings, but it carried names over into another phonetic system; so when we want to know what memory of Semitic origin lies behind a name, its Greek form alone does not suffice.

The fourth layer is the Masoretic systems of vocalisation, which settled in the early and middle centuries of the Common Era and fixed particular traditions of pronunciation and reading. Among the earliest complete dated copies of the Hebrew Bible that have come down to us is the Leningrad Codex, dated 1008/1009 CE. But many partial manuscripts precede it, foremost among them the Dead Sea evidence. For us, then, the date of the complete copy is not the date at which the text began, and what we ask is this: what did each witness preserve, and what changed from one witness to the next?

For all that, the Torah and the Gospels keep their historical and spiritual value in this book. Perhaps the nearest illustration of how we read them is an old map copied from an older one: the major landmarks and telling signs remain, while the drawing of some details changes. So too with names and words. Their sound may change as they are copied and translated, and if we look at their Semitic roots we recover something of what lies behind their written form.

The Phonetic Method

In phonetic comparison we turn to three kinds of reference. The first is what modern Comparative Semitic Linguistics has established as rules of sound correspondence, a field whose study has broadened since the nineteenth century. The second is the dictionaries: Lisān al-ʿArab by Ibn Manẓūr, Maqāyīs al-lugha by Ibn Fāris, Tāj al-ʿarūs by al-Zabīdī, the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon for Hebrew, Payne Smith for Syriac, Drower-Macuch for Mandaic, and the CAD for Akkadian. The third is what contemporary Arab scholars have written, among them the Libyan scholar Fahmī Khushaym, who made the phonetic relation between Arabic and its sister languages the subject of a number of his books. When we adopt one of his readings, we compare it with these references: what they agree on we show, and what he alone holds we set out in its place and weigh against those references.

The basic rule of this method is that the Arabic pharyngeal letters, when they pass into Hebrew, merge into one another or change according to a regular table that can be verified. Arabic ʿayn corresponds to Hebrew ע (ʿayin), and ghayn merges into it, so that the two share the same symbol; ḥāʾ and khāʾ correspond to Hebrew ח (ḥet) alone, so that they likewise share a single symbol; ẓāʾ and ḍād come to ṣād צ (tsadi). The ʿayn drops out in transfer into Greek, not into Hebrew. When these letters cross from Hebrew into Greek they lose further precision: khāʾ is written with the Greek chi χ (chi), ḥāʾ turns at times into an h-sound or drops, and the other heavy letters have no counterpart at all in Greek and are replaced by the nearest available sounds.

The title of the book is itself a literary image, which this comparison brings closer. Al-Masīḥ and al-Masīkh come from two roots, m-s-ḥ and m-s-kh, which differ by ḥāʾ and khāʾ; in Hebrew writing the two letters meet in a single letter, ח (ḥet), and their form changes once again when they are carried into Greek. We took this closeness as an example of what we see as having happened in memory: two images extremely alike in appearance, with a distant difference between their origin and their meaning. That the historical confusion really occurred is shown by the evidence the chapters present; the resemblance of the writing is not enough to prove it on its own.

In reading these comparisons we have a particular standpoint, which we set out in Chapter 1. Arabic, in our view, is the Semitic tongue that best preserves the logic of the mother tongue and retains most widely its pharyngeal letters and distinctions, while its sister languages have drifted away from it in some of these respects. We shall present the indications on which we rely, and make clear that this is a judgement the book prefers in explaining the linguistic kinship. From this same standpoint we understand why Arabic was chosen for the final revelation: it is an instrument that carries the root and separates out sounds that merged in other languages, so that the message comes through it in a clear Arabic tongue.

Raising and Descent: Layers of Meaning in the Qurʾānic Tongue

We read in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ: ﴿وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ وَمَا صَلَبُوهُ وَلَٰكِن شُبِّهَ لَهُمْ … بَل رَّفَعَهُ ٱللَّهُ إِلَيْهِ﴾ (wa-mā qatalūhu wa-mā ṣalabūhu wa-lākin shubbiha lahum … bal rafaʿahu llāhu ilayh) (“They did not kill him and they did not crucify him, but it was made to appear so to them … rather, God raised him to Himself,” al-Nisāʾ 4:157–158). If we pause at the word “raising,” we find for it, in Arabic and in the Qurʾān, usages that bring its meaning near. We say “God raised the mention of so-and-so,” and we mean that his standing rose and his name spread. The raising and the descent have, beside their physical sense, figurative aspects whose evidence we present in Chapter 1; we then consider which of them suits the report of the Masīḥ.

This book reads the raising of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, as the preservation of his standing and of the truth of his message, and as the veiling of knowledge of him from people once the composite image prevailed over them. It is a raising in meaning and in knowledge, and the return is the unveiling of what was veiled. This meaning will reach its full extent in Chapter 24, after we trace what became of the name, the story and the teaching.

We then read the words of the Exalted: ﴿وإنه لعلم للساعة﴾ (wa-innahu la-ʿilmun lil-sāʿa) (“and indeed he is knowledge of the Hour,” al-Zukhruf 43:61). When people recover their knowledge of the Masīḥ, that is, in our interpretation, part of the widening of human awareness and of the unveiling of what was hidden from it. The book will develop this link between knowledge and the Hour in its conclusion, when the reading of history meets another question: what does knowledge do to the human being?

Our understanding of the ḥadīth of “the Masīḥ al-Dajjāl” goes back to all this. We hold that the ḥadīth may describe the deified image of the Masīḥ that became settled in the councils of the fourth century and then spread through the temples of the Empire. If we understand it so, the fitna widens to include a doctrinal, political and visual phenomenon, all of it resting on the deification of a created being. The detail of this connection will come in its proper chapters; suffice it here to show how the meaning of the Masīkh in the title meets the meaning of the Dajjāl in this book, and how each is understood through the other.

How to Read This Book

I write this book as a Muslim, and what the texts have preserved of the reports of the Masīḥ has long occupied me. I invite the reader, whatever the reader’s creed, to accompany me as I look at these reports and at the places where they differ; if the reader does, the aspect of the question on which I have built the book will become clear.

Digging into the Layers of the Text

When an archaeologist finds a cuneiform tablet in the ruins of Nineveh, the archaeologist asks: who wrote it? When? For whom was it written? Then the archaeologist compares it with the other tablets that have come out of the same site, and may find a difference between two of its reports that needs explaining. Whatever one’s stance toward the god Ashur, one cannot do without these questions, because the investigation rests on arranging the evidence in time, comparing it, and attending to the details of where it agrees and where it differs.

With this same care we read the Gospels and the Torah, the Mandaean Ginza Rabba, the Qumran documents and the Babylonian inscriptions, as though we were working at an archaeological site in which each layer points to something of what preceded it. Each of these texts carries the memory of the community that preserved it, and that memory carries older reports, some of which remain clear while others changed as they were copied and revised. We therefore ask about the time of the text, who said it and to whom, and where it differs with itself or with the other witnesses. The Qurʾān we read as preserved revelation, which came down ﴿مُصَدِّقًۭا لِّمَا بَيْنَ يَدَيْهِ مِنَ ٱلْكِتَٰبِ وَمُهَيْمِنًا عَلَيْهِ﴾ (muṣaddiqan li-mā bayna yadayhi mina l-kitābi wa-muhayminan ʿalayhi) (“confirming what was before it of the Book and as a guardian over it,” al-Māʾida 5:48). It keeps of those ancient reports what was lost with others, and we set the other witnesses beside it with the same care, so that it becomes the measure by which we know what changed in them. We begin by understanding and examining, so that we know what is fit to build upon.

The places that help us most are the points of difference. They are like a crack in a wall that was rebuilt, through which an older layer appears beneath the surface. A narrative may seem continuous in its final form until we come upon a small detail in it, and that detail points us to the stages it passed through before it became continuous.

When a Text Contradicts Its Own Tradition

Take the four Gospels as an example. All of them relate the report of Jesus of Nazareth, yet his genealogy in Matthew is not his genealogy in Luke, his last words on the cross are related in several versions, the names of the witnesses to the resurrection differ, so do their places and times, and the order of some events differs from one Gospel to another. These differences have occupied the commentators of the Church for centuries; they proposed ways of harmonisation and interpretation for them, or left some without treatment. We consider that a number of those attempts load the text with what does not appear in it, so we return to the differences themselves and make them material with which to understand the text.

A question follows from this about the origin of the variation: which older reports were in the hands of the authors of the Gospels? How did each of them choose what he relates and arrange it within the course of his story? And what did this formulation preserve of the earlier inheritance, and what is missing from it, by intention or without it?

These are the places the book calls the fracture lines, because when narratives differ they point us to the history of their formation, and to what may lie behind their final form in reports that were once scattered.

The Uniqueness of the Qurʾān: Content and Chain of Transmission

The Qurʾān has a special place in this book for two reasons: the features it preserves about the Masīḥ, and the path by which its text reached us. Both bear directly on the comparison we shall make.

The Qurʾān preserves features that are best read together. It calls Maryam “the sister of Hārūn,” makes Zakariyyā her guardian in the sanctuary, calls ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, “the son of Maryam,” relates the scene of the birth by the palm tree and the rivulet, and denies that the Masīḥ was killed or crucified, saying ﴿ولكن شُبّه لهم﴾ (wa-lākin shubbiha lahum) (“but it was made to appear so to them,” al-Nisāʾ 4:157). At various points these features part company with the Gospel picture in circulation, and it is from them that the book begins its question: who is the subject of this report, and in what environment did he live? The denial of the crucifixion of ʿĪsā does not prevent, in our reading, its having befallen another man.

We read these differences as indications that call on us to reconsider the identification of this figure and of his time. If we place the Qurʾānic ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, in the horizon of Nabonidus in the sixth century BCE, the mother is joined to the king, and both are joined to Taymāʾ and to the reports of Zakariyyā. The history of the family is read in its layers: the time of the mother, then the time of the guardianship, then the time of the visions that the opening of the Book of Zechariah dates to the year 520 BCE. That year dates the first vision recorded in his name; it does not date the whole of his life. We shall set out this order in Chapter 5.

As for the path of transmission, the Qurʾān reached us through a chain independent of the chain through which the Gospels were handed down. Its text did not issue from Church councils, did not pass under Roman imperial censorship, did not reach us as a translation from Greek, and is not the fruit of attempts to harmonise the narratives of the New Testament. This independence has its value in historical comparison, whatever the reader’s doctrinal stance toward it. We therefore consider what it preserves of reports that converge with evidence from which we judge it was not copied directly, and then set out the aspects of this connection in the next section, “When Testimonies Converge.”

For this reason we ask the reader to consider the information the Qurʾān preserves with the care the reader would give to any ancient document, such as the reports of Herodotus or the Mari tablets, and so to ask: how did the text arrive? To what time does its material go back? What does it know of what is absent from the other sources? If we compare in this way, we read in it a Semitic source that preserves ancient layers of memory, going further back than some of its critics have supposed, and some of its defenders too.

When Testimonies Converge

When testimonies far apart preserve features that converge on a single question, they deserve to be read together. We see in the materials presented here doors that open onto a memory wider than the narrative that later became settled, and each door has its subject: some preserve the image of the Masīḥ, some the survival of the Law, some the connection of healing with forgiveness, and some the reports of the communities that carried the teaching. Among the most important of these doors are:

• The Noble Qurʾān: the identity of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and of his mother, monotheism, and a reading of what took place of the making of a likeness and the raising.
• The Mandaean heritage: the centrality of Yaḥyā and the debate over the image of the Masīḥ and its relation to his teaching.
• The Ebionites: the Christian memory that preserved the Law and rejected the authority of Paul, as the sources transmit it from their sects.
• The Prayer of Nabonidus, 4Q242: the king’s illness in Taymāʾ, the presence of a man of the Children of Israel, and the connection of forgiveness and healing.
• The Ethiopian tradition: the preservation of books, rites and a wide Semitic memory within a Christianity that believes in the divinity of the Masīḥ.

We gather these testimonies because, in spite of the difference between their places, they show us what has been dispersed of the picture: here we find a name, there a rite, and in a third place a dispute or a report of healing. When the threads connect, we ask: what history would explain their meeting? The detail of each witness will come in its chapter, where we present first what it carries itself and then what we add to it.

The connection among some of these communities may well be part of the same answer, for behind it there may be an ancient teaching carried by followers, then dispersed across tongues and countries. We therefore read the points of agreement, and read with them the routes by which they travelled. A report passed along by many communities helps us trace the memory, and a testimony that differs from them helps us distinguish what remained of the origin.

The Course of This Book

This is a book that asks about the identity of the Masīḥ and about what became of his message. Its argument turns on the claim that ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, is Nabonidus, and that his biography is not the biography of Jesus of Nazareth; it then traces how the reports were transmitted and how meanings were transformed. With the argument the reader will proceed from the words of the texts to events and narratives, and then to the image of the human being that the message carries.

The reader will find each text where we use it as evidence, while the documents, tables and references are gathered in the appendices for those who wish to go further. Wherever we propose a reading of a name or an event, we show its basis in its context, so that the difference stays clear between what the document says and what we ourselves understand from it.

The strongest point of this framework is that it gathers questions that had been far apart. It considers the reports of the birth near the Euphrates, the lineage of Maryam, the residence of Nabonidus in Taymāʾ and the account of his ordeal, the disagreement of the communities in understanding the Masīḥ, and the image made by later traditions. These witnesses do not carry a single ready answer, but it is from the comparison among them that the course of the book begins.

These are questions that were asked before us, and scholars will return to them after us. What we present here is what joins them: whatever the difference of their subjects, their answers can be arranged within one hypothesis, which explains what has remained scattered in studies and narratives.

This book is part of a wide conversation about the history of texts, the geography of reports and the names of figures. We have drawn in it on the Semitic comparisons of Fahmī Khushaym, on the questions raised by Kamal Salibi and others, and on the reports and readings gathered by Muhammad Mustafa Mansur in The Torah of Mecca and the Awaited Prophet. But from these studies we return to the texts they point us to, and then read those texts with the book’s question before us; so when we take a report or a reading from one of them, that does not oblige us to take his whole conception.

Let us begin, then, with the points of difference, because they are what show us the road the report travelled until it reached us.

The Argument in Brief

This is a summary of the question addressed by the twenty-five chapters and the appendices that follow them. We want the reader to learn from it the principal claim of the book, the evidence that points toward it, and the matters whose detail we leave to the chapters, and we want it to accompany the reader as the reading proceeds, so that the reader sees how each chapter connects to the book’s purpose.

The Claim in Three Degrees

The first part of the claim is that ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, and Jesus of Nazareth are two figures whose reports became confused. The argument begins from the fact that the image of the family, the environment and the message differs between the two, and then draws on the significance of names and on the comparison among texts. We understand Jesus as a righteous man from a current that inherited the teaching of the Masīḥ, and his biography was then loaded with reports older than himself.

The second is that ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, is Nabonidus, the king whose report the Babylonian documents preserve in the sixth century BCE, and we read Maryam in his mother Adad-guppi. At this degree we gather what was related of his mother and her piety, of his residence in Taymāʾ, of his illness and healing as the Prayer of Nabonidus relates them, and of his recovery of the monuments of his predecessors. The mother mentions her son in the Ḥarrān stele, saying “my only son, the fruit of my womb,” and mentions no father for him. Her inscription says that her son was chosen for kingship and given a commission, and this is the aspect we compare with divine election; the birth, however, remains a sign from God that the inscription does not relate.

The third is that the biographies of Buddha, Lao Tzu and Zoroaster may be other narratives of the original figure, carried by journeys and communities, and then reshaped by each culture in its own way. We present this possibility by examining the structure of the biography and the teaching and the route by which they travelled, and we keep for each comparison its own text and its own history.

The Names and Times We Gather Again

The comparison involves three sources that the book connects: the royal documents of Nabonidus, the reports of Zakariyyā, and the picture of the priestly family in the Qurʾān. An eastern environment and a religious heritage bring them together, and Chapter 5 arranges their dates in their layers: the time of the mother, then the time of the guardianship, then the time of the visions.

• Nabonidus reigned between 556 and 539 BCE, and stayed about ten years in Taymāʾ.
• The opening of the Book of Zechariah dates his visions to the reign of Darius I, beginning in 520 BCE.
• The Qurʾān links Maryam to Hārūn and makes Zakariyyā her guardian; on this the book builds its reading of the Aaronid lineage.

We join the Zakariyyā whom the Qurʾān mentions to the author of the book that bears his name, and then we read the reports of the family in Chapter 5 in their layers: the time of the mother, then the time of the guardianship, then the time of the visions.

The chapters that follow set out these questions one after another. We begin with the tongue and the manner of reading, then study the documents in Chapters 5 and 6, then trace the communities that preserved aspects of the inheritance, and finally consider the way in which the image that we see as altered from the original took shape. Whoever wishes to discuss a particular argument will know where it lies and can return to it.

The Fracture Lines: The Four Gospels under Academic Criticism

We Begin with the Gospels, as the Historian Reads Any Source

We begin with the four Gospels as a historian begins when an ancient document falls into his hands: he reads its narratives, compares them with one another, and then asks why they diverge. In this chapter we pause at what the texts themselves say and at what the scholars who have studied their history have concluded, as a preparation for understanding the image that has reached us of Jesus of Nazareth.

Many people read the four Gospels as one continuous record, written by eyewitnesses who supply what the others left out, and they may liken them to four pictures taken of one scene. But when we put the texts side by side, differences appear that call on us to revise this conception. We shall present here what academic criticism has said about these differences, in order to see how far the narratives can be traced back to a single report, and then move to the reading this book proposes.

Two Genealogies: Two Trees That Do Not Meet

The Gospel of Matthew opens its text with a genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:1–17), and Luke gives another genealogy (Luke 3:23–38). The reader who expects the two genealogies to coincide, or one to complete the other, is surprised to find that they differ in the finest details. The father of Joseph in Matthew is “Jacob” (Matthew 1:16), and his father in Luke is “Heli” (Luke 3:23). The Davidic line itself is different: Matthew passes through King Solomon, while Luke passes through another son of David named “Nathan.” Indeed the number of generations between David and Jesus differs between the two texts in a way that cannot be traced to a mere slip of copying.

Raymond E. Brown, the Catholic scholar of the New Testament, studied this difference in his book The Birth of the Messiah (1977), and concluded that the two genealogies cannot both be historically correct as they stand, because the father differs in them, the grandfather differs, and so does the path by which descent is traced. Among the ways in which commentators of old harmonised them is that one of the genealogies belongs to Maryam and the other to Joseph. But the text itself does not state this distribution, so it remains an explanation proposed by commentators to resolve the contradiction, and its suitability can be judged only by setting it against the words we have before us.

The Date of the Birth: Ten Years Within One Book

There is another fracture concerning the time of the birth. Matthew places the birth of Jesus in the days of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1), and Herod died in 4 BCE by the reckoning of historians. Luke, by contrast, ties the birth to a census that took place “when Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Luke 2:2), and this Roman census is dated to 6 CE.

Between the two dates lie about ten years. The disagreement here falls within the corpus of the accepted Gospels itself, between two of its narratives, and its effect appears once we set each narrative against what historians know of the chronology of Herod and Quirinius. What concerns us is that the time of the birth was related in more than one form. This opens a wider question, the order of reports in time, which lies at the heart of our study of the transmission of the image of the Masīḥ.

The Day of the Crucifixion: A Passover Before It or a Passover After It

The Gospels also differ over the order of the Last Supper and the crucifixion. The Synoptic Gospels, Mark, Matthew and Luke, make the supper a Passover meal, which Jesus eats on the evening of the fourteenth of Nisan, the evening that passes into the fifteenth, and he is crucified on the following day, the fifteenth of Nisan (Mark 14–15). In this narrative, then, Jesus ate the Passover before he was crucified.

John arranges the events differently. In describing the trial he says that the leaders of the Jews avoided entering the governor’s residence “so that they would not be defiled, but to eat the Passover” (John 18:28), and the reader understands that the Passover meal had not yet been eaten. He then calls that time “the Preparation of the Passover” (John 19:14), so that the crucifixion falls, in his account, on the fourteenth of Nisan. Between the two narratives there is a whole day, and that day changes the relation of the crucifixion to the Passover, in the event on which the conclusion of the whole biography stands.

The Resurrection Narratives: Who Went, and Whom They Met

The narratives of the empty tomb differ in the number of those who went to the tomb and in their names, and they differ in whom the visitors found there. In Mark the women find a “young man” sitting (Mark 16:5), in Luke “two men” stand beside them (Luke 24:4), and Matthew relates that “an angel of the Lord” descended, that an earthquake occurred, and that the stone was rolled away (Matthew 28:2). It is better to leave each narrative with its own features as they are, so that we understand how each Gospel pictured that scene.

The ending of Mark, as it stands in its oldest copies, deserves a special pause. After the women are commanded to carry the good news, the narrative says: “They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and bewilderment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid” (Mark 16:8). At this verse the text stops, closing with the fear and silence of the women, and it does not relate that Jesus himself appeared to anyone. The appearances that follow in the longer ending we shall take up shortly, when we speak of the textual layer.

The Last Words on the Cross: Three Words across Four Gospels

The Gospels also differ over the last thing Jesus said on the cross, and the difference is significant. Mark and Matthew relate that he cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34 and Matthew 27:46). Luke, for his part, chooses to close the scene with words of surrender: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46).

John relates that he said “It is finished” (John 19:30). The scene is one, but it is heard in three tones: in the first, the pain of one who feels abandoned; in the second, a man surrendering his spirit; in the third, one who has completed his mission. The words each narrator chooses for the close of the biography are what give the death its meaning in his Gospel, and for that reason they become a key to understanding his whole conception.

The Textual Layer: What Was Not in the Oldest Manuscripts

So much for the difference of the reports. Another question remains, that of the transmission of the text itself from copy to copy. There are passages that became so well known that readers grew used to them, and yet they are absent from the oldest Greek witnesses for their places, which is why textual criticism counts them as additions that attached themselves to the text afterwards. Among the most prominent are the longer ending of Mark (Mark 16:9–20), the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11), and the Johannine Comma in the First Epistle of John (5:7–8).

The evidence for this judgement is set out in the specialised references. Bruce M. Metzger discussed in A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament the absence of those passages from the early witnesses, and showed their place in the history of the transmission of the text. And Bart D. Ehrman explained in Misquoting Jesus (2005) how an addition enters the copies, and then readers become so accustomed to it that they take it for part of the text from its beginning. Manuscripts must therefore be compared, and what each layer of them preserves must be known.

The Oldest Papyrus: What Can the Dating of the Script Bear?

Then we go to the other end of the history of manuscripts and ask: what is the oldest witness that has survived? The answer given most often is Rylands Greek Papyrus 457, known by the siglum P52, which is cited as the oldest fragment of the books of the New Testament. It is a scrap of the Gospel of John, carrying on one side 18:31–33 and on the other 18:37–38, and it is commonly dated to about 125 CE. On this estimate it is built that the Fourth Gospel was in circulation in Egypt a generation after the date proposed for its composition, about 90–100 CE, and nearly a century after the events it relates. For this reason it is well to pause at the basis on which this dating rests.

Colin Roberts published the fragment in 1935, and compared its hand with other hands, and so favoured the first half of the second century. The fragment carries no date written by its scribe, so its dating is an estimate resting on the characteristics of the script and on what it is compared with. Scholars after him re-examined these comparisons and their limits, and for this reason the common date of 125 should be read as an approximation, one that the papyrus itself does not record.

Then Brent Nongbri set this judgement against the wider body of reliably dated papyri that have appeared since 1935, and published his conclusions in his study “The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel,” in the Harvard Theological Review, volume 98 (2005), pages 23–48. He found that hands close in appearance to the hand of the Rylands fragment appear in the late second century and the early third century, so that the script alone allows a range extending through the second century and beyond, and does not confine the fragment to a narrow point near its beginning. As for Pasquale Orsini together with Willy Clarysse, they kept the fragment in the second century, in their study “Early New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography,” published in Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, volume 88 (2012), pages 443–474, but they made its range extend between 125 and 175 CE.

As these studies show, the range of dating widens or narrows according to the scripts with which the scholar compares. The fragment is an important material witness, but its script gives us an estimate of the time and not a year in which the scribe wrote it. We therefore set this estimate beside the other witnesses when we ask when the Gospel was composed, and we keep the whole range that the comparison allows, whether the scholar favours its early end or its late end.

The Cleansing of the Temple: At the Outset or at the Close

The Gospels also differ over the order of some major events. Take the scene in which Jesus drives the sellers and money-changers out of the Temple. John places it in the second chapter of his Gospel (2:13–22), at the opening of the public mission, so that it becomes one of the acts with which Jesus began to appear before the people.

The Synoptic Gospels, by contrast, place the cleansing of the Temple in the last week before the crucifixion (Mark 11:15–17). That changes where it stands in our understanding of the biography. Was it an act with which Jesus opened his mission, or a confrontation that came at its end and helped to hasten that end? Years lie between the two places in which the narratives set it.

Gathering the Gospels into One Narrative: Tatian’s Diatessaron

An early attempt was made to gather this material into a single continuous story. Around 170 CE Tatian the Syrian composed the “Diatessaron,” that is, the woven fourfold Gospel, taking the narratives of the four Gospels and arranging them in one account. His work shows us how readers dealt with multiple reports before the later commentaries on them became settled.

As this gathering shows, the ancient reader needed to arrange in one account what had been distributed among the Gospels. Tatian’s method opens a way into studying what he put forward, what he postponed and what he combined, and so we ask: how is a continuous biography formed from several narratives? That question lies at the heart of what this book studies when it examines the composition of memory. What we take from Tatian as evidence is his method of gathering, as the text transmits it.

Eight Points between the Biography and the History of Doctrine

So far we have considered how the Gospels differ from one another. We now turn to another question: what is the relation between what the subject of the biography said and what was attributed to him in the stages that came after? Dr Muhammad Mustafa Mansur gathered eight points that bear on this question. We present them here with their references, and in two of them we delimit the inference, so that it is clear what each report indicates and what needs another witness.

1. Sonship of David: In Mark 12:35–37 a question is raised about the relation of the Messiah to David, and it ends with the words: “David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son?” The title “son of David” itself thus comes under examination, and a group of critics have read the question as an objection to requiring Davidic descent in the Messiah.
2. The report of the king: John 6:15 relates that a crowd wished to make Jesus king and that he withdrew from them. The report belongs to the Gospel biography, so its judgement remains there, and we do not transfer it to Nabonidus, the king whom we identify with ʿĪsā, peace be upon him.
3. The Law: Matthew 5:17 declares that the intent is to fulfil and not to abolish. When we set this saying beside the epistles of Paul, we can examine what changed in the place of the Law.
4. Prophecy after Jesus: The Book of Acts mentions prophets in the communities of Jerusalem and Antioch (Acts 11:27, 13:1), and Paul counts the prophets second in rank after the apostles (1 Corinthians 12:28). The first communities, then, knew prophecy as a gift that continued among them after Jesus; only later did the concept of the completion of revelation become settled in Christian theology.
5. The silence of Paul: The epistles of Paul do not recount the miracles of Jesus’ life as the Gospels do, and Paul himself declares his aim: “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). His preaching turns on the crucifixion and the resurrection more than on the life of the teacher and his works, and at this point the transformation of the picture begins.
6. The birth: Matthew and Luke each tell of the virginal conception in their own account, while Mark and John are silent about it. Silence about a report is one thing; denying it outright is another.
7. Infancy narratives: What Matthew relates of them differs from what Luke relates, and these reports then expand in works that came after the two, such as the Protoevangelium of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Each group of them is therefore read with its own date and sources.
8. Josephus: Scholars differ over the Flavian testimony in Antiquities 18:63–64 and dispute how far a Christian hand intervened in it. The reports on the Essenes in War 2:152–153, for their part, allow us to compare their attitude to suffering, without making them and the crucified man one person.

All these points ask about the distance between the early narrative and the formulations that became settled after it. Some arise from differences of text, some from silence about a report, and some from disagreement in interpretation; taken together they give us a field in which we can investigate the history of the image. In this field the book sets out what it proposes: that the reports of two men, and the heritages of two different times, have come together in one biography.

Historical Criticism within Gospel Studies

These questions are not new. They have a long history in the Gospel studies that arose in the West and within the Christian milieu itself. In the eighteenth century Hermann Samuel Reimarus distinguished between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith. Then David Friedrich Strauss examined the narratives with the tools of historical criticism in The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835). From these beginnings the questions widened, and scholars took many different roads in answering them.

Modern scholars have followed this road. E.P. Sanders studied Jesus in his Jewish context, Raymond E. Brown investigated the birth narratives, Bruce M. Metzger worked in textual criticism, and Bart D. Ehrman devoted Jesus, Interrupted (2009) to presenting the differences among the narratives and what follows from them. What we draw on in this chapter, then, are inquiries well established in specialised New Testament scholarship, even though their authors differ in their positions and in the conclusions they reached.

The Limits of This Chapter, Candidly Stated

We have arrived in this chapter at the conclusion that the Gospels preserve multiple narratives, and that the continuous picture in which they are presented took shape when people read them, gathered them and interpreted them. Fixing the time and place of Jesus, and establishing the alternative this book proposes, belong to the evidence that follows. What we take from this chapter is a starting point: to read each report with its own features, to learn the path by which it was transmitted, and then to consider its relation to the other reports.

From this starting point we move to the tongue of the Qurʾān. Before we compare the figures and the times, we must understand the words that describe them, and know how much meaning a word preserves that is wide enough for what we have been accustomed to read in it.

Chapter 1: The Tongue of the Qurʾān: From Literal Reduction to Original Comprehensiveness

The Problem of Reduction

When we read a Qurʾānic word, we tend to connect it with the most famous historical image we have known for it. When ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, is mentioned, we read him through the biography of Jesus of Nazareth; when Mūsā is mentioned, through the Torah narrative; when the tree is mentioned, the plant comes to mind; with the crucifixion it is the wooden beam, and with the raising it is the movement of a body upward. Scholars of language have acknowledged that a word has several aspects, yet in much of exegesis, from al-Ṭabarī to the present day, the application has stayed nearer to the famous image. This is what we wish to reconsider. When we stop at the words of the Exalted “They did not kill him and they did not crucify him,” we read in them, alongside the physical image, the sense of nullifying the message and erasing its bearer from awareness, and we see what links crucifixion with public exposure, humiliation and the toppling of the truth before people. The language of the Qurʾān is broad enough to invite us to consider these aspects, and it is the context that decides among them.

The Method of the Root and Its Instances

Let us begin with the word “raising.” The first thing that may come to mind is the body moving to a higher place. Then we read ﴿وَرَفَعْنَا لَكَ ذِكْرَكَ﴾ (wa-rafaʿnā laka dhikraka) (“and We raised high for you your mention,” al-Sharḥ 94:4), and we understand that what is raised here is the mention and the standing of the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam). We read likewise ﴿يَرْفَعِ اللَّهُ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا مِنكُمْ وَالَّذِينَ أُوتُوا الْعِلْمَ دَرَجَاتٍ﴾ (yarfaʿi Llāhu lladhīna āmanū minkum wa-lladhīna ūtū l-ʿilma darajāt) (“God will raise those of you who believe and those who have been given knowledge, by degrees,” al-Mujādila 58:11), and now the raising is a raising in rank, through faith and knowledge, as the exegetes explain it. So one word is used of the physical and of the figurative alike, and the context tells us which aspect is meant.

Our reading proceeds on this pattern in three steps. We look first at the Semitic root as it stands in Arabic and its sister languages; then we trace the meaning that unites its uses; then we return to the context to learn which of these applies in the verse. In this way the study of the word stays tied to the understanding of the report in which it occurs.

Who Speaks, and About Whom?

Let us read the verses of al-Nisāʾ in their connection with one another. The passage on the killing begins with ﴿وَقَوْلِهِمْ إِنَّا قَتَلْنَا الْمَسِيحَ عِيسَى ابْنَ مَرْيَمَ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ﴾ (wa-qawlihim innā qatalnā l-Masīḥa ʿĪsā bna Maryama rasūla Llāh) (“and their saying, ‘We killed the Masīḥ, ʿĪsā son of Maryam, the messenger of God’”). The verse presents the claim of a people who name the one killed, and then the answer follows: ﴿وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ وَمَا صَلَبُوهُ وَلَٰكِن شُبِّهَ لَهُمْ﴾ (wa-mā qatalūhu wa-mā ṣalabūhu wa-lākin shubbiha lahum) (“they did not kill him and they did not crucify him, but it was made to appear so to them”). The context goes on to mention their disagreement about him, their doubt and their following of conjecture, and then says ﴿بَل رَّفَعَهُ اللَّهُ إِلَيْهِ﴾ (bal rafaʿahu Llāhu ilayh) (“rather, God raised him to Himself”) (al-Nisāʾ 4:157–158). Whoever stops at the image of crucifixion alone misses that saying, knowledge, conjecture and disagreement come back again and again in these verses.

In our reading the semblance (shubha) fell on the identity of the subject of the report: what was related of another man was attributed to ʿĪsā, peace be upon him. The claimants joined the name to the event, and the answer of the Qurʾān came and separated them. This is the reading that our book connects with what remains of the biography of Nabonidus and with what was attached to Jesus of Nazareth. Its historical material comes in the chapters that follow; here the context shows us where the question lies: how did it become settled among people that they knew who was killed, and on the strength of what knowledge did they judge it with certainty? For us the raising is bound up with the preservation of the truth of the Masīḥ and the loftiness of his station, and his return is the unveiling of what was veiled of his report.

We find the same breadth in the word “tree.” The words of the Exalted ﴿كَشَجَرَةٍ طَيِّبَةٍ أَصْلُهَا ثَابِتٌ وَفَرْعُهَا فِي السَّمَاءِ﴾ (ka-shajaratin ṭayyibatin aṣluhā thābitun wa-farʿuhā fī l-samāʾ) (“like a good tree, its root firm and its branches in the sky,” Ibrāhīm 14:24) draw the image of a doctrine whose root stood firm and whose branches reached out to the horizons of knowledge. In the same way we understand the sending down in ﴿وَأَنْزَلْنَا الْحَدِيدَ﴾ (wa-anzalnā l-ḥadīd) (“and We sent down iron,” al-Ḥadīd 57:25): what is meant is that knowledge of iron was made available to people, and with it the ability to extract it. These are all aspects of meaning, and we see that whoever confines himself to the physical image of the word has these aspects veiled from him.

The root m-s-ḥ is among the most important examples in this book. In Arabic it denotes the anointing of kings and prophets with oil when they are consecrated to the holy office, and it denotes also the passing of the hand over a sufferer in search of healing, as in what Ibn Manẓūr cited: “The angel wiped him with a wiping and took the harm away from him.” In Hebrew we find מָשִׁיחַ, mashiaḥ, that is, the anointed, consecrated one, and among the verbs of the root is נִמְשַׁח (nimshaḥ). Corresponding to it in Aramaic is mshīḥā (māshīḥā). These are neighbouring forms in the three tongues: משיח (mashiaḥ) in Hebrew, mšīḥā in Aramaic and al-Masīḥ in Arabic, and all of them keep their tie to a common Semitic root.

When we gather these meanings, we see the image of a man consecrated by divine blessing, who heals by God’s leave. By them we read the description of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him: ﴿وَأُبْرِئُ الْأَكْمَهَ وَالْأَبْرَصَ وَأُحْيِي الْمَوْتَىٰ بِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ﴾ (wa-ubriʾu l-akmaha wa-l-abraṣa wa-uḥyi l-mawtā bi-idhni Llāh) (“and I heal the one born blind and the leper and bring the dead to life by God’s leave,” Āl ʿImrān 3:49). Early exegetes also connected the title al-Masīḥ with his travelling in the land and calling in it, a meaning that the root of anointing itself preserves. Al-Rāzī reports from Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā, “He was called al-Masīḥ because he used to wipe the earth, that is, to cross it.” Whoever wipes the earth has gone out into it, and at this meaning travelling meets the image of the prophet.

Yet the breadth of the description sends us back to the historical figure to whom it points. ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, is in the Qurʾān a particular prophet who lived at a particular time, and his attributes carry meanings tied to the wider Semitic heritage of prophecy. We therefore hold two things together: we identify the man, and we study the meanings that appeared in his life, because an attribute may exceed its bearer even though it was manifested in him in a particular way. This joining prepares us to look at the image of the original Masīḥ and at the altered image we call the Masīkh.

Aramaic and Arabic: A Kinship Deeper than the Reader Imagines

Semitic linguistics counts Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew as sister languages going back to a common Semitic origin (Proto-Semitic). The reader may know this phrase without realising how much kinship lies behind it. These tongues share the system of roots, many morphological patterns, and a great number of basic words close in sound and meaning. Whoever learns Aramaic after Arabic feels this in familiar words, as though returning to other faces of a tongue whose origins he knows.

The researches of Dr Aḥmad al-Jallād on the Safaitic and Thamudic inscriptions have shown that ancient Arabic was spoken and written in the north of the Peninsula centuries before Islam. It was sometimes written in alphabets other than its own, such as Nabataean Aramaic and Greek, and kept its phonetic and morphological characteristics all the same. So we understand how the Nabataeans wrote in the Aramaic alphabet, and what relation this writing bore to the Arabic they spoke. Among these inscriptions are those of Umm al-Jimāl, the Raqush inscription dated 267 CE at Madāʾin Ṣāliḥ, and the Namāra inscription dated 328 CE; in all of them we can look at the language and tell it apart from the shape of the letters in which it was written.

On these comparisons we build a view particular to this book: that Arabic is the most faithful of its sisters to the logic of the mother tongue, and the most exact in keeping a group of pharyngeal and emphatic sounds, among them ʿayn, ghayn, ḥāʾ, khāʾ, ẓāʾ and ḍād. These differences have remained apparent in Arabic, while Hebrew and Aramaic writing was too narrow to hold some of them. We see in this that the sisters drifted from the original in these respects, so we return to Arabic to discern which sounds merged in its sisters. We shall present the phonetic and lexical evidence for this view in its proper places, and distinguish it there from the common ground of academic study. By it we also understand why the final revelation came down in a clear Arabic tongue, a tongue that we see as better able to carry these distinctions and to preserve the meanings of the origin.

Let us take a name every reader knows: Gaza. In Hebrew it is written עזה (ʿazzāh), with a letter by which Hebrew writing also expresses the ʿayn, and in ancient Greek it is carried over as Γάζα (Gáza). Arabic, however, keeps the ghayn in Ghazza and distinguishes it from the ʿayn in writing and in pronunciation alike. Gesenius cited this example when he discussed the pharyngeal letters and their transfer into Greek. The comparison among languages gives us back a phonetic difference that disappears if we rest content with Hebrew writing, and it is from such differences that we begin to read ancient names and to hear them anew. (Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, §6, on the pronunciation and division of the letters.)

Our return to Aramaic and ancient Hebrew belongs to our examination of the deep kinship of the tongue of the Qurʾān. We turn to them as we turn to dictionaries, to learn the history of a word and the aspects of its meaning. This comparison allows us to read the names of the prophets in a way that connects each name with the description of its bearer and with the report that the texts preserved about him.

Rooting the Method in the Heritage

This method has roots in the Arabic linguistic heritage. Al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī built the dictionary al-ʿAyn on a phonetic ordering that returns the letters to their points of articulation. Ibn Fāris came after him by more than a century, and in Maqāyīs al-lugha searched for the central meanings of roots and what branches from them. Then al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, in al-Mufradāt, attended to the aspects of the Qurʾānic word and its connection with its meaning, so that his work went beyond collecting words to explaining them in the context of revelation. Alongside these works arose the science of al-wujūh wa-l-naẓāʾir (aspects and counterparts), which traces the multiplicity of meaning of one word in the Qurʾān.

Among the continuations of this interest in the modern period are the comparisons Fahmī Khushaym drew between Arabic and its Semitic sisters. In Western thought Gadamer concerned himself with the history of understanding and the context of the text, and Ricoeur inquired into the multiplicity of layers of meaning; we set this beside what Islamic heritage had already anticipated in its ways of looking at meaning. The method this book follows thus draws on an inheritance that stretches from al-Khalīl, Ibn Fāris and al-Rāghib to Khushaym, and returns with its tools to the questions of names and reports that occupy us here.

We move on to the names: what do they preserve of the description of their bearer, and what is lost when they are carried from one tongue to another? We shall read ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, Yaḥyā and Maryam in this way, and then compare their meanings with the stories they carried.

Chapter 2: Names of Prophets in the Qurʾān: Descriptors, Not Proper Names

“The Name” in the Qurʾān’s Own Usage

A name in the Qurʾān is more than a mark by which its bearer is known; names there have a life and a meaning. Take the words ﴿ولله الأسماء الحسنى فادعوه بها﴾ (wa-li-Llāhi l-asmāʾu l-ḥusnā fa-udʿūhu bihā) (“and to God belong the most beautiful names, so call upon Him by them,” al-Aʿrāf 7:180): naming here is bound up with mercy, wisdom, might and holiness. In the same way we read the names of the prophets, and we see in them descriptions that call up the message of their bearers and gather the meaning of a whole life in a short word. But when a name becomes in our minds a sound by which we tell one man from another, what it was chosen to indicate has slipped away from us. This chapter is an attempt to recover that significance.

The grammarians of old differed over the derivation of ism (“name”). The Basrans traced it to sumūw, that is, height, and said that the name stands above the thing named; the Kufans traced it to wasm, that is, the mark by which a thing is known. The question is set out in al-Inṣāf fī masāʾil al-khilāf by Ibn al-Anbārī. In our reading we take the Kufan view, for to us the name is a mark, and in this view we understand “his name is Aḥmad” to mean that his mark is Aḥmad.

The disagreement between the two schools still stands, and for that reason we do not rest the proof of this chapter on this point alone. We join to it what we find in the Qurʾān itself, where names are used to indicate attributes. When the two come together, our reading has a witness from the text and a recognised basis in linguistic inquiry.

In this sense a person has two names. One is his name in this world, chosen by his family: people call him by it, write it in their records and know him by it at home and in the market. The other is his name with God, which tells his true nature, the qualities he was created with and the task he came for. When the Qurʾān names its prophets it calls them by this second name, and so their names come from God in the glad tidings before they are born: ﴿يَٰزَكَرِيَّآ إِنَّا نُبَشِّرُكَ بِغُلَٰمٍ ٱسْمُهُۥ يَحْيَىٰ لَمْ نَجْعَل لَّهُۥ مِن قَبْلُ سَمِيًّۭا﴾ (yā Zakariyyā innā nubashshiruka bi-ghulāmin ismuhu Yaḥyā lam najʿal lahu min qablu samiyyā) (“O Zakariyyā, We give you glad tidings of a boy whose name is Yaḥyā; We have not made anyone before him his namesake,” Maryam 19:7), and ﴿وَمُبَشِّرًۢا بِرَسُولٍۢ يَأْتِى مِنۢ بَعْدِى ٱسْمُهُۥٓ أَحْمَدُ﴾ (wa-mubashshiran bi-rasūlin yaʾtī min baʿdī ismuhu Aḥmad) (“and bringing glad tidings of a messenger to come after me whose name is Aḥmad,” al-Ṣaff 61:6). It is God who gives the name, and the name goes ahead of its bearer into the world to tell what he will be. Some of the exegetes took samiyy in the verse on Yaḥyā to mean one who is like him and resembles him, as they took it in the verse ﴿هَلْ تَعْلَمُ لَهُۥ سَمِيًّۭا﴾ (hal taʿlamu lahu samiyyā) (“Do you know of any who is like Him?,” Maryam 19:65). A namesake, then, is one who shares your mark, not only the sound of your name.

The books of the two Testaments bear witness to the same meaning, for there the name changes when the task is revealed. Abram was told: “Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee” (Genesis 17:5). Jacob, after he had wrestled until the dawn, was told: “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel” (Genesis 32:28). And in the Revelation of John, the one who overcomes is promised “a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it” (Revelation 2:17). The true name is given from above and stays a secret between its bearer and his Lord, until God reveals it to whom He wills. This is how one man can be known by one name in the records of people while the Qurʾān calls him by another: the records keep the name his people called him, and the Qurʾān calls him by the name God gave him. This is what we read in Chapter 5, when we find ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, in the inscriptions of Babylon under the name of its king, Nabonidus.

ʿĪsā: Reading the Name from Its Letters

On this basis we read the names of the prophets. A name points to its bearer by what it carries of his attribute or his task, and then his biography comes and makes clear what meaning lay folded in it. In our view the names of the Qurʾān are condensed descriptions, each of them calling up the essence of a message. We begin with the name ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, because it is the nearest of the examples to the question on which this book turns.

Our first step is to look at what the letters of the name say in Arabic, before we compare them with its forms in other tongues. The letters of ʿĪsā are ʿayn, yāʾ and sīn. When we return to this root in Arabic we find al-ʿīs, the noble white camels, and al-ʿīsa with what is connected with it of whiteness and clarity. From this field we read in the name a meaning of purity and election.

Beside this field we then set another, the field of ʿaysh (living), from ʿ-y-sh: ʿāsha, yaʿīshu, ʿaysh, maʿāsh. What links the two forms is that the Semitic languages have regular correspondences between sīn and shīn. If we accept this link, we read in the name purity and life together, and sound and meaning meet in it.

When we gather the two fields, the meaning that emerges is that of the living, pure, chosen one. We find this meaning in the description of the bearer of the name himself, for ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, gives life to the dead by God’s leave, as he said: ﴿وَأُبْرِئُ الْأَكْمَهَ وَالْأَبْرَصَ وَأُحْيِي الْمَوْتَىٰ بِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ﴾ (wa-ubriʾu l-akmaha wa-l-abraṣa wa-uḥyi l-mawtā bi-idhni Llāh) (“and I heal the one born blind and the leper and bring the dead to life by God’s leave,” Āl ʿImrān 3:49). He is the Masīḥ, the anointed, purified, consecrated one, the word of God and a spirit from Him, whom the pure Maryam bore by the breathing of the Spirit. The significance we propose for the name meets these attributes, and each explains the other.

Sīn and Shīn: The Rule of Semitic Interchange

When we compare the Semitic languages with one another, we find regular correspondences between some sīns and shīns. Hebrew writing also bears witness to this: it used the single sign ש (shin / sin) for two sounds, which the reading points later distinguished. Closeness of the sign, however, does not mean that all sounds interchange without restriction. We therefore read each example of correspondence together with its word and its context, and then present our proposal for the name on that basis.

Among the clearest examples are sana in Arabic and שנה (shanah) in Hebrew, sabt and שבת (shabbat), salām and שלום (shalom), sinn and שן (shen). In each pair the sound changes between two close tongues while the meaning stays the same. We draw on this class of correspondences when we connect the name of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, with the meaning of life. The course the name itself followed, however, is fixed only by its forms and its witnesses, which the following paragraphs take up: the inscription and the near names.

The inscriptions offer an important witness on this question. Aḥmad al-Jallād and ʿAlī al-Manāṣir published a Safaitic inscription in which the name ʿsy occurs in the context of a prayer. They judged it likely that the name corresponds to that of the Qurʾānic ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and that the inscription goes back to the fourth century CE. The name in this form was therefore known in the north of the Peninsula before Islam, and the Qurʾān preserves an Arabic form that existed before it. That is what the inscription attests: that the form is old. As for its meaning, we seek it in the tongue, in ʿays and ʿaysh, on the reading of this book. (al-Jallād and al-Manāṣir, “The Pre-Islamic Divine Name ʿsy and the Background of the Qurʾānic ʿĪsā,” 2021.)

Arthur Jeffery stood before the name of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, in The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān (1938, pp. 218–220). He counted it a puzzle not yet solved, found no way to it from Yēšūaʿ except by a permutation of consonants, and then pointed to a possible influence of Nestorian pronunciation. Even in the eyes of those who propose it, then, deriving the name from Hebrew requires several operations before it holds, while the Safaitic inscription bears witness that the Arabic form already existed.

The Name the Qurʾān Did Not Use

After the derivation, we look at the name the Qurʾānic text chose. The Arab Christians of Syria, al-Ḥīra and Najrān knew the name Yasūʿ (Jesus), connected with the Syriac form, and used it before Islam and after it. The Qurʾān, however, which addresses the People of the Book about the subject of these reports, mentions “ʿĪsā” twenty-five times and the title “al-Masīḥ” eleven times, and never mentions the word Yasūʿ. These are counts of words, and some of them occur together in a single verse. We read this choice together with the difference between the reports about the two figures in mother, environment and fate, because the book’s argument for distinguishing between them is formed by all of this together.

Additional Witnesses: al-ʿĪṣ and the Essenes

Beyond the material of the root and the Safaitic inscription, we have two names close to this form. We judge that comparison with them helps us trace how old the form is and how it connects with the Semitic tongue.

The first is al-ʿĪṣ, or ʿĪsū (Esau, עֵשָׂו (ʿEsaw)), who in the Torah narrative is the son of Isḥāq and the twin of Yaʿqūb. Ibn Ḥazm al-Andalusī recorded, in his remarks on names, how close “ʿĪsā” and “al-ʿĪṣ” are to each other. What concerns us in this comparison is that a form close in sound to the Qurʾānic name was present in the ancient Semitic memory, and so it opens a way for us to trace the origin of the name before Islam.

The second is the Essenes (Essaioi), an ascetic, monotheist Jewish community. Philo of Alexandria described its communal life in Hypothetica, and he connected its name with holiness (ὁσιότης (hosiotēs)) in Every Good Man Is Free (Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit, 75). Josephus Flavius described in The Jewish War (2:8) the order of its life and its care for healing. Then Matthew Black (1961 CE) and Géza Vermes investigated the origin of the designation and traced it to the Aramaic ʾāsyāʾ, that is, the healers who cure. Alongside that we propose a reading of the opening of the Greek name. The vowel E at its beginning may preserve the trace of ʿayn and yāʾ, “ʿī,” because the ʿayn has no counterpart in Greek, and so it either dropped out or turned into a vowel. Behind Essaioi, then, would stand the name al-ʿĪsiyyūn, those ascribed to ʿĪsā, peace be upon him: ʿī-siyyūn → Esaioi. Next we consider the relation of this name to the two Arabic forms, al-Īsiyyūn and al-ʿĪsiyyūn.

We then take the explanation of the significance a step further than Black and Vermes stated it. The healing that ʾāsyāʾ indicates and the life that we read in ʿ-y-sh meet in a single work: that a human being should be given life and have his health restored. The Qurʾān joins the two actions in describing ʿĪsā, peace be upon him: “I heal the one born blind and the leper and bring the dead to life by God’s leave.” On this connection we build the comparison between the Arabic meaning, the Aramaic mediator and the Greek form, until the name seems to preserve the image of the living teacher who gives life and heals.

These, then, are four approaches to the name: the Semitic root, the Safaitic inscription, the name al-ʿĪṣ and the name of the Essenes. We consider what each approach adds to the others, both in explaining the name and in learning how old its material is. The wider historical frame, including the Prayer of Nabonidus 4Q242, we shall return to in Chapters 5 and 6.

Yaḥyā and ʿĪsā: The Complementary Prophetic Pair

We move now from the single name to two names that are paired in the Qurʾān: Yaḥyā and ʿĪsā, peace be upon him. Each of them was named before he was born, and his name came in glad tidings from God. Zakariyyā was told “We give you glad tidings of a boy whose name is Yaḥyā,” and Maryam was told “God gives you glad tidings of a word from Him, whose name is the Masīḥ, ʿĪsā son of Maryam.” In both places the naming comes with the glad tidings, and in this parallel we see an entrance to understanding what connects the two messages and what joins the two prophets in a single divine purpose.

In our reading the two names revolve around life and the giving of life. We see Yaḥyā as a teacher of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, on his way to God: the chosen one may be accompanied by a teacher and brought up by trial until his appearance is complete. For both of them purification is connected with healing, which is the same connection we shall read afterwards in the report of Nabonidus. So we do not assign the heart to one and the body to the other, because the message embraces the whole human being.

To this we add that the two prophets came from a house of connected lineage. Zakariyyā is a priest consecrated to worship, and Luke 1:5 mentions that his wife Elizabeth was “of the daughters of Aaron,” while the Qurʾān addresses Maryam with the words “O sister of Hārūn.” We read in this address her descent from the same priestly house. Yaḥyā and ʿĪsā, peace be upon them both, would then be the sons of two Aaronid women, and the heritage they carry would go back to Mūsā and Hārūn and the holy anointing. Once we know this lineage, we understand something of the spiritual tradition in which they grew up.

The Mandaeans kept in their memory a central station for Yaḥyā in teaching and baptism, and their narratives about Jesus carry the traces of a religious feud, at which we shall stop in Chapter 14. This material helps us trace what remained of the authority of Yaḥyā and his teaching, and then ask in what way the reports of this relationship came to be distributed among the Gospels and the other traditions.

Another connection between the two prophets appears when we look at the way their fate is mentioned. Of Yaḥyā the Qurʾān says ﴿وَسَلَامٌ عَلَيْهِ يَوْمَ وُلِدَ وَيَوْمَ يَمُوتُ وَيَوْمَ يُبْعَثُ حَيًّا﴾ (wa-salāmun ʿalayhi yawma wulida wa-yawma yamūtu wa-yawma yubʿathu ḥayyā) (“and peace be upon him the day he was born, and the day he dies, and the day he is raised alive,” Maryam 19:15), mentioning his birth, his death and his raising, without detailing how he died. The report that his head was cut off by order of Herod occurs only in Matthew 14 and Mark 6, and the Qurʾān does not elaborate on it, either affirming or denying. Of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, it says ﴿وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ وَمَا صَلَبُوهُ وَلَٰكِن شُبِّهَ لَهُمْ﴾ (wa-mā qatalūhu wa-mā ṣalabūhu wa-lākin shubbiha lahum) (“they did not kill him and they did not crucify him, but it was made to appear so to them”) and then ﴿بَل رَّفَعَهُ اللَّهُ إِلَيْهِ﴾ (bal rafaʿahu Llāhu ilayh) (“rather, God raised him to Himself”) (al-Nisāʾ 4:157–158). The two prophets are joined in the message, but what is related about the fate of each differs in amount, and this is a difference we take into account in the comparison.

“Ḥaṣūr”: An Inclusive Reading

Among the attributes of Yaḥyā are the words of the Exalted ﴿وَسَيِّدًا وَحَصُورًا وَنَبِيًّا مِنَ الصَّالِحِينَ﴾ (wa-sayyidan wa-ḥaṣūran wa-nabiyyan mina l-ṣāliḥīn) (“and a leader, and ḥaṣūr, and a prophet from among the righteous,” Āl ʿImrān 3:39). “Ḥaṣūr” has been interpreted as one who does not approach women, but Ibn Manẓūr gives a wider meaning under the root ḥ-ṣ-r in Lisān al-ʿArab: “The ḥaṣūr: one who greatly withholds, who holds himself back and contracts in everything, and one who does not approach women.” The root extends to withholding, encompassing and preserving, and from this inclusive meaning we read the description: the ḥaṣūr is a man who preserves his Aaronid heritage and governs himself, and chastity enters into his attribute together with the other aspects of preserving and withholding.

Yaḥyā First: The Temporal Sequence the Qurʾān Preserves

When we look at the order of the reports, we find the Qurʾān putting Zakariyyā and Yaḥyā first and then moving on to Maryam and ʿĪsā, peace be upon him. This sequence recurs, complete or in some of its links, in several places:

• Sūrat Āl ʿImrān (37–45): Zakariyyā prays, Yaḥyā is given glad tidings, then Maryam is given glad tidings of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him.
• Sūrat Maryam (1–34): Zakariyyā first, Yaḥyā second, Maryam third, ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, fourth.
• Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ (89–91): Zakariyyā, then Maryam and ʿĪsā, peace be upon him.
• Sūrat al-Anʿām (85): ﴿وَزَكَرِيَّا وَيَحْيَىٰ وَعِيسَىٰ وَإِلْيَاسَ﴾ (wa-Zakariyyā wa-Yaḥyā wa-ʿĪsā wa-Ilyās) (“and Zakariyyā and Yaḥyā and ʿĪsā and Ilyās”), where their names are gathered in a single verse.

If the Qurʾān puts Yaḥyā first in these passages, that accords with our reading of him as a teacher who preceded ʿĪsā, peace be upon him. Beside this we set the man of the Children of Israel who appears in the Prayer of Nabonidus. We propose that he is Yaḥyā, and that the healing, the baptism and the appearance of the Spirit in the later narratives preserve aspects of the same experience of the path. For in this reading illness is a trial for the chosen one and an advancement for him, as the verse relates of the trial of Ibrāhīm and his fulfilling of the words; we do not read it as a transfer from an unbelieving king to a believing prophet. That much is what the order of mention in the Qurʾān illuminates. Identifying the man in the document is an interpretive effort that we shall set out when we present its text.

Connected with this order is what the name itself is described as in the words of the Exalted ﴿لَمْ نَجْعَل لَّهُ مِن قَبْلُ سَمِيًّا﴾ (lam najʿal lahu min qablu samiyyā) (“We have not made for him before this a namesake,” Maryam 19:7). In the uniqueness of the naming we read an indication that what was prepared for Yaḥyā was something new, and that it was a beginning to which the message of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, was joined after him. In this way the name and the order of the report meet in our reading of the relation between the two prophets.

“And Tenderness from Us”: The Qurʾān Reads the Biblical Name

The Christian tradition keeps for this prophet the name John the Baptist. Its form in Greek is Ἰωάννης (Iōannēs), Yoannes, and in Syriac ܝܘܚܢܢ, Yuḥanan, and behind them stands the Hebrew יוֹחָנָן, Yoḥanan, whose full form is יְהוֹחָנָן, Yehoḥanan. The full name is composed of two parts: יְהוֹ, Yeho, the element that indicates the name of the Lord, and חָנָן, ḥanan, from the root ḥ-n-n, meaning to show tenderness and bestow favour, so that its meaning is “God has shown tenderness.” The Hebrew letter ח (ḥet) corresponds to the Arabic ḥāʾ, so the kinship shows in the ḥāʾ and the nūn and in the meaning of tenderness (ḥanān) together, and through this kinship we connect the name with the description.

We now return to the Qurʾān, and find that it names the boy Yaḥyā and mentions the uniqueness of this naming, and then, some verses later, describes him with the words ﴿وَحَنَانًا مِّن لَّدُنَّا﴾ (wa-ḥanānan min ladunnā) (“and tenderness from Us,” Maryam 19:13). The word ḥanān occurs in the Qurʾān in this place alone, and this unique word falls in the description of the prophet whose name, as the People of the Book know it, rests on the same root. We read this meeting as evidence that the meaning of the other name is present in the verses, although the Qurʾān chose the name Yaḥyā to identify him.

The meaning of “Yoḥanan,” that is, the tenderness of the Lord, meets the words ﴿وحناناً من لدنا﴾ (wa-ḥanānan min ladunnā) (“tenderness from Us”): the tenderness in the verse is a gift issuing from God. The divine element in the name corresponds in the verse to the side from which the giving came, and the root ḥ-n-n is present in both places. This is a comparison in the construction of meaning, and not a literal translation that would make “Yeho” alone mean “from Us.”

Here the method we propose for reading names appears. “Yaḥyā” brings out the meaning of life connected with the prophet’s message, while “tenderness” returns the meaning of the old name to a gift from God. On this basis we understand ﴿لَمْ نَجْعَل لَّهُ مِن قَبْلُ سَمِيًّا﴾ (lam najʿal lahu min qablu samiyyā) (“We have not made for him before this a namesake,” Maryam 19:7): what is unique is the word Yaḥyā as a name, whereas Yoḥanan was among the common names, borne by high priests and Hasmonean kings. By the difference between the two forms, each keeps its meaning in its own place.

The spread of “Yoḥanan” in the reports of priests and kings raises another question, a question of time. The verse ﴿لم نجعل له من قبل سمياً﴾ (lam najʿal lahu min qablu samiyyā) (“We have not made for him before this a namesake,” Maryam 19:7) speaks of the name Yaḥyā that the Qurʾān chose, and with it we can read the newness of rank and function. To turn it into a dating of the first bearer of the name Yoḥanan in all the records, however, is a step that the text alone does not give us. We therefore trace those who bore the name and the network of their families, and consider what these may preserve of a connection with the house of Zakariyyā and Yaḥyā.

In Luke the relatives object to the naming with the words: “There is no one among your kindred who is called by this name” (1:61). Their objection concerns the clan, so it does not deny that the name was common outside it. What concerns us in this scene is that the naming was deliberate, and that the family broke with its custom by it. This meets the Qurʾān’s concern with the bestowed name, and so it enters the comparison of the two stories before we determine the era in which this report arose.

The name Yoḥanan also appears in the reports of the priesthood, whose connection with Zakariyyā and Yaḥyā we read. In Ezra 10:6 Ezra enters “the chamber of Yehoḥanan son of Eliashib,” and the name here is in its full form יְהוֹחָנָן (yehoḥanan). Nehemiah 12:22–23 gives the chain of the high priests: Eliashib, Joiada, Yoḥanan and Jaddua. The Elephantine papyri mention in 407 BCE “Yehoḥanan the high priest” in Jerusalem, and we find the name inscribed in metal on the coin “Yoḥanan the priest,” which we present in Appendix 9. With these witnesses we can trace the name in the priestly house, especially in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. We then set them against the picture of Yaḥyā in the Qurʾān: his father is the man of the sanctuary, and in his prayer is ﴿وَيَرِثُ مِنْ آلِ يَعْقُوبَ﴾ (wa-yarithu min āli Yaʿqūb) (“and inherit from the family of Yaʿqūb,” Maryam 19:6), and Maryam is addressed with ﴿يَا أُخْتَ هَارُونَ﴾ (yā ukhta Hārūn) (“O sister of Hārūn,” Maryam 19:28).

Among the dated witnesses is the Elephantine petition TAD A4.7, also known as Cowley 30. It was written in 407 BCE and mentions Yehoḥanan the high priest in Jerusalem. Its value is that it establishes that the name was present in the priestly milieu at that date. But it is more than a century later than the reign of Nabonidus, so we use it to trace the name and the priestly house, and we do not treat it as a document contemporary with Nabonidus.

The Mandaeans join the two names in the Book of Yaḥyā in the form “Yahia Yuhana” (Iahia Iuhana, in Lidzbarski’s edition of 1915). This testimony carries weight, because it comes from a community that preserves for Yaḥyā a special station and never entered the canon of the Church. We understand the joining of the two names among them as the preservation of two descriptions of the same man: a form that agrees with the Qurʾānic name, and another connected with the biblical name. On this we read his naming Yaḥyā, and the occurrence of tenderness in his verses, as knowledge of both meanings together. This reading differs from that of those who see in Yaḥyā a corruption of Yoḥanan.

The inference here stands on two levels. The correspondence between Arabic ḥ and ח (ḥet) is well known, as the second row of the table in Chapter 7 shows, and the occurrence of “tenderness” only once is a matter known by counting; this is the fixed level. As for whether the meeting of the word with the name in this place is intended, that is what we propose in interpretation. There we stop the comparison: the root of zakāt, z-k-w, differs from the Hebrew root of Zakariyyā, ז-כ-ר, z-kh-r, which is connected with remembrance (dhikr), and resemblance gives no licence to ignore the third letter. To this we add what al-Suyūṭī relays in al-Itqān from Ibn ʿAbbās: “All of the Qurʾān I know except four: ghislīn, ḥanān, awwāh and al-raqīm.” We take comfort in his pause at ḥanān when we try to understand what may be hidden in the word’s connection with the name known among the People of the Book; it is as though the break of memory between the two names had kept one of the word’s keys far from its reader.

The Two Anointed Ones in Zechariah: Yehoshuaʿ and Zerubbabel

We shall need a brief introduction to the Book of Zechariah here. It is one of the books of the prophets in the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Tanakh, and it belongs to the collection of the Twelve Minor Prophets, a collection distinct from the five books of Mūsā: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The book is attributed to Zakariyyā son of Berekiah, whose prophetic beginning is dated to about 520 BCE, in the generation of the return from Babylon and the rebuilding of the Temple, and he was a contemporary of Haggai. His book contains many visions and many meanings of expectation of the Messiah. The traditional narrative distinguishes him from Zakariyyā the father of Yaḥyā, as it distinguishes Yehoshuaʿ the priest who appears in it from Yūshaʿ ibn Nūn. This book, for its part, reads the connections between these names within the earlier horizon that it proposes for ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Maryam, and sets out both the closeness that the reports allow and the questions raised by their order.

The book contains a vision that joins religious office with kingship, the vision of the golden lampstand and the two olive trees. Zakariyyā sees a lampstand with seven lamps, and on its right and left two olive trees that supply it with oil. He asks what they mean, and the answer comes to him:

“These are the two sons of oil, who stand beside the Lord of the whole earth” (אלה שני בני־היצהר העמדים על־אדון כל־הארץ (elleh shene bene ha-yitshar ha-ʿomdim ʿal-adon kol-ha-arets))Zechariah 4:14

These are two figures standing before the Lord, whom the text calls the sons of oil, or in Hebrew “sons of yitshar.” Since oil is the material of the holy anointing, we understand from this description that they are anointed ones. Who are they? To identify them we return to the two prominent figures in the third and sixth chapters:

• Yehoshuaʿ son of Yehozadak, the first high priest after the return from Babylon, and the son of Yehozadak the priest who was led into captivity. In the third chapter he stands in filthy garments (a symbol of iniquity), and they are taken off him and “clean garments” and “a clean turban” are put on him (3:4–5), and then he is crowned with a crown in 6:11. This is the priestly anointed: he purifies and lifts away iniquity. (He is other than Yūshaʿ ibn Nūn, the successor of Mūsā; and the resemblance of the two names is precisely the source of the confusion at which we shall pause.)
• Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah under Persian rule, who led the return and laid the foundation of the Second Temple. In the vision “the mountain before him becomes a plain” (4:7), and “his hands lay the foundation of the house” (4:9). This is the royal anointed: he builds and founds.

The name “Zerubbabel” itself carries the memory of Babylon, for its common Akkadian reading is zēr-Bābili, that is, “seed of Babylon.” The text relates his descent from Shealtiel and links him to the Davidic heritage, so that in this man there meet Babylon in his name, the house of David in his descent, and his role in the building of the Temple and in the royal expectation. The picture then reaches its climax in Zechariah 6:12–13, where “the Branch” appears and the building of the Temple, the throne and the priesthood are mentioned, and the vision closes with mention of a counsel of peace between the two. This is essential material for our question about the meeting of king and religious function; the identification of the figures and the relation between them is taken up in the paragraphs that follow.

What draws our attention in the Hebrew text is that the crowns are gathered and placed on the head of Yehoshuaʿ, and that the counsel of peace is then mentioned “between them both” in Zechariah 6:13. In the following verse a verb in the singular comes after “the crowns”: וְהָעֲטָרֹת תִּהְיֶה (ve-ha-ʿaṭarot tihyeh). The Hebrew tongue knows the assigning of the feminine singular to a plural of things, as Gesenius explains in §145, and so our attention goes to the picture of the scene and to the ones whom peace joins, more than to the difference in grammatical number alone. The text places the crowns, the crowned head, the building of the Temple, the throne and the priest side by side, and links them together.

The ancient Greek translation makes the question clearer: in Zechariah 6:13 it places a priest on the right of the one on the throne, and then mentions the counsel of peace between the two. The Hebrew, by contrast, places the priest “on his throne,” a construction over which readings have varied. We have, then, two ancient witnesses to the way the ancients pictured this relation: in the Greek, two figures side by side more clearly, and in the Hebrew, a wording in which throne and priesthood overlap. From this comparison the question of the two anointed ones enters the material of the text itself. (Zechariah 6:11–14, Hebrew text; comparison of 6:13 and the Septuagint reading; Gesenius, §145.)

Textual scholars have discussed in this passage the multiplicity of the crowns with the unity of the head and the dual form of the pronoun, and some of them have proposed that Zerubbabel had a role in an older form of the narrative. What matters to us is that the text combines anointing, purification, a crown, building and peace, and sets them between two. From these elements we begin the comparison with the expectation of the two anointed ones at Qumran, and then consider how far the two pictures are connected, because the expectation itself is part of the history of the transmission of this heritage.

Zakariyyā himself is connected with the priestly house that returned from Babylon. Nehemiah mentions “Iddo” among the priests who went up with Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and Yeshua (12:1, 4), and then says “and of Iddo, Zakariyyā” (12:16). The one who saw the vision, who speaks of the crowning and of the relation between the two, belongs, by this report, to the very milieu that he describes.

If we arrange the reports according to their dates, we see events following one another over about forty years, each tied to the name of a king and to a time known from the inscription or the book that relates it:

• About 553–543 BCE: Nabonidus resident in Taymāʾ, by the testimony of his own steles at Ḥarrān.
• 539 BCE: Cyrus enters Babylon, by the testimony of the Chronicle of Nabonidus.
• 520 BCE: the first revelation of Zakariyyā, dated by the month and by the second year of Darius (Zechariah 1:1).
• 515 BCE: the completion of the house, in the sixth year of Darius (Ezra 6:15); and the book states that the building succeeded only “through the prophesying of Haggai and Zakariyyā” (Ezra 5:1–2, 6:14).

These reports follow one another in a space in which Babylon, the Levant and the north of the Peninsula are connected, but that they succeed one another does not mean that all their figures were contemporaries. Our reading proposes that behind them lies a heritage that passed among kings, priests and communities. Among the keys to the identification remain who Zakariyyā was, how old he was, and how his reports were ordered.

We set this pair against Yaḥyā and ʿĪsā, peace be upon him. The comparison between them rests on a teacher and a chosen student, on purification and kingship, and on a heritage that flows to the next generation. With them we read the expectation of “the Anointed Ones of Aaron and Israel” at Qumran. This expectation may preserve a contemporaneous pair, or it may extend to two figures in two times, so that it could be identified with ʿĪsā and Muḥammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), or with Yaḥyā and ʿĪsā, and the texts do not decide between the two aspects. What is settled for us is that ʿĪsā himself is a king, and that his Aaronid lineage does not confine his message to a priestly function stripped of rule.

The closeness of the two names Yehoshuaʿ and Jesus, together with the recurrence of titles and functions, shows how the reports of different men may meet under a shared name. We read this possibility in the way memory is composed, and then set it against the details of each narrative. Joining the two names is a linguistic step, and identifying their bearers is a historical step, and the argument of identification rests on the two steps together.

These connections invite us to ask what place Babylon holds in the memory of the Children of Israel. The name Zerubbabel, “seed of Babylon,” takes us back to the land that the narrative describes as a land of captivity, yet the books preserve for this land older and wider connections with them. Ibrāhīm goes out from Ur of the Chaldeans in southern Mesopotamia; Rebekah, Rachel and Leah come from Ḥarrān in its upper reaches; Ezekiel receives revelation by the river Chebar, and Daniel serves in the Babylonian court. Later Ezra goes up from Babylon with the Law, Zerubbabel and Yehoshuaʿ lead the return to build the Second Temple, and Yehoshuaʿ the priest was himself born in Babylon. When family origins, revelation, priesthood and Law gather in this one space, we may ask about its place before the stage of exile and after it.

We propose that the image of Babylon as a place of exile has veiled older connections that make Mesopotamia a nursery of the Children of Israel and a centre in their history. Once this veil is lifted, we can read the captivity and the return within a wider movement, in which people went back and forth between centre and peripheries through deportation, exodus and return. Deportation is a reality with its directions and stages, and we then ask how a long history was reduced to a single tale of estrangement. Within this movement we place the axis along which the biography of Nabonidus moves: Babylon, Ḥarrān and Taymāʾ.

If we look at Mesopotamia as a centre, the questions of ancient geography grow wider. One of them is the location of “Egypt,” or Miṣrayim, in the account of the Exodus: is it the Egypt of the Nile itself, or can we look for a place for it in the space of Mesopotamia and the Peninsula, as some revisers of the geography of the Bible have proposed? That is a subject for a separate study. What remains of the question for our purpose is the significance of the Babylonian name and the ties that bind the figures of these reports to Babylon.

Maryam: Myrrh, Anointing and the Masīḥ

The name “Maryam” (מִרְיָם (Miryam)) is among the oldest Semitic names. Linguistic studies propose three principal possibilities, among which the choice has not been decided conclusively.

The first of these possibilities, and the closest to the religious meaning we are following, is that the name is tied to the root of myrrh, m-r-r, which denotes bitterness and also the sacred resinous perfume. Pure myrrh goes into the anointing oil with which kings, prophets and priests are consecrated, as in Exodus 30:23–25: “And you shall take for yourself the finest spices: liquid myrrh, five hundred shekels,” and then “and you shall make it a holy oil of anointing.” So in our reading Maryam is tied to myrrh, myrrh to anointing, and anointing to the Masīḥ, and this tie brings together the mother, the son and the substance of consecration. The Hebrew word itself supports it: myrrh in Hebrew is mōr, from the root of bitterness m-r-r, and it is the first of the spices of which the anointing oil is compounded in Exodus 30:23.

The second possibility is that the name is tied to the Aramaic root m-r-ʾ (ܡܪܐ (mārā)), which denotes lordship and eminence. From it comes ܡܪܝܐ (māryā), the Lord in the masculine, and ܡܪܬܐ (mārtā), the lady. On this reading we find in the name a meaning of eminence and election, and we set it beside the words of the Exalted, “God has chosen you and purified you and chosen you above the women of the worlds.” A third possibility traces the name to rebellion, from mry (mᵊrî). In the judgement of this book it is the weakest of the readings, both in form and in meaning, so we do not rely on it in understanding the character of Maryam.

The reports about Maryam in the Qurʾān set the name in its own setting. Her mother had vowed her to worship before she was born, and said, “I have vowed to You what is in my womb, dedicated, so accept it from me.” Then Zakariyyā became her guardian, and she had a sanctuary where provision came to her: “whenever Zakariyyā entered upon her in the sanctuary he found provision with her.” The picture these reports draw is of a woman consecrated to purity and worship, who grew up under the care of a priestly household. We read this picture together with her tie to Hārūn, and with the meaning of anointing that we are following in the lineage of her son.

We understand “O sister of Hārūn” as a description of Maryam’s descent from the Aaronid line. The glad tidings of the son came in a house that had carried the religious office generation after generation, and ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, inherits from his mother’s side this station bound up with the holy anointing. So our reading joins the lineage of the mother to the office of the son, and joins both to the tradition in which consecration with oil and myrrh was linked from the time of Mūsā and Hārūn.

In Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (2135) there is a report from al-Mughīra ibn Shuʿba in which the people of Najrān ask about the “sister of Hārūn,” and the answer ties the naming to the prophets and righteous men who came before. The link between names and religious memory, then, was alive in that exchange. This book reads the description of Maryam also as a statement of belonging to the Aaronid house, and that is the meaning that fits, for us, with her vow to the sanctuary and with Zakariyyā’s guardianship of her.

What the Arab Linguists Said about the Word “al-Masīḥ”

Having finished with the name of Maryam, we return to the word al-Masīḥ as the Arab linguists and exegetes explained it. They gathered several aspects of it, and from them we learn what the Arab reader heard in this title and what it suggests about the work and character of its bearer.

The Imam Ibn Manẓūr records in Lisān al-ʿArab three meanings that intertwine in the one root: for him al-masīḥ is the blessed anointed one, he is the healer, and he is the wanderer who never settles. Of this last meaning he says: “Masaḥa fī l-arḍi yamsaḥu musūḥan: he went. And al-masīḥ is the one who goes about in the land and does not settle in one place.” Then the Imam al-Qurṭubī, in al-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-Qurʾān, confirms this aspect of movement. He does not count it anomalous; he sees it as firmly rooted in the oldest language, and says: “He was named al-Masīḥ because he swept (masaḥa) the earth, that is, went in it and settled in no place.”

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī gathered in Mafātīḥ al-ghayb more than ten aspects of the naming. For him the Masīḥ may be the one anointed with blessing, or the one purified of sins, or the healer who touches the sick, or the traveller who swept the earth, or the one anointed with the oil of holiness in the custom of kings and priests, or the one of truthful countenance, or the one protected by the wing of Jibrīl at his birth, or the blessed, or the king crowned with anointing, or the generous, and others besides. He set out all these aspects and did not confine the name to any one of them. That he gathered them teaches us how wide a significance the exegetes saw in the title, and what images they tied to its bearer.

The books of exegesis and of language gather several aspects of the title, among them anointing with blessing, the anointing of the sick and travelling in the land, and they mention its connection with the word mshīḥā. Al-Qurṭubī cites these aspects in his comment on Āl ʿImrān 3:45, and relays from Abū ʿUbayd the view that the word is Hebrew in origin. In the reading of this book all these meanings stand side by side: the Masīḥ is the chosen one who is anointed, the travelling teacher, and the bearer of healing. There enters here too the symbolic comparison we drew between myrrh and the anointing oil when we looked at the name Maryam. For in our memory anointing joins consecration to the trace a teacher leaves in people; we do not ascribe this whole connection to a single exegete, nor make it a derivation on which the people of language agreed.

Al-Fīrūzābādī records in al-Qāmūs al-Muḥīṭ, under the root m-s-ḥ, that in his commentary on Mashāriq al-Anwār and elsewhere he collected fifty sayings on the derivation of al-Masīḥ, and Lane reports in his lexicon that in another book he brought the number to fifty-six. So many sayings bear witness that the title is a wide field of meanings, and each reading holds one end of it.

The Phonetic Link: m-s-ḥ ↔ s-y-ḥ

The two roots m-s-ḥ and s-y-ḥ share the sīn and the ḥāʾ, and they meet in the meaning that the explanations of the title have kept. To wipe over the earth is to go across it, as Ibn Manẓūr and al-Rāzī report, and travelling (siyāḥa) in ancient Arabic is bound up with going about in the land for knowledge, worship and calling; that is the meaning we want here. On the words of the Exalted ﴿السَّائِحُونَ الرَّاكِعُونَ السَّاجِدُونَ﴾ (al-sāʾiḥūna l-rākiʿūna l-sājidūn) (“the travellers, the bowing, the prostrating,” al-Tawba 9:112), the exegetes mentioned fasting, journeying for worship and knowledge, jihād and ribāṭ. In “the travelling Masīḥ” we choose the aspect of going about in the land, one of those set out by al-Ṭabarī and those after him. So we read movement and journey in the title alongside anointing and healing, because the root of anointing keeps both meanings together, as the books of language and exegesis kept them.

Three Names That Serve the Argument: Zakariyyā, Mūsā, Yūshaʿ ibn Nūn

The tie between a name and the function of its bearer shows in other names too. We confine ourselves here to Zakariyyā, Mūsā and Yūshaʿ ibn Nūn, because they bear directly on the lineages and reports this book studies; whoever wants wider material will find it in the lexical appendix.

Zakariyyā, peace be upon him: his name in Hebrew is זְכַרְיָה (Zekharyah), Zekharyah, formed from remembrance and the divine element “yah,” so its meaning is “God remembers.” Remembrance (dhikr) in Arabic is calling to mind by heart and tongue, and God described His Book with the word: ﴿إنَّا نَحنُ نَزَّلنا الذِّكرَ﴾ (innā naḥnu nazzalnā l-dhikr) (“It is We who sent down the Reminder,” al-Ḥijr 15:9). We find “yah” in other Semitic names, such as Elijah, Isaiah and Jeremiah. The meaning of Zakariyyā’s name meets the report of his prayer in the Qurʾān: ﴿ذِكْرُ رَحْمَتِ رَبِّكَ عَبْدَهُ زَكَرِيَّا ۝ إِذْ نَادَىٰ رَبَّهُ نِدَاءً خَفِيًّا﴾ (dhikru raḥmati rabbika ʿabdahu Zakariyyā idh nādā rabbahu nidāʾan khafiyyā) (“A mention of the mercy of your Lord to His servant Zakariyyā, when he called to his Lord in a secret call,” Maryam 19:2–3). This meeting matters to us because the Book of Zechariah connects the bearer of the name with the Babylonian horizon after the exile, in the sixth century BCE, the horizon to which this book returns ʿĪsā, peace be upon him. So we add this scriptural witness to the archaeological remains, and build the dating on both together.

Mūsā, peace be upon him: the search for the origin of his name, whether Egyptian or Hebrew, is well known. The report of the Qurʾān opens a way into it from the side of the event: ﴿فَالْتَقَطَهُ آلُ فِرْعَوْنَ﴾ (fa-ltaqaṭahu ālu Firʿawn) (“and the family of Pharaoh picked him up,” al-Qaṣaṣ 28:8), that is, they picked the child up out of the water. We set this report beside the Semitic sense of drawing out and extracting, which Hebrew keeps in מָשָׁה (mashah), mashah, meaning “he drew out.” So in our reading the name keeps a description of an event in the life of its bearer, and the report makes its meaning clear.

Yūshaʿ ibn Nūn, peace be upon him: his name enters the comparison in which some orientalists traced “ʿĪsā” to an Arabisation of “Yehoshuaʿ.” The Hebrew form יְהוֹשֻׁעַ (Yehoshuaʿ) is made up of “yeho,” the divine element, and “shuaʿ,” from y-sh-ʿ, meaning salvation and deliverance, so the name means “God saves.” This root is different from ʿ-y-sh, tied to life, which we propose in reading ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and the difference in meaning has its place in our argument for separating ʿĪsā, Jesus of Nazareth and Yūshaʿ ibn Nūn.

In the three examples the name keeps a description that we read together with the report: Zakariyyā and remembrance, Mūsā and the drawing out of the water, Yūshaʿ and the salvation that God brings about. Whoever wishes to widen the comparison to the names of Ādam, Nūḥ, Ibrāhīm, Isḥāq, Ismāʿīl, Yaʿqūb, Yūsuf, Dāwūd, Sulaymān, Yūnus, Ilyās, al-Yasaʿ and others will find it in the lexical appendix. It is enough here that the way we tie a name to its function and meaning should show itself.

“Hādū” and “al-Yahūd”: When a Verb Hardens into a Name

We close the chapter by applying this reading to the name of a community. The Qurʾān uses “those who hādū,” a verb form, and it uses “the Jews” (al-Yahūd), the name of the community. In Arabic hawd is returning and repenting, as in the words of the Children of Israel ﴿إِنَّا هُدْنَا إِلَيْكَ﴾ (innā hudnā ilayk) (“Indeed we have turned to You,” al-Aʿrāf 7:156), and the exegetes tied the naming to this meaning, as in what Ibn Kathīr relays from al-Ṭabarī: “They were called al-Yahūd only because they said: ‘Indeed we have turned (hudnā) to You.’” So we begin to understand the naming from this Arabic origin, and we read in its meaning the trace of returning to God, before we refer it back to the name Judah.

Next we look at where each form occurs. The phrase ﴿إِنَّ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَالَّذِينَ هَادُوا﴾ (inna lladhīna āmanū wa-lladhīna hādū) (“indeed those who believe and those who are Jews”) appears in two verses, al-Baqara 2:62 and al-Māʾida 5:69, and in both the reward is bound to faith and righteous action. “Al-Yahūd,” by contrast, occurs where there is disputation, as in ﴿وَقَالَتِ الْيَهُودُ عُزَيْرٌ ابْنُ اللَّهِ﴾ (wa-qālati l-Yahūdu ʿUzayrun ibnu Llāh) (“and the Jews said, ʿUzayr is the son of God,” al-Tawba 9:30), ﴿قَالَتِ الْيَهُودُ يَدُ اللَّهِ مَغْلُولَةٌ﴾ (qālati l-Yahūdu yadu Llāhi maghlūla) (“the Jews said, God’s hand is shackled,” al-Māʾida 5:64) and ﴿لَتَجِدَنَّ أَشَدَّ النَّاسِ عَدَاوَةً لِّلَّذِينَ آمَنُوا الْيَهُودَ﴾ (la-tajidanna ashadda l-nāsi ʿadāwatan lil-ladhīna āmanū l-Yahūd) (“you will find the most intense of the people in enmity toward those who believe to be the Jews,” al-Māʾida 5:82). Sūrat al-Māʾida itself holds both the promise in verse 69 and the description of enmity in verse 82. Yet “hādū” also occurs in rebuke, as in al-Nisāʾ 4:46, so we do not take the verb as unqualified praise. What deserves notice is that the verses of salvation choose the verbal form while the noun occurs in these disputational contexts, and this distribution is what the next paragraph explains.

We understand the relation between the two forms from the difference between a living verb and a settled title. Hādū calls to mind returning and repentance, and what faith and righteous action open to a person. A title, however, may settle on a community with the meaning of returning, and then the community’s practice drifts away from the meaning the title carried. This reading meets our distinction between the Children of Israel and the heritage of the revealed Law on the one hand, and Judaism as a historical movement on the other, as Appendices 9 and 10 set out. It brings us back to the question on which the book turns: how does the name remain while the meaning by which its bearer was known changes?

Chapter 3: Applying the Method to the Quranic Narrative Keys

The Comparative Semitic Phonetic Tool

In this chapter we take what we have set out before and apply it to the central words in the story of the Masīḥ. First, a brief reminder of the tools we rely on in comparison. We turn to the lexicons of Arabic, such as Lisān al-ʿArab, Maqāyīs al-Lugha and Tāj al-ʿArūs; to the lexicons of its sister tongues, such as Brown-Driver-Briggs for Hebrew and Payne Smith for Syriac; and then to studies in comparative phonetics, among them the works of the Libyan scholar Fahmī Khushaim. Once these references are put together, they tell us what corresponds to a given sound in a neighbouring tongue, and we are able to tell an accidental resemblance from a relation that recurs across words.

When we compare, we must distinguish between the number of written letters and the number of spoken sounds. The Hebrew alphabet has twenty-two letters, but at certain stages in the history of the tongue some of its symbols came to cover sounds that had once been distinct; the clearest cases are ḥāʾ and khāʾ, ʿayn and ghayn. A trace of the ghayn survives in the transcriptions of the Septuagint, in names such as Ghazza (Gaza) and ʿAmūra (Gomorrah). Arabic kept these distinctions, and for that reason we regard it as a precious instrument for recovering the possibilities of a reading, provided that we set a word against its counterparts and do not derive its pronunciation from the number of letters alone.

In this table we have gathered the points of comparison between the forms of words and what happens to them when they are transmitted. Among the differences that the script hides is the meeting of ḥāʾ and khāʾ in a single ancient spelling. We have taken the closeness of “al-Masīḥ” and “al-Masīkh” as a literary image of what happens to memory as it is transformed; the confusion between ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Jesus is another matter, and its evidence stands in the reports, the names and the times.

al-Masīḥ ↔ al-Masīkh: Applying the Table to the Central Pair

Arabic draws a clear line between m-s-ḥ and m-s-kh: the first is the root of anointing and consecration, the second the root of a change of form. Since the two words are so close, we can say in the title of the book what we see in the story itself: an origin of which the report kept one part and altered another, until it appeared in a different image.

So the Masīḥ in our book is the person and the message that we are trying to recover, and the Masīkh is the doctrinal image that took shape when the reports were blended and the meanings shifted. This is a designation we have fixed by convention for this book; we do not claim by it that some writer slipped over a single dot and that his slip produced the whole of Christian history.

The Five Keys That Illuminate the Reading

We leave the name now for five verbs connected with the report of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him: the raising, the descent, the taking in full (tawaffī), the killing and the likeness. About each we shall ask what its root indicates, and then how the Qurʾān used it. When we know that, the meaning we adopt becomes clear, and so does its relation to the other verbs in the account.

The Raising: Concealment and Protection

In Sūrat al-Nisāʾ the Exalted says, “Rather, God raised him to Himself” (al-Nisāʾ 4:158). In Arabic, raising carries several senses: it is elevating, it is purifying, it is removing a thing from the reach of hands and keeping it from being lost. Close to this is the Qurʾān’s saying, “and We raised for you your mention,” where what is raised is the mention and the meaning is loftiness of standing; and its saying, “God raises those of you who believe and those who were given knowledge in degrees,” where the raising is a rank that believers and people of knowledge attain. From these usages we read the raising in the verse in terms of station and meaning.

If we read the verse in this way, we understand that God preserved the reality of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and his message, raised his station, and left of his mention what connects people to him, even though the details of his life were veiled from them. It is true that worldly powers did damage the knowledge of him, but the thread of his message stayed in memory, and whoever seeks it returns to it. This preservation, accompanied by veiling, is what we read in the meaning of the raising, and the book proceeds on it.

The Descent: Availability and Manifestation

Sending down (inzāl) is used in the Qurʾān in a wide sense, covering a gift’s reaching people and being made available to them, as God sent down the Book and sent down iron. In this way we read the descent (nuzūl) of knowledge: something is veiled, then becomes known and begins to act on human life. So when we say that the Masīḥ returns, we mean that his reality and his teaching appear after a long veiling.

Tawaffī: Fulfilment and Full Taking

The taking in full and the raising come together in the words addressed to ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, “I am the one who takes you in full and raises you to Me” (Āl ʿImrān 3:55). The root w-f-y turns on complete taking and fulfilment, and so we read in it that ʿĪsā died after he had completed his mission, as all human beings die; the Qurʾān says ﴿وَمَا جَعَلْنَا لِبَشَرٍ مِنْ قَبْلِكَ الْخُلْدَ﴾ (wa-mā jaʿalnā li-basharin min qablika l-khuld) (“And We did not grant immortality to any human being before you,” al-Anbiyāʾ 21:34). The raising then came after the death, and we understand it as the preservation of the truth, the elevation of his standing and the survival of his mention, along the lines of “and We raised for you your mention” and “God raises those who believe... in degrees.” The book therefore stands on this: that ʿĪsā died, that his station was raised, and that his message remained, beyond what all the distortion could efface. From this angle too we read his return, and we shall expand on it in Chapter 24.

The Killing: Denial of Physical Execution, and the Extension of Meaning

As for the saying of the Exalted ﴿وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ وَمَا صَلَبُوهُ﴾ (wa-mā qatalūhu wa-mā ṣalabūhu) (“And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him,” al-Nisāʾ 4:157), the first thing we take from it is that neither killing nor crucifixion befell ʿĪsā, peace be upon him. On this denial rests the question of identity that the book raises. If the account that comes to us from Roman Palestine in the first century CE tells of a man who was crucified, who was that man? And how was what happened to him carried over to the prophet of whom the Qurʾān denies crucifixion? Here our reading of the blending of the two figures begins.

Beyond this direct meaning, the verse has another aspect, which concerns the survival of the message and of the mention. The Arabs use “killing” for things other than taking life: they say “he killed it with knowledge” (qatalahu ʿilman) when someone has reached the utmost of knowing it, and “he killed the subject” (qatala l-baḥth) when he has exhausted it and finished it. If we look at the denial of killing from this side, we read it as a denial that the adversaries could nullify the message of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, or wipe his trace from memory. The denial of physical crucifixion remains the foundation, and the sense of moral preservation is added to it, so that each aspect supports the other in the verse.

The Likeness: The Confusion over the Identity of the Subject of the Report

We read ﴿ولكن شُبّه لهم﴾ (wa-lākin shubbiha lahum) (“but it was made to appear so to them,” al-Nisāʾ 4:157) as meaning that the confusion occurred over the subject of the report itself: what happened to Jesus of Nazareth was attributed to ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him. This confusion may have begun in communities that told the reports of the first teacher and attached them to a righteous man among his heirs, after which the name and the image settled on him in memory. Todd Lawson, in The Crucifixion and the Qurʾān (2009), sets out the variety of interpretations the verse has provoked; to read it as this particular historical overlap is the proposal of this book, and the chapters that follow will develop it.

The Logical Structure: Five Converging Movements

When we put these meanings together, we find that they tell one connected story. ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, lived, completed his mission and died; his station was preserved with God, while the details of his life were veiled from people. Then his report became mixed with the report of Jesus of Nazareth, and the crucifixion of the other man was attributed to him. When knowledge returns, it opens what this composite image had closed. In this order we carry the argument forward, turning first to the documents and then to the communities that carried the reports.

These meanings also connect with the saying of the Exalted, “and indeed he is knowledge of the Hour” (al-Zukhruf 43:61). We see that the knowledge of the reality of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, of the time in which he lived, and of the fitna that befell his message, which we call the Dajjāl, may belong to the knowledge of the Hour and to its major signs. What we intend by this book is to follow the evidence as far as it allows us to know, and to bring nearer what has remained veiled of the image of the bearer of the message.

We have finished with the meaning of the name and of the verbs, so let us move on to the life of the bearer of the message himself. How does memory preserve him as a teacher who wanders through the land and heals the sick? And where do we find the traces of the king whom we propose to be he? Then we follow what became of his teaching and his reports in the communities that came after him.

Chapter 4: The Itinerant Masīḥ: What Language Preserved and History Forgot

The Islamic Gospel: Three Hundred Sayings of ʿĪsā That Arabic Alone Preserved

The books of Islamic Arabic hold a wide body of sayings and reports of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, that lie outside the collection the Church adopted in its Gospels. The historian Tarif Khalidi gathered this material, arranged it and documented its sources in The Muslim Jesus (Harvard University Press, 2001), where it comes to three hundred and three texts. Their sources are scattered through the books of renunciation (zuhd), ḥadīth, literature and history, from the second century to the twelfth century AH. We begin with them because they portray the Masīḥ in the aspect that concerns us here: a teacher walking in the earth.

Let us look first at the books that carried these sayings. If we arrange the texts by the first source to which Khalidi assigns each of them, these numbers appear:

We notice that these sources include the books of renunciation and moral formation, such as al-Zuhd, Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn and Dhamm al-Dunyā, books in which the reader meets the sayings of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, in order to be disciplined by them and to act on their meaning. Once we recognise this function, we understand what Islamic memory preserved of him, and we can tell it apart from other material gathered for disputation, in the books on sects and creeds and in the refutations of the Christians.

Some of this material is very old and goes back to the first layer of the recording of ḥadīth. In the Ṣaḥīfa of Hammām ibn Munabbih (d. 131 AH), p. 34, no. 41, ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, saw a man stealing and asked him, “Did you steal?” The man said, “No, by Him besides whom there is no god,” and ʿĪsā said, “I believe in God, and I have given the lie to my own eye.” Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim relates the same report. So this image of the Masīḥ is present in the oldest of the ḥadīth sheets that survive.

Moreover, the picture on which the corpus settles is a single one that does not vary: a man with no house, no wealth and no child, who journeys in the earth and eats of what it brings forth. Of this is his famous saying, reported by Ibn Qutayba in ʿUyūn al-Akhbār (2:328) and by al-Ghazālī in the Iḥyāʾ (4:218): “The world is a bridge; cross it, and do not build it up.” Of it too is what Ibn Ḥanbal reports in al-Zuhd (p. 143, no. 471): that he said, “I turned the world over, back to belly, and sat upon its back: no child of mine dies, and no house of mine falls into ruin”; and it was said to him, “Will you not take a house?” and he said, “Build me a house in the course of the torrent.” Of it too is what he also reports (p. 124, no. 402) about the “strangers” (al-ghurabāʾ), those who flee with their faith, that they “will be gathered with ʿĪsā on the Day of Resurrection.”

This very saying is not in the books alone; it is carved in stone. On the Great Gate (Buland Darwāza) of the mosque of Fatehpur Sikri, which the Emperor Akbar built, there is a Persian inscription dated 1601 CE that opens with his saying: “ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, said: The world is a bridge; cross it, and do not build a house upon it; whoever hopes for an hour hopes for eternity, and the world is an hour, so make it worship.” So the saying that the people of renunciation carried in their books, an emperor carried on the gate of his mosque, and wrote above it the name of its speaker as the Qurʾān names him: ʿĪsā. We shall see in Chapter 10 the place of this saying in the relation between the teacher and his disciple.

This corpus preserves the image of the Masīḥ as a wandering teacher, and it opens to us an aspect of his life that was overlooked by those whose interest turned to the trial and the crucifixion. The renunciation we read in it is a stance towards possession and attachment; it does not follow that its bearer was never a king at some stage of his life. Indeed, leaving the palace and walking in the earth are themselves among the points of comparison between him and Nabonidus.

Khalidi, however, explains the origin of this corpus differently from us. He sees it as the fruit of Islamic circles of renunciation, in which Gospel material was combined with Eastern wisdom and Islamic piety. We profit from his work in knowing the texts and their sources, and then we read the image they preserve as a memory that stayed outside the canon of the Church. To connect that memory with a source going back to the sixth century BCE is the proposal of this book. We have taken the meanings here from Khalidi’s English translation, and recorded their places in the Arabic sources so that the reader can easily check their wording.

Five Voices in One Century

Karl Jaspers gave the name “Axial Age” to a period of history in which the ways of looking at the human being and the world changed widely. In this period we place the lives of the Buddha, Laozi and Zoroaster, and we read them alongside the record of Nabonidus and the image of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him. But the dating of these lives is not agreed, and in some of them there is wide disagreement, so our comparison considers the times together: the time of the figure, the time at which his narrative took shape, and the time of its transmission. These times may move far apart when a biography travels from one culture to another.

What, then, is the connection between these lives, which gathered in the ancient horizon? The question has two familiar answers: some scholars see a spiritual wave that appeared in different environments, others see convergent answers to a shared human need. This book reads some of these images differently, as going back to one man whose story travelled between peoples, each tongue keeping his name and description in its own way. To show this we leave the general proximity and go down to the details of name and biography.

The Buddha, or Qutham? A Semitic Reading of the Name and the Biography

In his biography the Buddha’s name is Siddhārtha Gautama, and “the Awakened One” is his title. Buddhist tradition places his life at about 563–483 BCE and his birth at Lumbinī at the foot of the Himalayas. We shall present this framework first as the inherited account preserved it, and then look at the other readings of his chronology and at the way his biography took shape.

A number of scholars, however, bring the Buddha’s death down to about 400 BCE, against the older traditional dating, as appears in the proceedings of the symposium “The Dating of the Historical Buddha” published by Heinz Bechert. This disagreement concerns us because our reading does not stop at the person but takes in the transmission of his biography as well. When we find a late layer in a narrative, it may be a dating of its subject, or it may be a dating of the milieu that reshaped it, and the date alone is not enough to decide between the two.

The first thing we stop at is the name Gautama (Gautama / गौतम (gautama)). This name has its explanation in its own Indo-Aryan language, and beside that explanation we propose to compare it with a Semitic form close to it.

If we strip the name of its vowels in this spelling, its radical letters remain: g-t-m. Let us set it beside q-th-m in Arabic, and see how the three letters come close in sound:

The Sanskrit sound (G) corresponds to the Arabic qāf (q) in hearing, and the Sanskrit (T) likewise to the Arabic thāʾ (th), while the (M) matches the Arabic mīm (m) exactly. We present these two correspondences as proximity in hearing, not as an inherited phonetic law, since there is no law of this kind between Indo-Aryan and Arabic, as we note a few pages on.

“Qutham” is a well-known Arabic name, borne by some Arabs before and after Islam, and the most famous bearer of it in Islamic memory is Qutham ibn al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (a cousin of the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), buried in Samarkand in the land beyond the river). The root q-th-m turns in the lexicons of the Arabs on the senses of gathering, assembly and completion; it is said “qathama lahu l-ʿaṭāʾ” when someone gave abundantly, and “rajulun qathūm” of a man who gathers good. If we move to the meaning on the other side, we find that the Sanskrit root √gau- carries connotations of light, excellence and radiance (“the best of cattle,” as in the traditional explanation, or “the radiant”). Both roots, then, turn in a closely related semantic field on the senses of excellence, abundance and completeness.

When we compare Gautama with Qutham, we propose that behind this proximity stands a Semitic name or description that travelled between tongues. “Qutham” holds the senses of gathering and giving, which suit the image of a teacher from whom wisdom overflows. As for the name in its Indo-Aryan origin, it has its own analysis within its own language, and our alternative reading draws its strength from what links the phonetic comparison to the history of the biography’s transmission. So we move now to the features of life and teaching, for there the proximity can become more than a resemblance in sound.

It is the biography that gives the comparison of the name its wider meaning, because it holds features that we can set beside the account of the Masīḥ and his Semitic environment:

• Birth: Buddhist traditions tell that Māyā saw a vision, that she conceived an exceptional child, and that she then gave birth near a tree at Lumbinī. We compare this picture with the birth of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, at the palm tree, allowing for the differences between the two accounts in the dream, the tree and those present around the mother.
• Leaving the palace: Gautama leaves a life of privilege and goes out to seek knowledge. Nabonidus too left the capital for Taymāʾ, and kept his royal authority. The move in the two lives is the same in its meaning: a man leaves the centre of power for the sake of a higher mission.
• Purification: Buddhist teaching confronts attachment and desire, and the Qurʾānic message places the purification of the self at the very heart of success. We read in this a kinship of aim, and we note at the same time how the texts differ in their concept of the self and of salvation.
• The image of the teacher: In some schools of Buddhism the image of the Buddha grows until it reaches cosmic and devotional dimensions. But that does not simply amount to the Mahāyāna belief in a creator God; we give its language the same chance of being understood that we give to the Word and the Light elsewhere.

When these parallels are put together, and the comparison between g-t-m and q-th-m is added to them, we judge it likely that an older memory travelled to the Indian environment. Here we reach the furthest point the book proposes: that the image of the Buddha preserves, in some of its deep layers, the very account of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, the Semitic monotheist prophet, after communities carried it and shaped it in their own tongue. The image of the Buddha then broadened in the Mahāyāna into cosmic and devotional dimensions, as the image of the Masīḥ was transformed in the Pauline tradition, and we compare the two transformations while taking into account what each school means. The verse ﴿وَإِن مِّنْ أُمَّةٍ إِلَّا خَلَا فِيهَا نَذِيرٌ﴾ (wa-in min ummatin illā khalā fīhā nadhīr) (“and there is no community but that a warner has passed among it,” Fāṭir 35:24) reminds us that the memory of the warner that reached India some two and a half thousand years ago may have preserved this origin. What we compare here, then, is the transfer of the man’s name, meaning and biography, and then what each tradition added to it.

Būdhāsaf and Yūdhāsaf: A Dot That Made a Saint

One of the best-known examples of the transmission of a biography and the change of a name is the story of “Bilawhar and Būdhāsaf.” This is a book of Indian origin which Arabic came to know in the second century AH, and Ibn al-Nadīm mentioned it in the Fihrist among the books of India, beside the Kitāb al-Budd. The name Būdhāsaf goes back to the Sanskrit bodhisattva, that is, one who is on the way to awakening, and reached Arabic by way of the Middle Persian “Būdhisaf.” Then the bāʾ turned into yāʾ in the manuscripts, and the name became Yūdhāsaf. In that form Shaykh al-Ṣadūq Ibn Bābawayh (d. 381 AH) gave the story in Kamāl al-Dīn, under the title “The Story of Bilawhar and Yūdhāsaf,” and a note in the critical edition says: “Thus with yāʾ in all the manuscripts; it is presumed to be a corruption, and the correct form is Būdhāsaf.” The name went on into Georgian as “Iodasaph,” then into Greek as “Ioasaph” and into Latin as “Josaphat.” When Baronius revised the Roman Martyrology in 1583, Barlaam and Josaphat entered the calendar as saints in India bordering on Persia, with their feast on 27 November. European scholarship did not know that the Buddha’s biography lay behind this story until 1859, when Laboulaye and Liebrecht noticed it, and David Marshall Lang then traced the chain of its transmission in 1957. Here is a man whose identity changed in the eyes of his readers, while a wide body of his account remained.

Let us open the story itself to see what remained beneath the changed name. In the third canto of Aśvaghoṣa's Buddhacarita, the prince goes out from the sheltered world of the palace and sees old age, then sickness, then the funeral of a dead man. He asks his charioteer about what he sees: is this the fate of some people, or the fate of the human being? The truth that had been veiled from him opens before him, and the quest for deliverance becomes more pressing for him than the delights of the palace. (Canto III, Cowell's translation.)

Then we open Barlaam and Ioasaph. In the third chapter the father keeps sickness, old age and death from his son, and surrounds him with young men and with everything that pleases him. In the fifth chapter the prince goes out and sees a crippled man and another who is blind, then a feeble old man, and he asks what becomes of the old man in the end and is told of death. The order of the scenes has changed, and some of the persons in them, but the movement of the story is what it was: a palace that veils, then suffering laid bare, then a question that luxury cannot answer. At this point Barlaam comes and fills the void with Christian teaching, and the journey ends with the prince in faith, baptism and renunciation. (Barlaam and Ioasaph, chapters 3 and 5–8.)

What makes this example important is that what travelled in it was not a single name, nor a wisdom that might occur to people far apart. The knot of the whole story travelled, with the movement of its hero and his questions, and then the frame that answers them changed. The reader enters the life of a Christian saint and finds in it stages of the biography that a reader of the Buddha knows. Once we have seen this transmission with our own eyes in the texts, we have the right to ask about the older layers, because the transmission of a biography is here an attested fact. And these older layers go back, in the reading of this book, to the source in ʿĪsā.

In 1960 Lang noted another change in an Arabic edition issued in Bombay, which made “Kashmir” the place of Yūdhāsaf’s death in place of “Kūshīnar,” that is Kushinagara, where the Buddha died in the Buddhist tradition. This change is tied to the modern claim that the tomb of “Yūz Āṣaf” in Srinagar is the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth, one of the claims on which Kersten relied. Even with this change the Arabic text keeps the posture of the Buddha’s death: he instructs his disciple, then lies down with his head to the west and his feet to the east. The account in Kamāl al-Dīn then adds another aspect to this overlap, for it puts in the mouth of Yūdhāsaf the Gospel parable of the sower, with the seed the birds eat, the seed that falls on rock, and the seed that grows in good soil. So here is a Shiʿi book of the fourth century AH in which the life of the Buddha and the parables of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, meet. All these facts show us the ways in which memory is transmitted. We read them together with the material of Khalidi above, and in the light of the book’s view that there is a connected origin whose images were scattered.

Zoroaster: The Star of the East

Zoroaster is among the figures in this section whose dating is most disputed. Some traditions bring him close to the sixth century BCE, while some linguistic and historical readings make him far older. The disagreement does not stop at his time, but extends to the understanding of his name, Zaraθ (theta)uštra, and to the layers of the texts attributed to him. We offer here a Semitic reading of the name and the biography, and set it in dialogue with the Iranian reading that connects the last part of the name with camels.

What we turn to in this comparison is the whole field of radiance: Arabic zahar, Hebrew and Syriac zrḥ, and with them the East and the star. From this field we propose to read “the star of the East” as a description by which we follow the image of Zoroaster in the reports connected with the Magi. This is a reading of meaning with which we compare the inherited name; it stops at the part of the name that resembles, and we do not stretch it into a linguistic translation of the rest of its parts.

At the heart of Zoroaster’s teaching stands “Ahura Mazdā,” the Wise Lord, source of good and light, and set against the good is “Angra Mainyu,” the power of corruption. The aspect we adopt makes this contrast a moral choice in the human heart, between truth (asha) and falsehood (druj), and between light and darkness. From this side we set it beside the saying of the Exalted ﴿وَنَفْسٍ وَمَا سَوَّاهَا * فَأَلْهَمَهَا فُجُورَهَا وَتَقْوَاهَا﴾ (wa-nafsin wa-mā sawwāhā fa-alhamahā fujūrahā wa-taqwāhā) (“and by the soul and Him who proportioned it, and inspired it with its wickedness and its piety,” al-Shams 91:7–8). If we understand the teaching in this way, we see it inclining toward monotheism and toward a moral meaning, and we understand the power of corruption in it without making it a god, a peer to the Wise Lord.

The reports of Zoroaster touch the subject of the Masīḥ by way of the Magi, the priests who carried this tradition. In Matthew 2:1–12 the Magi come from the East, following “his star in the east” and seeking the child who was awaited. What knowledge moved them to make this journey? One of the ways we compare this report is the expectation of the Saoshyant, the saviour who triumphs by truth and renews the world at the end of time. Perhaps it was this expectation that made them understand the appearance of the star, whatever its nature, as a glad tiding of the birth they sought.

This brings us back to the possibility that behind this tradition stands an older Semitic source, whose teaching the Iranian environment carried in its local form, and that the expectation of the Saoshyant is tied to the memory of the promised Masīḥ. With this we read the mention of the Magi in the Qurʾān: ﴿إِنَّ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَالَّذِينَ هَادُوا وَالصَّابِئِينَ وَالنَّصَارَىٰ وَالْمَجُوسَ وَالَّذِينَ أَشْرَكُوا إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَفْصِلُ بَيْنَهُمْ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ﴾ (inna lladhīna āmanū wa-lladhīna hādū wa-l-ṣābiʾīna wa-l-naṣārā wa-l-majūsa wa-lladhīna ashrakū inna llāha yafṣilu baynahum yawma l-qiyāma) (“Indeed, those who believed, and those who became Jews, and the Sabians, and the Christians, and the Magians, and those who associated others with God: indeed God will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection,” al-Ḥajj 22:17). The verse names them by their own name and counts them as an independent community among the religious communities, and we understand from this that they are tied to an ancient monotheistic tradition, which underwent changes as others did. So we read the “star of the East” as tied to this inheritance, and we leave the remaining evidence to set out in detail the road by which its report reached the communities.

The Line of the Magi: Pharaoh's Magicians and the Magi of the East

The report of the Magi has an older counterpart in the story of the magicians who believed in Mūsā. In both stories a group from outside the Children of Israel, whose people have religious and sapiential knowledge, recognises the prophet and responds to him. This likeness in the structure of the report is the first thing we pause at.

The magicians whom Pharaoh gathered to confront Mūsā were people of knowledge and ritual in the Egyptian environment, and of the elite of the palace. When Mūsā cast his staff they understood what they had witnessed and prostrated: ﴿فَأُلْقِيَ السَّحَرَةُ سَاجِدِينَ * قَالُوا آمَنَّا بِرَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ * رَبِّ مُوسَىٰ وَهَارُونَ﴾ (fa-ulqiya l-saḥaratu sājidīn qālū āmannā bi-rabbi l-ʿālamīn rabbi mūsā wa-hārūn) (“So the magicians were cast down in prostration. They said, ‘We believe in the Lord of the worlds, the Lord of Mūsā and Hārūn,’” al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:46–48). What strikes us in the report is that the acknowledgement came from the people of the art in which they had been summoned to compete, before Pharaoh or his entourage responded.

That is no wonder, for knowledge brings discernment: whoever knew the tools of magic and their limits was better able than others to recognise what goes beyond them. So the magicians responded, though their response went against the king, with all that this entailed. Pharaoh threatened them with the words ﴿لَأُقَطِّعَنَّ أَيْدِيَكُمْ وَأَرْجُلَكُم مِّنْ خِلَافٍ وَلَأُصَلِّبَنَّكُمْ أَجْمَعِينَ﴾ (la-uqaṭṭiʿanna aydiyakum wa-arjulakum min khilāfin wa-la-uṣallibannakum ajmaʿīn) (“I will surely cut off your hands and your feet on opposite sides, and I will surely crucify you all,” al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:49). In their stand we read that a sincere scholar may be led by his sincerity to recognise the truth when it appears, even if it comes to him at the hands of a man not of his own people, and even if responding exposes him to harm.

The Gospels relate that the Magi came from the East to the child and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. We read this report among the materials that may have passed from the original biography of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, into the biography of Jesus, and for that reason its present place in the Gospel of Matthew is not enough to fix the time at which it arose. What concerns us first is the community that knew the glad tiding, and the inheritance that moved it to make the journey.

Various studies have tried to link Matthew’s star with astronomical phenomena near the turn of the era, among them the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 7 BCE. All of these are attempts to explain the time of the Gospel narrative as it is received. The question this book poses comes before that: did an Eastern knowledge of the appearance of the teacher remain in the report, to be connected only afterwards with a later calendar? The astronomical comparison opens this question, but the identity of the child and of the community rests on other evidence.

This connection we call in our book “the Line of the Magi,” and by it we mean communities of sages and priests who kept knowledge and expectation, and who recognised prophethood when it appeared. We begin tracing this line with the magicians who believed in Mūsā, then set against them the Magi of the East who sought the child, and those who kept the sacred fire in the Zoroastrian tradition between the two Testaments. We propose that behind these different images lies an inheritance whose communities do not belong to the Children of Israel, yet which is bound to monotheism and sides with it.

The word maguš passed into Greek as μάγος (mágos), and then into European words that came to denote magic. Its meaning widened in different contexts, so that it was applied at one time to a religious community and at another to a practitioner of knowledge and ritual. In this history of the word we see an entry to the comparison with the magicians who believed in Mūsā. But the claim that the community of the Magi really inherited from them we do not build on the resemblance of the title in translation; we build it on the chain of transmission.

Behind the Magi we read an ancient believing brotherhood that perhaps inherited knowledge and expectation from the time of Mūsā. If the links of this connection come to light, they would explain the Magi’s presence with the Masīḥ. But we distinguish between this inheritance, which preceded the Masīḥ, and the movement that we propose spread through his teaching, whose traces include the ways of wandering and of wisdom.

We propose a symbolic reading of the fire that the Magi kept in their temples for about two thousand years. In the origin of its meaning it may have been a memorial of the revelation that prophets receive, whose covenant the people of wisdom then guard in the time of expectation. We set it beside the fire in the account of Mūsā: ﴿وَهَلْ أَتَاكَ حَدِيثُ مُوسَىٰ * إِذْ رَأَىٰ نَارًا فَقَالَ لِأَهْلِهِ امْكُثُوا إِنِّي آنَسْتُ نَارًا﴾ (wa-hal atāka ḥadīthu mūsā idh raʾā nāran fa-qāla li-ahlihi mkuthū innī ānastu nāran) (“Has the story of Mūsā reached you? When he saw a fire and said to his family, ‘Stay here; I have perceived a fire,’” Ṭā Hā 20:9–10). Read in this way, a connection appears between the fire of Ṭūr and the sacred fire the Magi went on tending until the Seal of the Prophets ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) appeared in the seventh century. This interpretation joins successive links: a prophet receives the knowledge, his followers then guard it, and a later mission renews it. So we understand the Magi as guardians of the legacy of revelation between the missions.

What the Infancy Narratives Preserved about the Magi

In the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy the Magi come in response to a prophecy attributed to Zoroaster; they are guided by the star and bring their gifts. Then Maryam gives them a swaddling cloth from the child’s swaddling clothes, and they return with it to their people. Here the story goes on beyond the point where their account stops in Matthew: their kings and chiefs gather to them, the cloth is put in the fire and comes out unharmed, and they keep it in their treasuries. So the narrative joins the ancient knowledge of the Magi to the child, through the glad tiding and the sign that they carried to their own country. (Chapters 7–8.)

The star, the newborn and the gifts are found in Matthew 2; the name of Zoroaster, the swaddling cloth and the trial by fire come from the infancy narrative, and they give the report a clearer Eastern extension. This extension brings us back to the question of the community that kept it: what was it waiting for, and how did it tie the report of the Masīḥ to its own inheritance? The narrative makes Zoroaster a herald who came before the Masīḥ, while this book reads the two as two images of one story. So what concerns us here is how memory distributed the roles between the herald and the one heralded, and how the report reached a people who give the fire its station.

In the Syriac Revelation of the Magi a community waits for the star and keeps an inheritance that it traces to Seth from Adam. The chain of descent here differs from the Mosaic connection we propose, but the picture of a teaching kept generation after generation helps us to recognise who carried the memory. The Magi are then no longer passing visitors in the scene of the birth; the question about their past becomes part of the question about the Masīḥ himself. (The Revelation of the Magi: text, manuscripts and studies.)

Laozi: The Dao That Cannot Be Named

We come then to China, to Laozi, whose title means the Old Master or the Great Elder. The reports differ about his age, some placing him in the sixth century BCE and some after it, and his life is surrounded by narratives in which it is hard to separate the person from his later image. The text attributed to him that has remained famous is the “Dao De Jing” (道德經), of about five thousand Chinese words. Short as it is, it carried a wide body of wisdom, and it became the source of a long tradition in the understanding of existence and conduct.

It opens, some twenty-four centuries ago, with the words: “The Dao that is spoken is not the eternal Dao, and the name that is named is not the everlasting name.” The subject here is the limit of expression, and how words fall short of the reality they are meant to convey. We read this from the side of transcendence (tanzīh): human definition does not exhaust the supreme origin of which the text speaks. Then we set this meaning beside the saying of the Exalted ﴿لَيْسَ كَمِثْلِهِ شَيْءٌ﴾ (laysa ka-mithlihi shayʾ) (“There is nothing like unto Him,” al-Shūrā 42:11) and His saying ﴿لَّا تُدْرِكُهُ الْأَبْصَارُ وَهُوَ يُدْرِكُ الْأَبْصَارَ﴾ (lā tudrikuhu l-abṣāru wa-huwa yudriku l-abṣār) (“Eyes do not perceive Him, but He perceives the eyes,” al-Anʿām 6:103). What we compare here is that the reality is too wide for a human being to describe or to encompass.

A Semitic Reading: “Ṭāw” from “Ḍawʾ”

The Arab ear stops at the word “ṭāw” or “dāw” (Dao / 道 (dào)), because it is close in sound to “ḍawʾ” (light). In this nearness we read a connection between path, light and guidance, meanings strongly present in this book, and we read in the word itself a trace of the Semitic source that carried the meaning. But Old Chinese pronunciation is known only by reconstruction through comparison, and so the proposal must be weighed against that old form of the word.

How could such a transfer have happened? Let us compare the Arabic ḍād, with its emphatic quality (iṭbāq), to the sound /d/ in a tongue that does not know that very form, and then consider the possibility that the final hamza of ḍ-w-ʾ drops, so that the form approaches dao. Arabic is known for distinguishing the ḍād, so that it is called the language of the ḍād (lughat al-ḍād), while its counterparts in the Semitic sister tongues changed. Moreover, when words are carried into other tongues, some of their guttural sounds sometimes drop out. The suggestion rests on these approximations of sound.

The meaning supports the comparison too, because light and the way are connected: by light a person is guided, and the way in Laozi’s teaching is wider than the tangible road, since it takes in the order of existence and of conduct. We read this beside the language of light and guidance in our own heritage. Where the two fields resemble each other, we have the spiritual proximity the book intends, and it strengthens the claim that the word and the meaning travelled together.

We see the link between “ṭāw” and “ḍawʾ” as a linguistic path along which the meaning travelled, and the comparison between the teaching and the biography bears it out from another side. For memory moves by the sound of a word and by the translation of its meaning at the same time.

As for the end of Laozi, the reports tell that he went out through the western gate riding a green ox, handed his manuscript to its guard, and then went on towards the west, and nothing more was heard of him. The biography closes, then, on this departure, with an open ending. If we read the report symbolically, his heading west may preserve the memory of a return to the Semitic source that we propose as the origin of both meaning and word.

Nabonidus in the Babylonian Documents

When we have finished with these biographies we return to Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, who ruled between 556 and 539 BCE. He is the origin in this book, while Zoroaster, Laozi and Gautama we read as aspects of what passed from his account into other cultures. The cuneiform and stone inscriptions allow us to study his personality in a royal record, and then to connect that record with the Aramaic narrative preserved in the Prayer of Nabonidus, 4Q242. These materials tell us that he lived about ten years in Taymāʾ, that he went through an affliction and was healed, and that a man of the Children of Israel attended him. On the conjunction of these reports rests his connection with ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (peace be upon him), whose prophetic image the Qurʾān preserves.

For this reason we devote the next chapter to Nabonidus. In it we study his biography, the reports of his mother Adad-guppi and her attachment to Sîn, his residence in Taymāʾ, and the prayer that survives at Qumran in his name. Then we gather eight points on which we compare his account with the image of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him), and show how the sixth century BCE becomes the foundation of the chronology the book proposes. We have shown how the images spread through the cultures; it is time to go back to the documents in which we see the account of its subject.

Recurring Patterns in the Prophetic Biographies

When we set these biographies side by side, elements appear that recur in them: in the accounts of birth, of teaching and of departure, and in the stance of the religious communities. Once these elements come together they call for an explanation that holds them all, and that is what the following comparison sets out in detail.

In the narrative of Māyā and in that of Maryam, birth is joined to a tree: the sal tree in the biography of the Buddha, the palm tree in the Qurʾān. In both, mother, birth and the blessing that comes from vegetation meet, and we count this among the things we compare between the biographies. But we keep for each narrative its own distinct details, because the details are what may show us the path of transmission, or what was reshaped.

Images of withdrawal, retreat and the quest for knowledge recur in the narratives we compare. Gautama goes out, Laozi departs, Nabonidus settles in Taymāʾ, and Zoroaster has reports of this kind, and we read all of this in that sense. But these narratives differ in the time at which they were recorded and in the purpose withdrawal serves in each, and retreat does not mean that every revelation took place far from people.

The subjects of these biographies also share the opposition of those who held religious influence. The Brahmins objected to the Buddha’s teaching, and the priests of Babylon were hostile to Nabonidus; the “Verse Account” (Verse Account of Nabonidus), composed after the fall of Babylon, even describes him as disordered in mind, and we read that description in the setting of political and religious satire, not as a diagnosis of his illness. In the Christian biography the priests of the Temple opposed him, and in the accounts of Zoroaster the court magi resisted him before they followed him. Whatever the differences in detail, all these narratives preserve a clash between the new teaching and those in whom the authority of interpretation and ritual had settled.

The endings differ. The Buddha’s death has a detailed account, Laozi has the report of his departure to the west, Nabonidus has varying reports after the fall of Babylon, and the Qurʾān denies that ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) was killed or crucified and affirms his raising. What we compare here is the way the departure was preserved and interpreted, and we leave each narrative with the ending it gave.

The Furthest Hypothesis: One Voice in Many Tongues

These comparisons bring us to the view the book adopts: that behind some images of the “Axial Age” stands one Semitic Arab origin, whose biography and teachings travelled in different directions, each environment retelling him in its own tongue. The Persians preserved him as Zoroaster, the Indians in the image of Gautama, which we compare with Qutham, and the Chinese in the accounts of Laozi, while the Babylonian documents preserved his account under the name Nabonidus. In Arab memory there remained the name the Qurʾān affirms: ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (peace be upon him). This is how the book reads the connection among these images, and through that connection it understands the differences between them.

At this proposal all the resemblances meet: one personality narrated under many names and images. Now that we have put it forward, whether it stands depends on the details that strengthen this connection, and on the dates and routes of transmission that can explain why the narratives differ.

• The overlap of the times to which the figures and narratives are attributed, despite the disagreement over their dating.
• The recurrence of features of birth, retreat, teaching and confrontation with the religious institution.
• Names and titles that carry meanings of wisdom, light and election.
• The routes of travel, the languages and the communities that could have carried the biography.
• The unity of guidance with which the book reads these materials in the light of the Qurʾān.

The reader may weigh this proposal against two other ways of explaining the proximity. So we have three readings, ranging from the claim that these figures share a source of guidance to the claim that the personality whose accounts were told is one:

The first is that these figures are independent of one another, each having received guidance from one divine source, so that close meanings appeared in their teachings. This view keeps the independence of each person, and still explains the spiritual aim they hold in common.

The second is that a Semitic message travelled with trade, migrations and the routes of culture, such as the Silk Road and the Incense Road, and that teachers who were influenced by it carried its teaching to their own environments under their own names. The known routes of contact between the civilisations bear witness that this is possible, and show the stages through which it may have passed.

The third, which we adopt, is that the original personality was itself narrated under many names. For us this personality is ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (peace be upon him), who lived, according to the chronology proposed here, in the region stretching between the Peninsula and its north. His memory then travelled east and west, the tongues shaped it into their local forms, and his name remained preserved in the Qurʾān.

The Achaemenid Empire, which grew in stages, linked Mesopotamia, Anatolia and parts of the Levant with regions lying to the east, until the influence of Darius reached the area of the Indus. These roads and this administration explain how people and reports moved in that area, and along them travelled, on this book’s reading, the story we are following from Babylon to India and China.

The spread of Aramaic helped this connection. From the middle of the eighth century to the end of the fourth century BCE its use broadened in administration and public life, across the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid empires. Then in the reign of Darius it became the language of the chanceries in more than twenty provinces between Egypt and the Indus. Thus caravans and letters crossed a wide space whose writers a single tongue united, by which a scribe in Thebes could communicate with a scribe at the borders of India.

Routes, administration and language show that reports could travel in this connected world. Once that is established, the questions remain: who was the traveller? Who was the teacher? What was the community? When a narrative appears in one country after it has appeared in another, that points to the path along which it moved, while the time the journey took is decided by other evidence.

The Persepolis Fortification tablets preserve details of this movement. Richard Hallock published them in 1969, and they are available from the Chicago institute; in them are rations issued to travellers between Susa and India on sealed documents, in the twenty-second and twenty-third years of Darius I, about 500 BCE. Tablet 1511 mentions “Sakasaka the Indian ... carrying a sealed document from Parnaka; they went to Susa,” and another record mentions a bearer of the king’s seal who “went to India” with five masters and fifteen servants; drink is also issued to Indians on their way to Susa. Hallock describes provisioning stations a day’s march apart, and the tablets carry Aramaic notations by the scribes of the chanceries. At Taxila we then find an Aramaic inscription on a marble column. Marshall dated it in 1918 to the fourth century BCE on the form of the script, and it was afterwards read as a decree of Aśoka from about 260 BCE, because the title “Priyadarśī” occurs in it. Dupont-Sommer, in his study of 1970, held that it addresses communities whose language remained Aramaic two generations after the fall of the old empire. The Kharoṣṭhī script, in which the Gandhāran Buddhist manuscripts were written, also arose from the imperial Aramaic alphabet; among them is evidence from the first century BCE. These materials document the road, the tongue and the writing, and they mention messengers and officials. They establish that transmission was possible, but they do not name the Israelite traveller who carried the story. It is striking, by way of comparison, that Kersten’s claim about Jesus in Kashmir also needs the assumption that Israelites were in the East in the sixth century BCE; it meets this book’s reading in needing to explain that ancient presence, though it differs from it in the personality and the biography.

When we cite the nearness of names such as Gautama and Qutham, or Dao and light, we cite it as evidence of the translation of meaning and sound when a name passes from one tongue to another, and that is a different matter from hereditary laws between distant language families. What adds weight to this evidence is that it comes joined to details in the biography and to a route of transmission that we can trace. As for the “Axial Age,” we use it as a frame in which to compare broad transformations, within which the times of the figures come close together.

This reading brings together issues that the idea of the Axial Age usually treats separately:

It answers three questions at once. Why do some details of the biographies resemble one another? How do names and meanings change when they travel? And which routes or communities carried the narrative? The book’s answer to all three is that the subject of the story is one. The strength of this answer lies in the details it explains, not in setting names in a list of near forms.

The verses lay down that the messages come from one source and that the communities guidance reached are many. This is the principle from which we set out in the comparison, and in it the prophets are several persons. Our own proposal is narrower: that some of the names we study may be cultural images of the Masīḥ himself, within a wider history of prophets and messages.

The teacher of whom we speak also appears in narratives that give him knowledge wide enough to take in body, mind and cosmos. In chapters 51–52 of the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy we see him discuss questions of astronomy, medicine and the soul, and then a philosopher asks to become his disciple. The value of this picture is that it joins healing to teaching, and that it gives us a specific textual material when we compare the Masīḥ with wisdom and philosophy. (The text, 51–52.)

So we read the Masīḥ as a teacher who opens to the human being the doors of knowledge and refines the use he makes of it. For that reason we understand his miracles of healing as bound up with the knowledge and mercy that were opened to him. The narratives in our hands describe what effect this knowledge had on healing, and on them we build our understanding of this comprehensive picture of the teacher.

As for the raising of the dead, it is a miracle of healing that God gave to ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, as He said on his tongue: ﴿وَأُحْىِ ٱلْمَوْتَىٰ بِإِذْنِ ٱللَّهِ﴾ (wa-uḥyi l-mawtā bi-idhni Llāh) (“and I bring the dead to life by God’s leave,” Āl ʿImrān 3:49). We read some of its reports in their closest sense: a person whose heart had stopped and who was then rescued, through the knowledge opened to the Masīḥ, and returned to life. Some of them may describe a person who had reached an illness that leads to death with certainty, and God healed him at the hand of ʿĪsā. This is an example that brings home to the mind how healing can occur in the body, and it joins that healing to divine permission. Medicine today distinguishes between cardiac arrest, in which attempts at resuscitation may succeed, and death from which there is no return, and in this distinction we read the aspect of the report. Yet the gift of healing remains wider than any means we know today. (For the medical distinction: American Heart Association, Emergency Treatment of Cardiac Arrest.)

Both senses are called giving life in the Qurʾān’s own tongue. The king who disputed with Ibrāhīm, peace be upon him, about his Lord, and who is Nimrod in the books of exegesis, said: ﴿أَنَا۠ أُحْىِۦ وَأُمِيتُ﴾ (anā uḥyī wa-umīt) (“I give life and I cause death,” al-Baqara 2:258). Al-Ṭabarī relates in his commentary from Qatāda, Mujāhid and al-Rabīʿ that he called for two men, killed one of them and spared the other, and Ibn Kathīr reports from Qatāda, Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq and al-Suddī that they were two men who deserved death, and that he ordered one of them killed and pardoned the other, so that he called the pardon of a man condemned to death a giving of life. In sūrat al-Māʾida we read: ﴿وَمَنْ أَحْيَاهَا فَكَأَنَّمَآ أَحْيَا ٱلنَّاسَ جَمِيعًۭا﴾ (wa-man aḥyāhā fa-ka-annamā aḥyā l-nāsa jamīʿan) (“and whoever gives life to one, it is as though he had given life to all people,” al-Māʾida 5:32). Al-Ṭabarī relates from Mujāhid that to give it life is for its keeper to save it from drowning, burning or destruction, and al-Ṭabarī himself chose to understand that giving it life means leaving off killing it. The tongue in which the Qurʾān came down calls the rescue of a soul from a death it was close to a giving of life, and in this tongue we read the reports of the Masīḥ: God is the Giver of life, and ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, brings about the healing by His leave in a body that had reached the edge of death, and its owner returns to his family alive.

In this chapter we have come to read the Buddha, Laozi and Zoroaster as possible cultural images of one personality, ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (peace be upon him), and the next chapter will present his identification with Nabonidus. Names may change, and the local environment may enter into the details and symbols of the biography, but the origin of the teaching and of the report remains continuous. This is what we mean by the unity of the personality, and we build its demonstration on the documents we have about the man in the Babylonian and Arabian domain.

Chapter 5: Nabonidus Is ʿĪsā: Two Memories of One Figure

In this chapter we read Nabonidus and ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (peace be upon him) as two memories of one personality. We shall begin with the king as the inscriptions preserve him, and then set his account beside the family and the message that the Qurʾān preserves, and beside the narratives that circled around his illness and healing. In this understanding ʿĪsā was chosen by God, yet he passed through an experience of conduct and trial by which he grew in knowledge of his Lord. As for the man of the Children of Israel who appears in the Prayer of Nabonidus, we propose that he is Yaḥyā, ʿĪsā’s teacher on this path; the sick man in the document is Nabonidus himself, and the one who attended his healing is another man.

Nabonidus ruled Babylon from 556 to 539 BCE and was the last of its kings before it passed to Persian rule. Of the ancients, Herodotus and the Greeks and Romans after him left only a few references to him, which do not match the wealth of his reports preserved in the documents. Then came the modern discoveries, above all in the twentieth century, which brought out cuneiform texts, royal letters and the inscribed biography of his mother. From this material there emerged a man who held firm to religious positions and entered, on their account, into conflict with an entrenched priestly authority. With this material we begin to read his personality anew.

The Prayer of Nabonidus: Document 4Q242

The “Prayer of Nabonidus” (4Q242) preserves Aramaic fragments of the account of a king who was struck by illness for seven years while in Taymāʾ, and who was then attended by a man of the Children of Israel from the community of the exiles. When we read the text as its editors have restored it, we find forgiveness and healing together, and we find the king commanded to write down his praise. This recalls Mark 2, where forgiveness goes with healing, and on this basis we read the relation between the king’s experience and the prophetic image. But the text is a literary work written after the age of Nabonidus and preserved at Qumran, so the date of its writing differs from the date of the event it relates. In Appendix 1 we shall present what remains of the text, what restoration has added, and how we read it as literature, each in its place.

Here the times must be fixed, because the account has more than one date. The king lived in the sixth century BCE; the narrative of the Prayer was composed after him, at a time that scholars dispute. The fragments that survive were then copied in the first century BCE, as the dating of the script shows, and they lay in Cave 4 until the discoveries of Qumran brought them to modern scholarship, when Milik published them in 1956. Each of these dates therefore belongs to a stage in the life of the account.

Hezekiah: The King’s Illness and Babylon’s Question

The Prayer of Nabonidus has a precedent in the Hebrew scriptures themselves: the account of Hezekiah king of Judah in the eighth century BCE, as told in 2 Kings 20:1–11, Isaiah 38–39 and 2 Chronicles 32:24–31. It begins, “In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death,” and Isaiah the prophet came to him and told him to set his house in order; the king turned his face to the wall, and prayed, and wept sore. The prophet had not gone out into the middle city when he came back to him with the answer: “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears: behold, I will heal you” (2 Kings 20:5). The king asked for a sign, and Isaiah called upon the Lord, “and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward, by which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz” (20:11). The book of Isaiah then preserves a text in the king’s own voice, headed “The writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered of his sickness” (Isaiah 38:9), in which he says to his Lord: “for you have cast all my sins behind your back” (38:17).

When the king was healed, Babylon entered the account. “At that time Merodach-baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah: for he had heard that he had been sick, and was recovered” (Isaiah 39:1). The book of Chronicles names what the delegation had come for: they were “the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent unto him to enquire of the wonder that was done in the land” (2 Chronicles 32:31). The wonder is in Hebrew מוֹפֵת (mofet), the very word with which the book describes the sign of the healing in 32:24. Hezekiah then showed the envoys his treasuries of silver and gold, and Isaiah warned him that what his fathers had laid up would be carried to Babylon, and that some of his sons would be taken, “and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon” (2 Kings 20:18). So the account ends with men of the sons of Judah in the palace of the king of Babylon. In the Prayer of Nabonidus, by contrast, a man of the sons of Judah, one of the exiles according to the restoration of the line, stands before the king of Babylon himself.

Let us set the two accounts side by side. In both a king falls ill and comes near to death, or his affliction drags on; he prays, and then a man of Judah attends him bringing the word of the deity: Isaiah the prophet in the first account, the gāzer in the second. In both, recovery goes with the blotting out of sins, and then the account is written in the king’s own voice after his healing: “the writing of Hezekiah” in Isaiah, and “proclaim and write” in the Prayer. The affliction in the two accounts even bears one name. The “boil” on which the lump of figs was laid (2 Kings 20:7) is in Hebrew הַשְּׁחִין (ha-shiḥin), and the ulcer of Nabonidus is in Aramaic שחנא (shaḥnā), and the root is the same in both: sh-ḥ-n. The roles, however, are exchanged between the two accounts. In the first the king is a Judean, whom the court of Babylon comes to ask about his wonder; in the second the king is the king of Babylon himself, who receives the announcement of forgiveness from a Jewish man. The Hebrew text says of Hezekiah’s recovery וַיֶּחִי (wayyeḥî), “and he lived,” and makes the sign of the recovery that the king should go up to the house of the Lord “on the third day” (20:5, 8).

The sign of the shadow leaves an astronomical question that we keep open. On a horizontal sundial with an upright gnomon, the shadow goes back naturally when the sun’s declination exceeds the latitude of the place, that is, at places lying between the equator and the Tropic of Cancer, as the Portuguese mathematician Pedro Nunes demonstrated in 1537. At Mecca this happens every summer for about seven weeks, and on the day of the solstice the shadow retraces an arc of about fifteen degrees; at the latitude of Jerusalem it does not happen on a horizontal sundial. Dr Muhammad Mustafa Mansur drew attention to this phenomenon in the account of Hezekiah (The Mecca Bible, 2023, pp. 174–176). But the question has another side. The Hebrew word for “degrees,” מַעֲלוֹת (maʿălôt), also means a stair, and on an inclined surface the shadow can go back at latitudes higher than the tropic, as Clavius demonstrated in 1586; and the text calls what happened “a sign from the Lord” (20:9). We therefore present the observation as a question about the geography of the account, and leave the judgement to the evidence as it accumulates.

The Report of the King between Two Names

If we set the Prayer beside Daniel 4, we come closer to the subject of this book, and we see one story told twice. The Prayer tells that Nabonidus, king of Babylon, was struck by a malignant ulcer while he was in Taymāʾ, and remained in it for seven years, until a man of the Children of Israel came to him; his sin was forgiven, his health returned, and he praised God. The book of Daniel tells that Nebuchadnezzar saw a dream which Daniel interpreted for him, and that he was then driven out from among people, dwelt with the beasts of the field and ate grass like oxen for “seven times,” until his reason and his kingdom returned to him and he glorified the Most High. The king’s name changed, and so did his affliction, and the account in its essence remained one: a king of Babylon whose ordeal is long, and who is then given back what he lost.

For this reason a number of scholars, Beaulieu among them in his study, have compared the two accounts and discussed the possibility that the memory of Nabonidus stands behind the story of Nebuchadnezzar. Takuma Sugi then came with an explanation of how the account diverged: he set the skin disease, and the king’s going out like the wild ass, beside Babylonian curse formulae attributed to Sîn, and proposed that the report of the ordeal branched along two courses, one of which kept the disease and the other the wild life. The relation Sugi examines is therefore wider than a literal copying of the Prayer into the book of Daniel. In the title of his study Sugi calls Sîn “the Moon God,” following the custom of scholars, and we read the name as a name for al-ʿAlī, whose sign is the moon. (Sugi, “Nabonidus and the Curse of the Moon God,” 2018, pp. 1–12.)

The link that joins the two names is preserved by the book of Daniel itself. In chapter 5 a king named Belshazzar, בֵּלְשַׁאצַּר (Bēlšaʾṣṣar), holds his feast in Babylon on the night on which the city falls, and the book names his father Nebuchadnezzar again and again: “the golden and silver vessels which Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem” (Daniel 5:2), and “the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honour” (5:18), and then Daniel addresses him: “And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart” (5:22). In the Babylonian documents Belshazzar is Bēl-šarra-uṣur, the eldest son of Nabonidus. The Nabonidus Chronicle says for the seventh year of his reign that the king was in Taymāʾ while the king’s son, his nobles and his army were in Akkad, and the Verse Account relates that the king entrusted the army to his eldest son and handed the kingship over to him, and then set out on his long journey to Taymāʾ.

Who, then, is this father to whom the book ascribes Belshazzar? We read him as Nabonidus in descent and Nebuchadnezzar in name. The name most famous in Babylon’s memory came to carry the account of the king who had been absent from it, and so what chapter 4 relates of the ordeal of “Nebuchadnezzar” became an account of Belshazzar’s real father. Chapter 5 holds a small detail in which the years in Taymāʾ have survived: Belshazzar promises whoever reads the writing on the wall that he “shall be the third ruler in the kingdom” (5:7, 16, 29). Why the third? Because the first is the king, who is away in Taymāʾ, and the second is his son, who stands in his place in the capital; the third rank is therefore the highest that a man who acts in Babylon for his father can give. The book of Baruch pairs the two names explicitly, in the Arabic translation of the deuterocanonical books: “And pray for the life of Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon, and for the life of Balthasar his son” (Baruch 1:11).

Chapter 4 is itself a royal letter, which its author writes in his own voice. It begins: “Nebuchadnezzar the king, unto all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth” (Daniel 4:1), and then the king says: “I thought it good to shew the signs and wonders that the high God hath wrought toward me” (4:2). This is exactly what the king is commanded to do in the Prayer, in the letters that survive from its fifth line outside the brackets of restoration: “proclaim and write.” In both accounts the king tells people what God has done with him, and writes his testimony himself. What the book calls “seven times,” שִׁבְעָה עִדָּנִין (shibʿā ʿiddānîn), the Greek Septuagint turned into “seven years” in two places (4:16, 32 in the Van Dyck numbering), and these are the seven years that the king of the Prayer spent in Taymāʾ.

The king closes his account with praise: “and I blessed the most High, and I praised and gave thanks to the Living One for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion” (4:34), and in Aramaic חַי עָלְמָא (ḥay ʿālmā). The king who has come out of his ordeal gives thanks to the Most High in the name of life, and in this description we read the meaning we read in the name of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) in Chapter 7: the Living, the Giver of life.

In this example we see how a part of an account can remain while the name of its subject disappears, and even how the judgement passed on him can change. The picture drawn by the king’s adversary, or the one by which a preacher reinterprets his past, itself becomes a part of the history of memory. For that reason we read the tale of the ordeal beside Nabonidus’s inscriptions and what he said of himself, and we understand his affliction as a stage on his way to God, just as the prophets knew a testing after which their mission appeared. What matters to us in this whole transition is that, when the name changed, it did not wipe out everything that leads the researcher to the older subject of the biography.

André Dupont-Sommer compared the Prayer of Nabonidus 4Q242 with Mark 2, because in both forgiveness is joined to healing. But we must distinguish between the time of the witness and the time of the story. Mark relates the account of Jesus of Nazareth in the first century CE, while the Prayer relates the account of Nabonidus in Taymāʾ in the sixth century BCE, even though its text was written later. In the story of the Prayer there is a man of the Children of Israel whose name was lost among what was lost of the text, and he is the man whose identity and role in the ordeal we shall determine in what follows.

The framework the book proposes for Zakariyyā, Maryam and ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) directs the question to Yaḥyā. If we can connect this house with the Babylonian environment in which Nabonidus lived, it becomes useful to set the man of the Prayer beside Yaḥyā, the man of teaching and purification in Mandaean memory. Three things bind the comparison together: the meaning of life in his name and in its root ḥ-y-y, his connection with water and baptism, and the joining of forgiveness and healing in the account. We read, besides, his uniqueness in being named, in “We have not made for him before a namesake,” as connected with his uniqueness in the function that remained his in memory. On these grounds we propose that the man is Yaḥyā; the detail of the text and its archival evidence will come in Appendix 1.

Baptism and the Appearance of the Spirit

The account of the baptism has details that are best read together. Mark 1:9–11 relates that Jesus came to John and went down into the water, and when he came out of it the Spirit appeared and a voice came from heaven. Matthew 3:13–17 keeps the same scene and adds a dialogue in which John hesitates to baptise him. Luke 3:21–22 joins the descent of the Spirit to prayer. In John 1:29–34 the Spirit’s remaining on him becomes a sign by which the Baptist recognises the one whom he declares to the people. In all its versions, then, the scene is an encounter of two men, in which one is purified at the hand of the other and his station is then disclosed.

In the Dialogue with Trypho 88, Justin preserves another picture of the account: when he entered the water a fire was kindled in the Jordan, then the Spirit descended, and a voice came from heaven in the words of the Psalm about sonship. Justin then explains the event as a manifestation of the Masīḥ’s matter before people, and affirms that he had power before it. This addition and this explanation show that the meaning of the event itself occupied the ancients: was it the beginning of the station, or its manifestation before those who witness? (The Dialogue, chapter 88.)

We read the event as the manifestation of the chosen one after he had completed his experience on the path. ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) is chosen from the first of his affair, and yet he had a teacher, went through a testing, and grew in knowledge. We join the end of the ordeal in the Prayer of Nabonidus to this encounter, whose picture the Gospels preserved in the baptism. It is true that the baptism passages we have mentioned say nothing of an earlier illness of Jesus, and that what remains of the Prayer says nothing of the water of baptism; but the comparison gathers aspects that were scattered from an older experience: the king’s account preserved the ordeal and the healing, and the Gospel account preserved the teacher, the purification and the appearance of the Spirit. For this reason we see Yaḥyā in the guide whose name was lost.

Eight Threads Hard to Attribute to Chance

Before drawing the comparison we pause at the non-Christian sources that mention Jesus. The most famous is the report of Tacitus in Annals 15:44, written about 116 CE, whose authenticity most scholars accept, though they still ask where he drew his information and how it relates to what the Christians of his time believed. Among them also are two references in Flavius Josephus, the more famous being the “Testimonium Flavianum” in Antiquities 18:63–64, which many judge to rest on an original into which Christian additions entered. What survives of Jewish and Roman literature of the first century is little when measured against the worldwide standing this personality came to have. This disparity invites us to seek a wider past for the Christian memory, though silence alone identifies neither another man nor another time.

We gather the comparison between Nabonidus and ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) into eight aspects. The value of the argument for us lies in how they connect, and in what each aspect explains when taken with the rest. They are:

1. King and conduct: he was a king who combined rule with care for the temples, and we read his religious movement in the light of prophethood.
2. Ordeal and healing: the Prayer of Nabonidus preserves the account of his illness, his turning to God and the presence of a teacher from the Children of Israel at his side; in it we read the path of the chosen one until his manifestation is complete.
3. The devout mother: the stele of Adad-guppi preserves her piety, her care for her son and his choice for the mission; we set this beside the picture of Maryam and her election.
4. Taymāʾ: the king lived a long time outside Babylon, so that the north of the Peninsula became part of his documented biography.
5. Retrieval of heritage: he searched for the foundations of temples and the remains of those before him, and this opens the way to a comparison with the picture of an heir to the inheritance of the prophets.
6. The hostility of the institution: the accounts of his adversaries oblige us to ask what political and religious satire did to his image.
7. The meaning of the name: in the name Nabonidus we recover the meanings of calling and glorifying, and set them beside the titles of election and raising.
8. The composition of memory: we propose that the royal record and the religious narrative each preserved a side of one man, and the rest of the chapter sets out this joining in detail.

Adad-guppi and Sîn

Nabonidus’s mother, Adad-guppi, is our way into understanding the house he came from. Her stele tells of a long life spent in the service of Sîn, that is, in the service of the Most High (al-ʿAlī), whom the inscriptions call by this name, attached to his sanctuaries, and records that she reached the age of a hundred and four. We see in her religious care and in her charge to her son a part of what formed his mission, and in them we trace the picture of the mother whom the Qurʾān calls Maryam.

The biography of Adad-guppi is bound to Ḥarrān and to the service of the house of the Most High there, the One whom her inscriptions call Sîn, and in it her son’s kingship and his rebuilding of that house are explained by the Most High’s having chosen him for it. Among her reports is a dream in which Nabonidus is tied to the task of building; for this we refer to the inscription of Adad-guppi published in ORACC. In this choice we see the same language of election and charge that the story of Maryam preserves, while the glad tiding of the birth remains a sign that the Qurʾānic text relates in its own place.

Nabonidus came to the kingship after the fall of Labaši-Marduk, in a political transition whose circumstances are still debated, and his inscriptions then framed his legitimacy in the language of divine election. This religious interpretation does not deny that there was a struggle for power, just as the occurrence of a struggle does not exhaust what the man understood of his mission. We read his exaltation of Sîn as a turning to the Most High, while the texts of his adversaries preserved an opposing picture of him. We therefore set the two pictures against each other, remembering that satire cannot serve as a medical diagnosis of the king’s condition.

The comparison between Adad-guppi and Maryam rests on three things: both are mothers, both are consecrated to worship, and the son of each was chosen for a mission. The Babylonian report is told in a different form from the glad tiding in the Qurʾān, for the inscription mentions no virgin birth and does not transmit all the details of the miḥrāb. Nonetheless we read Adad-guppi and Maryam as two memories of one mother, and we show what this correspondence illuminates and what difference remains within it, leaving each source its own wording.

Who, Then, Is Maryam?

From the question of the son we move to the mother. If Nabonidus is ʿĪsā (peace be upon him), where is Maryam in his reports? Our answer is Adad-guppi, his mother, whose name and biography Ḥarrān preserved, and we propose that the Qurʾān preserved her image under the name Maryam. This correspondence extends the same reading that joins the royal account to the prophetic one: it rests on what the two pictures share, and shows where they differ.

The stone biography attributes to Adad-guppi a long life of about a hundred and four years, and describes her religious devotion and the standing of her son. But this whole age is not a documented period that she spent continuously in service at one temple, and the common description of her as a priestess differs from the titles that the inscription itself states. For us she is a woman who devoted herself to knowledge and worship, and this is the picture we set against Maryam.

In her stele Adad-guppi tells that she was attached to the sacred from her childhood, that she renounced the world and asked that her son be preserved, and then she relates how he was chosen for the kingship and rebuilt the temple. In her words the son is “my only son, the fruit of my womb”; she names him, prays for him and bears witness to his charge. This is the aspect we adopt in setting her beside the language of election and naming in the story of Maryam. (Text Q005471, the stele of Adad-guppi.)

In both pictures there is a consecrated woman surrounded by divine care, who has a son with a mission and prays for his preservation. But in the Qurʾān these meanings are distributed between the wife of ʿImrān and Maryam, while on the stele they come together in the biography of Adad-guppi alone. The Babylonian memory gathered in one woman what the Qurʾān sets out separately in two women: the vow of the wife of ʿImrān corresponds to Adad-guppi’s consecration from her youth, and the election of Maryam corresponds to her motherhood of the chosen son, and each text keeps its own ordering of its persons.

The source of this reading is the published text: the stele of Adad-guppi (Nabonidus 2001, text Q005471) in the RIBo project of ORACC, edited by Weiershäuser and Novotny in RINBE 2, based on the edition of Schaudig in AOAT 256, under a free open licence. We mention this because what is built on in this chapter ought to be within the reader's reach to check for himself.

The mother’s biography has reached us in two copies. Henri Pognon found the first in 1906 at Eski Harran and published it in 1907. D. S. Rice found the second in 1956, reused as a step in the northern entrance of the Great Mosque of Ḥarrān, and with it he found the two stelae of Nabonidus in the eastern and western entrances. C. J. Gadd then published the texts in 1958 in Anatolian Studies. The stones that bore the memory of the mother and the son never left Ḥarrān, and later entered the building of its mosque.

Maryam in this correspondence is the mother. As for the vow, the miḥrāb and the sacred service found in the house of Nabonidus, we use them to understand the environment in which we propose she lived. Some of this connects with her directly and some with another woman of the house, and the account of Nabonidus’s daughter will come as an example showing that this tradition continued in the family.

What we build the correspondence of the mother on is the structure of the account: a woman consecrated to worship, and a son whose election the narrative pictures and to whom it promises a mission. As for the two names “Adad-guppi” and “Maryam,” we do not look for a linguistic derivation between them on which the correspondence would rest. We read the two pictures as we read those of Nabonidus and ʿĪsā (peace be upon him), and take what each narrative says in its own place.

Nabonidus’s lineage we read in its own wording as it stands. In the inscription Q005448, lines 1–2, the king presents himself and is then traced to “Nabû-balāssu-iqbi,” and the sign DUMU occurs, which the editors translate “son.” The inscription describes one of the two as the perfect prince, and the editors disagree about who is described: the father, or the king himself? This name recurs in the king’s inscriptions. So the correspondence with the Qurʾānic birth concerns the nature of this written relation and who its subject is, and not merely the fact that the archive is silent about the father.

As for his mother Adad-guppi, her biography is related on the Ḥarrān stele, and she mentions her son again and again: “my only son, the fruit of my womb,” and does not mention a father for him. Nabonidus says in an inscription from Ḥarrān: “I am Nabonidus, the only son who has no one,” and mentions in another inscription that his destiny was decreed “in the womb of his mother.” The name “Nabû-balāssu-iqbi” is a sentence whose meaning is “Nabû has decreed his life,” and Nabû among the Babylonians is the god of writing and the word. We read these texts beside the glad tiding: ﴿إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُبَشِّرُكِ بِكَلِمَةٍۢ مِّنْهُ﴾ (inna llāha yubashshiruki bi-kalimatin minhu) (“Indeed, God gives you glad tidings of a word from Him,” Āl ʿImrān 3:45), and the birth remains a sign from God.

The reader may weigh this proposal against the evidence set out above. Alongside the identification of the mother stand other pieces: Nabonidus lived in Taymāʾ, the narrative mentions his illness for seven years and then his healing, he glorified Sîn, and a man of the Children of Israel attended him in 4Q242; each of these reports has its royal or literary source, which we have introduced. Adad-guppi then adds the biography of a devout mother who mentions no father for her son, one of the best attested we have come upon of the women of this milieu in that century. From her begins the answer to the question of Maryam and her environment.

Enigaldi-Nanna: The Daughter Devoted to the Miḥrāb

In the house of Nabonidus there is another woman, his daughter Enigaldi-Nanna, who held the office of entu at Ur. We mention her only to understand how religious service was carried on in this family, and to trace the titles acquired by whoever held the office. Maryam in the correspondence we propose is Adad-guppi, the king’s mother; the daughter is a witness that the tradition continued in the same house.

The record of the daughter’s installation links her choice to an eclipse of the moon, which was read at the time as a sign from Sîn, that is, from al-ʿAlī, whose sign is the moon, by which He requests His priestess. The office of entu had lain interrupted for a long time, so Nabonidus searched the old tablets until he drew from them what showed the priestess’s dress, her equipment and her rites. Two things came together, then, in her entry into the sacred office: a sign from heaven, and an ancient tradition that the remains of the past had kept and her father restored.

The name Enigaldi-Nanna itself carries the meaning of this function. Its writing EN.NÍG.AL.DI. d NANNA is composed of EN, the name of the office of entu, NÍG.AL.DI meaning “the one requested,” and d NANNA, the Sumerian name of Sîn at Ur, whom scholars call the moon god and whom we read as another name for al-ʿAlī, whose sign is the moon. The title reads, therefore, “the entu whom Nanna requests.” Her father gave her this title at the installation, while the name she was born with we do not know from this record. Here the name identifies its bearer and at the same time describes the mission for which she was chosen.

This example connects directly with what we presented in Chapter 2. The Babylonian record itself shows that a name may preserve its bearer’s office and what was believed about his election to it. From this woman’s title we know her religious function, though her earlier name is lost to us. In the same way we compare the Qurʾānic names in which we read the attributes and messages of their bearers.

When we compare what the narratives say of the vow and the miḥrāb, elements of the shared religious environment appear, and we gather them in the following table:

In this house, then, three generations were bound to religious service: the mother, then the king, then his daughter. This allows us to read the biography within a family milieu with its own inheritance and tasks. But the correspondence of the mother with Maryam stays independent of the comparison with the daughter’s account, so that the lineages do not become confused as we move between the evidence.

The Migration to Taymāʾ

Nabonidus left Babylon and lived in Taymāʾ for about ten years, and yet he remained king, and his administration remained linked with the capital. We read his distance from the centre of rule as a space for his ordeal and conduct, and we find nothing in it that proves he abdicated the throne or abandoned all the affairs of state.

The remains of Taymāʾ show a settled civilisation that was older than Nabonidus and continued after him, and every building in it has its own date. His inscriptions document his presence in the north of the Peninsula, among them the well-known inscription at al-Ḥāʾiṭ, and in them we see a king who rules in the oases, builds and worships. The inscriptions preserved the name of the king, and the Qurʾān preserved the name of the prophet; the reading we propose sets the one beside the other, to recover what the language of hostility concealed.

Nabonidus: What the Name Means

Before we analyse the king’s name, it is well to explain how we read the divine names in Babylon. The reference works describe “Nabû” as the god of writing and wisdom in the Babylonian assembly of gods, the pantheon. This classification is influenced by the Greek and Roman model, and the multiplication of gods in it is an illusion created by the translators, who rendered the titles of al-ʿAlī and the ranks of those beneath Him with a single word. The Semitic and Egyptian texts describe functions and ranks, and the bearers of these names in them are symbols or commissioned powers resembling the angels as monotheists conceive them, while the command above all of them belongs to al-ʿAlī. So we ask: what did the name mean to those who used it? And what was the rank of the one named, under the command of al-ʿAlī, in their belief? We do not assume in advance that Nabû carries the same meaning as Hermes in the Greek classification. In what follows we shall use the titles known in the reference works, and we read them on this basis.

The Akkadian form of the king’s name is Nabû-naʾid. Its first element is Nabû, the name that the reference works know as that of the god of writing and wisdom. We set it beside the Semitic root n-b-ʾ and the meanings connected with it of calling, proclaiming, announcing and glad tidings, and beside the uses of nabû that the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary preserves. The word nāḇî (נָבִיא (nāvī)) also enters the comparison, the Hebrew for prophet, as do the Arabic al-nabī (the prophet), al-nubuwwa (prophethood), al-inbāʾ (announcing) and al-tanabbuʾ (foretelling). The second element, naʾid, “nāʾid,” is connected with the Akkadian verb na'ādu, which turns on glorification and exaltation. This linguistic material is what lets us consider the name’s relation to the meanings of calling and exalting, and then show the difference between its familiar translation and our reading of it.

The Akkadian name is usually translated “Nabû is praised” or “Nabû is extolled.” Alongside this direct translation we read, in the joining of Nabû and naʾid, the meaning of the exalted announcer (al-munabbiʾ al-marfūʿ), on the Arabist reading. “Nabû” enters the names of other kings, among them Nabû-apla-uṣur, “O Nabû, protect the heir”; in each name this prefix takes its meaning from what gathers around it in the life of its bearer, and in the life of Nabonidus the call, the announcing and the raising gather around it.

Sîn Is al-ʿAlī: The Tawḥīd of the Children of Israel in a Babylonian Tongue

In the inscriptions Sîn bears titles connected with light, wisdom and sovereignty, and these titles invite us to read religious symbols from within their meaning, so that we cross from the image of the heavenly body to the one it points to. Alongside him the inscriptions mention other names that the books translate as gods, and rites that go with their names. We present this material as it is, and then read behind it the worship of the Most High: the other names are high powers acting by His command, and the multiplication of gods is an illusion of the translators, made by the one word with which they rendered the titles of sovereignty and the ranks of the commissioned together.

In the Prayer of Nabonidus, as its editors read it, there is a call to glorify “the Most High God,” in restored places whose brackets appear in Appendix 1. We begin from this reading to trace the language of height, and then set it against the titles of Sîn in the king’s inscriptions, and so we read Sîn as a name that points to al-ʿAlī in the language of the inscriptions, and the moon is His sign in the sky.

The guide in the Prayer is described in Aramaic as yhwdy, which is usually rendered “Jew.” The description may, however, denote belonging to Judah or to its community, before the later institutional picture that we call Judaism as a movement had taken shape. We therefore keep the word in the translation and do not load it with all the judgements of the centuries that followed. That his role was that of a monotheist, and that he knew ʿĪsā (peace be upon him), comes from the comparison that the book builds.

The report of Melchizedek gives an ancient example of a man who combined kingship with a religious office. He is “king of Shalem,” “and he was priest of God Most High,” and he blessed Ibrāhīm, saying: “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand” (Genesis 14:18–20). This example is older than the Mosaic law, so we set it beside the picture of Nabonidus, the king devoted to al-ʿAlī who settled in Taymāʾ. Then we look at the name Shalem, which in Arabic belongs to the root s-l-m, and at its connection with submission to God (taslīm), and we call to mind the words of God, exalted is He: ﴿مِّلَّةَ أَبِيكُمْ إِبْرَاهِيمَ ۚ هُوَ سَمَّاكُمُ الْمُسْلِمِينَ مِن قَبْلُ﴾ (millata abīkum ibrāhīma, huwa sammākumu l-muslimīna min qablu) (“the creed of your father Ibrāhīm. He named you the Muslims before,” al-Ḥajj 22:78). In our reading the religion of al-ʿAlī runs on unbroken, from Ibrāhīm and Melchizedek to ʿĪsā-Nabonidus and then Muḥammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), though the tongues that gave it expression were many.

The comparison widens when we move to the inscriptions dedicated to “the Most High God,” Theos Hypsistos, which Stephen Mitchell studied in the eastern Mediterranean and the regions around it. They show that the exaltation of “the Most High” was a wide religious language, spoken by people from very different environments. We see in this description a single thread running through the language of exaltation: it stands beside Sîn in the inscriptions of Nabonidus, it is the Most High in the Qumran prayer, and it is al-Aʿlā in the Qurʾān. That all these communities are connected with one message is what the book proposes; what the inscriptions give us are the places where the title was used and the settings in which it was exalted. And the Qurʾānic call ﴿سَبِّحِ اسْمَ رَبِّكَ الْأَعْلَى﴾ (sabbiḥi sma rabbika l-aʿlā) (“Glorify the name of your Lord, the Most High,” al-Aʿlā 87:1) remains the centre of this comparison, in word and in meaning.

“ʾElāhā ʿIllāyā”: The Document Names Its God with a Word of Height

The form “ʾElāhā ʿIllāyā” appears in the text as its editors have reconstructed it, and the title “the Most High” denotes elevation and sovereignty in the Aramaic tongue. But the form reaches us in a fragmentary text, so the reader must read it together with the brackets, which separate what survives of the text from what the edition proposes.

What gives the comparison its value is that the content of the praise meets the language of height in all the sources we read. We read the restored word alongside the inscriptions and the report of the Prayer, and in every one of them we see the glorification directed to al-ʿAlī.

The Ḥarrān inscriptions give Sîn the titles of sovereignty over the gods, and the gods in them are the high powers who act by His command. When we set beside them the language in which the Prayer exalts God, we see, behind the difference of names, a single origin in the meaning of height, and we see the Qumran narrative joined to a Babylonian memory of the king.

In our reading the moon is the sign of al-ʿAlī, and He is indicated by it because He, glory be to Him, is the Most High; the moon is seen high above people and reminds them of the One who is higher than it. We read it also as a symbol of destiny and reckoning, and as a light borrowed from another, and we call to mind what the Qurʾān explains about its stations and its function in knowing the years. The Babylonian documents place it in worship and in the calendar together; the temple was wider than an astronomical observatory, the worship in it was for the one to whom the sign points, and the heavenly body itself is a sign set in service. Perhaps the same syllable survives in the Qurʾān in places of height and speech: in ﴿وَطُورِ سِينِينَ﴾ (wa-Ṭūri Sīnīn) (“and by Mount Sinai,” al-Tīn 95:2), the mountain at which God spoke to Mūsā, peace be upon him, and in ﴿سَلَٰمٌ عَلَىٰٓ إِلْ يَاسِينَ﴾ (salāmun ʿalā Il Yāsīn) (“peace be upon Il Yāsīn,” al-Ṣāffāt 37:130), the close of the account of Ilyās, peace be upon him, who called his people to leave Baal and to worship the best of creators.

Eḫulḫul: The House of the Crescent, and the Road of Sîn to Yathrib

The house of al-ʿAlī in Ḥarrān, which the inscriptions call the temple of Sîn and which Nabonidus restored, was called “Eḫulḫul” (é-ḫúl-ḫúl), whose well-known Sumerian meaning is “house of joy.” Arabic has the root h-l-l, in which exultation and rejoicing, the crescent (hilāl) and the pronouncing of tahlīl come together. So we set the joy in the temple’s name beside the joy of people at seeing the crescent, the sign of al-ʿAlī in the sky, and then beside their mention of God as they welcome it. Sumerian is a language different in origin from Arabic, so the comparison here is phonetic and semantic, and we use it to help us read the sign. For this reason we call the temple, in our interpretation, “the house of the crescent and the tahlīl”: the crescent is seen on high and brings the Most High to mind, and the voice is raised in tahlīl, “there is no god but God.” Then we ask how the link between the crescent, the calendar and worship has endured in the lives of Muslims, who inherited a lunar calendar and its vocabulary; the one they worship is the Most High to whom the crescent points, and the name of God stands by itself, not taken from the crescent. Whoever among the missionaries says that the God of Islam is a moon god has missed all of this meaning: the moon is the sign of the Most High, and worship belongs to the one to whom the sign points.

Sîn rises in the inscriptions of Nabonidus to the highest rank, and from this rank we proceed to read his exaltation in terms of tawḥīd. When the inscriptions describe him as sovereign over those whom the books translate as “the other gods,” we read in this the sovereignty of the one who commands over those who are commanded, as the Ḥarrān stele will show below. The titles are the titles of al-ʿAlī, and those who are commanded are high powers acting by His command. We build this understanding on the texts, rites and symbols taken together, and on what their owners intended.

The Ḥarrān stele names the stations at which Nabonidus halted on his journey and the length of his stay in the north of the Peninsula: “On the road to Taymāʾ, Dadan, Fadak, Khaybar, Yadiʿ, as far as Yathrib; ten years I moved among them.” The king, in his religious language, ascribes this movement to the guidance of Sîn. These place names give us a documentary basis for the domain we study, which stretches from Babylon and Ḥarrān to Taymāʾ and the Ḥijāz, as far as Yathrib, later to be known as the City of the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam). It draws attention that Taymāʾ and Dadan, that is al-ʿUlā, and Fadak, Khaybar and Yathrib also became homes of groups of the Children of Israel on the eve of the mission. We shall go through the reports of these stations in the next chapter, to look at the connection between the inscribed road and what religious memory preserved of it.

The Pre-Islamic “Shiyār” and the Semitic “Sabbath”: The Network of the Seventh Day

The calendar has another witness in the names of the days of the week. We read them within a network of Semitic terms that describe the cycles of time and the days of cessation, though their functions and origins differ, as the following examples show:

• In Akkadian, šapattu denotes, in a well-known usage, the middle of the month, the day of the full moon, and does not simply denote the weekly Sabbath.
• In Hebrew, “shabbat” is a day on which work ceases in a weekly cycle. Its historical connection with the Babylonian term is still under consideration among scholars, and a closeness of sound alone does not suffice to establish it.
• In Arabic, al-sabt comes from the root s-b-t, whose sense in the dictionaries is cutting off and rest, and not from the doubled root sabba.
• “Shiyār” is a name that the lexicons give to this day in an old Arabic naming; its origin and its relation to the number seven need independent linguistic evidence.

Among the Arabic witnesses to “shiyār” are two lines of verse attributed to al-Nābigha al-Dhubyānī, who died about 604 CE: “I hope to live, and that my day / will fall on Awwal, or Ahwan, or Jabbār, or the next, Dubār; if I miss it, / then Muʾnis, or ʿArūba, or Shiyār.” The names in them follow the order of the days of the week: al-Awwal is Sunday, al-Ahwan Monday, Jabbār Tuesday, Dubār Wednesday, Muʾnis Thursday, ʿArūba Friday, and Shiyār Saturday. Scholars have discussed whether the two lines are authentic in their full form, but shiyār is preserved also in the lexical material, and between the two the old name is established.

What we take from this is that the calendar of the Peninsula is bound to the memory of the Semitic tongues, though the names and the ways they were used differ. When the Sabbath is mentioned in the Arab environment and in the Qurʾān, it enters a wider calendrical and religious history, in which the words of rest and cessation meet what the Torah preserved and the Babylonian materials with which it is compared. In this shared domain we read the connection, and we keep the distinction we drew earlier between the weekly Sabbath and the date of the full moon.

The Stele Itself Says More: A Descent Not Written, Commissioned Hosts, and the Call “My Son”

We return to the Ḥarrān stele, which contains, beside the line of the journey, three passages whose meaning bears on the subject of this book. We shall set out what each passage says, and then show how we read it:

The first is that the inscription describes Sîn's great act as something that “no one knew,” and that “has not come down since distant days to the earth,” so that the people of the earth did not see it, and it was not written on a tablet and deposited for ever. Then comes the statement: “and it came down from heaven in the time of Nabonidus.” We read in this description that descent was joined to the appearance of knowledge that had not been recorded, and for that reason we compare the language of the inscription with what we shall expound in Chapter 24, where we understand descent as a movement in knowledge. The expressions here are those of the king's own record; joining them to the interpretation of descent is our reading of them.

The second is what the inscription says about Sîn's relation to the other divine names. It mentions Shamash, Ishtar, Adad and Nergal, and then has them all carry out his command; it describes Shamash as completing the command of Nannar, “the father who created him,” and states that the Anunnaki tremble before Sîn. So before us stand a supreme authority and commissioned creatures who carry out its command, a structure we set against the Qurʾān's description of the angels: honoured servants who act by God's command (al-Anbiyāʾ 21:26–27) and do not disobey Him in what He commands them (al-Taḥrīm 66:6). As we read names such as Ishtar we also recall what the Qurʾān relates about the worship of angels (Sabaʾ 34:40), and about those who made the angels, who are servants of the Merciful, females (al-Zukhruf 43:19). These names are commissioned powers, and the Akkadian edition calls them gods because the inscription applies to them the word it applies to al-ʿAlī; the multiplication of gods is an illusion produced by translation from this one word. We read their ranks in a tawḥīd-based reading that gives all command to al-ʿAlī, and the offerings made within this system were made to Him, because He is the Commander by whose command these powers act. By these two verses we understand the corrupt forms of worship around the king, in the priesthood of Marduk at Babylon and in popular cults, while the king’s own worship was of al-ʿAlī.

The third is the formula of sonship in the king's address to the one who comes after him: “Whoever you are, of those whom Sîn names king and then calls you: my son.” Here sonship is bound to the call to kingship and to election for it, and it occurs in an inscription of the sixth century BCE, that is, in the time the book proposes for ʿĪsā (peace be upon him). Nabonidus himself opened his speech with a formula that brings this meaning close: “I am Nabonidus, an only son with no one, kingship was not in my heart; Sîn called me king.” What interests us in this, as we compare the language of charge, is that calling and sonship came together in one utterance.

These formulae show that the word “son” carried in the royal religious language the sense of election and charge. When the word passed into another tongue and entered new philosophical terms, it could turn into a statement about nature and substance. This transformation at the level of the word is what we trace in the history of doctrine; the Ḥarrān stele helps us in it as a witness about nine centuries older than Nicaea, and we then return to the fitna connected with sonship in the chapter on Sūrat al-Kahf. This comparison does not say that the expression passed from this very inscription into a Gospel text, for we have no support for that in our hands.

The source of the three is a single text: the Ḥarrān stele H2 (Nabonidus 47, text Q005444) in the RIBo project of ORACC, edited by Weiershäuser and Novotny in RINBE 2, based on the edition of Schaudig in AOAT 256, under a free open licence.

Nabonidus the Excavator: What He Found under Sippar, and Why It Concerns Us

When Nabonidus restored an old temple, he would look for its first foundations, and this is among the best known of his acts. His cylinder, discovered at Sippar, records that he found inscriptions of Naram-Sîn and Shagarakti-Shuriash, and it estimates the spans of time that separate them from him. Here is a king who turns to the past to recover its building and revive the memory of its owners. This lies at the heart of the image of the Masīḥ as the book reads it: an heir to a prior heritage, who seeks to recover it and to revive its meaning. (The Nabonidus cylinder, British Museum, 1882,0714.1025.)

The name Naram-Sîn means “beloved of Sîn.” His inscriptions, among them the Bassetki inscription, indicate that he was granted divine status in Akkad, and that the divine sign was written with his name. We ask again what that status meant: was it a claim on his part to be independent of the god, or a consecration and representation of the sacred authority? The book takes the second view, because his very name proclaims him beloved of Sîn, and because in the Bassetki inscription the people of his city asked the gods of the land to make him the god of their city. The status was granted to him from above; he did not claim it for himself, and the divine sign with his name is a sign of consecration and representation. So too the Hittites' expression for the king's death, that he “became a god”: we read it in its wording in its own text, and understand it in its context as a passing to the side of the god, as in our phrase “went to God.”

Mesopotamian memory kept differing images of Naram-Sîn: he is a king in his inscriptions, and a literary figure in “the Curse of Akkad” and in the literature of Cutha. This is an example of how later narrative reshapes the biography of a king. But to bring the inscription of Adad-guppi under the general name of the literature of the narû does not automatically make it an imagined story of the same kind, because the judgement on any report rests on its literary genre, the time of its text and its function.

ʿĪsā and the Inherited Relic

In the book al-Tījān fī Mulūk Ḥimyar there is a report about a chest (tābūt) whose keeping the community inherited, and it goes on to say that the chest reached ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) from Kaʿb ibn Luʾayy. This report makes ʿĪsā a recipient of a prior inheritance, a function worth attention. In al-Iklīl there is a parallel report about the bringing out of the chest and its keeping, but for the expression that names ʿĪsā and Kaʿb we refer here to al-Tījān. (al-Tījān, p. 217 in the edition displayed.)

If we set this report beside Nabonidus's search for the remains of his predecessors, a question wider than the likeness in illness and healing appears: do the reports preserve the memory of a man who recovered the heritage of the prophets and renewed the covenant with it? It remains to set the names of those who bore the relic, and the sequence of the report, against what the inscriptions name. The report does not say that the chest is Naram-Sîn's deposit, and the cylinder does not name Mūsā or Hārūn; what clearly joins the two materials is that both tell of the recovery of what predecessors left behind.

The Estimation of Times in the King's Inscription

The chronology accepted today puts the reign of Naram-Sîn at about 2254–2218 BCE and the reign of Nabonidus between 556 and 539 BCE, so that about seventeen centuries lie between them; Nabonidus himself estimated the distance at thirty-two centuries. This difference invites us to separate the report of the finding of the relic from the computation attached to it, and to consider each on its own.

How did the ancients compute times, and where did the king get his estimate? This is what the difference between the two figures raises. Deciding between the two dates comes back to the king-lists and documents on which each estimate was built.

That the king saw the relic is one matter; that he was right in computing the time that had passed over it is another. The description of the discovery may be sound while the estimate of its age is disputed. For that reason we set the sequence the report proposes against the documents, and each remains open to revision.

The spans may be inflated because the reckoner places contemporary dynasties one after another, or because he takes over inherited figures, or because he wishes to magnify the antiquity of the temple. These are all possibilities that help us understand the computation, but to say that one of them is the cause in this inscription depends on its list and its sources.

The Thread of Zakariyyā: Chronological Triangulation

The book proposes that the Zakariyyā of the Qurʾān is the author of the book that bears his name, and it reads Maryam in the Aaronid lineage. This identification is of this book's construction, and the exegetes have not agreed on it. The opening of the Book of Zechariah dates his visions to the second year of Darius, that is, about 520 BCE, so the text comes later than the end of Nabonidus's reign in 539 BCE; but that date does not show when the life of its author began.

The openings of the books help us to order the reports in time. The Book of Zechariah begins by tracing its author to Berechiah son of Iddo, and dates his speech to the second year of Darius (1:1); Ezra shortens the ascription to Iddo (5:1), and Nehemiah mentions Iddo and Zechariah among the priestly houses (12:4, 16). Between the end of Nabonidus's reign in 539 and the beginning of the dated visions in 520 lie nineteen years, while the guardianship of his mother takes us back to a generation older than the beginning of his reign. So we read the history of the family in its layers: the time of the mother, then the time of the guardianship, then the time of the visions, and in each layer we ask whom it speaks of. This is clearer than loading the whole life of Zakariyyā onto the date of the first vision recorded in his name.

The Akitu: The Priest's Slap and ﴿ابْعَثْ لَنَا مَلِكًا﴾ (ibʿath lanā malikan) (“Send us a king”)

Whenever the chronicle of Nabonidus mentions his absence from Babylon, it mentions with it that the Akitu festival was not held. It describes its suspension with the word baṭil, which we compare with the Arabic bāṭil and the root b-ṭ-l. But the report matters more than the word, because it shows that the holding of the rite was tied to the king's presence.

In the Akitu ceremonies the king renewed every year his connection with the sacred and his legitimacy. The high priest of Marduk stripped him of the insignia of rule, the sceptre, the ring, the mace and the crown, then slapped him and dragged him by the ears until he knelt before the god. The king declared that he was innocent of sin, that he had not neglected his deity and had not ruined Babylon; then the insignia were returned to him and he was slapped a second time, and if tears came to his eyes they were counted a sign of approval. From these ceremonies we learn how large a part the priesthood played in confirming the king every year.

When Nabonidus was away for about ten years, this renewal lapsed, and yet he remained king. He was able to administer his authority from outside Babylon, while the rite in which the priests mediate to confirm him fell silent. We read his choice to live far from Babylon in terms of the mission for which he saw that he had gone out, and of what that indicates about the ordering of authorities in his view.

Beside this relation we set the report of the Children of Israel in Sūrat al-Baqara: ﴿أَلَمْ تَرَ إِلَى الْمَلَإِ مِن بَنِي إِسْرَائِيلَ مِن بَعْدِ مُوسَىٰ إِذْ قَالُوا لِنَبِيٍّ لَّهُمُ ابْعَثْ لَنَا مَلِكًا نُّقَاتِلْ فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ﴾ (a-lam tara ilā l-malaʾi min banī isrāʾīla min baʿdi mūsā idh qālū li-nabiyyin lahumu bʿath lanā malikan nuqātil fī sabīli llāh) (“Have you not considered the assembly of the Children of Israel after Mūsā, when they said to a prophet of theirs, ‘Send us a king, and we will fight in the way of God’,” al-Baqara 2:246). The people ask the prophet for a king, and then his answer comes to them: ﴿إِنَّ اللَّهَ قَدْ بَعَثَ لَكُمْ طَالُوتَ مَلِكًا﴾ (inna llāha qad baʿatha lakum ṭālūta malikan) (“Indeed God has sent you Ṭālūt as king,” al-Baqara 2:247); they object, and he explains to them why he was chosen. In this report too the political office draws its support from a sacred source, and it is the prophet who announces its holder.

This comparison explains for us one aspect of Nabonidus's conflict with the priests of Marduk. The dispute touches doctrine, and it touches another question as well: who has the power to grant legitimacy and to interpret the sacred will? For that reason we read the satire against the king as coming from a rivalry between the holders of the two offices, and we weigh the interests of the narrators before we take their descriptions as a report on his mental health.

The King and the Prophet

The reader may ask: how can kingship and prophethood be joined in one man? The answer lies in the reports of Dāwūd and Sulaymān (peace be upon them both), for each of them combined rule with revelation. The crown and the message are joined in the ancient Semitic conception, and each has its own work in the life of its bearer. It is in this way that we read Nabonidus, joining his religious attribute to his political authority.

In the generation of Nabonidus himself, the book of Isaiah, in chapters that scholars date to the late Babylonian exile, put the title of Messiah on a king who was not of the Children of Israel: “Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to tread down nations before him” (Isaiah 45:1), and in Hebrew לִמְשִׁיחוֹ (limšîḥô), “to his anointed.” Before this it calls him “my shepherd” (44:28), and after it says to him: “I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me” (45:4). The word “surnamed” is in Hebrew אֲכַנְּךָ (ʾăkannekā), from the root from which Arabic takes the kunya.

In the idiom of the sixth century BCE, then, the Messiah is an attribute and a function that God places on a king he chooses for a purpose he intends, and the name by which God names him is a kunya and a title that describe their bearer; this is the rule by which we read the names of the prophets in Chapter 2. In the same idiom we read in Babylon, in the same century, of an anointed prophet-king. But it was Cyrus who ended the reign of Nabonidus, so from the text we take only the meaning of the title.

Here we must ask: who wrote the reports of Nabonidus, and for what purpose? The man resisted a priestly institution with real authority, and the literature of his adversaries preserved of him the image of a disturbed man, hostile to the gods. We, for our part, read his actions as a movement of reform directed to exalting the Most High, and we set the record in which he interprets his mission beside the record that lampoons him; from this comparison we follow what power did to his image as it reached later generations.

Nabonidus and Taymāʾ: The First Layer of the Confusion

On the correspondence we propose, the hostility of the priests of Babylon is the first layer of confusion surrounding ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) himself. Nabonidus lived at Taymāʾ for about a decade and went on interpreting his mission in religious terms, yet he appeared in the accounts of his adversaries as a king who fled his duty and was unsettled in judgement. Behind this description we read a struggle with a reformer who exalted the Most High God above Marduk, and so the image of the man drifted apart in memory from the meaning his work carried.

After some centuries we see another layer of transformation. The reports of this teacher passed into the biography of Jesus of Nazareth in the first century CE, the two images were joined under the title of the Masīḥ, and Pauline and Nicene theology then interpreted them through the image of the incarnate Son. The Babylonian narrative distorted the man and the later narrative deified him, and each in its own way distanced the reader from the origin: the monotheist prophet whose name and the meaning of whose message the Qurʾān preserved.

The biography travelled from Taymāʾ to the communities that narrated the reports of the Masīḥ, and its image changed on the way. “Masīḥ” and “Masīkh” are two titles for this difference; what carried it from place to place was the journey, the teaching and the narration, and then the authority of doctrine. The traces of Nabonidus have remained; what was veiled, in our view, is that he should be known as prophet and king from the biography of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him).

Six Proofs of the Proposed Chronological Framework (the Sixth Century BCE)

We now gather what pertains to dating in six heads. The claim that ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) lived about six centuries before the customary dating requires that the reader see its sources and how they connect, and know what each witness contributes to its construction:

(1) Zakariyyā: in the Book and in the Qurʾān there is a priestly house and a message, with the chronological gap we explained. This correspondence is a witness to be added to the other witnesses; it does not stand alone as proof.

(2) The Prayer of Nabonidus 4Q242: its Aramaic fragments, from Qumran Cave 4, preserve the story of the king who fell ill in Taymāʾ, and of a man of the Children of Israel, from the community of the exiles, who attended him, so that forgiveness was joined to his healing. The story is attributed to the age of Nabonidus in the sixth century BCE, though the manuscript is later than him, and it gathers for us the time, the place and the religious environment that we propose for ʿĪsā (peace be upon him). We assign the roles as follows: ʿĪsā is the king who was healed, and the man whose name is not given is Yaḥyā. Healing and forgiveness are the subject of the comparison with the religious function in the traditions of the Masīḥ, while the distinction between the two persons is kept.

(3) Among the linguistic witnesses is the Safaitic inscription in which al-Jallād and al-Manāṣir studied the form ʿsy in the context of the name of the Masīḥ before Islam. It bears witness that the name was in circulation in the north of the Peninsula before Islam, in an area whose routes connect with Taymāʾ. We read this form together with what we presented earlier in connecting the name with living and life, and with ʿays and whiteness. The inscription's place in the argument is that it bears witness to the form and its circulation; it does not bear witness to dating.

(4) The interval between messengers: the Qurʾān says that the Messenger came after an interval (fatra), and we read this together with what we propose about the length of the distance between ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) and the final mission. The word describes a break and does not fix a number of years; it illuminates the period, while its duration is determined by the other evidence. In Chapter 24 we shall return to the difference between the break in the presence of the message and the survival of the traces of its teaching.

We see that the teaching of the Masīḥ remained, throughout this distance, in communities and ways, that some of his biographies passed to other tongues, and that some blended with the biography of Jesus. The world in the time of the break was not empty of believers or of wisdom; it was the origin that was veiled, and the ways of knowing it that were dispersed. Then the final message came to correct the relation with God and to restore the perfection of the human being to guidance and character.

(5) Environment: the palm tree, the miḥrāb, the religious family and the names of persons all point to the Semitic space extending between the two rivers, the north of the Peninsula and the Levant. But palm trees are known outside the Ḥijāz too, so we determine the geography by the conjunction of reports and inscriptions, and at its heart is the presence of Nabonidus in Taymāʾ.

(6) Maturity (kahl): the Qurʾān promises Maryam in the annunciation that her son will speak to people in two states, saying ﴿وَيُكَلِّمُ ٱلنَّاسَ فِى ٱلْمَهْدِ وَكَهْلًۭا وَمِنَ ٱلصَّٰلِحِينَ﴾ (wa-yukallimu n-nāsa fī l-mahdi wa-kahlan wa-mina ṣ-ṣāliḥīn) (“and he will speak to the people in the cradle and in maturity, and he is of the righteous,” Āl ʿImrān 3:46), and then it reminds ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) of this in the enumeration of its favours to him: ﴿تُكَلِّمُ ٱلنَّاسَ فِى ٱلْمَهْدِ وَكَهْلًۭا﴾ (tukallimu n-nāsa fī l-mahdi wa-kahlan) (“you speak to the people in the cradle and in maturity,” al-Māʾida 5:110). In the dictionaries the kahl is a man who has passed youth and not entered old age. Ibn Manẓūr opens the entry in Lisān al-ʿArab with the words: “The kahl: the man when grey hair has begun to streak him and you see in him a venerable bearing (bajāla).” Al-Jawharī in al-Ṣiḥāḥ defines him as “one who has passed thirty and been streaked with grey,” Ibn al-Athīr as “one who exceeds thirty years up to forty,” and others extend the limit to fifty. Al-Naḥḥās said, as al-Qurṭubī relates: “The kahl among the people of the language is only one who is approaching forty.” The two verses, then, promise an age in which grey hair mingles on the head of ʿĪsā, and in which he speaks to people after his years are complete; and the promise of maturity came coupled with the cradle in a single annunciation.

The tradition put the commentators in difficulty at this promise. It was settled among them that ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) was raised as a young man, and al-Baghawī wrote that he was raised “when he was thirty-three years old,” and al-Rāzī put the question openly in Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb: “It is transmitted that the age of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, until he was raised was thirty-three years and six months, and on this reckoning he had not reached maturity.” He answered in two ways: that the sense of kahl is wide enough to cover one between thirty and forty, or that the promise is deferred to the end of time, which is the view of al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Faḍl al-Bajalī (d. 282 AH) as he transmits it: “that what is meant by his words ‘and in maturity’ is that he will be mature after he descends from heaven at the end of time, and speaks to people, and kills the Dajjāl.” Al-Baghawī gave it in brief: “‘and in maturity’: after his descent from heaven,” and al-Ṭabarī transmitted before both from Ibn Zayd: “ʿĪsā spoke to them in the cradle, and he will speak to them when he kills the Dajjāl, and he will then be mature.” We read in this solution a trace of the joining of two men in one life: a short age that came from the report of Jesus, and a Qurʾānic description of maturity that carries the life of a man who lived long. When the age that was transmitted could not be made to fit the description, the commentators moved the description to a time that has not yet come.

The Gospels themselves place Jesus on the threshold of maturity when he began: “And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age” (Luke 3:23), and then make his ministry short, in which John mentions no more than three Passovers (John 2:13; 6:4; 11:55). Nabonidus, for his part, lived the whole of his maturity speaking among people before he reigned. His mother Adad-guppi says in her stele that she placed her son in the service of Nebuchadnezzar and Neriglissar, and that he served them night and day, and she herself lived a hundred and four years. Beaulieu states in The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon (1989) that he was born no later than about 615 BCE, and perhaps before it; he became king in 556 BCE at about sixty or above, lived in Taymāʾ after sixty, and remained on the throne until Cyrus took Babylon in 539 BCE. The man in whom we read ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) therefore reached maturity and spoke in it, serving kings and then reigning as a king with a call, and ﴿وَكَهْلًۭا﴾ (wa-kahlan) (“and in maturity”) applies to him in its plain sense. Muhammad Mustafa Mansur observed that this word does not fit an age that ends at thirty-three.

From these threads together the book's reading of the sixth century BCE is formed. The record of Nabonidus fixes the time of the king whom we propose to be ʿĪsā (peace be upon him), and the remaining materials illuminate his family, his environment and what remains of him in memory. Each thread has its own function, and the chronological assumption itself we submit to everything we gather and compare with it, so that it is not a witness to itself.

We have benefited from Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Mansur in reaching reports, names and readings, among them the report of the chest mentioned above. His interest in the earlier ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) meets our question and widens the field of comparison, but it does not make his dating the dating of Nabonidus. We take each report back to its source, and read it within the structure that its material imposes.

The Chronological Anchor: An Explicit Declaration of the Framework of This Book

This book rests on a framework of time and place: its time is the sixth century BCE, and its place Babylon, Ḥarrān, Taymāʾ and the oases connected with it. Within this framework we identify ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) with Nabonidus and Maryam with his mother, and then trace the reports that were scattered afterwards in later traditions. It does not follow that every community that crossed the oases was in the company of the king himself; what we mean are the links by which memory passed between these places.

When we say “ʿĪsā” in this book, what is meant is the prophet-king whose report we read in the record of Nabonidus, and when we say “Jesus,” what is meant is the later righteous man to whom reports of that biography were attributed. Between this man and the theology that took shape in his name there is a distance that the book investigates. On this distinction we enter Taymāʾ, the place where the name, the trace and the report can come together in a single scene.

At the close of the chapter we return to the three layers we distinguished in the Introduction: the Children of Israel, the revealed law, and Judaism as a historical movement. When we place ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) in the horizon of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, we place him in the inheritance of the people and its law, more than three centuries before the crystallisation of the movement we linked to the Hasmonean period. His belonging to the Children of Israel remains preserved, and we read his time according to the framework we propose. In Appendix 9 we set out the archaeological evidence from which we benefit in distinguishing the history of the inheritance from the history of its later institutions.

Chapter 6: Taymāʾ, the Oasis That Knows More Than It Says

The name Taymāʾ occurs in the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Isaiah, in a call that the prophet addresses to the people of the oasis: “Inhabitants of the land of Taymāʾ, meet the fugitive with his bread, for they have fled from before the swords.” The report is attributed to the eighth century BCE, and it pictures people driven from their homes by war, and then asks that water and food be provided for them in Taymāʾ. Why did the text choose this oasis for such a call? We read in its choice evidence of its place on the desert routes, and that people knew it as a refuge to which one flees and a destination to which one journeys. There is also in the verb wāfū (“meet”) a sense of readiness: the people of Taymāʾ are called to go out to the fugitive and help him. So the oasis in the text is part of the life of people and of the ties between them, alongside its importance in trade.

It is fitting to read this call in its oracle as a whole (Isaiah 21:11–17), because the names in it follow one another in an order that has a meaning. The oracle begins with Dumah: “The oracle concerning Dumah: one calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night?” Then it passes to “The oracle concerning Arabia: in the forest in Arabia shall ye lodge, O ye travelling companies of Dedanim,” and then comes the call to the people of “the land of Tema” that we presented, and the oracle closes with Kedar: “within a year, according to the years of an hireling, and all the glory of Kedar shall fail.” Dumah, which is Adummatu in the Assyrian annals and Dumat al-Jandal today, then Dedan, then Taymāʾ, then Kedar, the tribes of the steppe that extend between these places: these are names that a single oracle gathers, and that follow one another in it along one road. And these are the very lands of Nabonidus. The Ḥarrān stele opens the list of the places where he stayed with Taymāʾ and Dedan, and the Nabonidus Chronicle (ABC 7) mentions that in his third year, 553 BCE, his army descended on a land whose name stands in a damaged line and which the editors have completed and read as “Edom”; and Seir, from which the watchman of Dumah cries out, is the name of the mountains of Edom in the Old Testament. Jeremiah gathers these same oases in his report of the cup of wrath: “And Dedan, and Tema, and Buz, and all those with hair clipped round” (Jeremiah 25:23). Mansur cited this chapter, whereas we read it in the record of the king.

The same chapter opens with the vision of the fall of Babylon: “Go up, O Elam: besiege, O Media” (Isaiah 21:2), and goes on to say: “Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground” (Isaiah 21:9). Anshan, the first kingdom of Cyrus, lay in Elam; Media Cyrus annexed to his realm when the troops of Astyages handed their king over to him, as the Nabonidus Chronicle relates, and with these two armies he took Babylon from Nabonidus in 539 BCE. The chapter places the fallen capital and the oases of the Arabs in successive visions, and these are the two ends of the reign of Nabonidus: Babylon, which fell at the end of his rule, and the oases in which he stayed for ten years. So we read in this juxtaposition a prophetic memory that preserved his reign in Babylon and in Taymāʾ together, and gathered it into a book attributed to a time older than his.

Then we set the name Taymāʾ beside the Arabic root t-y-m, from which come tatayyum, mutayyam and Taym Allāh, a root that turns on the senses of abasement, submission and worship. So we read the name as a description of a place where one withdraws for worship, a sense that agrees with the picture of the oasis in the desert and with the religious life that its reports and inscriptions point to.

One Geographical Line

Let us now place Taymāʾ on its wider map. The documents mention Nabonidus as a king of Babylon who stayed in Taymāʾ, and the Prayer of Nabonidus (4Q242), preserved at Qumran, tells of a man of the Children of Israel who was bound up with the king’s affliction and healing. To the north lies Ḥarrān, with the Semitic heritage that its Sabian community preserved; and in the lava field of the Levant (ḥarrat al-Shām) and the Ḥawrān was found the Safaitic inscription in which ʿsy was read. All these places are connected by routes that stretch from Iraq across the Syrian steppe to the Ḥijāz, which merchants, herders and devotees used to travel. On these routes we read what may connect the reports of the wandering teacher, which we presented in Chapter 4, with the record of Nabonidus.

G. R. S. Mead raised the question of dating in 1903 CE, in a book he called Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.?, drawing in it on Gnostic and early Christian texts. His work did not gain wide acceptance in mainstream scholarship, and scholars debated its sources, its instruments and the conclusions he drew from them. We mention him here only because he is one of the scholars who brought the question of the time and place of the Masīḥ back into discussion. The framework of this book, however, rests on the comparison that we ourselves conduct, and Mead’s work remains a chapter in the history of the question.

Nebuchadnezzar in the Peninsula

Accounts of a Babylonian presence in the Peninsula reach back to a time before Nabonidus. Al-Ṭabarī relates in his History of the Prophets and Kings (Tārīkh al-Rusul wa-l-Mulūk) that Nebuchadnezzar II launched campaigns against Taymāʾ, Dedan and other places, and Ibn al-Kalbī preserves in The Idols (al-Aṣnām) reports connected with this presence. Jeremiah 25:23–24 mentions “Dedan, and Tema, and Buz, and all those with hair clipped round, and all the kings of the Arabs, and all the kings of the mixed peoples who dwell in the wilderness” in the context of the cup of wrath connected with Nebuchadnezzar. We read these materials together with the report of his campaign in 599/598 BCE, that is, about half a century before Nabonidus’s residence. So when Nabonidus chose Taymāʾ, his choice was a link in older ties between Babylon and the Peninsula, for military and administrative activity in the oases had preceded his stay there.

The Triple Corridor: Taymāʾ, Khaybar, Yathrib

The routes of the north of the Peninsula link Taymāʾ with Khaybar and Yathrib, and the king himself names these stations in the Ḥarrān stele: Taymāʾ, Dedan, Fadak, Khaybar, Yadiʿ and Yathrib, and says that he moved among them for ten years. In these very oases the Arabs knew groups of the Children of Israel on the eve of the Prophet’s mission, so that five of his six stations became their homelands. We therefore read this geographical strip as a single route that carried knowledge from Babylon to Yathrib, though each place on it has its own evidence and its own period.

This presence has support in the same references. The Encyclopaedia Britannica records that Nabonidus organised an Arab province in Taymāʾ, drawing on mercenary troops from Judah (Jewish mercenaries). The Encyclopaedia Judaica (entry Tayma) records that his inscription reporting the building of his house in Taymāʾ gave rise to the view that some of the exiles of Judah in Babylon settled there with him, and the Prayer of Nabonidus, found among the Qumran manuscripts, then came to support this view. We read the communities that inhabited the oases down to the Prophet’s mission as an extension of those who accompanied the king there, and with them there remained the environment that carried memory: the oasis, the road, the devout communities, and what linked them with Mesopotamia. In this environment we trace the transmission of the report of the Masīḥ. As for the first Arabic translation of the Bible, no dated manuscript of it has reached us that is ascribed to Taymāʾ.

The symbols of light and the titles of the deity in Taymāʾ and in the Safaitic inscriptions open a wide door to comparison with the language of the Qurʾān. To them we may add what we know of communities devoted to knowledge and worship, such as the Therapeutae whom Philo described in Egypt, whose name combines the sense of service with the sense of healing, according to the derivation he discusses. In these communities we see a route that joined purification of the soul to knowledge and healing, and it is the same route that we read in the companionship of Yaḥyā with ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) in the report of Taymāʾ. The link between the two is a link of route and method, and does not mean descent from any particular community.

The name Yathrib deserves to be read in its ancient forms, among them its form in the inscriptions of Nabonidus, which is among the oldest mentions of the city that have reached us. The first sound of the name is carried over differently in different languages, and in this difference there is material for comparison that helps us understand names as they pass from one tongue to another. By such a comparison we read the link between the names of the Essenes and the ʿĪsawīs in its religious and linguistic context together. Then comes the name Yathrib, the city the king reached and which became the city of the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), a circumstantial indication that accompanies this link and strengthens it, though every phonetic shift in it is weighed against its evidence.

The Daughters of al-Najjār and the Song of the Full Moon: Yathrib Receives the Caller

Yathrib is, in the inscription of Nabonidus, the last station of his Arabian journey: “as far as Yathrib; for ten years I moved about among them.” So the city knew the king in whom we read ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, some twelve centuries before it knew the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam). Then the king returned to Babylon, and his call remained in the oases where he had stayed. The Encyclopaedia Britannica states that he organised his Arabian province with the help of hired troops from among the Jews, and so the oases from Taymāʾ to Yathrib were connected with communities of the Children of Israel who carried that era with them. It is on this memory that we read the scene of the reception at the Hijra.

Ibn Mājah (1899) relates from Anas that the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) passed by a part of Medina, and there were girls of the Banū al-Najjār beating tambourines and saying: “We are girls of the Banū al-Najjār; how fine that Muḥammad is a neighbour!”, and al-ʿIrāqī graded it sound. The daughters of al-Najjār are a group with a song of its own, with which it receives whoever comes to it. The Banū al-Najjār were the maternal uncles of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, the grandfather of the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), and in their land his she-camel knelt, and he alighted at the house of one of them, Abū Ayyūb al-Anṣārī.

The report also preserves a second song: “The full moon has risen over us from the passes of al-Wadāʿ; thanks is due from us as long as one calls to God.” Al-Bayhaqī relates it in Dalāʾil al-nubuwwa from Ibn ʿĀʾisha, and its chain is broken (muʿḍal) according to al-ʿIrāqī and Ibn Ḥajar. Ibn al-Qayyim mentioned in Zād al-maʿād that the passes of al-Wadāʿ lie on the side of Syria, so the song greets one who comes from the north, from the direction of Taymāʾ and Babylon, which is the direction of Nabonidus’s own journey. And the full moon (al-badr) is a moon, and the moon is the sign of al-ʿAlī, whom Nabonidus worshipped under the name Sîn, and for whom he restored His house Ehulhul in Ḥarrān, whose name we have already read as the house of the crescent and of the acclamation (tahlīl). The song greets the one who comes with the sign of al-ʿAlī in the sky. The phrase “as long as one calls to God” makes the joy renew with every caller who comes, and for that reason we read the song as an older memory among the people of the reception, renewed when the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) came to them calling to God.

The tribe’s very name carries an allusion. For al-najjār (the carpenter) in Arabic is a word of Aramaic origin, and in Syriac it is ܢܓܪܐ (naggārā), the word with which the Gospels describe Jesus: “Is not this the carpenter?” (Mark 6:3), and “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” (Matthew 13:55). In the Talmud the scholar who solves the difficult question is called “a carpenter, son of a carpenter” (Avodah Zarah 50b). As for the ancestor of the tribe, Taym al-Lāt ibn Thaʿlaba, he was named al-Najjār, according to what Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr transmitted from Ibn Sīrīn, because “he circumcised himself with an adze”; the adze is the carpenter’s tool, and with it Ibrāhīm, peace be upon him, circumcised himself in the ḥadīth of al-Bukhārī (3356) and Muslim (2370). So we read “the Banū al-Najjār” as the people of the master and his followers, that is, a community named after the founder of its way, as the “Society of Jesus” among the Jesuits was named after him centuries later.

Ancient Syriac Christianity knew a community of this kind, “the daughters of the covenant” ܒܢܬ ܩܝܡܐ (bnāt qyāmā): women who vowed chastity, poverty and service of the church, and who formed choirs singing hymns, and tradition attributes the organisation of their choirs to Ephrem the Syrian in the fourth century. On the model of their singing we read the girls of the Banū al-Najjār: daughters of a way, from the houses of their own people, singing for the coming of the caller who had been foretold. The Banū al-Najjār belong to the Khazraj, and the Aws and the Khazraj are the Anṣār who supported the call; in Chapter 7 we shall read their function on the pattern of the function of the disciples (ḥawāriyyūn), the helpers of God (anṣār Allāh). From these devout communities, each with its own way of worship, we set out in Chapter 18 to read them as earlier links in the line along which the Ṣūfī orders walked after them, the line of the sincere followers of the prophets.

The Valley of the Palm

﴿فأجاءها المخاض إلى جذع النخلة﴾ (fa-ajāʾahā l-makhāḍu ilā jidhʿi n-nakhla) (“and the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of the palm,” Maryam 19:23): the palm in the Qurʾānic scene is a tree by whose trunk Maryam holds, and from which the dates come to her. The name in it is definite, so one who searches for places that bear the name of the palm turns to this definiteness, and asks the geographical question, which we answer with Wādī Nakhla.

Wādī Nakhla is among the well-known places between Mecca and al-Ṭāʾif, and its occurrence in the reports carries weight in the comparison. But palm trees are not peculiar to the Ḥijāz; they are present also in Iraq, in the Levant and in other oases. Nabonidus reached Yathrib, as the text of his inscription at Ḥarrān states, and Mecca lies to its south on the same road, so his reaching it is not far-fetched. And the Qurʾān mentions the trunk of the palm with the definite article: ﴿فَأَجَآءَهَا ٱلْمَخَاضُ إِلَىٰ جِذْعِ ٱلنَّخْلَةِ﴾ (fa-ajāʾahā l-makhāḍu ilā jidhʿi n-nakhla) (“and the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of the palm,” Maryam 19:23), as though it were a palm known to the hearers, and Wādī Nakhla lies on the Iraq road from Mecca. For this reason we read in the valley a Ḥijāzī layer of the story of the birth, alongside the report that was written in Iraq. This is one aspect we offer; there may be another, and both are admissible in the reading of this book.

The ḥadīth of the Night Journey brings the image of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) closer to this same valley. Muslim related in his Ṣaḥīḥ (Book of Faith, chapter of the Night Journey, no. 167) from Jābir that the Messenger of God ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) said: “The prophets were shown to me. Mūsā was a lean man (ḍarb min al-rijāl), as though he were of the men of Shanūʾa; and I saw ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, and the nearest of those I have seen to him in likeness was ʿUrwa ibn Masʿūd; and I saw Ibrāhīm, God’s blessings be upon him, and the nearest of those I have seen to him in likeness was your companion,” meaning himself. The three prophets are described in the ḥadīth by faces of the people of the Peninsula: Mūsā (peace be upon him) by men of Azd Shanūʾa, a clan of Yemen, Ibrāhīm by the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) himself, and ʿĪsā by a man of Thaqīf. Mansur cited this ḥadīth.

ʿUrwa ibn Masʿūd al-Thaqafī was one of the great men of al-Ṭāʾif; according to what al-Ṭabarī relates from Qatāda and Ibn Zayd, he is the “great man” of the people of al-Ṭāʾif in the words of God, exalted be He: ﴿لَوْلَا نُزِّلَ هَٰذَا ٱلْقُرْءَانُ عَلَىٰ رَجُلٍۢ مِّنَ ٱلْقَرْيَتَيْنِ عَظِيمٍ﴾ (law-lā nuzzila hādhā l-qurʾānu ʿalā rajulin mina l-qaryatayni ʿaẓīmin) (“Why was this Qurʾān not sent down upon some great man of the two towns?” al-Zukhruf 43:31). He became a Muslim after the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) left al-Ṭāʾif, and then went back to his people to call them, and they shot him with arrows and killed him. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr mentioned in al-Istīʿāb that “he was likened to the Masīḥ, peace be upon him, in his appearance.” Wādī Nakhla lies between Mecca and al-Ṭāʾif, and in it the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) stood to pray in the night as he was returning from al-Ṭāʾif, as we presented from the biography of Ibn Isḥāq. The man by whom the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) described ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) belongs to the people of the road on which we read the Ḥijāzī layer of the story of the birth, and in this prophetic description we see that ʿĪsā, in his form and features, was a man of the men of the Peninsula.

Suleiman A. Mourad, in his study of the origin of the palm-tree story (Oriens Christianus 86, 2002), held that the myth of Apollo’s birth by the trunk of a palm on Delos is the source of the palm story in both the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Qurʾān. But the Qurʾān names “the trunk of the palm” with the definite article, and names with it the stream, the ripe dates and the withdrawal to a distant place, so that it points to a site known to its hearers’ memory. We therefore read in it the memory of a place that has in Arabia a name, a valley and a road, and not a borrowed literary symbol.

The Islamic sources contain reports that meet at this region. We read each of them with its chain of transmission and its context, and we benefit from the points at which their details intersect, without assuming that the accounts are independent merely because the books that carried them have different titles.

The first of these reports is what Ibn al-Kalbī (d. 204 AH) relates in The Idols. He places the sanctuary of al-ʿUzzā in the hollow of Nakhla (baṭn Nakhla) and describes in it three samurāt, that is, acacia trees, which the narration ties to the female demon worshipped by Quraysh, Kināna and the people of Mecca. He fixes the place with the words: “Al-ʿUzzā was in a valley of Nakhla al-Shāmiyya called Ḥurāḍ, opposite al-Ghumayr, on the right of one going up from Mecca towards Iraq.” Then he relates that the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) sent Khālid ibn al-Walīd to cut down the samurāt and demolish the house. The account tells us of the religious standing of the valley among Quraysh, and of the pilgrimage, sacrifice and sacred reports that gathered in it before Islam.

The second report is in the Sīra of Ibn Isḥāq (d. 151 AH). He mentions that when the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) returned from al-Ṭāʾif he stood to pray by night at Baṭn Nakhla, that a band of the jinn heard his recitation, and that they then went back to their people as warners. He says: “When he was at Baṭn Nakhla he stood to pray in the night, and a band of the jinn of the people of Naṣībīn passed by him, and they listened to him.” The origin of this event is matched by the words of the Exalted, “And when We directed to you a company of the jinn, listening to the Qurʾān; and when they attended it, they said, ‘Be silent’” (al-Aḥqāf 46:29). Nakhla in the Sīra is a place where the message is received, and in the other reports it is a place with an older standing; when we put the two materials together we read in them a spiritual memory that continued in this valley.

The word “eastern” fixes a direction relative to the place of Maryam’s people, but it does not name that place. So whatever place is proposed, whether in Ḥarrān, in Iraq or in the north of the Peninsula, we set it on its own map and weigh it by what it explains of the report, because the direction is a clue that accompanies the place and is not a name that stands in for it.

The reports of the palm, the oases and the journey meet in drawing an environment close to the geography that this book presents. But they deal with different events, so each is read within its own event, and the three are not counted as testimonies to the same place of birth. Their benefit is that they open the horizon of the story onto what lies beyond the place in which people have been accustomed to confine it.

The Elevated Ground, of Stability and Flowing Water: The Verse Describes the Oasis

The Qurʾān describes the place where God gave refuge to ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) and his mother in these words: ﴿وَجَعَلْنَا ابْنَ مَرْيَمَ وَأُمَّهُ آيَةً وَآوَيْنَاهُمَا إِلَىٰ رَبْوَةٍ ذَاتِ قَرَارٍ وَمَعِينٍ﴾ (wa-jaʿalnā bna Maryama wa-ummahū āyatan wa-āwaynāhumā ilā rabwatin dhāti qarārin wa-maʿīn) (“and We made the son of Maryam and his mother a sign, and We gave them refuge on an elevated ground, of stability and flowing water,” al-Muʾminūn 23:50). The rabwa is raised ground, the qarār a place where one settles, and the maʿīn water that is visible and running. Ibn Kathīr gathered the opinions on where it was. Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salām and al-Ḥasan are reported to have said Damascus and its Ghūṭa; Abū Hurayra, al-Ramla; al-Ḍaḥḥāk and Qatāda, Jerusalem, and this last Ibn Kathīr preferred. All of these name a place that the verse describes without naming. They belong to the report of the sheltering of mother and son, and they do not fix the place of the birth. In modern times the Ahmadiyya community took the description to refer to Kashmir, and Kersten reported this view. Since the identifications differ so widely, it is clear that the verse describes the place by its attributes: raised ground, a settled abode, visible water. That is the description of an oasis in the wilderness, and so we read the rabwa within the range of the oases where Nabonidus stayed for ten years.

In the reading of this book Maryam is the mother of Nabonidus, and so the geography of mother and son falls into a single life story. Ḥarrān is the mother’s homeland, with the house of the Most High that she served, which the inscriptions call the temple of Sîn; Taymāʾ and the oases are where the son lived for ten years. Along this road we read the scenes of birth and of refuge, setting each scene in its place on it, until the sequence of the journey holds together.

The Cradle and the Beginning of Speech

Connected with this are the words of the Exalted ﴿فَنَادَاهَا مِنْ تَحْتِهَا أَلَّا تَحْزَنِي قَدْ جَعَلَ رَبُّكِ تَحْتَكِ سَرِيًّا﴾ (fa-nādāhā min taḥtihā allā taḥzanī qad jaʿala rabbuki taḥtaki sarīyā) (“Then he called her from beneath her, ‘Do not grieve; your Lord has placed beneath you a rivulet,’” Maryam 19:24). The exegetes disagreed about who the caller was: ʿĪsā (peace be upon him), speaking beneath his mother, or Jibrīl calling to her from the foot of the valley? Besides these two views there is a northern dialect reading, which ties the expression to the environment preserved in the Nabataean inscriptions, and whose meaning is weighed by what supports it in the language and by the order of the story.

As for the reading that makes “from beneath her” the name of a place, or makes “the cradle” a Nabataean word with another meaning, it needs a linguistic text to support it before anything is built on it. The Arabic scene remains clear in its direct sense: a voice reassures Maryam in her weakness, and then the child speaks and answers the accusation against her.

One form of the dialect reading takes “from beneath her” to mean “from her womb”, so that the call came in the midst of labour. With it is read ﴿قَدْ جَعَلَ رَبُّكِ تَحْتَكِ سَرِيًّا﴾ (qad jaʿala rabbuki taḥtaki sarīyā) (“your Lord has placed beneath you a rivulet,” Maryam 19:24). Sarī in Arabic is the small stream, but it is also used of a noble, generous man, and so this reading proposes that the word means the noble child she carried. We mention it here for what it gathers of the inward, the enclosed and the noble, though we keep it apart from the order of the report as the text states it plainly.

The Qurʾān does not say that ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) spoke before he was born. The cradle is mentioned in the context of the reference to him after she had come to her people carrying him. We stop at that limit in presenting the scene. What the speech shows is a divine election, apparent from the beginning, before the kingship, the journey and the trial.

This whole geography is a single field. It begins with the reports of the family and the king, and extends to the oases where Nabonidus’s presence is attested. To fix every Qurʾānic scene to a particular city is to follow the clues as far as they allow, and the road stays open for whatever may yet be discovered.

Fadak: The Missing Link

Fadak, which is Padakku in the Akkadian record, lies between Taymāʾ and Yathrib, about a hundred and eighty kilometres south of Taymāʾ and a hundred and forty north of Medina. Hausleiter and Schaudig published the wall inscription (the Ḥāʾiṭ inscription) in 2016 CE, and the Saudi Heritage Commission presented it again in 2021 CE. The inscription gives direct evidence that Nabonidus was present in the region that includes Taymāʾ, Dedan, Fadak, Khaybar, Yadiʿ and Yathrib during his Arabian stay of about a decade, between 553 and 543 BCE.

Fadak then entered the reports of early Islam, as one of the things the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) obtained without fighting. Next came the well-known dispute over the right of Fāṭima and the Ahl al-Bayt in it and over how its revenue should be used, and the narrations and juristic readings differ over gift, inheritance and fayʾ. What concerns us is that the oasis itself stayed at the heart of religious and political history. We are not here to settle that dispute in a passing phrase.

Fadak appears first in the list of oases connected with Nabonidus’s activity, then in the history of the groups of the Peninsula, and in the reports of fayʾ in the Prophetic period. These stations lie far apart in time, yet they make the oasis a place where we read the continuity of its inhabitants and of knowledge. Even so, we do not reduce the ruling on fayʾ to ordinary personal property: the sources give it its own rulings, its channels of expenditure and its well-known disagreement.

The Excavations: What the Earth Brought Forth

The work of the Saudi-German mission at Taymāʾ has brought to light inscriptions and material evidence for Nabonidus’s residence and activity in the oasis. The project’s publications, among them the second volume of the Taymāʾ studies, gather the cuneiform material together with the contexts in which it was found. To this is added the king’s inscription at al-Ḥāʾiṭ, another site, which should be kept distinct from the excavations at Taymāʾ. This evidence shows a king who governs, builds and worships. His Arabian decade, then, cannot be reduced to the image of madness made famous by a later literary narrative, just as it is wrong to assign every building in the oasis to his reign.

4Q242: The Joint That Connects Everything

The Prayer of Nabonidus relates that the king fell ill in Taymāʾ for seven years, and it mentions a man of the sons of Judah who played a part in understanding the religious experience. The prayer has reached us in fragments, the editors differ over the restoration of some passages, and the man’s name is missing from what remains. We read his role as a trace of the story of Yaḥyā with ʿĪsā (peace be upon him), and we read the affliction and the healing as an aspect of the prophet-king’s journey to his Lord. In the Gospels Yaḥyā appears as a teacher and baptiser, and the baptism of ʿĪsā is joined with the appearance of the Spirit. If we set the two reports side by side, we find in them the features of one experience: a teacher from the Children of Israel, purification, and then a state brought to completion.

On this reading Nabonidus was not an unbelieving king who became a prophet after his illness. He was chosen, and then followed the path of knowledge and trial at the hands of a teacher, just as Ibrāhīm’s election did not prevent him from fulfilling the words with which his Lord tried him. The healing here completes a stage of upbringing, and one who has tasted mercy becomes a means of bringing it to others, in knowledge, in medicine and in guidance.

Why Does the King of Babylon Go to the Desert? An Assyrian Precedent Two Centuries Earlier

There remains the question of the residence itself: what moved the king of Babylon to live for ten years in oases far from his capital? His opponents made this absence a ground for attacking him. To understand his choice we must know the history of Mesopotamia’s relationship with these oases before his reign.

The Assyrian annals preserve evidence that takes this relationship back about two centuries. Among it:

• The queens of the Arabs in the annals, acknowledged and dealt with as states: Zabībe in the eighth century, then Šamsī, then Yatiʿ, then Teʾelhunu, priestess of Adummatu.
• Sennacherib raids Adummatu (Dūmat al-Jandal) between 691 and 689 BCE, defeating Queen Teʾelhunu and Ḥazāʾel, and carries the gods of the Arabs off to Babylon.
• Then Esarhaddon his son returns them, inscribed with his own hand: ʿAtarsamayin, ʿAtarquruma, Nuḫay and Ruldaiu; and he installs over the Arabs Tabūʿa, a woman raised in Sennacherib’s palace, as queen over them.

In these reports the Peninsula appears as a land of kingdoms, priestesses and temples. Mesopotamia had dealt with it since the eighth century BCE: it fought it at times and made treaties with it at others, restored its deities to it, and set rulers over it. Within this continuous history of politics and religious ties we place Nabonidus’s residence at Taymāʾ, and then read what he himself added to it.

This precedent explains something of the king’s standing there. Sennacherib and Esarhaddon had already entered the reports of the oases and of the queens of the Arabs, so when Nabonidus moved to them he followed routes and policies that the Mesopotamian state had known before. As for his own choice of Taymāʾ, in it we read politics, religion and conduct together.

(Source: the Assyrian annals as published in the critical editions of the inscriptions of Sennacherib and Esarhaddon; the names of the gods of the Arabs that were returned are given in Esarhaddon’s own text.)

The Line of Monotheism

In the reading of this book these oases are one of the roads by which a memory travelled, a memory kept in the prayer and in the reports of the Children of Israel. The road begins with a king whose residence there is documented in his own inscription, and with a religious narrative about his affliction and healing. It ends with communities of the Children of Israel who lived at the same stations down to the Prophet’s mission. Between the two ends lie links that we trace with their evidence, while the road itself is fixed in the inscription.

This comparison connects with what we set out about the Essenes (Essaioi) and the groups we read beside the Qumran documents. We saw that their name is tied to healing, and we presented our reading of the root ʿ-s-ā in the name of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him), and how the pharyngeal ʿayn remained in Arabic and Aramaic but dropped out of the Greek rendering. Forgiveness and healing, moreover, come together in 4Q242 as they do in Mark 2:5–11, where spiritual purification precedes the completion of bodily healing. The prayer, then, keeps the story in a time older than the time in which the Gospels place the act of Jesus, even though the date at which texts were written differs from the date of the events they describe. In all these elements we read a road along which teaching and report travelled.

Taymāʾ, then, is the place where the king’s life met the memory of healing. That meeting kept a portion of the original story of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) and Yaḥyā, and we shall go on to trace how its mark passed into the communities that came after. The man whose name has dropped out of the fragment we read as Yaḥyā, and the meaning of the experience for us is that the chosen one rises in knowledge and patience at the hands of his teacher.

From place we move to name: in what words did the communities preserve the mention of the bearer of the message, and how did names change when they crossed from one tongue to another? This is the subject of the next chapter.

The Road of the Oases: From Taymāʾ to Yathrib

The Ḥarrān inscription, which C. J. Gadd published in “The Harran Inscriptions of Nabonidus” and which then appeared in the more recent editions of the royal inscriptions, lists Taymāʾ, Dedan, Fadak, Khaybar, Yadiʿ and Yathrib in its report of the king’s residence in the land of the Arabs. This list carries a weight that verbal resemblance alone cannot give, because it ties the Babylonian record to known oases, and the king says in his own words that he moved among them for ten years. Here we must distinguish between the date at which the inscription was found and the date of its publication or re-announcement; each has its own place.

To the Ḥarrān stele we may add that the king’s name occurs in the Ancient North Arabian inscriptions in the form “nbnd mlk bbl”, that is, Nabonidus, king of Babylon, as Hani Hayajneh documented in PSAS 31 in 2001 CE. This is a local writing that preserved the name and the title, and it ties the king’s record to the land of the oases itself. We read it together with his other inscriptions as we trace his religious and political activity in this region.

Here we return to what we set out in Chapter 5. Khaybar, Fadak and Yathrib later appeared as homes of groups of the Children of Israel, known to the Arabs on the eve of the Prophet’s mission, and the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) lived beside some of them and conversed with them. We propose that these oases, which fall within the range of Nabonidus’s movement, carried a monotheistic heritage that continued through the ages. The road from Ḥarrān to Yathrib would then be a road of religious history too. It starts with the exaltation of Sîn, which we read as an exaltation of al-ʿAlī (the Most High), and ends with the expectation of guidance and the appearance of the message in Medina. The stations are firm in the evidence, and our reading follows the meaning that continued between them.

Chapter 7: Semitic Lexical Resemblances, When a Word Carries Civilisational Memory

Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Akkadian and Syriac share a broad system of triliteral roots. From k-t-b come kataba (“he wrote”), kitāb (“book”), kātib (“writer”), maktūb (“written”), maktaba (“library”) and kuttāb (“scribes”), and from q-t-l come qatl (“killing”), qatīl (“slain”), maqtal (“place of slaying”) and qitāl (“fighting”). We may find the same root in more than one tongue, with some of its sounds and patterns altered. This system is useful in this book because it lets us trace a meaning back beyond the form that a word finally took in a particular language.

We shall use this comparison on the names of persons and communities and on the terms of worship. With each word we begin with its sound and its meaning, and then ask what heritage it carried. Words can keep something of the history of the communities that used them, and so they join together what the narratives have scattered of those communities’ reports.

ʿĪsā, ʿĀʾisha and Ḥawwāʾ: Life as a Root That Crosses Names

We return first to the comparison we proposed in Chapter 2 between the name ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) and the field of ʿ-y-sh. The name ʿĀʾisha brings this meaning close to the Arabic reader, since it comes from ʿaysh, life, with the movement and action that go with it. We read the sīn of ʿĪsā as corresponding to the shīn of ʿaysh, as Semitic correspondences regularly allow, where forms come close and their sounds differ, as the Arabic shams, the Akkadian šamšu and the Hebrew šemesh lie side by side. So life is one aspect of our reading of the name ʿĪsā. It stands beside the whiteness and clarity in al-ʿīs with which Chapter 2 began, and other names share it.

ʿĀʾisha in Arabic is “she who lives”, and the name is a description before it becomes the mark of one particular woman. In the way we presented, we read ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) as meaning the Living One who gives life (al-ḥayy al-muḥyī). This is what we mean by descriptive names: people know who bears the name, yet his naming keeps a meaning tied to his life, to a prayer made for him, or to the task he performs. We read the names in the ancient Semitic texts in this same way.

The meaning of life is present in two names: that of the prophet who gives life by God’s permission, and that of the Mother of the Believers ʿĀʾisha, may God be pleased with her, who was close to the final Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam). This is an observation about names and their meanings, and we place it among the links between life and guidance that recur in the Semitic tongue.

We find this field older still in the name Ḥawwāʾ, חַוָּה (ḥawwāh), which is connected with the root ḥ-y-ā, signifying life, and the Genesis report itself explains it: “he named her Ḥawwāʾ because she was the mother of every living being” (Genesis 3:20). Before this naming the account uses אִשָּׁה (ishshāh), the Hebrew word for woman, in which the Arabic reader hears a closeness to the name ʿĀʾisha. But closeness in hearing is one thing and derivation another: ʿĀʾisha is from ʿ-y-sh, and ishshāh has a different origin. The sense of life in the report of Ḥawwāʾ, by contrast, is explicit, because the narrative itself explains her name by it.

Here are three names: Ḥawwāʾ, mother of the living; ʿĪsā (peace be upon him), who gives life to the dead by his Lord’s permission; and ʿĀʾisha, Mother of the Believers. They share a single semantic field, in which the Hebrew ḥ-y-ā lies beside the Arabic ḥ-y-y and ʿ-y-sh. In their coming together we read an aspect of the tie between prophethood and life, and the giving of life, while each name keeps its own root and history.

The East Says “ʿĪsā”: Two Channels That Do Not Mix

The names in the Gospels did not form in a Greek vacuum. The Gospels carried over Semitic names that had passed through different languages and systems of writing, and the Greek form of the name of Jesus is only one link in that transmission. “ʿĪsā” differs from it, and the difference points to an independent road that preserved the name in the East, the road we follow in the evidence that comes next.

The name of the Messiah travelled to the Far East by two roads, which sound alone tells apart. The first is Syriac, carried by the Church of the East; in it the name is Īshōʿ, with the ʿayn at its end. The Xi’an stele (781 CE) writes the Messiah 彌施訶 (Mishihe), rendering Syriac Mshīḥā, and the Sutra of Hearing the Messiah writes his name 移鼠 (Yishu), from Īshōʿ, and the Syrian Christians of Kerala say Īshō to this day. The second road is Qurʾānic, carried by Persian and Urdu into India; in it the name is ʿĪsā, with the ʿayn at its head. The Bhaviṣya Purāṇa has Īśā-masīha, that is, ʿĪsā al-Masīḥ, in a passage that scholars judge to have been written in the nineteenth century. Notovitch called him Issa in 1894, and in the same year Max Müller remarked on its likeness to the Arabic name ʿĪsā al-Masīḥ and on the influence of Islam in that land. Where the road was Islamic, the Qurʾānic form arrived; where it was the Church, the Syriac.

Among the nearer witnesses is Classical Mandaic, the tongue of the Nāṣorāyē in southern Mesopotamia. It writes the name of Jesus as ࡏࡔࡅ (ʿšu), that is, ʿ-sh-w, and pronounces it “Īšo”, placing the ʿayn at the head of the name, as in Macuch’s Mandaic lexicon (1965, p. 649). Here the ʿayn stands in a different place from the Syriac “Yešūʿ” and the Arabic “Yasūʿ”, and the order comes nearer to that of the Qurʾānic name. The name “Yešu” occurs in the Manichaean Turfan fragments in Henning, with the final ʿayn dropped. Arthur Jeffery, in The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān (1938), reports from Mingana the mention of a monastery called “al-ʿĪsāniyya” in the south of the Levant from 571 CE. When we add these materials to the Safaitic inscription ʿsy that we presented in Chapter 2, the examination of the Arabic form widens, and it is no longer confined to explaining it as a transformation of Yešūʿ carried out to match Mūsā.

Naṣārā and Anṣār: Who Gave the Name?

At this intersection we begin from the sense of nuṣra in Arabic: support, protection and standing with the call. The Hebrew root נצר (n-ṣ-r), by contrast, carries the sense of keeping and guarding, which comes close to nuṣra in some respects, though it does not translate everything derived from the Arabic root. In the title al-Naṣārā (the Christians) the community’s memory meets all these senses: support, preservation and consecration. This comparison shows itself most clearly in the answer of the disciples (ḥawāriyyūn) in the Qurʾān.

In Sūrat al-Ṣaff the question and the answer use the same word of support. ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) says to the disciples, “Who are my helpers (anṣārī) to God?”, and they say, “We are the helpers of God (anṣār Allāh)” (al-Ṣaff 61:14). Then we learn from the Sīra that the Aws and the Khazraj in Yathrib were called al-Anṣār because they sheltered the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) and supported his call. The meaning is one in the description of the two groups, though the time differs and so does the bearer of the message.

This invites us to reconsider the name al-Naṣārā. The common explanation links it with Nazareth, the town where the subject of the Gospel biography lived. We read the sense of support (nuṣra) as the original sense in the naming, alongside the sense of the vow (nadhr) that we set out in Chapter 8. Our evidence is that the Qurʾān gives “we are Naṣārā” as something a community says, and then weighs the actions and stances of those who bear the name by its meaning. In its beginning, then, the name described the supporters of the Masīḥ who held to his monotheism, and later it widened until it took in institutions that had changed his teaching.

Connected with this is the title of the disciples. The Arabic lexicons trace it to the root ḥ-w-r, which turns on whiteness, purity and returning, and from it comes the sense of clarity of intention and sincerity in giving aid. The Qurʾān calls the companions of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) ḥawāriyyūn and then reports their answer, “We are the helpers of God.” One community thus carries both attributes: it is sincere toward the bearer of the message, and it supports what he brought. The title, however, has another aspect, for it may also carry a connection to a place.

Take the word “the disciples” (al-ḥawāriyyūn). In it we bring together the name of the community and its attributes with the places that may have preserved its heritage, such as Ḥawrān, Ḥarrān and al-Ḥīra. A single title can hold both an attribution to a place and a religious meaning. Yet to fix the place we need evidence that ties the community to it, and a resemblance of letters is not enough.

Ḥawrān, Ḥarrān and al-Ḥīra are distinct places, but they lie on a single road along which memory travelled. The evidence allows three possibilities: the title of the disciples may preserve a trace of one of these environments, or the connection may be descriptive, or both may hold together. We read in it the combination of description and homeland, as we set it out in Chapter 12.

We see in this the continuity of the Islam brought by ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, in the Islam brought by Muḥammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam). The disciples were helpers in what they did, and the Anṣār took the place of the disciples in their own community, in aid and in fidelity. The Qurʾān closes the verse of al-Ṣaff, which began with the dialogue of ʿĪsā and his companions, with the words “So a party of the Children of Israel believed and a party disbelieved; then We supported those who believed against their enemy, and they became dominant” (al-Ṣaff 61:14). The message that believers support is one across the succession of prophets, and they are joined to its meaning however long the time between one community and another.

Kāffa and Kēfā: The Rock and Inclusiveness

Among the words we compare is kāffa (“altogether”), as in “Enter into peace altogether” (al-Baqara 2:208). Arabic traces it to the root k-f-f, which turns on gathering, encompassing and restraining, and from which come yakuff, kiffa, kāff and kāffa. In the verse it signals completeness in entering into peace, and in the comparison that follows we set this meaning beside the meanings of steadiness and togetherness.

The Aramaic word Kēfā (Kepha / Cephas) means rock, and carries the sense of steadiness and a firm strength that does not pass away. ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) gave this title to Simon, and in the Greek translation it became Petros (Petros = rock). Peter, or Kēfā, has a particular historical importance, for in the Ebionite memory and in the pseudo-Clementine literature he is among the disciples closest to the original monotheistic message that ʿĪsā brought, and this literature draws a deep doctrinal gap between him and Paul. The Ebionites and the Clementines regard Paul as an intruder upon the original movement who changed its meaning. This is an Ebionite-Clementine reading, distinct from the ecumenical reading of the churches, and this book calls it up because it is an early, effaced voice that deserves to be heard, not because it is a final historical verdict on the person of Paul.

The two words stand on a single skeleton of kāf and fāʾ. The root k-f-f has the sense of gathering and containing, and Kēfā the sense of steadiness, and when they meet they yield the sense of a community standing on a firm foundation. By this we understand the title of the disciple and his place in the community. Connected with it is the picture of Peter in the Ebionite narratives, which preserve, as was explained earlier, an objection to Paul and his authority.

Then we look at the Iraqi environment in which Kūfa arose in 17 AH (638 CE), close to al-Ḥīra, about three kilometres from it by the estimate given here. Al-Ḥīra was the capital of the Lakhmids and a centre of Syriac Christianity and of the monasteries that we present in Chapter 9, and the land of the Sawād had known Aramaic and Syriac for centuries before Islam. When the next generation came, Kūfa became a centre for the sciences of the Qurʾān, language, grammar and jurisprudence. In the connection between the two environments we read how words and knowledge passed from one to the other.

The lexicographers differed over the name of Kūfa. Some said it was the rounded sand-hill; others, the hillock on which the mosque was built; and it was also said to be so named because people gathered in it (takawwafa), that is, came together. It has also been proposed that the name is connected with the Aramaic kēfā, “rock”. We read the name in this last way, because it includes the ones before it. The skeleton is one, the meaning is a community gathered on a firm foundation, and the city is a city of reading and learning that arose beside an old Aramaic Christian centre, so that knowledge passed among generations that followed one another on the same land.

So the same letters meet in three words. “Kēfā” is the rock on which the Masīḥ said he would build his community, and in the Syriac Gospel it is a name for Peter and for the rock together (Matthew 16:18). “Al-Kūfa”, the linguists said, was so named because people gathered in it (takawwuf), that is, came together. And al-kāffa in Arabic is the community; in the Qurʾān we have ﴿وَمَآ أَرْسَلْنَٰكَ إِلَّا كَآفَّةًۭ لِّلنَّاسِ﴾ (wa-mā arsalnāka illā kāffatan li-n-nās) (“and We have not sent you except to all people together,” Saba 34:28). The vowels between the kāf and the fāʾ change from dialect to dialect and from age to age, but the skeleton remains, and its meaning with it: a community standing on a firm foundation. We see in these three words a thread joining the community of the Masīḥ to the message that came to all people, and Kūfa arose beside al-Ḥīra, which preserved Aramaic Christianity.

Bayt Laḥm and Lakhm: Two Names for Two Paths

We move to two names, one connected with the Gospel narrative and the other with Arab Christianity. The first is Bayt Laḥm (Bethlehem), the well-known city in Palestine, whose Hebrew name is explained as “house of bread” or food. It has been tied in the church narrative to the birth of Jesus, so the name became one of the best-known marks of the biography.

The second is Lakhm, the Arab tribe whose kings founded the state of al-Ḥīra and were known as the Lakhmids. We compare l-kh-m with l-ḥ-m according to our reading in Chapter 1, which posits an Arabic parent source, and on the basis of what we presented about ḥāʾ and khāʾ meeting in the Hebrew script while Arabic distinguishes them. In Arabic lakhm has the sense of penetrating and engagement, and in Hebrew laḥm the sense of bread. Behind the two forms there may be two distinct origins, with Arabic preserving the difference between them, or a single origin whose meaning branched out in the tongues; what we presented about Arabic and its sisters allows either possibility.

What concerns us in this comparison is that it brings together the name of the place of birth in the Palestinian narrative and the name of a tribe that had great influence on Arab Christianity. Does the closeness stop at the word, or does it belong to the history of a report that moved between two Christian fields? We examine this question in its connection with al-Ḥīra and with Semitic memory, and in what history adds to the linguistic comparison.

Nabonidus and Nabû: The Prophet Whom the God Raised

The king’s name Nabû-nāʾid is a nominal sentence, which the reference works translate “Nabû is glorified.” As we set out in Chapter 2, we read in it the sense of the announcer who is raised on high: Nabû corresponds to the root n-b-ʾ, the root of the report and the proclamation, and nāʾid comes from glorification and exaltation. The Qumran prayer, for its part, asks for the glorification of God, and this call meets the meaning of the name, so that the sense of prophecy and the sense of exaltation come together in the king’s name and in his report.

Nabû himself, however, was part of the official religious life of Babylon, so we cannot picture him outside the institution, set against Marduk. What marks Nabonidus out is the highest standing that he gave to Sîn in his inscriptions, and the struggle over authority and religious reference that accompanied his policy. What we read is a king who rearranged the centre of religion and so provoked an opposition that left its mark on the reports written about him. His reign ended when Cyrus entered Babylon in 539 BCE, an event we should keep distinct from the doctrinal judgments his opponents formulated.

Akkadian studies read the form Nabû-naʾid as meaning the magnifying or glorifying of Nabû. We read behind the form that has reached us a pronunciation and meaning nearer to the ancient Arabic tongue: “the revered prophet”. This is an Arabic reading of the name, and we set it beside its known Akkadian translation.

Ebion and the Poor: Poverty as a Doctrinal Virtue and the Forgotten Church of the Poor

The Hebrew word אביון (ʾevyōn), Abyon, means the poor and needy man, and from it we pass to the meaning of miskīn in Arabic, from s-k-n. What joins the two names in our reading is the brokenness and neediness before God that may accompany poverty, together with the giving up of pride and of clinging to what is in the hand. Poverty is a material need, but beside it there is a spiritual stance that a person takes toward himself and toward his Lord, and it is this spiritual side that runs on through the heritage of the prophets and their communities.

In the name of the Ebionites we see an expression of this religious choice of poverty. They were the groups that kept the Masīḥ as a human prophet, rejected his deification, and tied fidelity to his teaching to letting go of wealth and power. We connect the roots of this picture with the church of Jerusalem led by James the Just, known for his kinship with the subject of the Christian biography, and with what is called the Church of the Poor. In Acts 4:32 we read: “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common”, and in Acts 2:45: “And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.” Hegesippus, as Eusebius transmits him in the Ecclesiastical History 2:23, preserves a picture of James whose knees had grown hard like a camel’s from long prayer. James was killed in 62 CE in the conflict with the priests of Jerusalem. These reports keep a picture of austerity, service and devotion, which we read as part of the origin of the community and its heritage.

Paul’s own letters bear witness to the place of the poor in the community of Jerusalem. He collected aid for them from the communities of the Gentiles, as in 1 Corinthians 16:1, 2 Corinthians 8:1–4 and Romans 15:25–26, and his reports mention the ties of the churches of Corinth, Rome, Philippi and Macedonia with this aid. When he relates his meeting with James and Cephas, that is Peter, and John, and how they agreed to his mission to the Gentiles, he says: “Only they would that we should remember the poor; the same which I also was forward to do” (Galatians 2:10). We read this request as showing that poverty and care for the needy stood at the centre of the community’s identity, and this remained visible in Paul’s letters, despite the disagreements between him and the community that the book deals with.

This practice has a root in the teaching that the Gospels preserve. Luke gives “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God” (6:20), and Matthew gives “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (5:3). Scholars working on the source Q have seen Luke’s form as nearer to the Aramaic or Syriac original, and the addition of “in spirit” as widening the reception beyond the immediate social sense. Whatever one makes of the two forms, we read the Ebionite memory as holding to poverty both as work and as good news. Luke’s saying confirms this side: “Woe to you, O rich, for you have received your consolation” (6:24); so does the report of the rich young man, who was told “Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Mark 10:21). When he went away grieved, the comment followed: “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” (Mark 10:23). These sayings make a person’s relation to wealth part of religious conduct itself, and we see that the Ebionites kept this side of the teaching and lived by it.

The gap then widened between the picture of the poor community of Jerusalem and the picture of the church tied to the imperial court. When the centre of influence moved to Rome, and the years ran on from James to Constantine, wealth, estates, palaces and servants piled up among the men of the church, while the Gospel still held the saying “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). The objection came back, renewed from within Christianity. In the twelfth century Peter Waldo and his followers the Waldensians called for the sale of property and for evangelical poverty; they were condemned as heretics and pursued in the Alps. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Francis of Assisi left the inheritance of his merchant father and lived among the poor and the sick, and his movement then found a place in the monastic order with the approval of Innocent III. In the fourteenth century the dispute with the Spiritual Franciscans sharpened over the claim that the Masīḥ and his disciples owned nothing, until John XXII issued in 1323 the decree Cum inter nonnullos rejecting this teaching. In these movements we see a repeated return to the first image of poverty, and we see that the response to it ranged between suppression and absorption.

This history puts before us the question of fidelity to the image of the Masīḥ in teaching and in practice. Which of the two images is nearer to him: a community that lives in poverty as it understood it from the Gospel, or an institution tied to wealth and power? In the return of Waldo, Francis and the Spirituals to poverty we read evidence that this question has stayed alive in the conscience of Christianity itself. That is why the Ebionites matter in our book. We see them as among the groups nearest to the origin of the teaching, and the institution that overcame that teaching is the one that afterwards branded them as heretics. We want the Christian reader too to consider this heritage, and what the lives of communities say about the meaning of the message to which they belong.

The question reaches into our own age. In 1971 the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez published A Theology of Liberation, holding that the Gospel is understood from the side of the poor. Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador was assassinated on 24 March 1980 while celebrating Mass, after standing with the oppressed peasants. And Pope Francis said on 16 March 2013, days after his election: “Ah, how I would like a Church that is poor and for the poor!” The question carried by the first poor of Jerusalem is still alive in the conscience of Christianity itself.

The same meaning returns in Islam. Al-Tirmidhī (2352) and Ibn Mājah (4126) transmit the supplication “O God, let me live poor, let me die poor, and gather me among the poor”. The ḥadīth scholars differed over its grade: al-Tirmidhī called it gharīb, while al-Ḥākim and al-Albānī judged the supplication itself sound. The People of the Bench (ahl al-ṣuffa), poor men among the Emigrants, sheltered in the portico of the Prophet’s Mosque and so stood at the heart of the community. Poverty here is a station of the heart, not a want to be sought.

When the people of the spiritual path (ahl al-sulūk) speak of poverty, they may mean neediness toward God, and this is compatible with owning wealth and with holding the office of rule. For that reason the title “the poor” does not automatically stand over against the king, and not every ascetic title describes an economic condition. What is meant is the picture of the person who sees for himself no independence from his Lord.

Praise and the Glad Tidings: The Meaning of the Name

We now come to the meaning of praise (ḥamd) in the name and in the glad tidings, one of the discussions of this chapter most closely related to the subject of the book.

The sayings reach us through Greek, Syriac and other texts, and this is why Semitic comparison has its value here: it returns the expression to the tongue in which it was said, and shows what meaning the word carried before it was translated.

The Qurʾān reports, on the tongue of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him), “and giving good news of a messenger who will come after me, whose name is Aḥmad” (al-Ṣaff 61:6). This expression prompts two questions. What meaning did the glad tidings carry in their first tongue? And which Aramaic or Syriac words can be compared with Aḥmad?

When we compare the words for praise, desire and love in Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic, we read each root in the context of the expression in which it occurs. The Hebrew root חמד (ḥ-m-d) turns on desire, coveting and the precious thing, that is, on what souls cleave to and praise, as in “the desire of all nations” (Haggai 2:7). From this field we read the name “Aḥmad” as an attribute of the one toward whom desire turns and on whom praise gathers.

“Aḥmad”, in the reading of this book, is a name that carries an attribute: he is the one in whom the meanings of praise and perfection come together, and who completes what came before. We build this understanding on the meaning of the glad tidings and on the role to which it points, even if not every transmitted text preserved an identical Arabic word.

Ibn Isḥāq preserves in the Sīra the text of John about the Comforter as it reached him in Syriac, and in it the word al-Munaḥmanā occurs. He explains it as Muḥammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), and mentions that in Greek it is al-Barqalīṭis. Alfred Guillaume showed that this text is taken from the Palestinian Syriac translation of the Gospels (Al-Andalus 15, 1950). So the glad tidings were read in the sense of praise in the oldest books of the Sīra. The book connects the Paraclete with the meaning of praise on the strength of the meaning of the glad tidings and of this early reception, although the surviving Greek manuscripts write “Paraclete” (paraklētos) in the sense of helper or comforter.

A Shared Semitic Liturgical Lexicon: The Unity of the Prophetic Tongue, Not Ecclesiastical Borrowing

Beside these resemblances between names there is another layer of correspondences that deserves notice: the shared liturgical-monotheistic lexicon of the Noble Qurʾān and early church Syriac. Comparative Semitic studies have long noted roots that the two tongues share (ṣalāt (“prayer”)/ܨܠܘܬܐ (ṣlōtā), ṣawm (“fasting”)/ܨܘܡܐ (ṣōmā), zakāt (“almsgiving”)/ܙܟܘܬܐ (zakūtā), qurʾān/ܩܪܝܢܐ (qeryānā) in the sense of liturgical reading), and the parallels multiply in essential Qurʾānic terms:

When we compare Syriac with Arabic, we read sūra beside Syriac shūrā, which in Syriac means the encircling wall and the wall. Al-Ṭabarī makes the sūra a rank among the degrees of elevation, and sees in it the wall of a city, so named for its height above what it encloses. When the comparison is widened, it shows us the relation, provided we specify the word and the sentence in which it occurs.

We read this lexicon as going back to a single origin, the Semitic prophetic heritage. The words furqān, sakīna, raḥmān, kalima, ṣalāt, ṣawm and zakāt belong to the life of nations that handed worship down, from Ibrāhīm, Mūsā, Dāwūd, Sulaymān, Zakariyyā, Yaḥyā and ʿĪsā (peace be upon them) to Muḥammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam). The churches carried them among the things they inherited, but their meaning is older than the imperial formulation that took shape after Paul and Nicaea. The resemblance between the two tongues is a kinship in the inheritance of prophethood, and for that reason we distinguish the history of a word from the history of the doctrine that used it.

When furqān, sakīna and raḥmān occur in the Qurʾān, we understand this as the recovery of the lexicon of monotheism in the Arabic tongue. The early Christian communities carried this heritage, and then the schools known as the Nestorians, Maronites, Jacobites and Ebionites divided over it, while the Mandaeans kept in their tradition words close to it. The lexicon stayed shared across the differing theological conceptions, until the Qurʾān came and set it again in the meaning of pure monotheism. What we compare, then, is the word, and what happened to its meaning through this history.

The Qurʾān affirms that the origin of the message continues, in its words ﴿شَرَعَ لَكُم مِّنَ الدِّينِ مَا وَصَّىٰ بِهِ نُوحًا وَالَّذِي أَوْحَيْنَا إِلَيْكَ وَمَا وَصَّيْنَا بِهِ إِبْرَاهِيمَ وَمُوسَىٰ وَعِيسَىٰ﴾ (sharaʿa lakum mina d-dīni mā waṣṣā bihī Nūḥan wa-lladhī awḥaynā ilayka wa-mā waṣṣaynā bihī Ibrāhīma wa-Mūsā wa-ʿĪsā) (“He has laid down for you of religion what He enjoined upon Nūḥ, and that which We have revealed to you, and what We enjoined upon Ibrāhīm, Mūsā and ʿĪsā,” al-Shūrā 42:13). If the message is one, related words become witnesses to a shared prophetic heritage, and we read Islam as a return to the source of which early Christianity preserved certain aspects. The Pauline and Nicene formulations left their mark on the meanings of words, and in the Qurʾān we see what joins them again to their monotheistic origin.

A Note: The Thread of Gradual Deification

The words we have presented, from the disciples and the Anṣār to Kēfā and kāffa, and al-Ḥamīd and al-Aḥmad, lead us to a question: how did doctrine change while the language of the heritage remained? We see that deification took shape in stages, which began with Paul’s letters, passed through the layers of the Gospel narratives, and acquired an official form at Nicaea. We shall treat this in detail in Chapter 11, when we set Paul beside Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, so that the reader may see how the verbal comparison connects with the history of the religious image.

The Ebionites and the Ḥarrānians: The Law of Survival Under Pressure

When the dominant institution closes in on an inherited teaching, the teaching may survive in small communities. The names of its people change, their places of residence and ways of expression shift, and then the meaning appears again in a new context. The reports of the Ebionites and the Ḥarrānians are two examples.

As for the Ebionites, the sources tell us that they believed in the Masīḥ as a human prophet from the Children of Israel, held to the Law, and rejected the authority of Paul and his letters. From the second century they were entered in the classifications of heresy, and so they were excluded and faced a counter-organisation, and reports of them dwindled as groups moved toward the Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula. We pause at what remained of their meanings in the environment that preceded Islam and in its early sources: the humanity of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, the necessity of the Law, and the objection to what had been changed in the message. By this resemblance we trace a memory whose bearers have vanished from the official record.

As for the Ḥarrānians, heirs to a part of Chaldean and Babylonian wisdom, the reports tell that in the reign of al-Maʾmūn, about 830 CE, they faced the question of their religious identity. They attached themselves to the name of the Sabians mentioned in the Qurʾān and took from it a status by which they kept their tradition. The report shows that the name affected the survival of the community and its legal standing. From this milieu came Thābit ibn Qurra, who took part in transmitting Greek philosophy and sciences into Arabic, and who helped to preserve mathematics, astronomy and medicine and to develop their study in the ʿAbbāsid age.

In both cases a religious or intellectual heritage found a way to survive under the pressure of authority. In Ebionite teaching we see a remnant of the truth that the Qurʾān states about the Masīḥ, which the community kept until the Qurʾān came and made it plain, and in the Ḥarrānians’ attribution of themselves to the Sabians we see a road they took to protect their community. The mechanism differs: in one case a meaning continues, in the other a name is taken. But the question that joins them is one: how do communities keep what they count as the core of their heritage?

Conclusion: The Words Are Not a Coincidence

When two words from two tongues resemble each other, we weigh three possibilities: that they share an origin, that the word passed from one language to the other, or that the resemblance is a coincidence of sound. Three things decide which: the regularity of the correspondence, the meaning of the word, and the history of its use; when all three come together in one comparison, coincidence recedes. Borrowing itself shows ties between communities, just as a shared origin shows the antiquity of the heritage. When we gather the comparisons we have presented, we read in them a Semitic monotheistic current that ran through many tongues and left in their words traces by which we follow what drew near in their teachings and what diverged.

In the next chapter we look at the four letters INRI on the cross. We begin with their known meaning in Latin and the text they go back to, and then move to the names and titles they contain and their connection with the book’s question of identity.

The Torah: The Light of w-r-y and the Inheritance of w-r-th

If the law of this chapter is applied to the name of the first Book itself, there appears in it what had not appeared. Hebrew writes Torah תּוֹרָה (tōrāh), and the standard Hebrew lexicon traces it to the root י-ר-ה (y-r-h), whose meaning is throwing and hitting the mark, which then became in the hiphil form הוֹרָה (hōrāh) with the sense “he taught and guided”; so the Torah on this is “teaching”.

Contemporary scholars, among them Dr Muḥammad Muṣṭafā Mansur, have linked al-tawrāh with al-turāth (“heritage”), and the Torah itself joins the two names in its words תּוֹרָה צִוָּה־לָנוּ מֹשֶׁה מוֹרָשָׁה קְהִלַּת יַעֲקֹב (tôrāh ṣiwwāh lānû Mōšeh môrāšāh qehillat Yaʿăqōb), that is, “Moses charged us with a Torah, an inheritance for the congregation of Jacob” (Deuteronomy 33:4). Turāth is from w-r-th, and its Hebrew counterpart is י-ר-שׁ, y-r-sh, meaning “to inherit”, from which comes יְרֻשָּׁה (yerushshāh), yeruššah, “inheritance”, and also môrāšāh in the same verse. In the name תּוֹרָה (tōrāh), however, we give priority to the sense of warā, which is the view of the majority of the people of Arabic: it is from wārā the thing, when he concealed it, and from warā the flint, when it brought out its fire. On this view the Torah is a light that was hidden and then appeared, ﴿فِيهَا هُدًۭى وَنُورٌۭ﴾ (fīhā hudan wa-nūr) (“in it is guidance and light,” al-Māʾida 5:44), and at the same time it is the inheritance of the community that carried it.

The comparison with Arabic is what opens this aspect to us, through the root w-r-y, from which come īrāʾ al-nār, the kindling and lighting of fire. The interchange of wāw and yāʾ at the beginning of Semitic roots is well known, and one example is walada (“he gave birth”) beside the Hebrew יָלַד (yālad). Through this interchange the field of kindling and illumination connects with the name of the Torah, beside its lexical explanation as teaching and guidance. The two meanings lie close, since teaching is showing the way. The Qurʾān bears witness to this field when it says: ﴿أَفَرَأَيْتُمُ النَّارَ الَّتِي تُورُونَ﴾ (a-fa-raʾaytumu n-nāra llatī tūrūn) (“Have you considered the fire that you kindle?” al-Wāqiʿa 56:71).

So on this view we read the Torah as a light that is kindled and that guides, lighting a person’s way, and this agrees with the Qurʾān’s description ﴿إِنَّا أَنزَلْنَا التَّوْرَاةَ فِيهَا هُدًى وَنُورٌ﴾ (innā anzalnā t-Tawrāta fīhā hudan wa-nūr) (“Indeed, We sent down the Torah, in which is guidance and light,” al-Māʾida 5:44). In our reading the linguistic comparison and the Qurʾānic meaning meet, and the one name carries two meanings together: teaching and illumination.

The Family of Return: ʿ-w-d, h-w-d, ḥ-w-r

Arabic has three roots that turn on the sense of returning: ʿ-w-d, h-w-d and ḥ-w-r. The wāw stays in the middle of each, and only the first or last letter changes. This neighbourhood in meaning invites us to think of return, guidance and repentance together, without making the three roots a single derivation.

These roots connect with the keys of the book. The “return” in its title is from ʿ-w-d, and “those who were Jews” (alladhīna hādū) is from h-w-d, that is, they returned and repented, as in ﴿إِنَّا هُدْنَا إِلَيْكَ﴾ (innā hudnā ilayk) (“Indeed, we have turned back to You,” al-Aʿrāf 7:156). The disciples are connected in one respect with ḥ-w-r, from which comes ﴿إِنَّهُ ظَنَّ أَن لَّن يَحُورَ﴾ (innahū ẓanna an lan yaḥūr) (“Indeed, he thought that he would never return,” al-Inshiqāq 84:14). We then set this field against the sense of cutting and severing in j-z-r, which we met earlier. So two images come together in our reading: the image of separation from the origin, and the image of return to it. Return, on this view, means resuming the tie with the guidance that the messages preserved, and this is the unifying aspect in which we see the final revelation calling the human being to return.

Chapter 8: INRI, the Truth Written on the Cross

The Placard of the Charge and the Testimony of the Monotheists

The Gospel of John relates that a title was written above the cross in three languages, and the Latin tradition later expressed it in the abbreviation INRI. What lies before us is a report told in a Gospel and a religious image with a history. As for the original wood and the phrase written on it, we possess nothing of either that we could examine independently of this report.

The picture of a man may stay as it was while what people understand from it changes. We read this in the image of the crucified. Title, blood and cross came together in it until they became a complete religious language, and this language then carried meanings that went beyond the life of its subject, so that the believer came to address his Lord through it.

The image that Christian art has made familiar is well known: a man hanging on a cross, a royal title above his head, and believers around him. We begin from this image because the centuries have handed it down and people have lived with it, even though the details of the later crosses do not all go back to a single age.

That the bearer of the message was a king is granted, for with us ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, is both a prophet and a king. What we object to is that the person of the man and his image should become an object of faith, so that the meaning of his message is veiled by them, and that this faith should then be imposed on people.

The ḥadīth comes to mind here: “Written between his eyes is kāfir (‘unbeliever’), which every believer reads, whether literate or not” (al-Bukhārī 7131, Muslim 2933). We read it on the basis of the difference between knowing letters and knowing the doctrine that the image carries. The believer, on this understanding, may know no Latin and still know where the defect lies: he sees a man, a human being, and then finds that divinity has been added to him. It is through the words “whether literate or not” that we enter this reading of the heart.

The Inscription in Its Roman Setting

The letters INRI are the initials of the Latin words Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, which mean “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” That is what the text says. When we link the sign to the description of the Dajjāl, as we propose, we are comparing the image and the title with that sign in the function they perform; we are not translating these letters into the word kāfir.

Then came Constantine, and after him Nicene Christianity entered the very heart of the Roman state, and the image of the crucified came to stand above altars and in homes. How strange the outcome was! The man whom Roman authority had condemned became the centre of a faith that a Roman authority patronised. The royal title remained above the image. The new believer read it with the eye of his creed, and the monotheist saw in it a witness that the man who was deified after him had been a human being.

The Four Letters: What Each Letter Carries

INRI has four letters: the first I is from Iesus, that is, “Jesus”; N is from Nazarenus, that is, “the Nazarene”; R is from Rex, that is, “king”; and the last I is from Iudaeorum, that is, “the Jews”. Behind each word lies a theme that the book treats: the first is the man’s name, the second his title and what it means, the third his kingship, and the fourth the people to whom he was attributed. People have grown used to seeing the phrase as a single sign above the cross, so it is right that it should be read word by word.

The Testimony of the Heart: A Faith-Based Reading of the Placard of the Cross

The sign of unbelief, in the reading we offer, concerns the doctrine that the image carries. Does it open the viewer’s way to God, or veil him from it? That is why we compare it with the sign mentioned in the reports of the Dajjāl. What joins the two, in our view, is meaning; we do not search the Latin abbreviation for concealed Arabic letters.

And when we separate the meaning of the letters from the significance of the image, our question becomes clearer: what does the believer see in an image he has inherited, and what creed does he recognise through it?

The Ḥadīth of the Dajjāl: “Written Between His Eyes Is Kāfir”

In the sound ḥadīth agreed upon, from Anas ibn Mālik, may God be pleased with him, from the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, in describing the Dajjāl: “Written between his eyes is kāfir”, narrated by al-Bukhārī in the Book of Trials (Kitāb al-Fitan) number 7131, and by Muslim in the Book of Trials and the Portents of the Hour (Kitāb al-Fitan wa-Ashrāṭ al-Sāʿa) number 2933. And in another narration in Muslim there is the addition: “Every believer reads it, whether literate or not.” Then he explained it in a third narration with the words: “Then he spelled it out: k f r.”

What matters most to us in the ḥadīth is the phrase “every believer reads it, whether literate or not”; for reading here is measured by faith, and so the one who knows the letter and the one who does not stand level in it. The believer recognises the fitna before he reads the written sign, and what he then sees with his eye agrees with what he has grasped through his creed.

In the report of the cross the title lies above the head, while in the narrations of the Dajjāl the sign lies between the eyes. Both are in the upper part of the picture, where every onlooker sees them, and both are signs by which the place of the fitna is recognised.

This does not mean that Jesus of Nazareth himself is a dajjāl (an impostor). We see him as a righteous man whose image, after him, was loaded with a doctrinal structure that he did not himself make in all its parts. What we criticise is what was built upon his name, and fairness requires us to separate the man from the fate to which his heritage came.

King of the Jews: The Dajjāl’s Inverted Title

As for Rex, it means “king.” Since we read the biography of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, in the biography of King Nabonidus, we do not deny kingship in itself. What we examine is the divine station added to the image, and how the title passed from a report told about a man into part of the faith established around him.

According to the book, this transformation took place in Rome. This is an identification made by the book and is not attributed to the ḥadīth, whose narrations point to the East. When the Empire adopted the Nicene creed, Jesus became in its faith god, saviour and king of the universe, and so the man whom Roman authority had crucified came to be worshipped in its shade three centuries later. That is why the meaning of Rex differed between the trial scene of the first century and the scene of worship in the fourth: the title of king stayed as it was, but it passed from the mockery of a condemned man to the glorification of an image that the state had adopted.

The Image and the Warning Against the Fitna

The image, then, is a door through which we enter the history of doctrine. It may preserve a true human pain, and later ages come and read that pain in the language of redemption and incarnation. This transition has to be traced place by place, one at a time, because not everyone who made these images or looked at them meant the same thing.

In this transition we understand why the warning against the fitna came: the image of a teacher may end by veiling his teaching, once it becomes itself the object of faith. The words on the placard, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” remain a witness that he was a human being, and the onlooker then adds to them his judgement on the doctrine the image carried. This is what we compare with the reports of the Dajjāl; the man himself we keep apart from the structure built upon his name.

Yet the churches that differed over the nature of the Masīḥ did not divide simply into those who deified him and those who held to God’s oneness. Many of them affirmed his divinity, and then disputed fiercely over how divinity and humanity were united in him. For that reason we read each community in its own words, and it becomes clear where it kept an older trace and where it entered the structure the book criticises.

Let us imagine a believer standing before an image he has known since childhood, who then asks himself what it means. That question needs no extraordinary event; the search may begin from the most familiar of things, when its owner sees for the first time a difference between what the image signifies and what he was taught to believe about it.

An idea may draw its authority from the sacred image that carries it, and from a long familiarity that makes it hard to question; this explains the severity of the warning against the fitna of the Dajjāl. That, in our reading, is what happened to the image of the Masīḥ: it was a means to guidance, and it became a veil in front of it.

In this reading Jesus of Nazareth remains a historical person, other than ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, whose biography we read in Nabonidus. What has been mixed together is the reports, the attributes and the identity, and what is needed is to correct that mixing, not to accuse the man of having deceived those who came after him.

The Nazarene: The Vowed One and the Helper

The letter N stands for Nazarenus, the title that Jesus bore in the Gospels and in the inscription on the cross, and the question of the name al-naṣrāniyya (Christianity) is tied to it. The familiar church explanation traces it to Nazareth in Galilee, but this explanation has been challenged from two sides, the history of the place and the linguistic form of the name, and each side has its own material and its own questions.

We read in “the Nazarene” two senses that its letters bring together, and neither makes the other unnecessary. He is first the vowed one (manthūr), because he comes from a house of which the wife of ʿImrān said ﴿إِنِّى نَذَرْتُ لَكَ مَا فِى بَطْنِى مُحَرَّرًۭا﴾ (innī nadhartu laka mā fī baṭnī muḥarraran) (“Indeed, I have vowed to You what is in my womb, dedicated,” Āl ʿImrān 3:35); and from the very root of vow (nadhr) comes the nadhīr, the warner who warns his people, and in Hebrew נָזִיר (nāzīr), the one vowed to God. He is second the helper (nāṣir), as in the question ﴿مَنْ أَنصَارِىٓ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ﴾ (man anṣārī ilā llāh) (“Who are my helpers to God?” Āl ʿImrān 3:52), which the disciples answered with ﴿نَحْنُ أَنصَارُ ٱللَّهِ﴾ (naḥnu anṣāru llāh) (“We are the helpers of God,” Āl ʿImrān 3:52); from this root came the name of the Naṣārā and the name Nazareth, and in Hebrew נָצַר (nāṣar) means to keep. We do not claim to grasp the whole secret of the name; it is enough for us to lay hands on near indications that are connected to one another, in the hope that the reader finds in them what lights his insight.

Matthew himself turns the title into a prophecy: “And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene” (Matthew 2:23). The reader will find no verse in the books of the Prophets with this word, so the evangelist is ascribing to “the prophets” as a whole a meaning he finds in their speech, and not a particular phrase. Commentators have most often traced his saying to two passages. The first is the account of Samson: “for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb” (Judges 13:5), the word in Hebrew being נְזִיר (nəzîr); the second is the prophecy of the branch: “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots” (Isaiah 11:1), where the branch is נֵצֶר (nēṣer), from the root n-ṣ-r.

If we look at the two passages by which Matthew’s saying is explained, we find in them the two senses of the title as we read them: the one vowed from the womb, and the helper, from the root of keeping and support. In the verse the town is a place where he dwelt, while the title is ascribed to the speech of the prophets.

Nazareth and the Nazarene: The Place and the Title

The American researcher René Salm argued, in his book The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (2008) and its sequel NazarethGate: Quack Archeology, Holy Hoaxes, and the Invented Town of Jesus (2015), that the site known today as Nazareth was not inhabited in the first century CE, and he made his case from the archaeology. He reviewed the published excavation reports and examined the datable pottery, the coins, the types of tombs (most of them of the arched kokh type and of the late Roman rock-cut type) and the architectural remains. All of them, in his opinion, point to settlement beginning in the late first or early second century, and not before. If his conclusion were correct, the title “the Nazarene” could not mean “from Nazareth”, since a man cannot be attributed to a city that did not exist in his time.

But this distinction cannot be built on the claim that Nazareth did not exist in the early Roman period. Yardenna Alexandre has published an archaeological study on the history of settlement at Nazareth, in which she presents evidence from the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods. The question of what “the Nazarene” signifies, and of how the title was transmitted, remains open with this archaeological material before us, so we have no need to deny it.

In the face of this material, several readings are possible. Nazareth may have been an obscure village that the sources saw no reason to mention. Its original name may have been something other than “Nazareth”, the present name arising from a later corruption. Or the title “the Nazarene” may have been, at its origin, a religious attribution of function and not of place, and the name of the town was cast over it afterwards.

The Linguistic Problem: Nazōraios and Not Nazarēnos

The second problem runs deeper than the first. A number of scholars of New Testament linguistics have pointed to it, among them Matthew Black in his classic study An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (third edition, 1967), and George Howard in his research on the Semitic backgrounds of the Gospels. In brief, the Greek Gospels describe Jesus by two different forms: Ναζωραῖος (Nazōraios), the more common, and Ναζαρηνός (Nazarēnos), the less frequent. If the title were an attribution to a city named Ναζαρέτ (Nazaret), we would expect the form “Nazarēnos” to be derived from it by the usual Greek morphology of attribution to cities, as one says Damaskēnos from Damaskos, and Antiokhēnos from Antiokheia. How, then, did the other form come to prevail in the Gospels?

The form Nazōraios takes us back to the question of the origin of the title, and of its relation to support (al-nuṣra), to the vow and to the religious community. Scholars have studied its connection with Nazareth and with Semitic words close to it, among them nāzīr, “the vowed or consecrated one.” In this form we read a religious memory of the title that is wider than attribution to the town, while Nazareth itself remains an existing place.

Epiphanius of Salamis adds his testimony to this discussion, in the Panarion, which he composed in the fourth century CE. He mentioned a sect he called the “Nasaraeans” Νασαραῖοι (Nasaraioi), said that it existed before the birth of Jesus, and described it as a religious community and not as the inhabitants of a town. When we read this testimony beside what Black discussed on the linguistic side, we judge it more likely that the title “the Nazarene” meant belonging to a religious tradition that preceded Jesus and continued after him.

This is supported by the fact that the New Testament itself uses “the Nazarene” as the name of a community, and not of an individual from a town. In Acts (24:5) Paul is accused of being “a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes” (hairesis tōn Nazōraiōn), which is the naming of a sect, as a vow-taking order would be named, and not the attribution of the inhabitants of one village. A phonetic witness supports it as well. The Hebrew name of the town, נצרת (naṣrat), contains a ṣāde, and should have been written in Greek with a sigma (Nasar-), yet the Gospels fix a zeta (Ναζ (naz)-) together with a long vowel (-ω (ōmega)-) that has no basis in “Nazareth”. These very anomalies are resolved by returning the word to nāzīr. We do not ignore the contrary view: H. H. Schaeder, in Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT, IV: 874 ff.), defended the correctness of the attribution to Nazareth and argued for it from the dialect of the Galileans. But the vow-“guardian” sense survived independently in “Nāṣorāyē”, the title of the Mandaean priests to this day, and this shows that “the Nazarene” was a religious description before it was attributed to a Galilean village.

We find this question also among scholars who differ from us in all the rest of the construction. Mark Lidzbarski, the editor of the Mandaean texts, examined the title in the introduction to The Mandaean Liturgies (1920), and concluded from the Mandaean side that it is not derived from Nazareth. Holger Kersten then repeated the same argument in his book (pp. 93–94 of the 1986 edition), citing Bauer’s lexicon of New Testament Greek, although his construction differs from that of this book. What concerns us in meeting these scholars is one specific point: they find it difficult to connect the title with the town. In Chapter 10 we shall trace the effect of this understanding on the connection of Jesus with the community whose name he bore.

When the Qurʾān speaks of the “Naṣārā”, it means the people of the vow and of support, as in the words of the Exalted in Sūrat al-Ṣaff: ﴿مَنْ أَنصَارِىٓ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ ۖ قَالَ ٱلْحَوَارِيُّونَ نَحْنُ أَنصَارُ ٱللَّهِ﴾ (man anṣārī ilā llāh qāla l-ḥawāriyyūna naḥnu anṣāru llāh) (“Who are my helpers to God? The disciples said, We are the helpers of God,” al-Ṣaff 61:14). The attribution here is to a function in religion, and not to a place.

The Nazirite in the Reading of the Book

If we accept that “Nazarenus” means in its origin “the one vowed and consecrated to God”, we find for the title an ancient root in the Torah. The religious vow, which the Hebrew tradition calls “nāzīr”, was an ancient institution, deeply rooted in the biblical heritage. The Book of Numbers gave it a complete body of rules, with defined conditions and observances, running from the first verse to the twenty-first of chapter 6: they set out how the vow is made, what the one who takes it must abstain from, how he comes out of it, and what penalty he owes if he breaks it. What recurs most in this institution is the vow of a child in his mother’s womb before he is born. So it was with Samson in Judges 13:5, where the angel says to Manoah’s wife: “For, lo, you shall conceive and bear a son, and no razor shall come on his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb”, the razor being the instrument of shaving. So it was also with Samuel in 1 Samuel 1:11, for Hannah vowed him to God before she conceived him.

We find the same pattern in the Noble Qurʾān, in the words of the Exalted on the tongue of the wife of ʿImrān when she conceived Maryam: ﴿إِذْ قَالَتِ ٱمْرَأَتُ عِمْرَٰنَ رَبِّ إِنِّى نَذَرْتُ لَكَ مَا فِى بَطْنِى مُحَرَّرًۭا فَتَقَبَّلْ مِنِّىٓ ۖ إِنَّكَ أَنتَ ٱلسَّمِيعُ ٱلْعَلِيمُ﴾ (idh qālati mraʾatu ʿImrāna rabbi innī nadhartu laka mā fī baṭnī muḥarraran fa-taqabbal minnī innaka anta s-Samīʿu l-ʿAlīm) (“[Remember] when the wife of ʿImrān said, My Lord, I have vowed to You what is in my womb, dedicated, so accept it from me; indeed You are the Hearing, the Knowing,” Āl ʿImrān 3:35). The wife of ʿImrān vowed Maryam to God while she was still in her womb, before she bore her. The word “muḥarraran” (dedicated) means consecrated, set apart for the service of God alone, and this is exactly the literal sense of the word “nāzīr” in the depths of the Hebrew language. Maryam is therefore a Nazirite woman (nāzīra) by the text of the Qurʾān, and her son whom she bore inherits this family covenant that her mother made before she conceived her.

Since we place ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, in the sixth century BCE, this family vow gains weight with us: his mother was vowed to God, and his grandmother was the one who made the vow before she bore her. The title “nāzīr” suits this house, and we read in “the Nazarene” an extension of this religious meaning, without needing, in our reading, to tie it to any particular town.

In chapter six of the Book of Numbers the reader finds the rules of the Nazirite: while his vow lasts he abstains from wine, lets his hair grow and does not shave it, and keeps away from the dead. These rules were a nucleus that extended into the ascetic communities that came afterwards, which made consecration a way of the whole of life. There the names of vow, support and the Nazarene meet in a single meaning: devotion to God and support for His religion.

At this meaning we propose a connection between the name of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and the names of the ʿĪsawīs and the Essenes, the communities that vowed themselves to God. If the connection is sound, the biography of ʿĪsā appears as a link in a long tradition of vow. We see its precedents in Samson, Samuel and Hannah, we see Maryam at its heart, and we then follow its extension to the Qumran community on the shores of the Dead Sea. Through these communities we follow how the name and the report were handed on together.

What Remained of the Name and What Changed in Its Meaning

Nazareth, then, is an existing place, while “the Nazarene” is a religious title whose significance is wider than the town, since it joins the vowed one and the supporter. The title kept the memory of the community that preserved the vow and the support, and the place stands beside it.

We reach in this chapter a basic point: name and image may remain while the report and the doctrine carried on them change. After it we move on to the communities that carried names and books from country to country, for in their course, as we read it, it becomes clear how the ancient biography of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, came together with the later life of Jesus.

The placard remained, and the eyes that read it changed. In the report of the trial it carried the sense of accusation and mockery, and then it entered a religious image that people venerate. The monotheist reads in it that the man was a human being, and then asks how the image of this human being came to carry the meaning of divinity. The letters are the same before everyone, and the whole disagreement lies in the meaning the observer sees.

This is the truth we read on the cross. The letters INRI proclaim “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”, that is, a man, his title and his people, and the believer then finds before him a doctrine that goes beyond everything the phrase proclaims. The distance between these two meanings is the distance between the message of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and what was later formulated in the name of the Masīḥ, and it is for this distance that we adopted the literary opposition between “the Masīḥ” and “the Masīkh”.

If we understand the matter in this way, the warning about the Dajjāl concerns also a history that people lived through, and not only a future they await. The image and the sign were before their eyes, and the Muhammadan revelation came to turn their gaze back to the meaning of faith by which images are measured. This is the connection we propose between Christian memory and the Islamic warning against the fitna.

Chapter 9: Christian-Arabian Geography, the Peninsula of Monotheism, Not Paganism Alone

Whoever looks at the Arabian Peninsula before Islam and sees only idolatry in it has lost sight of a wide area of its history. The inscriptions and the surviving reports of the kingdoms and tribes show that a strong monotheistic current ran through it, that it had settled religious institutions, and that it was joined to Iraq, the Levant and Abyssinia. If we follow this material, we see more fully the environment in which the Muhammadan call appeared.

The Kingdom of Ḥimyar and the Documented Religious Upheaval

The clearest case of this change is the kingdom of Ḥimyar. Christian Julien Robin, of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), has shown that pagan inscriptions disappeared from it about 380 CE, and that monotheistic formulas took their place, among them “Lord of heaven and earth, God of Israel”. The testimony carries weight both in its wording and in its source, because it comes from a strong kingdom in the south of the Peninsula that changed the language of its official address more than two hundred years before Islam. Here monotheism entered the policy of the state and stayed carved in the stone it left behind, so it is too firmly rooted to be counted a marginal belief.

The Ghassanids: A Complete Arab Christian Civilisation

When we move to the edges of the northern Peninsula we meet the Ghassanids, an Arab tribal confederation that left the south of the Peninsula for the Levant in the third century CE and settled in the Ḥawrān, the Golan and eastern Jordan. They brought their Arab ties with them, then entered the Byzantine system as official allies, or foederati, and took on the protection of its eastern frontier. They lived as Arabs in their way of life and as Christians in their institutions, and they held a military standing within the Empire.

The Ghassanids chose the doctrine of the One United Nature (Miaphysite), which understands the nature of the Masīḥ as the divine in him united with the human. In doing so they differed from the official Chalcedonian doctrine, and they paid for this choice in their relations with Constantinople. In the reign of al-Ḥārith ibn Jabala (Arethas, 529–569 CE), in the time of Justinian, Jacob Baradaeus was appointed, under the king’s patronage, itinerant bishop of the followers of this doctrine in the East. Jacob reorganised the church and ordained its men, until it came to be called by his name, the “Jacobites”; it is known today as the Syriac Orthodox Church. The patronage of these Arabs thus had a direct effect on the survival of this church and the continuity of its institutions.

But this dispute has to be understood in the language of its own people. The supporters of the united nature and the supporters of Chalcedon alike affirmed the divinity of the Masīḥ; they differed in the way they expressed the union of divinity and humanity. So we do not make the first doctrine the monotheism of the Ebionites itself. Even so, we read in its spiritual language, and in its resistance to the formula imposed by the Empire, something that may preserve an older Eastern memory. Here lies the comparison that concerns us, while each church’s share in that heritage is known from its own words and meanings.

Whoever wishes to see the flourishing of this Arab Christian world should look at al-Ruṣāfa, or Sergiopolis, in the Syrian steppe. In its church complex, which extends for dozens of metres, stand the basilica of Saint Sergius and, beside it, the cathedral of the Ghassanids known as Building A, with its three aisles and apse, what remains of its mosaic decoration, and its carved white stones. Greek and Syriac inscriptions mentioning Ghassanid kings were found at the site. Irfan Shahîd (1926–2016), of Georgetown University, studied the role of the Arabs in this history, first in Rome and the Arabs (1984) and then in the volumes of Byzantium and the Arabs that he devoted to the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, and showed that they took part in Byzantium’s religious, military and cultural policy. Then Glen Bowersock, in The Throne of Adulis (2013), drew the network that extended across the Red Sea between Abyssinia, the Peninsula and the coast of the Levant. On these routes trade was accompanied by religious and cultural movement, and reports and books travelled with the people.

The Tanūkh: The First Organised Arab Christians and the Revolt of Queen Māwiyya

In the Tanūkh tribes we see another aspect of organised Arab Christianity. Their influence extended over Iraq and the Levant; they had bishops, knew the life of a church community, and held their prayers in liturgical order. What reaches us of their reports is therefore the reports of a society with its own religious institutions, not of individuals who had taken up a passing belief.

Among the best known of their reports is the revolt of Queen Māwiyya of the Tanūkh (Queen Mavia / Māwiyya) in 378 CE. The Arab queen refused to have an Arian bishop imposed on her tribes, and asked for a bishop who followed the faith of Nicaea. When no agreement could be reached, the quarrel turned into war, and her armies overran Palestine and Sinai as far as the borders of Egypt. So the choice of a single bishop became a matter touching the relation of the tribes with the Empire, until Constantinople was forced to negotiate.

Socrates of Constantinople, Sozomen and Theodoret related this conflict and the settlement in which it ended. In the end the monk Moses, a son of the desert whom the sources call Moses the Saracen, was consecrated bishop of the Arabs, and Māwiyya’s choice was accepted. What concerns us in this report is that the Arab Christians had a say in their creed and in who should manage it, and had the capacity to defend that view in the face of imperial authority. They were partners in shaping their faith, and this faith was part of their political and social life.

There is a telling indication in this incident. The queen’s name, “Māwiyya”, is connected in language and in the custom of naming with a name that would afterwards become one of the best known in early Islamic history: “Muʿāwiya”, the first Umayyad caliph, who ruled from Damascus. Between “Māwiyya”, queen of the Christian Arabs in the fourth century, and “Muʿāwiya”, caliph of the Muslim Arabs after her, there is a closeness in the silent skeleton (the consonantal frame). Both are genuinely Arabic names from a single onomastic sphere, though their roots differ: Māwiyya is from m-w-h/m-w-y (from water and the mirror), and Muʿāwiya from ʿ-w-y (from ʿawā, “to howl”), in which the ʿayn is radical and not an addition. What also joins them is that their land is connected and their function is connected: a queen who protects her people’s religious choice, and a caliph who rules from the Levant itself.

When we look at Damascus in the time of Muʿāwiya, we see this environment continuing. The Meccan Umayyad house had ties with the Levant in trade and religion before Islam, and Damascus then became the capital of the realm, close to al-Jābiya, the seat of the Ghassanids. Muʿāwiya kept in his chancery scribes and advisers from the Syriac Christians of the Levant, and methods of Byzantine administration remained in use until the registers were Arabised in the time of ʿAbd al-Malik. The Arab Christian communities did not vanish with the coming of Islam; sections of them entered the new community and brought with them their names, their experience and their ways of organising. For this reason we take the contrast between Māwiyya and Muʿāwiya as an entry into what continued between the two periods in geography and institutions.

Al-Ḥīra: A Real Arab Christian City

In southern Iraq lay al-Ḥīra, capital of the Lakhmids, which remained a centre of politics and religion for centuries. About forty monasteries are mentioned in its reports, a number sufficient for us to picture a city in which monasteries had entered the social and cultural fabric. When the discussion moves from the kings of al-Ḥīra to its inhabitants and their daily life, we should remember that these monasteries stood among them.

The name “al-ʿIbād” is mentioned in al-Ḥīra. When we read it, we are reading the name of a religious and social identity that arose in an Arab Christian environment, and we do not assume that the members of this community all held one creed. The name carries the meaning of worship, while the institutions of its people, their teaching and their link with the church are sought in the detail of the sources.

From the names of communities we pass to the name “Banū Hāshim”, the Qurashī house to which the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) belongs. The inherited tradition explains the name by the report of Hāshim ibn ʿAbd Manāf, who crumbled (hashm) tharīd (bread in broth) in the year of famine. Beside this report we put another reading, based on comparison among the Semitic tongues.

In this comparison we read “Hāshim” in two parts: “hā”, which we set against the definite article, and “shim/ism”, from the Semitic root sh-m. Its nearest counterpart in Hebrew is the word הַשֵּׁם (ha-shem), that is, “the Name”. The word has its standing in the tradition of the priests of the Children of Israel, who mention the divine Name by it out of reverence without pronouncing it openly; to pronounce it is tied, in the Temple tradition, to the high priest, when he enters the Holy of Holies once a year. In this sense we connect the name of the house with the prophetic heritage that extends from Hārūn to Zakariyyā, Yaḥyā and ʿĪsā, peace be upon them.

On this interpretation the “Banū Hāshim” are the “sons of the Name”, that is, a house that carries the mention of the ancient prophetic priestly heritage. We trace this heritage to the line of Ibrāhīm and the prophets of the Children of Israel, and we separate it from the later Talmudic rabbinic institution whose origin, as we presented it, falls after the second century BCE. The comparison becomes clearer if we look at the functions of service of the House in Mecca: the siqāya (providing the pilgrims with water), the rifāda (feeding them), the ḥijāba (guarding the door) and the sidāna (serving and maintaining the House). These functions were distributed among the clans of Quraysh, and we see between them and the functions of the Levites in the Temple a resemblance in the structure of religious service.

In 1 Chronicles 9:26–27 the chief gatekeepers of the Levites were over the chambers and treasuries of the house of God, lodging round about it to guard it, “and upon them was the key” הַמַּפְתֵּחַ (ha-mafteaḥ), which they opened morning by morning. This is exactly the function of the ḥijāba in Mecca: its holder keeps the key of the House and opens it, and it remains with the Banū Shayba to this day. The house of the Name in Mecca keeps, then, from the structure of service what the house of the Name kept in the Torah.

For this reason we bring together “al-ʿIbād” in al-Ḥīra and “Banū Hāshim / sons of the Name” in Mecca: both names, in our reading, attribute their bearers to the service of God and the preservation of the prophetic heritage. Other things support this interpretation along with the verbal resemblance: the sanctity of the House, the functions of its service, its people’s descent from Ibrāhīm, and then the descent of the final revelation in that Qurashī house. When these elements come together they bear the interpretation, and they set the verbal resemblance in its context within the history of the one religion.

The divine Name is revered in other sources as well. In the traditions of the Second Temple the Name is surrounded by a special sanctity, and is referred to as “Ha-Shem”; the Babylonian text describes Sîn as “a god whose name no one can explain”; and in the Prayer of Nabonidus (4Q242) the Israelite healer calls on the king to “exalt the name of the Most High God”. When we read these formulas together, we find the same meaning recurring in all these environments: that the Name is kept pure and lifted up. On this meaning we build the connection we propose between Sîn, al-ʿAlī (the Most High) and the “sons of the Name”.

Among the best-known monasteries of al-Ḥīra is the Monastery of Hind the Elder, built by Hind bint al-Ḥārith, wife of al-Mundhir ibn Māʾ al-Samāʾ. The reports have handed down the text of its foundation: “This church was built by Hind daughter of al-Ḥārith ibn ʿAmr ibn Ḥujr, queen daughter of kings, handmaid of the Masīḥ, and mother of his servant al-Mundhir, king of the Arabs.” The phrase speaks at once in the language of kingship and in the language of religious service: the queen is “handmaid of the Masīḥ”, and her son the king is “his servant”. This is a language that must be understood in its spiritual tradition, beside the church doctrine in which its speakers lived. The soil itself bore witness to these reports: in 1934 CE an Oxford University expedition excavated at al-Ḥīra and found two mud-brick churches dating to the fifth and sixth centuries, together with crosses, wall paintings, seals and Syriac inscriptions, and so what the reports told of the monasteries of al-Ḥīra met what remained in its ground.

The Lakhmid kingdom lasted until shortly before Islam. Its last king, al-Nuʿmān ibn al-Mundhir III (about 580–602 CE), had embraced Nestorian Christianity and built churches, and was then executed on the orders of Khosrow II. With the end of his reign are linked the events that led to the Battle of Dhū Qār, dated to about 609 CE, when the Arabs defeated the Persians. The Islamic sources transmit from the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) concerning it: “This is the first day on which the Arabs obtained justice from the non-Arabs, and through me they were victorious.” This event shows us how Persian and Arab politics were entangled with the religious life of the region.

Against this background we understand the hypothesis presented by Fred Donner, of the University of Chicago, in Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (2010). He sees the early Islamic movement as a wider movement of Believers, which Jews and Christians who accepted monotheism entered, before the boundaries of the community settled into their later form. We notice in the Qurʾānic idiom that derivatives of ʾ-m-n, such as īmān, al-muʾminūn and āmanū, are more frequent than derivatives of aslama. This agrees with the place Donner gives to the name “Believers” in the first movement, and with his view that the more specific designation, “Muslims”, took shape little by little. It is a framework that helps us understand the connection of the Muhammadan call with the environments that preceded it.

Jan Retsö makes this picture clearer by what he has studied of the role of religious affiliation in defining the ancient Arab communities. Genealogy alone does not explain their cohesion, because ties of religion and civilisation shared with it in building their identity. If that is so, the Peninsula is a society in which ties of belief, tribe and politics interlace, so that it is hard to understand any one of them apart from the other two.

This political division between al-Ḥīra and Ghassān has a doctrinal side to which we shall devote Chapter 17. The Lakhmids, the people of al-Ḥīra, held the “Nestorian” doctrine of the Church of the East under the patronage of Sasanian Persia, while the Ghassanids in the Levant held the Monophysite doctrine under the patronage of Byzantine Rome. It was a dual system of proxy rule, and it stamped the great imperial rift on the faces of the Arab Christians themselves. As for the Church of the East, of which al-Ḥīra was one of the greatest sees, with its institution, monasteries and schools, it receives its separate treatment in that chapter.

Al-Ḥīra and Kūfa: The Movement of Population and Institutions

How did this life pass into the Islamic age? The tie of al-Ḥīra to Kūfa answers us. Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ founded Kūfa in 17 AH (638 CE), by order of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, may God be pleased with him, as a garrison city in Iraq. Al-Ḥīra was near it; in estimating the distance between them, figures are given beginning from about three kilometres, or approximately one farsakh, depending on the point from which it is measured. Christians moved from al-Ḥīra to the new city, and its scribes and men of learning entered the fabric of Kūfa, while monasteries remained to serve those of its inhabitants who were Christians. What concerns us is this close connection in population and institutions: the new Kūfa arose beside an older religious metropolis, and inherited something of its life.

We presented in the chapter on Semitic resemblances the connection of “Kūfa” with the Aramaic “kēfā”, that is, the rock. In the Syriac Peshitta text of Matthew 16:18 the same word is repeated (ܟܐܦܐ (kēfā) ... ܟܐܦܐ (kēfā)), at the place where the Greek text distinguishes between Πέτρος (Petros) and πέτρα (petra): “You are a rock (kēfā) and on this rock I will build my church.” We read this verbal echo beside what we know of the connection between al-Ḥīra and Kūfa, of the population that passed between them, and of the traces of forty monasteries. Then we add to it the meaning of universality in ﴿وَمَآ أَرْسَلْنَٰكَ إِلَّا كَآفَّةًۭ لِّلنَّاسِ﴾ (wa-mā arsalnāka illā kāffatan li-n-nās) (“And We have not sent you except to all people together,” Sabaʾ 34:28), because kāffa is built on the same skeleton as “kēfā/kafā”, that is, the kāf and the fāʾ. When the linguistic comparison, the geographical connection and the history of religious transmission come together, we see them meeting in a single picture.

The Painting of ʿĪsā and Maryam in the Kaʿba

Al-Azraqī preserves in Akhbār Makka (Reports of Mecca) a narration about the image of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Maryam in the Kaʿba on the day of the Conquest. In it he mentions that the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) ordered the images erased, and then placed his hands on the image of ʿĪsā with his mother and said: “Erase all the images except what is under my hand.” The soundness of the narration has been disputed, but it has stayed in the reports of Mecca, and its survival makes it a witness to what the religious memory preserved about the House, and to the images attributed to it before Islam.

The narration places the image of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Maryam in the Kaʿba before the Conquest, and this invites us to ask who carried it there, and which tradition exalted it in this place. We understand it within the framework of the ties that existed among the followers of the Masīḥ in the Fertile Crescent and in the Peninsula, whose veneration of him extended to the holy places in the Peninsula. That is why the report matters to us in this book: it places the memory of ʿĪsā within Arab religious life, in its most particular places, instead of confining it to the lands that later became famous as his homeland.

Al-Ḥijāz According to Ibn Isḥāq, and the Virgin at Petra

Beside the image hung on the wall we find, in the oldest books of the Sīra, a written testimony. When Ibn Isḥāq (d. 151 AH) narrated the report of the envoys of the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) to the kings, he called up a precedent for it: the mission of the disciples and followers whom ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, sent to the nations. He listed them place by place: Peter and with him Paul to Rome, Philip to the land of Carthage, which is Ifrīqiya, Yuḥannus to Ephesus (Afsus), the town of the youths, the people of the Cave, and Yaʿqūbus to Jerusalem, which is Īliyāʾ, the town of Bayt al-Maqdis. Then he said of one of them: “And Ibn Thalmāʾ to al-Aʿrābiyya, which is the land of the Ḥijāz.” The text is in the Sīra of Ibn Hishām, in the chapter on the departure of the envoys of the Messenger of God ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) to the kings, p. 608 of the Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī edition, Cairo, 1955.

“Ibn Thalmāʾ” is Bartholomew; the Greek name Βαρθολομαῖος (Bartholomaios) is simply the Aramaic “Bar Tulmay”, that is, son of Tulmay, and Arabic here transmitted the Semitic patronymic as it was, without Arabicising the Greek word. The church tradition meets this report from another side: Eusebius of Caesarea mentions in the Ecclesiastical History (Book 5, chapter 10) that Pantaenus reached “India” and found among its people the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew, which Bartholomew had left them. Some scholars have taken Eusebius’s “India” to be the margins of the Arabian Peninsula and others to be Abyssinia, so the two traditions meet in the direction of the Peninsula and its neighbourhood. Ibn Isḥāq gives his list without a chain of transmission, and it most probably reached him from narrators (akhbārīs) among the People of the Book. That is where its value lies: the early Islamic memory, in the oldest of its extended texts, placed the Ḥijāz explicitly among the places of the mission of ʿĪsā, and transmitted this as a familiar report that needs no explanation.

The second witness comes from the opposite side, from the pen of an adversary and not an ally. Epiphanius of Salamis (about 315–403 CE), in his Panarion, in the section he addressed to the “Alogi”, described pagan rites held on the night of the feast of Epiphany. He said that in Petra, which for him is the metropolis of Arabia that the Scripture calls Edom, they sing hymns to the Virgin in the Arabic tongue and call her by a name that he transmitted in Greek, “Chaamou” (in another version “Chaabou”), and explained as “the girl” and “the virgin”; they call the child born of her “Dusares”, which he explained as “only-begotten of the Lord”. He added that the like occurs in the city of Elusa on that same night. The place in his book is Panarion 51.22.11.

Epiphanius was writing as an adversary in a religious controversy, and wished to present these rites as a pagan imitation of the birth of the Masīḥ, so we consider his report and the purpose for which he told it together. The name of the Virgin, which he transmitted in two different forms, is still disputed among scholars, some of whom have even read it as a word for the cubic stone. As for “Dhū l-Sharā”, he is known in the Nabataean inscriptions in the form dwšrʾ, at Petra and at al-Ḥijr (Madāʾin Ṣāliḥ), and Ibn al-Kalbī mentioned him in The Book of Idols (Kitāb al-Aṣnām). And Elusa is the Ḥalūṣa known in the Negev. After all this, the report has a known land and known names, and in it a man of the fourth century describes Arabic chanting that concerns a virgin and her son in two Arab cities.

Here the report touches a Qurʾānic question. In Sūrat al-Māʾida ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, is asked about a people who took him and his mother as two gods besides God (verse 116). On its face the question seems strange to official church theology, for the councils of the Church never made Maryam, peace be upon her, a god, though they raised her to “Mother of God” at Ephesus in 431 CE. But the verse describes a worship existing among a people, and that is a different matter from the matter of the councils. The testimony of Epiphanius shows us that in the Arab neighbourhood, three centuries before the Prophet’s mission, there was a virgin hailed in Arabic and a son called “only-begotten of the Lord”. Revelation, in the reading of this book, is a source and not a branch, and the report here is a witness to the surroundings in which the address came down; the most it yields is that the picture which the verse negates, a mother and son worshipped together in an Arabic tongue, had a visible presence in the Peninsula and its margins.

Ḥarrān, Meeting Place of Roads

All these roads bring us back to Ḥarrān, which is today in southern Turkey, near the Syrian border. In the history of this city there came together what was scattered in other cities: the story of Ibrāhīm reaches it, the Most High was worshipped in it under the name Sîn, the family of Nabonidus was tied to it, and later the Sabians lived in it and the sciences were transmitted in it. That is why its name recurs in this book.

The Book of Genesis relates that Terah went out with his family from Ur, and then says: “they came to Ḥarrān and dwelt there” (11:31). In Ḥarrān Terah died, and from it Ibrāhīm, peace be upon him, went on with his journey toward the Holy Land. In this narrative, then, it is a place where the family settled and from which it resumed its journey, and not a name mentioned in passing on the way.

Ḥarrān is tied also to the family of Nabonidus; his mother was in the service of Sîn there, that is, in the service of the Most High whom the inscriptions call by that name, and to it he turned his concern when he wished to rebuild his house Ehulhul. Then for centuries the city was known as the centre of the Ḥarrānian Sabians, who preserved astronomy, mathematics, medicine and a celestial philosophy connected with Neoplatonism. In Ḥarrān the Chaldean-Babylonian wisdom met the Greek heritage, and its people went on working with both even as states changed around them. Among its sons was Thābit ibn Qurra (836–901 CE), who transmitted into Arabic works of Archimedes, Apollonius, Euclid and Ptolemy. This scientific connection is another aspect of the continuity of the Eastern heritage.

Three places in this book lie far apart on the map and stand side by side in the discussion: al-Ḥīra in Iraq, Ḥarrān in the Upper Jazīra (northern Mesopotamia), and Ḥawrān in the south of the Levant. For us they are stations on a single road, along which people travelled and reports were preserved, and with them the title of the disciples and its meaning are connected.

Tanakh and Tanūkh: One Name for a Union

“Tanakh” (תנ"ך (tanakh)) is written as an abbreviation of the names of the three parts of the Book, the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings, but it is pronounced as a complete name, and when you hear it you hear the letters of “Tanūkh”, because the final kāf in Hebrew is soft and is pronounced khāʾ. Tanūkh were tribes who allied themselves “on the Tanūkh, which is the abode (maqām), and they covenanted to mutual aid and support”, so that one name embraced them; and the Tanakh likewise is three collections embraced by one name. Both names, then, are a name for a union.

The root in tanawwukh and anākha is the same Semitic root that the Torah has in וַתָּנַח הַתֵּבָה (wattānaḥ hattēvāh), “and the ark rested” (Genesis 8:4), and by which it commands that the manna be placed, וְהַנַּח אֹתוֹ לִפְנֵי יְהוָה לְמִשְׁמֶרֶת לְדֹרֹתֵיכֶם (wehannaḥ ʾotō lifnê Yhwh lemišmeret ledōrōtêkem), “before the Lord, to be kept for your generations” (Exodus 16:33), and then Hārūn places it “before the Testimony” (16:34). The root, then, denotes an abode, and a deposit that is kept. Ben Yehuda’s dictionary mentions that the root in Akkadian is naḫu, and that in Arabic it is nākha in the sense of “he made the camel kneel”.

This abbreviation arose in the learning of the Jews in the Middle Ages, and the greatest schools of that learning in the East were at Pumbedita and Sura. Pumbedita is al-Anbār, as the traveller Benjamin of Tudela wrote in the twelfth century, and Sura lies some six kilometres from al-Ḥīra. Al-Anbār and al-Ḥīra were both the abode of Tanūkh: “and many of the Tanūkh settled al-Anbār and al-Ḥīra” (al-Ṭabarī on the authority of Ibn al-Kalbī). The scholars of the Tanakh therefore lived for centuries in the two cities of Tanūkh, among the people of the Arabic script that spread from al-Anbār to al-Ḥīra. So the name of the comprehensive Book and the name of the united tribes met in one land, with one sound and one meaning.

The Tanūkhid union itself arose in the east of the Arabian Peninsula in the second century CE. Its groups then moved to al-Ḥīra, and from there spread to the Levant in the Byzantine period. In the report of Māwiyya we saw how their Christian affiliation was bound up with their defence of the right to choose their own religion. It is within this course, from the Peninsula to Iraq and then to the Levant, that we set the name and read it.

Al-Ḥāʾiṭ and Fadak: The Babylonian Inscription and the Missing Bridge

A material witness to the reach of Nabonidus’s influence remains on the ground: the inscription of al-Ḥāʾiṭ in the Ḥāʾil region in the north of the Peninsula. The Saudi Heritage Commission announced that it had found it on a black basalt face, bearing the king’s name and image, and described it as the longest cuneiform inscription found in the Kingdom. Al-Ḥāʾiṭ is Fadak, the oasis that lies about a hundred and forty kilometres north of Medina, on the corridor linking Taymāʾ with Khaybar and Yathrib. The Islamic sources preserve reports of a Jewish community that lived there and was known for its crafts and learning. At Taymāʾ, too, there is an Aramaic inscription dated to 203 CE, which mentions bearers of Jewish names who held local offices. So the same corridor kept the trace of the Babylonian king, and then kept the reports of the communities that settled in it after him.

Fadak then returned to the heart of Islamic history, when Fāṭima al-Zahrāʾ and Abū Bakr disagreed over it after the death of the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam). Beside what has been written about its ownership, what concerns us here is that the oasis stayed present in history age after age: it bore the trace of Nabonidus, Jewish communities lived in it for centuries, and its name was then tied to the Prophet and his daughter in the narrations of Fadak and her right in it. When we look at these successive layers, we see how Fadak connects with the map of religion that we are drawing, from Babylon to the north of the Peninsula and then to the Muhammadan environment.

The Shīʿī Narration: ʿĪsā and Maryam on the Banks of the Euphrates

The Shīʿī narration offers another picture that places ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Maryam in Iraq. In Biḥār al-Anwār, al-Majlisī transmits a report from Mūsā ibn Jaʿfar al-Kāẓim (745–799 CE) that puts Maryam’s labour near the Euphrates, among palms and vines, and connects the sarī in the words of the Exalted, “your Lord has placed beneath you a sarī”, with a branch of the river. This picture suits the environment of southern Iraq, and it differs from mountainous Bethlehem, which rises about 775 metres and has no river running through it. For that reason we take an interest in the report, and in what goes with it in Shīʿī memory: the connection of ʿĪsā with Iraq, and of his return with it. We read it as a remnant of a Mesopotamian memory of his personality, which stayed present beside the Palestinian geography that came to dominate the narrative of his life.

If we gather all this together, the traces of Nabonidus at Taymāʾ and al-Ḥāʾiṭ, the report of the Israelite healer in 4Q242, the reports of the communities at Khaybar and Yathrib, then the narrations of the Euphrates, the monasteries of al-Ḥīra, the movement of the Tanūkhids and the revolt of Māwiyya, we see a wider map of the memory of the Masīḥ. It has a Ḥijāzī road running from Taymāʾ to Yathrib and Mecca, and an Iraqi road running from Babylon to al-Ḥīra and Kūfa, while Ḥarrān links elements of the history of both roads. At the heart of the reading we propose stands Nabonidus, with his biography, his remains and his presence in the north of the Peninsula. These are the places proposed as those in which the report was preserved and from which it travelled, beside what was transmitted in and from Jerusalem.

A Wider Picture of the Peninsula

When we have finished this tour, we see the Peninsula as a land where people argued about religion and exchanged reports and books, where paganism lived beside traditions of monotheism, and whose communities were connected with the Christian and Jewish centres around them. In this surrounding we understand the emergence of Islam as the extension of a long religious movement and a correction of its course. The Muhammadan call went out to people who had knowledge, who had an inheritance, and who disagreed among themselves, and it addressed all of that as it restated the one religion.

The Overarching Thesis: An Ebionite, Non-Pauline Layer in Arab Christianity

The Arab environments knew churches with a developed theology and clear institutions, and beside them an older layer that kept the humanity of the Masīḥ and his prophethood. The books of the Fathers call it by the name of the Ebionites, and its communities turned toward Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula. What concerns us in this layer is its tongue, the picture of prophethood it formed, and its local memory, which stayed close to the first reports of the Masīḥ.

Within this framework we understand the Muhammadan call as an extension of the one religion and a correction of what had entered into its knowledge of God and of the human being. This does not oblige us to make every community that preceded it agree with it in every detail, for the call may complete what came before it, criticise it in the same breath, and revive what had been lost.

The Two Men and the Doctrinal Image

This whole book rests on an explicit distinction among three figures that we do not confuse:

1. ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (peace be upon him): the prophet-king whom we identify with Nabonidus, and whose biography we place in the sixth century BCE.
2. Jesus of Nazareth: a later righteous man, whom we see as an heir of the heritage of the Masīḥ, and perhaps a teacher in one of its communities. What he claimed for himself the sources do not distinguish from the layers of narrative.
3. The deified image: the doctrinal structure that formed around the name of Jesus and, in our reading, veiled the truth of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him). This is the object of the criticism of imposture, not the accusation of the man of deliberate lying.

The map we are drawing has two connected levels. The first is the geography of the life Nabonidus lived, to which the inscriptions testify; the second is the geography of the reports as they travelled with the communities that carried them. The bearer of the message himself stayed ten years in the oases of the Ḥijāz, from Taymāʾ, Dedan, Fadak and Khaybar to Yadiʿ and Yathrib, as his stele at Ḥarrān testifies, and then the communities carried his trace beyond those oases.

The Peninsula (al-Jazīra): The Cut-Off Land, the Heart and Not the Exile

Ibn Fāris says in Maqāyīs al-Lugha: “The letters jīm, zāy and rāʾ form a single root, which is cutting ... and the jazīra was so called because of its being cut off.” Cutting is the one meaning on which the whole root agrees, whether the sea surrounds a land and so cuts it off, or the land is separated from what lies around it in some other way. We read this root by the method of “Roots” (al-Judhūr) that we adopt, a method that sees Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic-Syriac as connected stages and sees Arabic as the one that best preserves the origin. By this method we compare the uses of the root in the Book of Leviticus with the name of the Euphratean jazīra.

This very root names three things in which the meaning of cutting meets. The first is the place to which the scapegoat is sent on the Day of Atonement, the “land of the cut” (eretz gezerah, Leviticus 16:22), that is, “a severed land”, to which iniquity is carried so that the sin is cut off from the community. The second is the cry of the exiles, nigzarnū (Ezekiel 37:11), “we are cut off”, severed from our land and our hope. The third is “al-Jazīra” itself, the upper lands between the two rivers, whose name comes from the Syriac Gazartā, “the island”, which the Tigris and Euphrates cut off and enclosed, so that it lay like a floating land between two waters. Edward Lipiński gathered the strands of this one meaning in his study “The Root GZR in Semitic” (Aula Orientalis 17/18, 1999–2000). He lists cutting, slaughtering and cutting a covenant, and then names what is for us the decisive witness: “the planning and delimiting of lands by floodwaters.” Cutting is done with a knife and it is done with a river, and one root describes them both.

Ḥarrān is one of the cities of this Jazīra; Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī places it in Muʿjam al-Buldān in “the Jazīra of Aqūr”, the capital of the lands of Muḍar. Since geography and language meet in this way, we propose reading the “land of gezerah” in Leviticus as the land between the two rivers. The land we read of in the report of the exile then returns to the place of origin, as we set out in Appendix 11. And it is the meaning of cutting that permits this shift of view: a land may be cut off by the two rivers that surround it, so that its name describes the homeland itself, before it comes to carry in the narrative the meaning of distance from it.

Chapter 10: Expectation and the Transfer of the Masīḥ's Identity

When Remembrance Becomes Expectation

A prophet’s trace may remain among people for a long time while knowledge of the one who left it fades. On the reading of this book, this is what happened to ʿĪsā, peace be upon him: his wisdom remained, his remembrance remained, and the name al-Masīḥ remained, while the reports of his life were scattered among many tongues and communities. So when the expectation came afterwards, it was a search for a meaning that his companions had known and that was then veiled from them. Its cause was not that ʿĪsā was unable to establish a kingdom; for us he is the prophet-king whose life we read in the record of Nabonidus.

The Wave of Claimants in Jewish History

Between the second century BCE and the second century CE, religious and political movements followed one another, and their leaders carried hopes of liberation and of renewing the community. Their aims differed and their experiences varied, yet their reports show us how much the expectation of deliverance occupied people in those days.

The Maccabees rose in the second century BCE against Seleucid Greek rule and against what it had imposed on Jewish religious life. They succeeded in war and in politics, so that people saw in them a hope of liberation. But when they established their own rule, the questions of prophecy and deliverance did not come to an end, and people went on waiting after the revolt.

Then, around the year 44 CE, Theudas appeared. He called people to himself as a prophet and promised his followers that he would part the Jordan for them, as Joshua son of Nun had done. People who carried religious and political hope together gathered to him, until the Roman forces destroyed his movement and killed him. In his story we see the ancient image of rescue return, giving a contemporary movement its meaning.

Before him, at the beginning of the century, in 6 CE, Judas the Galilean had called for resistance to the Roman tax, counting submission to it contrary to the sovereignty of God, the sole King. His movement was connected with the history of the Zealots, or “the Zealous”, a people who joined religious belief to armed resistance in their approach. This stance left its mark on the movements that came after him.

Then Simon bar Kokhba led the revolt around 132 CE. His Aramaic epithet means “the Star”, and some religious circles saw in him the awaited Messiah. He fought the Romans for several years; the revolt ended with his death and its defeat, but its effect remained in Jewish memory. In this example messianic hope is plainly joined to political and military leadership.

The religious and political hopes of these movements vary in a troubled world: some call for reform, some resist a foreign government, and others look for the Masīḥ. We cannot trace all their leaders back to a single intention, nor count the response people gave them as proof that they deceived them. We recall all this only to see how people load a righteous man with hopes larger than his own story.

Jesus of Nazareth in the Context of the Successive Movements

Into this setting we place Jesus of Nazareth. We see him as a righteous man from currents that had inherited the remembrance and teaching of the Masīḥ, and perhaps he became a teacher in one of them. It does not follow from the titles that his followers or his opponents gave him that he deliberately took on the identity of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him. The report of his trial and the royal inscription written on his cross set one side of his life in the world of Roman rule, and we judge it likely that this side belongs to the life of Jesus, not to that of Nabonidus.

What happened after the trial and the crucifixion? We read it in two ways: either Jesus was tortured until he lost consciousness and then rose from his swoon, or God brought him back to life. On either reading we understand how the report of the resurrection arose in the later narrative, and how the matter came to Paul. What shows plainly in Paul’s letters is that he made death and resurrection the centre by which salvation is interpreted, and that there is a distance between the event and the doctrine built upon it.

The New Testament itself contains texts that preserve this way of reading. The Letter to the Hebrews says of Jesus: “Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up, with strong crying and tears, prayers and supplications to him who was able to save him from death, was heard for his godly fear” (Hebrews 5:7). He prayed to be saved from death, and the letter states that his prayer was answered. Mark relates that the governor himself was astonished at how quickly he had died: “And Pilate marvelled that he had died so soon” (Mark 15:44). He questioned the centurion, and when he learned from him, “he gave the body to Joseph” (15:45), so that within hours of the cross the body passed to one of his followers.

Luke then describes the one who appeared to his disciples as a man of flesh and bones. He says to them: “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see me have” (Luke 24:39), and then he asks for food: “And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them” (24:42–43). And in the Acts of the Apostles: “To whom also he showed himself alive, by many proofs, after he had suffered” (Acts 1:3). What these texts describe is a man alive after pain, whose body carries the marks of the wounds, who grows hungry and eats. This is the picture of a man who survived the cross, either because he recovered from his swoon or because God brought him back to life in answer to his prayer, as the Letter to the Hebrews says. The later construction then turned this life after pain into a resurrection from the dead.

To understand this transformation we do not need to suppose that Paul planned to exploit people’s grief. A man may be sincere in his experience and then interpret it within a structure that changes the meaning of the heritage he received. We read this structure in his letters, where we see what he added to the image of the Masīḥ and what he moved from his teachings to the centre.

How a Title Moves and Reports Attach to It

The title “al-Masīḥ” is a description carried by a religious memory, and it is too wide to be a personal name confined to its bearer. When a later man comes to be known by this title, the reports of its earlier bearer can be drawn to him, above all if he lived in a community that followed the earlier man’s path and narrated his life. This is the course we propose for the confusion of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, with Jesus: the teacher’s life was narrated and preserved, his followers took him as their model, the two images then blended in memory, and the composite image finally settled officially. We have no record that fixes a single moment at which all this happened, nor an independent genealogy proving that both lives had a mother named Maryam; the name itself may be among the things that travelled with the report.

The Gospels themselves preserve this way of speaking in the time of Jesus. When his name became famous, Herod said: “John the Baptist is risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works are at work in him” (Mark 6:14). Others said, “It is Elijah,” and others, “It is a prophet, or as one of the prophets” (6:15). In Luke there is a plainer saying: “that one of the old prophets was risen again” (Luke 9:8). And when he asked his disciples what people said of him, they answered: “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets” (Matthew 16:14).

In the first century people laid on the man before them the name and the works of an earlier prophet, and called that a rising from the dead, as though the ancient prophet had “risen” in a new man. This is how we read the attachment of the reports of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, to Jesus. In these verses the phrase “risen from the dead” is used of the passing of a personality and his reports into a later man, so the report of the resurrection in the later narrative has a precedent in the language of the Gospel itself.

What Helps to Distinguish the Two Biographies

Of Jesus we speak plainly: we see him as a man who lived in Roman Palestine, preached among his people and carried a trace of the way of the Masīḥ. To him we ascribe, as a matter of likelihood, the reports of the trial and the crucifixion. What came after the cross we read in two ways, as we presented earlier: either he swooned under torture and then rose from his swoon, or God gave him life. And when we make him a disciple of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, we mean only that he inherited his way and his teaching across the generations, since centuries lie between them in which no person meets a person.

How, then, do we tell the two men apart? We look at the milieu that the reports presuppose: whom they address, which parties they know, and which questions they make a matter of dispute. This is another road to the time of a report, and we add it to the names, places and documents that we already have.

The book distinguishes between the older heritage of the Children of Israel and Judaism as it took shape, a movement with institutions and with boundaries by which its identity is known. In this it draws on Yonatan Adler’s research into when the evidence appears for the wide practice of the Torah’s rulings. Adler does not say that all the foundations of the religion arose suddenly in the second century BCE, but his research lets us ask a more precise question: when did the Law become a social system attested by the archaeological record?

Now look at the two portraits:

In the Qurʾānic portrait of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, the Pharisees and Sadducees are not named, and the disputes over the Sabbath and the tithes are not set out in detail as we find them in the Gospels. In the Gospel portrait, by contrast, these disagreements take up a clear space alongside healing, teaching and parables. This is a difference in the features of the biography as each portrait presents it. We count it among the places where different layers of the narrative are read; we do not take it as a description of everything either man did in his life.

Behind this difference we see a difference in the time of the reports and in the people who stand behind them. The names, places and inscriptions we have met bear witness to this: the Qurʾānic reports rebuild an older milieu in a coherent way, and so the difference tells us more than mere silence.

Readers can try this comparison for themselves by asking of each scene: does it need Roman authority and later Jewish parties, or does it hold together in the older milieu of prophecy and priesthood? With this question the sorting of layers begins. It is a method of reading that weighs each report in the Gospels by its evidence before judging it.

For this reason we connect this comparison with the documents of Chapters 5 and 6, since significance arises when the features of a report converge with its evidence from inscriptions and documents.

The Disciple Who Narrated His Teacher's Life: Jesus as a Follower of ʿĪsā

It remains to explain how the two biographies became one. We see Jesus as having grown up in a community that preserved the report of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him. He followed his way, imitated him in teaching and healing, and narrated his life. Memory then carried some of the teacher’s reports over to his heir, because of the likeness between them in word and deed. This is one aspect of our reading of ﴿شُبِّهَ لَهُمْ﴾ (shubbiha lahum) ("it was made to appear so to them," al-Nisāʾ 4:157), which we set out in Chapter 19: the link begins with discipleship and the preservation of the heritage, and little by little the distinction between the narrator and the one he narrates about weakens.

The question has a witness in the names of the communities: the Nazarenes, the Nāṣorāyē, the Essenes and others. The meaning of vow, preservation and support unites these names, though their sources differ. So we read the attributes of each community, follow its course and its practice, and then discern what connects it with the way of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him.

The later Islamic corpus preserves sayings and maxims that it ascribes to ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, among them that the world is a bridge to be crossed. We read them as part of the history of his spiritual memory, not as documents contemporary with him. The teacher’s wisdom may stay preserved in one tradition while some of his reports pass to another figure in a second tradition. This opens a door to comparison between wordings and contexts, without equating the date at which a saying was recorded with the date of the one who spoke it.

Moreover, the Christian tradition itself preserves the memory of a doubled man. In the "Acts of Thomas", a Syriac text composed in Edessa before 240 CE, the apostle is called "Judas Thomas", and Thomas in Aramaic means "the twin"; the text addresses him (chapter 39): "O twin of the Masīḥ, apostle of the Most High"; and in the scene of the bridal chamber (chapter 11) the bridegroom lifts the curtain and sees the Lord speaking with the bride "in the likeness of Judas Thomas", who had just gone out, and says to him: Did you not go out? He answers: "I am not Judas Thomas; I am his brother." So the oldest Syriac Christianity bears in its text one who resembles the Teacher, is confused with him, and is called his brother. This book's reading of the scene: this is the memory of discipleship itself; the one who resembles is the one who follows.

John the Baptist says in the Injīl of the one who comes after him: “He was before me” (John 1:30). The expression carries two meanings together: that he preceded him in birth, and that he preceded him in rank, as the language of the prior light is read in the Sufi heritage. This meets what the Ebionites preserved, that the Masīḥ is older than Jesus and comes in various names and forms, as we shall set out in Chapter 12.

Some Mandaean texts contain harsh descriptions of Jesus. We present them as the voice of their authors, and then ask what they may preserve of an objection to the transfer of identity and attribute. For us the man was righteous, and the place of imposture is the structure erected on his name. So we take from the Mandaean memory of enmity what is useful, and keep the difference between it and our own interpretation.

Different Ways of Preserving Memory

The map of expectation and of the preservation of the heritage reaches beyond the Jews of Palestine. There are the Essenes, who withdrew to the wilderness, and whom we treat here and in Chapter 6. There are the Ebionites, who opposed Paul and preserved a human image of the Masīḥ, and to whom Chapter 12 is given. There are the Mandaeans, in whose tradition Yaḥyā is present, and to whom Chapter 14 is given. Then there are the Ḥarrānians, in whom we read heirs of the Babylonian monotheism connected with the line of Nabonidus, who awaited one who would receive their heritage. Then there are the Jews of the oases at Taymāʾ, Khaybar and Yathrib, with their reports of the promised prophet, which we presented in Chapters 6 and 9. Each of these communities has its own language for what it preserves and what it awaits.

In these communities we read reports and meanings that the Pauline and Nicene image alone did not take in. Each community preserved something different from what the others preserved, so we had to read each one independently before linking them, and for this reason we have given them separate places in the book. From these places taken together there forms for us the image of the heritage that continued outside the dominant creed, whose ways of facing the religious transformations varied.

A New Meaning for Expectation

If we place ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, in the sixth century BCE, as we do in this book, we can read the later expectation as a search for the continuation of an ancient heritage. The centuries pass and the details of the biography are scattered, but the name al-Masīḥ remains, and the hope attached to it. Then a later man appears in whom people see the fulfilment of what they await, and they load him with the remembrance of the first teacher, more than his own story can bear. So expectation came out of remembrance, and expectation then opened the way to the transfer of identity.

Paul’s letters give a different answer to the expectation, since they make the Masīḥ and his fate the axis of the salvation of the Gentiles. Then the Qurʾānic reading comes and returns the centre of the relationship to the worship of God: ﴿اعبدوا الله ربي وربكم﴾ (uʿbudū Allāha rabbī wa-rabbakum) ("Worship God, my Lord and your Lord," al-Māʾida 5:72). The question that occupies this book is how the heritage passed between these two pictures, and what remained beneath the later structure of the reports of the first light, of its teacher and of the bearers of his way.

The Two Messiahs at Qumran: A Prophet-Teacher and a Prophet-Lawgiver

The texts of expectation preserve several images of the one awaited: at one time a Messiah connected with Hārūn, at another a Messiah connected with David, and at another a prophet like Moses. These meanings came together in varying forms in the heritage of the prophets, and in the Qumran documents we then find an expression of the expectation of two Messiahs. This material deserves to be read in detail, because it widens a picture that we are accustomed to confine to a single awaited figure.

Here we shall gather the texts that open the question of a plurality of awaited figures, and then compare them with the relation between ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Yaḥyā, or between ʿĪsā and Muḥammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam). Our aim is to understand the persons and the connections between them. Prophecy, kingship and conduct may come together in one person, and so we do not assume from the start a division that makes one of the two prophets for the spirit and the other for government.

The Doctrine of the Two Messiahs at Qumran

In the “Community Rule” (1QS 9:11) there is a reference to the prophet and to the Messiahs of Hārūn and Israel. The Damascus Document has other formulations, among them the singular “Messiah of Hārūn and Israel”. This variety matters, because it tells us that we have in our hands a body of texts and expectations, and not a detailed biography of two persons whose names and order of appearance all the writers agreed upon.

The description “Hārūn” carries the connection with the priesthood and the Hārūnic lineage. The book sees in this an occasion to compare it with ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, who came from the house in which Maryam was addressed with the words “O sister of Hārūn”. The holder of this lineage may well combine kingship and government, because the joining of prophecy and kingship in ʿĪsā is one of the foundations of our reading.

“Israel” and the Davidic expectation belong to the picture of one who leads the community and renews it. We read each text in its own wording: some declare David or his branch outright, and some speak of the prince of the congregation or of the interpreter of the Law. We then place the picture of the awaited leader within the horizon of the Abrahamic promise, which is wide enough to hold it, and we keep the Davidic lineage explicit wherever the texts mention it.

John Collins sets out in “The Scepter and the Star” the variety in these messianic expectations. In the same material appears the “Teacher of Righteousness”, who has his own place in the community’s memory. When we compare the picture of the Teacher with that of the priest and that of the prophet, we trace what was attributed to each title, and it becomes clear to us where they meet and where they part.

The “Florilegium” document (4Q174) sets up another contrast, between the “Branch of David” and the “Interpreter of the Law”, and we connect it with the image of Zakariyyā: “a priest on his throne, and counsel of peace between the two”. The “Commentary on Genesis” (4Q252) mentions “the Messiah of Righteousness, the Branch of David” when it interprets “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah” (Genesis 49:10). So the image of royal leadership is present beside the image of the teacher and the priest. We then return to the difference of formulation between the plural in the “Community Rule” (1QS 9:11), which says “the Messiahs of Hārūn and Israel”, and what may be a singular in the “Damascus Document” (CD). The documents allow a single comprehensive person as they allow two persons, and it would be wrong to read them all as though they were one formulation.

The Texts That Open the Comparison

This comparison is easier to follow if we set each witness beside the question it opens:

Reading the Table

These texts allow two readings: we may see in them the remembrance of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Yaḥyā, that is, the prophet-king and his teacher, or we may see in them the expectation of ʿĪsā and the Seal of the Prophets in two stages. The wording of the texts does not fix who is meant, so what favours one reading is that it explains more fully how the relation among the figures is described.

On either reading we understand the succession between the two prophets as a succession of guidance, by which knowledge and morals are brought to completion, though the historical circumstances differ. The kingship of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, is a foundation in the reading of this book, and for that reason we do not make the coming of Muḥammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) a compensation for an earlier inability to establish rule.

What Remains of the Question

The value of Qumran is that it preserves for us the expectation of the prophet and the Messiah in its variety, before the later ecclesiastical image settled. From it we take a witness that the memory of expectation knew several names and functions, which agrees with what we read of the connection among ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, Yaḥyā and the Seal of the Prophets ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam).

The Family of ʿImrān in a Qumranic-Essene Setting: Contextual Intersections

We close this round by comparing the picture drawn by the Sūras Āl ʿImrān and Maryam with the practices of the communities whose reports Qumran preserved. We begin with the themes, and “ʿImrān” remains meanwhile the name of the Qurʾānic family and of Maryam’s father, as in the well-known exegesis. So we first ask what the two pictures share of vow, service, purity and teaching, and only then consider any linguistic proposal about the name.

If we gather the elements of the Qurʾānic story, these closely related themes appear before us:

• The wife of ʿImrān vowed what was in her womb, and by this vow she placed the family in a setting of consecration and religious service; Maryam became vowed to God from the womb, after the manner of the Nazirites, as we presented in Chapter 8.
• The miḥrāb, the guardianship of Zakariyyā and the Hārūnic affiliation draw a link with a religious institution and a priestly house.
• Withdrawal, silence and purity are meanings present in the story, and they have parallels in the communities of the wilderness, though that does not mean that every silence in it is a named Qumranic rite.
• Purification with water opens the way to comparison among several communities, provided that we distinguish the Mandaean maṣbuta from the terms and practices of Qumran.
• Election gathers the family around a meaning bound to a mission, and its effect may continue among followers who come after it.

The scene contains two terms that carry us from the description of devotion to the picture of a religious building in which service is organised: the miḥrāb and the guardianship (kafāla).

As for the miḥrāb, its picture is wider than an alcove for prayer. The Qurʾān says of the work of the jinn for Sulaymān: ﴿يَعْمَلُونَ لَهُ مَا يَشَاءُ مِن مَّحَارِيبَ وَتَمَاثِيلَ﴾ (yaʿmalūna lahu mā yashāʾu min maḥārība wa-tamāthīl) ("they made for him whatever he willed of sanctuaries and statues," Sabaʾ 34:13), so it mentions miḥrābs among the edifices they built. The inscriptions of South Arabia know mḥrb, that is, miḥrab, as the name of a building in the sanctuary, and beside it mḥrm, maḥram, as the name of the sanctuary itself, from which comes the familiar name "Maḥram Bilqīs". This sacred architectural usage helps us to picture the place in which Maryam lived and into which Zakariyyā went in to her.

On this reading we see Maryam as the ward of a sanctuary that had its building and its service, and we understand that Zakariyyā entered upon her by virtue of his relation to this religious institution. There is an established place, and there are those who take charge of it.

﴿وما كنت لديهم إذ يلقون أقلامهم أيهم يكفل مريم﴾ (wa-mā kunta ladayhim idh yulqūna aqlāmahum ayyuhum yakfulu Maryam) ("You were not with them when they cast their pens as to which of them should take charge of Maryam," Āl ʿImrān 3:44): the casting of lots in this scene suggests that guardianship held a special standing among the people of that setting. We can compare it with the ways in which responsibilities for sacred things were distributed, although the scene by itself does not identify a particular Meccan office. What concerns us here is that the family and religious service come together in a single scene.

The coming together of the miḥrāb and the guardianship connects with what we said about names and functions in this setting: where there is a built sanctuary there is a service and there are responsibilities for it, and a name may carry the mention of the office as it carries the mention of its holder.

These elements draw a religious setting that is suited to comparison with what the Qumran communities preserved. But in the book’s chronology the family of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, precedes those communities by centuries. The possible connection between them is therefore that the family’s heritage continued in those communities; we do not say that the family was a member of an organisation that came after it, lest the times be confused.

Qumran and ʿImrān: The Closeness of the Two Names

“Qumran” and “ʿImrān” are close in sound and in consonantal frame, and this closeness becomes more significant when we join it to the picture of the priestly house to which Maryam was ascribed by the words “O sister of Hārūn.”

But we weigh this correspondence of sound against the dated forms of the name and against the evidence that shows how the speakers of a single language pronounced it and how others transmitted it, and we weigh it also against the report and the attribute that go together with the name.

The link between “Qumran” and “ʿImrān” is a proposal for which no known intermediate ancient form testifies, and no report connects the community with the house itself. For this reason we set the verbal resemblance beside the historical and spiritual comparison, and each has its own material.

The spiritual and historical comparison between the two names, by contrast, rests on attested material: the vow, the priesthood, purity, the preservation of the Book, and the expectation that guidance would be renewed. These are matters we can study directly in the texts.

So the name of the Qurʾānic family stays in its place in the story, and the Qumran documents help us trace the heirs of its heritage, in whom the name and the report meet in one meaning.

This is how memory moves. It begins from the house out of which ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, came, passes to the communities that preserved his report, and then to the settings that reinterpreted it. At this stage Paul appears and moves the centre of the message to a doctrinal structure that had a profound effect on what came after.

Chapter 11: Paul: The Man Who Never Met the Masīḥ and Made Christianity

Paul says in his letter to the Galatians: "But I make known to you, brothers, the gospel which I preached, that it is not according to man; for I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but by a revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:11–12). Then he tells what he did after that: "Immediately I did not consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus" (1:16–17). The man testifies himself that his gospel did not come to him from those who had accompanied Jesus; and on this testimony the title of this chapter rests.

Saul, who later became known as Paul, grew up in Tarsus in Cilicia, where two worlds meet: the Jewish Law and Greek culture. The reports present him as a Jew by birth, a Pharisee by upbringing, and a holder of Roman citizenship. The Acts of the Apostles relates that he was present at the stoning of Stephen and kept the garments of those who stoned him. This man, who shared in persecuting the movement, then became one of its most far-reaching preachers.

The Book of Acts narrates his conversion on the road to Damascus in more than one place, and his letters tell us of the revelation he received and of his call to preach. Since spiritual experience has a place of regard in this book, we begin with what it did to its owner, and then look at the interpretation he built upon it. We do not know that Paul met Jesus before the crucifixion, but he met Peter and James and others afterwards, as his letters report. This difference between direct discipleship and later contact with the community is the key to understanding the source of his authority within it.

In “Paul and Jesus”, James Tabor gives Paul’s role a foundational weight in the shape that Christianity came to take, and brings out how far he differed from James and the first community. There are more critical readings, among them that of Hyam Maccoby in “The Mythmaker”, and other readings that oppose explaining the origin of devotion to Jesus by a mere pagan borrowing. We are not bound to adopt every detail of any of them in order to see the scale of the change in Paul’s own texts: the place of the Masīḥ in prayer changed, the interpretation of his death changed, and so did the position of the Law, and the community opened itself to the Gentiles.

In Galatians 1:17–18 he says that he went to Arabia, then returned to Damascus, and went up to Jerusalem after three years. The journey draws attention after what we have presented of the religious life in northern Arabia, for perhaps it gave him contact with those who preserved an older report about the Masīḥ. The letter does not specify the purpose of the journey or its length, so we draw its connection with those settings from the indications that surround it.

How Scholars Have Read Paul's Experience

The point of disagreement becomes clearer if we also read the interpretation of the scholars who come closest to understanding Paul from within. The works of N. T. Wright, Larry Hurtado and James D. G. Dunn discuss his experience and his relation to the first community and to the Law, and the most useful of what we draw from them falls under the following points.

The first is what the experience did to his life. He turned from persecutor to preacher, and endured prison and flogging for the sake of the mission; for his defenders this supports his sincerity in what he experienced. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, he lists the names of those to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection: Peter, the Twelve, more than five hundred brothers at once, and James. Then he says: “And last of all, as it were to one untimely born, he appeared to me.” So he places his experience at the end of the chain, and distinguishes it from the experiences of those before him.

The second is the antiquity of the letters. The earliest is dated to about 50 CE, while the Gospel of Mark is dated to about 70 CE, so the letters precede the preserved Gospels in composition. For this reason Paul’s testimony is close in time to the first community, even though he did not meet Jesus during his life. The scholars point out here that the relation of the Gospel writers themselves to direct eyewitness is a disputed question, so this objection alone is not enough to let us discard Paul’s letters while accepting the other transmitted accounts.

The third is his contact with the Pillars. He says that he stayed with Peter fifteen days after three years (Galatians 1:18), and that he went back after fourteen years with Barnabas and Titus and laid his gospel before James, Cephas and John. They gave him “the right hand of fellowship” (Galatians 2:9) and charged him to remember “the poor”. His defenders read this agreement as a division of labour between the Gentiles and the Jews, and as evidence of a measure of mutual recognition, although disagreement remained between them.

The fourth is the understanding of his position on the Law. These scholars distinguish between exempting entrants from among the Gentiles from the rulings of circumcision, food and the Sabbath in their Jewish form, and dropping the moral value of the Law. In Romans 7 he says: “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.” They hold that he made the Law disclose sin and made the Masīḥ fulfil its purpose, and they connect that with the saying of Jesus in Matthew 5:17 about fulfilment.

Larry Hurtado holds that devotion to Jesus, as it appears in Paul’s letters, extends to believing Jewish communities that were earlier than his activity, and that it is not explained by a mere importing from the mystery religions. This is an objection of weight against anyone who says that Paul invented all the elements of the conception on his own, but it does not cancel his role in formulating them, or in spreading them within wide communities. The reader will find his direct presentation in “Jesus-Devotion and Historical Questions”.

The Point of Our Objection

This reading has its grounds in Paul’s life and letters, and we take that into account. But we return the question to its place in this book: what did this experience do to the heritage that reached him, and how did the centre of the message change in his preaching?

The sources show both connection and disagreement between Paul and the Pillars; they show formulas he received, and the wide work he carried out among the Gentiles. What concerns us is what he did with this material. He formulated a structure that made the Masīḥ the axis of prayer and salvation, and he changed the boundaries of entry into the community and its relation to the Law, and the dispute over the table and circumcision lay at the heart of those boundaries. This transformation appears in his letters and his work, and we can trace it; our criticism of his project rests on it. His inner intentions we do not claim to know, and we do not make every Gospel tradition proceed from him.

For this reason we see Paul as one of the foremost makers of the new Christianity. He gathered narratives and meanings that were already in circulation, and rearranged them into a conception that had a wide power to spread. What matters in his role is what he did in building and spreading, which is clearer than the question of who was first to each single element, because it is the project he formulated that left this effect on what came after.

Let us return to the journey to Arabia that we mentioned. Hengel and Schwemer, in "Paul between Damascus and Antioch" (1997), link "Arabia" in Galatians 1:17 to the Nabataean kingdom in the time of al-Ḥārith IV, and compare that with the mention of "the governor of al-Ḥārith the king" in Damascus (2 Corinthians 11:32). This geographical identification fixes the setting of the journey for us. Its purpose is usually read as early missionary activity, but we propose another possibility: that he met there an older monotheistic heritage. The journey we know from his own words; what he received on it, his letters pass over in silence.

Dr Muhammad Mustafa Mansur has also read the journey in this way. He saw in it a going to those who preserved the report of the Masīḥ, and a seeking of knowledge before the mission had settled. We take up the possibility to which he drew attention, and read it together with the reports of the journey and with the setting we have presented.

Paul against the Disciples

The difference between Paul and those who knew Jesus during his lifetime raises a question about the source of authority in the community. Paul defends his apostleship by what he received through revelation, and does not make earthly discipleship alone its source. Galatians 2 shows his open dispute with Peter, whereas Acts 15 presents an agreement on what is to be asked of entrants from among the Gentiles. James, in that chapter, does not call for imposing the whole Law on them; so we compare the two pictures as they are, and then look at what the other traditions preserved of the dispute.

In the "Recognitions" attributed to Clement, in Book One, there is a scene in which an enemy of James falls upon him and throws him down from the steps of the Temple. Scholars see in this enemy Paul, and what bears them out is that the text itself then has him set out for Damascus with letters from the high priest to seize the believers, as in the account of Saul in the Acts of the Apostles. So the narrative preserves the memory of the conflict between the first community and the Pauline tendency, even though it has reached us in late literary redactions.

The Clementine literature also has the conception of the "True Prophet", and the idea that guidance continues through the prophets. We connect this meaning with the idea of the unity of light and the succession of messages, and we compare the image of the one who opposes the prophet with what we know, for example, of al-Sāmirī against Mūsā. This last comparison is our own work; with it we set the two heritages before one question about guidance and what obstructs it.

Mark's Opening and the Re-Reading of Prophecy

Mark begins his Gospel with a text that combines wording close to Exodus 23:20 and Malachi 3:1, and then Isaiah 40:3, and places it in the setting of Yaḥyā and Jesus. He re-reads the prophecies through the story he narrates, so that the way of the Lord which they mention becomes a way on which the Gospel figure appears. The importance of this lies in the standing he grants Jesus. It is more than a change of pronoun; it shows us the way in which the new meaning was built.

There were already high meanings about the Masīḥ in Paul's letters before the Gospels were written, according to the prevailing scholarly dating. For that reason the gradual deification begins in Paul's own letters, then develops in the layers of the Gospels until it reaches its highest form in John, with several pictures standing side by side in it all along the way. The titles themselves, Lord, Son of God and Saviour, moved in more than one field: they had scriptural and religious uses, and they had connections with the language of the worship of the Caesars. If we compare these fields, we understand what the addressees heard in the titles when they reached them.

Robert Price holds that many of the Gospel stories can be understood as the rewriting of older material, and Hyam Maccoby in The Mythmaker gives Paul a foundational role in the new Christian formulation. We benefit from the force of the question they pose, but we separate their views on the sources and on Paul from the facts that the letters themselves proclaim. Our criticism of the transformation stands even if we do not accept all their hypotheses about the mystery religions or about Paul's identity.

In How Jesus Became God, Bart Ehrman traces how the followers understood Jesus's standing. In Paul he finds belief in Jesus's pre-existence and incarnation, and perhaps even in material that Paul had received. The conception is thus present from an early date; then its formulation changes, and so does its relation to the religious institution and to obligation. At this change lies an essential aspect of our question.

Ehrman distinguishes between a conception that begins with a human being who is exalted, and another that begins with a pre-existent being who appears in the form of a human, and he places Paul in the second. He explained this in “Incarnation Christology, Angels, and Paul”. This distinction helps us read the letters from within their own language, and avoid reducing them to a simple spiritual adoption.

The Older Material That Entered the Structure

These studies lead us to a question: what older reports and meanings entered the later doctrine? Their authors answer differently, and our answer differs from theirs too. We benefit from their discussions in locating the point where the transformation took place, and then we build our interpretation on the material we have gathered for this book.

Then we take this material back to the layer we propose in the time of Nabonidus, and here the book's contribution to the debate begins. The researches of Ehrman, Hurtado and Maccoby do not determine the identity of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Nabonidus; the linking of them with our reading of the inscriptions, the Qurʾān and the narrations is our own work. The study of the formation of doctrine opens the way to this layer, and the comparisons that came before show our argument concerning it.

We can now read Paul's language with a wider horizon, from his letters themselves. In 1 Corinthians 8:6 he contrasts God the Father, from whom are all things, with the Lord Jesus, through whom are all things. The difference between "from him" and "through him" allows us to consider source and mediation, but it also places Jesus in a cosmic relation that goes beyond the report of the teacher in his earthly life. In Philippians 2:6–11 he mentions the form of God, the emptying of himself and obedience, and then says that God exalted him, that knees bow to him, and that the confession of his lordship is to the glory of the Father. Submission to God and loftiness of station come together in the one passage.

Then the effect of this structure intensifies in Romans 10:9–13, where salvation is connected with the confession of Jesus and belief in his resurrection, and calling upon his name enters this setting. In this text we see plainly what Paul did with the meanings he received: the figure of the Masīḥ became the centre of faith and deliverance, and went out from the field of report and interpretation into the life of the community and its prayer. For this reason we give him this weight in the making of the new Christianity: it was he who arranged these elements, linked them to the destiny of the human being, and then spread them in this form among the Gentiles.

The duality appears in the opening of many of his letters, where he mentions God the Father and the Lord Jesus together, and beside it, at the close of 2 Corinthians 13:14, stands the mention of the grace of the Masīḥ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. This material shows how language moved before the councils formulated their detailed definitions. We read what Paul did from within this movement, and we ask: how did the meanings of sonship, mediation and worship change in the structure that came to prevail? (1 Corinthians 8; Philippians 2; Romans 10; 2 Corinthians 13.)

Behind part of this language there may stand a conception of a primal reality, or of a Word and a Light that preceded the human appearance. If we do justice to the Sufi's speech about the Muḥammadan Light, we must do justice to the Christian text when it speaks of the Word. The question in both cases is the same: is what is meant a reality derived from God and pointing to him, or a self granted independence and participation in divinity? And then we ask: how did the expression move from explaining the station of guidance to confining that station to one individual, until belief in his person became the condition of deliverance? Here the book places the point of transformation that it wishes to criticise; it does not judge every expression about light to be associationism (shirk) merely because its language is lofty.

What Remained beneath the Pauline Layer

So what remains of the Teacher's image if we read it outside the Pauline structure? The reports of the Ebionites preserve the image of a human Masīḥ, committed to the Law of Moses, whose teaching is headed by the worship of God, purity and morals. This image has aspects that we compare with the teachings of the Essenes at Qumran, and then with the Qurʾānic call: "And the Masīḥ said, O Children of Israel, worship God, my Lord and your Lord" (al-Māʾida 5:72). The centre of this expression is the worship of God, who is the Lord of the Teacher and the Lord of those he addresses. And this centre is what we trace in the currents that preserved another image of the Masīḥ.

Paul, then, had a great effect in reshaping the message: he made the destiny of Jesus the axis of salvation, changed the community's relation to the Law, and paved the way for readings that confined the light to a deified person. We understand this effect from his letters, with their mention of the Masīḥ and the Spirit, and from what also distinguishes them from the conciliar formulas that came after them. After this we move to the communities that resisted aspects of this transformation, and so preserved another face of Christian memory.

Chapter 12: The Ebionites: The Poor Who Knew the True Masīḥ

"Ebyonim" in Hebrew means the poor, and in this name we read a meaning of poverty and asceticism, alongside the social condition its bearers lived in. The church sources described Jewish-Christian communities that held fast to the Law, objected to Paul, and refused to have Jesus raised above his humanity; in doing so they preserved for us a face of Christianity that remained outside the formula that prevailed. If we want to trace the link between these communities and the church of James and the migration to Pella, we must distinguish among the reports, because Eusebius narrates that the Jerusalem community departed to Pella, but he does not name all those who departed Ebionites.

The reports differ in describing their belief. Some attribute to one group among them the view that Jesus was born of two parents, and others mention a different group that accepts the virgin birth. But a considerable part of these reports agrees on three things: they rejected any divine pre-existence of the Masīḥ, they held to the Law, and they opposed Paul. Vegetarianism, the rejection of sacrifices and some details of baptism belong only to particular materials and particular groups in what Epiphanius presented and in the literature close to him. We pause at these differences because they show that the tradition was alive and varied, and so we do not reduce its worth to a single image.

Epiphanius preserves, from some of them, that the Masīḥ "comes here whenever he wishes, as he came in Adam and appeared to the fathers clothed in the body, and he who came to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the same who came in the last days" (Panarion 30:3). And in the Clementine Homilies the True Prophet "from the beginning of the age changes his forms along with his names, and runs through the age until he reaches his time" (3:20). So these poor ones knew that the Masīḥ is older than Jesus, and that he comes with various names and forms.

What the Sources Preserved about Them

Our way to the Ebionites is the books of those who opposed them. Irenaeus, Origen, Epiphanius, Jerome and Augustine transmitted fragments of their beliefs and gospels while refuting them, in books whose dates run from the second century to the fifth. Of the Ebionites' own books, no complete one has reached us in its original form, in which we could hear their voice from beginning to end. Reading this material therefore calls for two things together: extracting what those books preserved, and considering how the quarrel affected the choice of the report and the manner of its presentation.

These witnesses did not write in one age or in one setting. Irenaeus wrote around 180 CE, long before Nicaea, whereas Epiphanius wrote in the fourth century, in a world in which the councils had redrawn the boundaries of acceptable belief. Each witness therefore has his own distance from the time he describes, and his own polemical setting. A later author, moreover, may gather the reports of distinct communities under one name, so we must return each report to its place.

These testimonies keep their value all the same. When a writer objects to the humanity of the Masīḥ or to adherence to the Law, he shows us that these questions were alive among the communities of his time, or in the sources from which he drew. If we trace how the writers transmitted from one another, and where the reports of the Nazarenes part from those of the Ebionites and the Clementines, a map of this current takes shape, with its varied branches.

If we gather all this material, we see an early Jewish-Christian current that lived in Palestine, Jordan and Syria, held fast to the Law, refused to deify Jesus, and would not submit to the authority of Paul. The details of teaching and rites we read in each source on its own, and attribute to the community it describes. This is the picture on which we rely when we compare this current with Islam in what follows.

Points of Convergence with Islam

This current meets Islam on large matters. It keeps the Masīḥ in the station of the chosen servant, honours the Law, works and purity, and criticises the interpretation of the crucifixion as atonement, a criticism that runs in the direction decided by the words of God Most High ﴿وما قتلوه وما صلبوه﴾ (wa-mā qatalūhu wa-mā ṣalabūhu) ("and they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him," al-Nisāʾ 4:157). Then the differences appear in legal details: this current has vegetarianism and a criticism of the Temple sacrifices, while Islam has rules for food and slaughter. If we look at the connection and the difference together, we understand what continued of the prophetic direction, and what changed in it.

Schoeps, Pines, Eisenman and de Blois have studied various connections between Jewish Christianity and the texts and communities that came after it. Their works open up much material for comparison, but they do not arrive at a single conclusion on which the scholars agree about the Ebionites or the origin of Islam. We take from them what bears on our question about the continuity of the message, and we attribute each connection to the scholar who proposed it.

From another side, this picture meets what Geza Vermes wrote. He was a Hungarian-British historian, professor of Jewish studies at Oxford, and one of the students of the Dead Sea scrolls. In "Jesus the Jew" (1973) and "The Religion of Jesus the Jew" (1993) he presents Jesus as a pious Jewish man of the Galilean "Ḥasid" type, who preaches and heals within the framework of the Mosaic Law, and he separates Jesus's call from the institution that arose in his name afterwards. He says of this:

Jesus, the zealous herald of the imminent kingdom of God, could not have conceived the idea of founding an organised institution destined to endure for ages.

For Vermes, then, Jesus is a Jewish teacher committed to the Law, and this is the image that the reports of the Ebionites preserved as well. What concerns us in this meeting is that it looks at the man's teaching and life, far from the image of the deified founder of the church that settled afterwards.

Hurtado sets the dispute against another background. He holds that devotion to Jesus began in believing Jewish communities, before Paul's activity among the Gentiles widened. If we take his reading, the Ebionites' resistance becomes part of an early conflict that arose within Christian memory itself. In this he differs from the readings that hold this devotion to be borrowed from the Greek environment, but comparison among all these views helps us when we look for the point where the transformation took place.

In his book "Beyond the Essene Hypothesis", Gabriele Boccaccini studies the variety of currents in Second Temple Judaism, and proposes connections between the Enochic heritage and Qumran. This map of his helps us picture the communities as branches in a mobile religious environment, and then we add to it, from ourselves, our reading of the older origin in ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Nabonidus. This extension is our own reading; Boccaccini's study stops at the material closer to the time of the communities it studies.

The Sources through Which We Know the Ebionites

The picture becomes clearer if we know the date of each source and what it preserved. The absence of their complete books is a great loss, but it is part of a wider history, in which some traditions prevailed and others retreated, and people stopped copying their texts. What happened to each particular book, however, is known from the reports that concern it.

The oldest preserved reference to them in Christian literature goes back to Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, in his book "Against Heresies" (Adversus Haereses), which he composed around the year 180 CE. In the twenty-sixth chapter of his first book he tells us of a community that denies the incarnation and counts the Masīḥ a complete man born of a natural marriage between Joseph and Maryam, holds to the Mosaic Law fully, and reads the Gospel of Matthew alone without the other Gospels. After him comes Origen of Alexandria in "Against Celsus" (Contra Celsum), composed around 248 CE, who distinguishes two kinds of Ebionites according to their position on the virgin birth: one party sees Jesus as the son of Joseph and Maryam in the natural human way, and the other accepts his birth from a virgin but rejects his divinity outright. The fullest testimony is that of Epiphanius of Salamis in his "Panarion" (composed between 374 and 377 CE), in the thirtieth section devoted to the Ebionites, where he preserved for us excerpts from their own gospel, which circulated among them and is known as the "Gospel of the Ebionites"; about eight fragments of it remain with us today, transmitted in Epiphanius's book itself. From these fragments we learn that the Ebionite gospel began with the baptism of Jesus and not with his birth, and that Jesus in it says: "I came to abolish the sacrifices, and if you do not cease from sacrificing, the wrath will not be lifted from you." This is an explicit text that the Ebionite Masīḥ came as one abrogating the system of Temple offerings, not as its founder.

The Pseudo-Clementines contain material about James, Peter and the Law, and F. Stanley Jones and others have investigated the Jewish-Christian sources behind it. This material preserved the first community's objection to Paul, as the account of the "enemy" who set out for Damascus carrying letters from the high priest shows, which we presented in Chapter 11. But the Clementines were written in layers, so each passage in them must be read in its own layer of redaction.

As for Jerome's Letter 112, section 13, it should be read as a whole. For the "Nazarenes" with Jerome believe in the Masīḥ, the Son of God, born of the Virgin, who suffered under Pilate and rose. In his description they are a people who joined attachment to the Law with a distinct Christian faith, and the letter thus shows that the name "Nazarenes" does not coincide with all that other sources transmit about the "Ebionites"; nothing in it bears witness that they denied the divinity or the crucifixion.

The Disciples (Ḥawāriyyūn): Those in White Garments

The root ḥ-w-r indicates whiteness, and for this reason the name of the disciples (ḥawāriyyūn) was explained by the whiteness of their garments, or by the purity of their service and support. Josephus describes the Essenes as dressed in white, and mentions their purity and communal life. We compare the two communities in the picture of the people of the spiritual path, whereas the connection of the communities with one another is a separate historical question, to be examined on its own. Josephus, moreover, does not speak of the Essenes' belief about Jesus; we make use of his description only to learn the features of their life.

We have already raised the possibility that the name of the disciples joins the attribute and the homeland together, if we look to Ḥawrān, Ḥarrān and al-Ḥīra. The title of a community may indicate its service and, at the same time, the place it came from. This possibility we test in the texts that name the people of these places and describe their movement.

The root has another face, which leads us to the meaning of return. Ibn Fāris, in Maqāyīs al-lugha, gives three origins for the letters ḥāʾ, wāw and rāʾ, among them colour and returning. So ḥawr is found in whiteness, and it is found in coming back, as in ﴿إِنَّهُ ظَنَّ أَن لَّن يَحُورَ﴾ (innahu ẓanna an lan yaḥūr) ("indeed he thought that he would never return," al-Inshiqāq 84:14), and as in "We seek refuge in God from al-ḥawr baʿda al-kawr", that is, from returning to deficiency after perfection. If we combine the two meanings in the picture of the ḥawārī, he is pure, and turns back to God. With these two meanings we link the name with what we read of alladhīna hādū in Chapter 2, and then with the meaning of "the return of the Masīḥ" on which this book turns.

In Akkadian ḥarrānu denotes the road and the journey, the Acts of the Apostles calls the mission "the Way", and the Qurʾān often mentions the path and support. We compare the word ḥawāriyyūn also with the Geʿez ḥawārəyā, which denotes the apostle. All these words lie side by side around one meaning: that a person bears the message and walks its path. As for their derivational relations, each word has its own history, and so we begin the comparison from their religious function, because it is the clearest way in.

The Church of the Poor: The Thread from ʿĪsā to the Seal of the Prophets

We see poverty before God as a thread that joins the teaching of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, with the people of the spiritual path who preserved it, and then joins it with the meaning of servanthood in the final message. Communities bearing different names carried this meaning, among them "the Poor," which is a continuous line of the elect that arises with every prophet and remains after him, though the reports of its being handed on from generation to generation lie scattered through the books of history. Need before God does not contradict kingship: a person may possess, and yet remain aware that his might and power are from God. It is this meaning that suits our reading of ʿĪsā the prophet-king.

The Ḥarrānian Sabians: The Other Branch

Ḥarrān knew a community that bore the name Sabians and preserved religious and philosophical traditions that distinguished it. Ibn al-Nadīm tells a story that connects their adoption of this name with al-Maʾmūn's threat against them; we mention it as a transmitted report, not as a record by someone who witnessed the event. The reports describe their religion as combining the veneration of a supreme origin with astral rites, and this is material whose understanding is referred back to its symbols. From this setting came Thābit ibn Qurra, who died in 901 CE, and who contributed to the transmission and development of mathematics and astronomy.

In Ḥarrān the question of the continuation of the heritage comes back to us with particular urgency. This city has passed before us in the report of Abraham, then in the life of Nabonidus and the veneration of Sîn, then in the history of the Sabians and philosophy. What did its rites and reports preserve of the older religion? And what changed in it as it passed from one age to another? For this reason it matters to us that all these layers come together in one place, and it matters what may connect it with the communities that carried the teaching of the Masīḥ.

Who Are the "Sabians" in the Qurʾān?

The Qurʾān says: ﴿إِنَّ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَالَّذِينَ هَادُوا وَالنَّصَارَىٰ وَالصَّابِئِينَ مَنْ آمَنَ بِاللَّهِ وَالْيَوْمِ الْآخِرِ وَعَمِلَ صَالِحًا فَلَهُمْ أَجْرُهُمْ﴾ (inna alladhīna āmanū wa-alladhīna hādū wa-al-naṣārā wa-al-ṣābiʾīna man āmana bi-llāhi wa-al-yawmi al-ākhiri wa-ʿamila ṣāliḥan fa-lahum ajruhum) ("Indeed, those who believed, and those who were Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believed in God and the Last Day and did righteousness, they will have their reward," al-Baqara 2:62). The root ṣ-b-ʾ in Arabic indicates leaving a religion, and we understand the description here as applying to one who left the creed of his people to seek God; we compare it with the Mandaeans, the Ḥarrānians and others who kept seeking the supreme origin. The verse, moreover, makes the judgement hang on a clear condition: "whoever believed in God and the Last Day and did righteousness". So the name tells the history of the community, but the measure of the reward is belief and action; the meaning of the verse is not confined to an affiliation that a person inherits from his people.

Points of Meeting between the Ebionites and the Muslims

The preceding comparison was scattered over several questions: the station of the Masīḥ, the Law, purity, and the Ebionites' position on Paul. We now gather them in one place, so that the reader may see how they connect with one another, and what follows from them for understanding this current.

The table sets the points of meeting beside the differences that bear on their interpretation:

The Table

Reading the Table

This table shows us that a prophetic orientation holding fast to the Law remained alive within early Christianity, meeting Islam in fundamentals and parting from it in some rulings. We hold that a common origin explains this kinship; then the final message came, revived guidance, and corrected what people had differed over. The more we learn of the communities that carried this heritage, and of the paths it took, the stronger this reading becomes.

In this way we understand how the Islamic call was received in settings that had known prophets, books and ways of worship before it. Some in these settings responded to the reminder, and some resisted it. We do not trace the spread of Islam as a whole to one cause, but we refuse to portray it as words with no roots in the religious memory of the region.

In their works Robert Eisenman and James Tabor drew attention to the standing that James and the household (ahl al-bayt) had in leading the first community. We place this standing beside what Islam means by the inheritance of knowledge and message. But the Clementines keep a great role for Peter as well, so overlapping pictures appear before us of who leads the community and who is fit to lead it. We therefore understand religious inheritance from all this material, and leave the disputes of each age in their own context.

In "The Jesus Dynasty" (2006), James Tabor gathers archaeological material and genealogical reports in order to investigate the family's place in the first community that surrounded Jesus. He presents this community as bound together by religion and kinship alike, and this is what matters to us when we try to understand the standing that the Ebionite reports preserved for the heritage of the Children of Israel. Then we ourselves connect this familial meaning with what Islam knew of the continuity of the prophetic houses and the inheritance of teaching.

What This Current Preserves

The Ebionites add to this book a witness that Christianity was not, from its beginning, a single voice about the Masīḥ and the Law: there remained in it those who defended the human prophet and rejected the way Paul took. In their memory we see one end of the thread that the Qurʾān came to revive, and the following chapters will trace this thread in other communities, with different names and experiences.

Chapter 13: The Council of Nicaea: The Moment of Official Deification

In their first centuries the Christians disagreed over the standing of the Masīḥ, the meaning of his message, and his relation to God and to the Law, and these disputes were too many-branched to be reduced to two homogeneous currents. What changed when imperial authority entered, however, was that decision in doctrine acquired a new force. At Nicaea in 325 CE the bishops gathered at Constantine's summons, and the formulation of the faith became a matter touching the unity of the empire. For this reason we see a special weight in that moment: the religious conception that had been a subject of debate came to rest on government and compulsion.

The dispute that led to Nicaea began in Alexandria, between Arius and his bishop Alexander. Athanasius was then a deacon with Alexander, and later became one of the most prominent defenders of the Nicene direction. Arius saw the Son as prior to the world and as created by the Father by his will, so that he is not equal to him in eternity; but he did not see him as a mere man whose existence began with his birth. This is a point that touches the whole book, because some of what Arius said about mediation and priority is nearer to the conception of the First Intellect than the duality "God or merely a human prophet" suggests. Even so, we do not hasten to make his doctrine the doctrine of the Sufis; we look first at where he places worship and how he sees the relation of the Son to God, and then compare meaning with meaning. The council affirmed that the Son is equal to the Father in substance, and so decided one of these questions with a formula that would become a boundary of ecclesiastical belonging.

When the Formula Became an Imperial Matter

The bishops came to Nicaea carrying different conceptions of the Masīḥ's standing and his relation to God, and for some of them we have seen precedents in Paul's letters. The council chose a specific formula, condemned what contradicted it, and the conflict over its interpretation went on through the whole of the fourth century. Why, then, is Nicaea so important? Because it joined doctrinal choice to the authority of the empire, and so gave one of the positions a force beyond debate.

From that time ecclesial belonging came to be measured by a formula, and the ruling authority became able to raise or lower its adherents and opponents. The discussion continued after 325 CE, but it went on with exile and confiscation among its terms. It is by this link between doctrine and power that we explain why some of the heritage remained in circulation while the voice of some faded.

The Emperor and the Bishops

It is famous in tradition that the participants numbered 318, though the accounts differ, and most of them were from the East; delegates of the bishop of Rome attended with them. The one who summoned them was Constantine, a man who was baptised only near his death in 337 CE. Here we face a relationship forming between the emperor and the church: the man of government gathers the men of religion, and then intervenes in settling a dispute that touches the unity of his state.

Eusebius describes, in “Life of Constantine”, Book 3, chapter 10, how the emperor entered in a brilliant imperial robe, and then sat on a low seat after the bishops had signalled to him. The scene in his account shows the majesty of the king and, at the same time, his respect for the bishops. We may read in it the writer's praise of the emperor; but if we set it beside what we know of his acts, his summoning of the council and his intervention in its decisions and penalties, we see in those acts the weight of authority in that assembly.

The council affirmed that the Son is "begotten, not created, equal to the Father in substance". The Greek word for substance has a history in philosophy and theology, and the bishops disputed its meaning and its connection with Scripture. The expression then became a limit by which a person was accepted or rejected, and was joined with penalties that fell on some who refused it. So the discussion moved from one interpretation facing another to a formula whose means of enforcement the state possessed.

Nicaea was the beginning of a phase of codification; the debates of the fourth century came after it, then the Council of Constantinople and what followed, as the works of Lewis Ayres and Khaled Anatolios show. We connect this course with what we saw earlier in Paul, when he formulated the standing of the Masīḥ and spread it, and at the same time we trace the branches and differences that arose during this transition.

Socrates, in the "Ecclesiastical History" (1:9), transmits an order attributed to Constantine to burn the books of Arius, threatening anyone who hides them. The report does not count the penalties carried out or the books lost, but it shows us the kind of means that came to be used in the quarrel. Later reigns followed in which currents opposed to Nicaea gained the protection of the emperors, and the positions of power changed. This very change is a witness that the fate of a doctrine had come to depend on the stance of the court.

The Meaning of "Lord" in the Tongue and the Context

Before following the councils we pause at the phrase "We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ". The word rabb ("lord") is used in the Semitic tongue also for a human master. In Sūrat Yūsuf (12) Yūsuf asks his companion to mention him to his lord (verse 42), reports that one of the two youths will pour wine for his lord (41), and uses the same word when he speaks of the one who gave him a good lodging (23). The word is broad, and it is the context that shows what is meant in each place.

The same holds in Greek. The word κύριος (kyrios) is the word that the Septuagint placed in the position of the divine name, and it is at the same time the ordinary form of address said to a stranger in the sense of "sir". With it the Samaritan woman addressed Jesus at the well before she knew who he was, in John 4:11, and with it the jailer at Philippi addressed Paul and Silas, in Acts 16:30. So the one word carries both meanings, and only the context separates them.

For this reason we read "lord" with the rest of the sentence, and ask: what does the sentence say about the relation to God, and about creation and worship? The word homoousios may be absent while the sense of divinity remains in the rest of the speech, and the title may be a description of human lordship. If we look at context in this way, we can do justice to the language of the Word and the Light, and locate the doctrinal dispute precisely.

The Completion of the Structure and the Qurʾānic Description

Belief in the Holy Spirit appeared briefly in the Nicene Creed of 325 CE. Then the formula connected with the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE elaborated its description, making him the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father. If we compare the text of the Nicene Creed with this formula, we see how doctrinal definition widened for a meaning that first appeared in a short phrase.

Before the Council of Constantinople came the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 CE, issued by Theodosius with his two co-rulers. It made the accepted faith that which refers to the bishops of Rome and Alexandria, and called those who differed heretics. In this edict the matter this book treats appears: difference was no longer a matter of teaching alone, but became a legal classification by which the state exercised its authority.

Against the background of this history we read the Qurʾānic warning against excess and against taking scholars and monks as lords. The Qurʾān was addressing a world on which the councils had left their mark, and in which the formulas of belief had acquired a sanctity that the institution protected. Here the question that concerns us arises: how does an objection to a human interpretation become an objection ascribed to God himself? We understand the correction of the image of the Masīḥ as a liberation of faith from this mixing of revelation with the decision of clergymen.

The Seven Councils: How the Official Formula Was Determined

The councils after Nicaea took up different questions. They examined the Holy Spirit, then the unity of Christ's person, then his two natures, then his will, then the holy images. They did not re-found the Trinity each time, but each time they drew the boundaries of acceptable speech, and judged the one who differed to be outside it.

The table below gathers the principal stations, setting the subject of each dispute beside the effect of the decision on those concerned:

Analytical Table of the Seven Ecumenical Councils

These disputes left behind churches that are still distinct in their traditions: the Chalcedonian churches, the non-Chalcedonian Oriental Orthodox churches, and the Church of the East. Each has its own expression for the union; the non-Chalcedonians hold fast to the humanity of the Masīḥ, and the Church of the East does not sum up its belief as two separate persons. We shall read these formulas in Chapter 17 as their own people explained them, and then compare them with the meanings this book traces.

Reading the Pattern

If we look at this course as a whole, three matters appear:

The first is that doctrinal boundaries accumulate: an expression may be accepted at one stage, and then, after the dispute, become a sign of deviation. This touches the reading of the ancient texts themselves, because they are tried anew by wordings that had not yet settled with their authors. So we must do justice to the language of light and the Word before we project onto it all the boundaries of the councils.

The second is that the ruling authority took part in deciding the fate of the dispute. The disputants had real intellectual questions, but the spread of the answers was affected by protection, exile and appointment to church offices. What people are able to teach, copy and bequeath to those after them depends on who protects the teacher and the book, and who forbids them.

The third is that the currents that were defeated kept an objection to the dominant doctrine, such as the rejection of the equality of the Son with the Father, or the objection to the worship of images. We see in this resistance an effect wider than the history of the victors leaves to it, and in it remnants of the older monotheism. But we read each community in the whole of its belief, so as to know where it preserved this meaning and where it differed from it.

The Authority of the Religious Formula

We have seen how the field narrowed for ancient expressions, and how the official faith acquired an apparatus to guard its borders. Here the book makes the link between the history of the councils and the fitna of the Dajjāl: the image of the Masīḥ left the field of guidance and inquiry and entered a binding doctrinal structure guarded by the state. As for the Masīḥ, and the man whose name the reports carried, the reality of each is too great to be reduced to this structure.

Appendix 4 will follow what connects these councils with texts, with authority, and with the memory that remained outside them. The following chapters bring us nearer to the communities and churches themselves, each with its own experience and teaching.

Chapter 14: The Mandaeans: Living Witnesses of Monotheism and Guardians of Aramaic Memory

The Sabian Mandaeans, in Iraq, Iran and the diaspora, still preserve books and rites in Mandaic Aramaic. Their religious life has never been interrupted, and from them we hear an account that comes to us from outside the church canon. Emigration has scattered their members across the lands, but they still keep their language and their rite, and for this reason their testimony has a special place in this book.

Their name derives from manda (manda), which means knowledge, and which corresponds in Greek to γνῶσις (gnōsis). They are thus "the people of knowledge", and for them knowledge is religious, combining revelation, purification and rite, and wider than abstract contemplation alone. They also bear the name "Sabians" (al-Ṣābiʾūn), which occurs in the Qurʾān three times, among them the words of God Most High: ﴿إِنَّ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَالَّذِينَ هَادُوا وَالصَّابِئُونَ وَالنَّصَارَىٰ﴾ (inna alladhīna āmanū wa-alladhīna hādū wa-al-ṣābiʾūna wa-al-naṣārā) ("Indeed, those who believed, and those who became Jews, and the Sabians, and the Christians," al-Māʾida 5:69).

The Ginza Rba and the Free Aramaic Texts

At the heart of their books stands the Ginza Rba, that is, the Great Treasure, which contains reports on the world, on guidance and on the destiny of the soul. Its material lies in layers, one above another; scholars see links between some of them and late antiquity, and the dates of these layers are not the dates of the manuscripts that survive. For this reason we read each report in its place, and take account of what we know of the time of its redaction and the way it was transmitted.

This heritage arose outside the canon of books that the church had approved, yet it lived in contact with its neighbours and with the religious controversy around it. Because it differs from the church corpus, it lets us look from another angle. And its history of transmission and redaction shows us what it preserved and what it recast.

Yaḥyā, whom these texts call Yahia Yuhana, holds a prominent place in them, for he is the teacher and the baptiser. Around him in the Mandaean world stand luminous figures, and accounts of salvation and knowledge, which cannot rightly be reduced to the familiar sequence of prophets alone. What draws attention most is that Yaḥyā remained the centre of teaching and rite in a tradition that was never absorbed into the church.

This standing invites us to revise the picture that makes the whole work of the Baptist a brief prelude to the appearance of Jesus, and to see the accounts of teacher and disciple from another side. Then we notice that some Mandaean texts attack Jesus himself, unlike the position of the Ebionites. Neither position is ours: we see the man as righteous, and we criticise the doctrinal edifice that bore his name.

The maṣbuta, the rite of repeated immersion in running water, belongs to the very core of Mandaean life. Because the rite requires running water, we understand why the community has been tied to the rivers of southern Iraq and south-western Iran; for them water is part of daily religious life, and purification is renewed by it. We compare this presence of water with what appears in the story of Maryam: ﴿قَدْ جَعَلَ رَبُّكِ تَحْتَكِ سَرِيًّا﴾ (qad jaʿala rabbuki taḥtaki sariyyan) ("your Lord has placed beneath you a rivulet," Maryam 19:24), the sarī being, in one of its meanings, a small river. When a sacred account is joined with running water, we may see in it the trace of a Semitic tradition that links purity with life and birth, and by this link we read the Qurʾānic scene and the Mandaean rite together.

"Mšiha Kdaba" in Mandaean Memory

In Mandaean texts there is a sharp designation, "Mšiha Kdaba," that is, the false Messiah, which occurs in the context of intense religious polemic. We take its sharpness as it is, and read it as polemic; it is not a neutral description of the intention of the historical man. It tells us how the community saw its adversary, and what it rejected of the conception attributed to him.

In places in the Ginza, Jesus appears in a polemic about lying and religious claim, and the texts set against him luminous figures such as Anosh ʿUthra. Anyone who wants to consult this material will find it in the Right Ginza, books one and two, and in Lidzbarski's translation (1925). It is an image that the Mandaean tradition fashioned for its opponent, and we do not take it as testimony that the historical Jesus necessarily said everything it attributes to him. In our reading the criticism strikes the doctrinal image that was assembled upon his name.

In chapter thirty of the "Mandaean Book of John" Jesus meets Yaḥyā, and the meeting turns on baptism, truthfulness and claim. The edition of Häberl and McGrath (2020) lets us follow the wording of the report in its context. Its importance lies in the disagreement it preserves over the identity of the Masīḥ and the meaning of his baptism. As for the word "the Masīkh," spelled with a khāʾ, in the title of our book, it is an Arabic formulation of the sense of disfigurement that the book treats, and the Mandaean designation stays in its own form in its own text.

These scenes may carry an older memory that was given polemical form at a late time, and for this reason we look for their date in their wording and in their historical indications. Their sharpness tells us how intense the quarrel was, whereas the age in which they arose is fixed by other material from the text and from its history.

In this reading, then, we distinguish three things: Jesus as we see him, a righteous man; his image as the Mandaean polemic drew it; and the system that took shape in his name. If we distinguish them in this way, we benefit from the testimony of rejection, and from the struggle over memory that it preserves, and our interpretation of the man stays clear of the charges that the quarrel fashioned.

We read the Mandaean figures of light with the same fairness. We understand "ʿUthra" and "Anosh" from their rank, from their connection with the supreme source and from their function in guidance, just as we do when we read the Word in Christianity and the Muḥammadan Light. On the same ground we compare Anosh with the image of the Masīḥ as this book reads it. To link him with Nabonidus, however, is our own reading, since the Babylonian name does not occur in the Mandaean text.

This is where all of this touches the title of the book. In literature we set "the Masīḥ" against "the Masīkh", and the Mandaean texts preserve the phrase "Mšiha Kdaba" when they reject the image of the Masīḥ that they oppose. The two readings differ in some of what they say about the man, yet they meet at one question: what is the difference between the original message and the image that was exalted afterwards?

To this question we join images from Hebrew prophecy. In Zechariah we read: "and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him" (וְהִבִּיטוּ אֵלַי אֵת אֲשֶׁר־דָּקָרוּ (wehibbiṭu ʾēlay ʾēt ʾasher daqaru), 12:10), and then "smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered" (13:7). The Babylonian Talmud, in Sukkah 52a, applies the report of the pierced one to the slain "Messiah son of Joseph." We gather these images because they preserve the report of an anointed one who is pierced or struck, and the change that may come over his story. The comparison here is the work of this book. It sets the texts side by side; it does not presume that the Mandaeans knew Zechariah or took anything from him, and it does not turn these images into material for explaining the origin of the Qurʾānic revelation.

The Geographical Origin and the Essene Threads

Scholars have differed over the origins of the community. Some trace it to western milieus, others to Mesopotamia: those who favour the western explanation look into its Baptist connections, and those who favour the Mesopotamian one compare it with the heritage of Iraq. Whichever explanation we take, the reference remains the texts, the rites and the routes along which people moved, and from these we learn what bears on the identity of the Masīḥ and what belongs to the history of the community alone.

The Mandaeans and the ancient communities of purity offer several points of comparison. Water stands at the centre for them, they have a private instruction, their tongue is Aramaic, and they distinguish those inside the community from those outside it. Yet there are also significant differences between them and those communities. One is that marriage and family hold a place among the Mandaeans, whereas some ascetic groups lean toward celibacy. These differences help us to tell the branches apart within a shared religious field, and the kinship between them remains.

The Account of the Migration to Mesopotamia

The Haran Gawaita, which Ethel Drower published in 1953, contains a Mandaean account of how the community migrated, who protected it, and how it moved on until it reached its homelands. We read it first as a report that the community tells about its own origins, and then we compare what it says with what can be identified of kings and places.

The account mentions western places, "Inner Ḥarrān," and a king named Ardban who protected the community, and then tells of its move into Mesopotamia. Researchers differ over who Ardban was and over the dating of the stages of the report, and the name alone is not enough to fix a particular year for the migration before the destruction of Jerusalem.

What matters to us in this report is that the community moved into protection in the east and passed on its way through several Aramaic milieus. The title of the account itself carries the name Ḥarrān, and so it places the community's memory in the sphere we came to know in the life of Nabonidus and the temple of Sîn, on the road that runs from it to the mountains of the Medes, although some scholars have read the name as "Inner Ḥawrān." Each of these places has its own part in this road.

The Haran Gawaita was written down late, and specialists have differed over how much history it preserves and how much was shaped in it to explain the origin of the community. So we draw on it first to learn how the community narrated its journey, and then we set the king and the place it names beside what reaches us from outside the account.

Different Testimonies in One Environment

These testimonies agree in objecting to aspects of official Christianity, and then they part ways in describing Jesus. The Ebionite accepts him as a human teacher, the Mandaean text may attack the very same figure, and the Qurʾān affirms the station of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) and denies excess concerning him. We read this difference as one of the traces left by the struggle over memory, and we hold that the separation between ʿĪsā, Jesus and the later construction explains part of it. Paul appears by name in the materials of Christian dispute, while the Qurʾān does not name him. The comparison among all these materials is the work of the book, and it is what shows us the transformation.

Place has its share in this comparison too. The Mandaeans lived on the rivers of Iraq, between the Euphrates, the Tigris and the Shatt al-Arab, in the land that carried the Sumerian and Babylonian civilisations. To the north of them lies Ḥarrān, whose reports we have already met with Abraham, Nabonidus and the Sabians. In central Iraq al-Ḥīra stands out with its Tanūkh and its monasteries, and beside it Kufa and Najaf, with all that is connected with them: the mention of the Imam ʿAlī, Shiʿi teaching and Mahdist expectation. If we look at the map of Mesopotamia from the upper Jazira to Basra, we see different layers of religious memory lying on it. Alongside this road runs the Hijazi road, from Taymāʾ to Fadak, Khaybar, Yathrib and Mecca. Between the two roads we draw the field in which the reports of monotheism travelled and its communities diversified.

The Breadth of the Name "Sabians"

The Sabians are mentioned in the Qurʾān three times, in a context that we read as bringing them close to the People of the Book and to those who do righteous deeds, and the exegetes differed over who they were. Al-Ṭabarī, in the Jāmiʿ al-bayān, records sayings that place them between the Christians and the Magians, and others that connect them with the People of the Book and with the reading of the Psalms. In Arabic ṣabaʾa means to move from one religion to another, which is why Quraysh called the first Muslims al-ṣubāt. Some scholars distinguish between Sabian ḥunafāʾ who followed the religion of Abraham and Idrīs, and Sabians in whose rites the veneration of the stars found a place, and they connect this second group with some of the Ḥarrānians. This book looks at the name from the side of its breadth: it takes in everyone who went out seeking monotheism beyond the settled sectarian boundaries. We see the Mandaeans as a living remnant of this wider field, and we see in that field a possible connection with the ḥunafāʾ and the Essenes, and perhaps with the early Ebionites. What joins them, in our view, is the seeking of God and righteous action, before the name became the boundary of one particular community.

The value of the Mandaeans lies in the living Aramaic memory that they preserved beyond the boundaries of the church. Researchers have edited and studied their books, and their material enters here at the very heart of the comparison between the inscriptions, the Qurʾān and the Gospels. We understand their spiritual language as we understand the language of the other witnesses.

What this book cares for most in this memory is the place of Yaḥyā in it. The baptising teacher holds a central position there, while some of its texts reject the image of Jesus. We explain this by saying that the community is heir to the path of Yaḥyā, so it is natural that it should keep a prominent station for the teacher who purified and baptised. We then compare this memory with the report of the healer in the Prayer of Nabonidus, and with what we propose, that ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) is the king whose name the Babylonian record preserved. The comparison gives us an explanation for the primacy of Yaḥyā and for the disturbance that arose around the identity of the Masīḥ. Naming the healer Yaḥyā, and the identification with Nabonidus, are the reading of this book. And the community, after all, lives in the very Mesopotamian geography in which the book places the origin of the wave.

The Ḥarrānian Sabians: Witnesses of the North

Ḥarrān has a long history in the worship of Sîn, running from Nabonidus’s care for his temple Ehulhul to the communities that the Islamic sources called Sabians. Tamara Green followed this continuity in The City of the Moon God: Religious Traditions of Harran (1992), and saw the name of the city remain joined with what she calls the moon god for centuries after the fall of Babylon. We read what Green calls the moon god as a name of the Most High, whose sign is the moon, and so in this one place we read a knowledge of the supreme God that continued from the age of Nabonidus to the Islamic centuries.

The reports about the Ḥarrānians speak of the First Cause, of the standing of the stars and intermediaries, and of their occupation with the sciences. If we want to understand their tradition, we read all these aspects together and ask: what do they mean by the supreme origin? How do symbols and rites connect them to it? Then we can know where monotheism stands in their conception, and what separates this conception from the Qurʾānic exposition.

Behind these symbols we see an inherited knowledge of the supreme God, connected with what we read in the inscriptions of Nabonidus, where Sîn was exalted within the horizon of divine oneness. We read this knowledge in the words of its adherents and in the rite itself; the descriptions given by those who opposed them we read knowing the hostility they contain.

We place Ḥarrān in the north and the Mandaeans in the south on a single map of knowledge and worship in Mesopotamia, in order to set out the earlier connections between them. The two communities are joined by place, by the Aramaic tongue, and by the broad name of the Sabians that each of them bore. In this name as it occurs in the Qurʾān we read the breadth of that field and the many communities, each of which preserved a part of it.

Chapter 15: A Map of the Communities and Their Objection to Official Doctrine

We have met the Ebionites and the Mandaeans, and they were not alone. If we widen the map we see other communities that objected to official doctrine, each in its own way. Some refused to equate the Masīḥ with God; others disagreed over the understanding of the incarnation, over worship, or over the authority of the church. In these voices the book sees the remnants of a continuous search for the origin, though what has remained differs from one community to another.

The communities we gather here lie far apart in time, so we have arranged them according to their appearance in the sources, in order to see how the same questions returned in different forms. Two experiences may resemble each other without anything passing from one to the other by direct organisational transmission. We have also included some cases of persecution, because they show us how authority worked, and in each case we have set out what the adherents themselves believed.

The Comprehensive Map

The Thread That Was Never Cut

When we look at this succession, we see that the objection to the deification of the Masīḥ, or to the formulas in which it was expressed, was not a single voice that rose and then died away. The questions returned in distant milieus, and some of those who raised them went back to the very same texts and read them otherwise than the institution had. The book sees in this evidence that the prophetic origin can be recovered, though it does not make the belief of each community identical to that of another. The column "Line of connection" in the table shows both paths: one community inherited what it had by an unbroken line from an older one, and another recovered it by reading and by revelation.

A Geography That Speaks for Itself

The East holds a special place on this map, because it preserved languages, books and roads that carried the memory of the prophets. But it is also the place where much of the theology that became official arose, in Alexandria, Antioch and the Syriac churches. Meanings and reports moved among several centres; some of them remained outside the prevailing doctrine, and then the question came back to it in another age.

The Effect of Repression on the Survival of the Heritage

One thing recurs in these reports: a religious accusation goes together with a political decision, and afterwards the books that people circulate change, and with them the ability of communities to survive. The severity of this and its order differ from age to age, so we must follow each case on its own in order to learn the means that were used in it and what they left in the memory of the community that suffered them.

Islam: The Return of the Rejected Origin

The Muḥammadan call appeared in this East. It carried a varied prophetic and Christian heritage, and its conflicts had intensified, but its questions about God, man and salvation were still alive. This stock explains for us one aspect of the people's response to the Qurʾān, an aspect we see in what has reached us of their books and actions and in the transformations of their communities.

Fred Donner, in Muhammad and the Believers, pictured the first movement as a community wider than the boundaries that were settled for it later. We draw on this picture when we think about the connections that joined the believers, and then we place those connections in the older history that we propose for the message. The identification of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) with Nabonidus is our own addition, and its evidence lies in the comparisons that we presented in their places.

Memory Outside the Prevailing Doctrine

When we gather what all these communities preserved, we see that memory is wider than the books whose circulation prevailed. The questions about prophethood and guidance continued, and people kept returning to the texts and reading them in other ways. In this continuity we see that the meaning can be recovered, even though the boundaries of institutions veiled aspects of it.

On this map the two ends of the book meet. The first chapters followed the subject of the biography in the reports of Nabonidus, and this map shows us what became of that biography among the communities that carried the mention of the Masīḥ. Our argument on identity was presented by the earlier comparisons; these reports explain how memory was dispersed, and how it remained all the same.

Chapter 16: The Ethiopian Tewahedo Church: A Witness from the Other Wing of the Red Sea

If we cross the Red Sea we find the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. It settled as an institution in Aksum in the fourth century, in connection with Frumentius and with Alexandria, and became one of the oldest African churches that survive, though the Christian presence in Egypt came before it. What concerns us here is what it preserved of books, practices and memory, because it opens another road to the ancient heritage.

This heritage offers five doors of comparison, some of them connected with one another:

• The report of the Najāshī and the emigrants, and how people met in it across the sea in faith and in humanity together.
• The books of Enoch and Jubilees, which Gǝʿǝz preserved, so that it became possible to compare passages of them with the ancient fragments.
• Practices that remained alive and connect with the older scriptural traditions, such as the Sabbath and circumcision.
• The history of the Tewahedo, its connection with Alexandria, and how it rejected the Chalcedonian formula.
• The Gǝʿǝz tongue, a Semitic road by which names and texts were preserved.

Each of these doors adds something to the earlier comparisons, and we take them one by one.

The Najāshī and the Encounter of Sūrat Maryam

The closest of these connections to us is the report of the emigration to Abyssinia. When the harm from Quraysh grew severe, in the fifth year of the mission, dated to about 615 CE, the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) directed his companions to it. Ibn Isḥāq, as preserved by Ibn Hishām, relates what he told them: "In it there is a king with whom no one is wronged, a land of truth, until God makes a way out for you." So he chose for them a Christian land whose king was known for justice, in a region whose edges the Persians and the Romans contested. The choice showed esteem for a man and for his country, and it opened a door of trust between believers across the sea.

Quraysh sent ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ and ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Rabīʿa to the Najāshī with gifts, asking him to send the emigrants back. But Aṣḥama ibn Abjar wished to hear from the emigrants themselves. So Jaʿfar ibn Abī Ṭālib stood and recited to him from Sūrat Maryam: ﴿كهيعص * ذِكْرُ رَحْمَتِ رَبِّكَ عَبْدَهُ زَكَرِيَّا﴾ (kāf-hā-yā-ʿayn-ṣād * dhikru raḥmati rabbika ʿabdahu zakariyyā) ("Kāf Hā Yā ʿAyn Ṣād. A mention of the mercy of your Lord to His servant Zakariyyā," Maryam 19:1–2), and went on until he reached the report of the birth: ﴿فَأَجَاءَهَا الْمَخَاضُ إِلَىٰ جِذْعِ النَّخْلَةِ﴾ (fa-ajāʾahā al-makhāḍu ilā jidhʿi al-nakhla) ("and the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of the palm tree," Maryam 19:23). The narration tells that the Najāshī wept, and his bishops with him, and then relates his words: "This and what ʿĪsā brought come forth from one lamp-niche."

In that assembly the Najāshī recognised that guidance has a common source. This is what concerns us in the report in this book: a believer may hear another language and find in it the meaning that he knows. That response, however, was the position of the king and of those who attended his assembly; the doctrine of the Ethiopian church has its own history, and that history is read from its own sources.

It is established in the two Ṣaḥīḥs that the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) prayed over the Najāshī at his death, and so the Islamic narration preserved for him a station of faith. It would not be sound to compare this here with the absence of prayer over Heraclius, for Heraclius died after the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) according to the known sequence. The relation of each of the two men to the call is known from his own reports and from his own position toward it.

What we take from that assembly is that the recognition of guidance began there with a person hearing and understanding. It is a living example of the way in which we read the Word and the Light: we first ask what the believer intends by his expression, and then we learn where dependence on God lies and where excess begins. And we leave to the Najāshī his own testimony, which the biography preserved for him, and so did the prayer over him.

The Red Sea Arc: The Geography of the Monotheists

In Chapter 9 we drew the road that passes through Taymāʾ, Fadak, Khaybar, Yathrib and Mecca, and joined it to Ghassanid Syria and Ḥimyarite Yemen. If we add Aksum on the African shore, the picture of the field around the Red Sea is complete, and it becomes clear how that field was connected with the Peninsula.

Aksum was an African kingdom whose language, Gǝʿǝz, was Semitic, and its ties with the south of the Peninsula were deep, carried by trade, migration and culture. That does not mean that all its inhabitants, or the identity of its civilisation, go back to a single origin. The kingdom, moreover, was founded before it turned to Christianity in the fourth century, so we do not call all the first centuries of its history a Christian era.

These connections appear clearly in the reports of Najrān. In the reign of Yūsuf Dhū Nuwās, the Jewish Ḥimyarite king, about 523 CE, the Christians of Najrān were persecuted, and then came the campaign of Kaleb of Aksum in 525 CE. Many exegetes connect with these reports the mention of the People of the Trench: ﴿قُتِلَ أَصْحَابُ الْأُخْدُودِ * النَّارِ ذَاتِ الْوَقُودِ * إِذْ هُمْ عَلَيْهَا قُعُودٌ * وَهُمْ عَلَىٰ مَا يَفْعَلُونَ بِالْمُؤْمِنِينَ شُهُودٌ﴾ (qutila aṣḥābu al-ukhdūd * al-nāri dhāti al-waqūd * idh hum ʿalayhā quʿūd * wa-hum ʿalā mā yafʿalūna bi-al-muʾminīna shuhūd) ("Destroyed were the companions of the trench, the fire full of fuel, when they were sitting by it, and they were witnesses to what they were doing against the believers," al-Burūj 85:4–7). The verses bring out the faith of those who were persecuted, and the historical accounts tell of the conflict that took place in the south of the Peninsula and of the military intervention that followed it across the Red Sea.

Sūrat al-Burūj, however, names neither Najrān nor Kaleb. The link between the People of the Trench and these reports comes from narrations and from exegesis. Two things concern us: that the Qurʾān makes the persecution of believers a central moral question, and that the history of the Red Sea preserves events in which religious protection, politics and war are intertwined.

So the environment that we said was prepared for monotheism grows wider. Aksum lay at its south-western end, the Ghassanids in its north, Ḥimyar in the Arabian south, and Taymāʾ and the oases on another of its roads. Trade, migration and religion had joined these regions for centuries before the mission. When we look at Islam in this setting, we understand it as a return to a common origin and a new exposition of that origin, in lands that had known many forms of the heritage of the prophets before it.

The Books Preserved in Gǝʿǝz: The Canon of Eighty-One Books

The Ethiopian tradition counts its books in an expanded enumeration that reaches eighty-one, and it goes into detail about their groupings and the ways of arranging them. These books were not composed at one time, nor translated at one time, nor used to the same degree. For that reason we concentrate on the books that we can actually compare with older witnesses, the most prominent being 1 Enoch and Jubilees. Whoever wishes to see the church's own presentation should consult the canon of books.

• The Book of Enoch, the First (1 Enoch / መጽሐፈ ሄኖክ (maṣḥafa Henok)): a complete text that exists only in Gǝʿǝz; its original fragments in Aramaic were not known until the discovery of Qumran in 1947, so that Gǝʿǝz alone preserved the complete text from loss.
• The Book of Jubilees (Jubilees / መጽሐፈ ኩፋሌ (maṣḥafa kufale)): a retelling of the books of Genesis and Exodus from a Jewish perspective strictly committed to the Law, which was also among the foundational texts of Qumran (its fragments are in 4Q216–228).
• The Ethiopian books of Meqabyan (Meqabyan I, II, III): three books that differ from the two Greek books of the Maccabees, reflecting a tradition resistant to pagan domination within a Jewish framework adhering to the Law.
• The Book of Baruch with its sixth chapter: which is known among others as the "Letter of Jeremiah," in which there is a fierce satire on idolatry and open comparisons concerning what is worshipped besides God.

When the Epistle of Jude cites Enoch, it witnesses that part of this heritage was in circulation in early Christianity. The other books, among them the Ethiopian Meqabyan, each have a history that differs according to its composition, translation and use. The expanded list came together by several ways of preservation, and we cannot know how a text reached its place in it until we study the way it came by.

The Book of Enoch contains many images of the chosen figure, of the heavenly world and of judgment. This is a language that we can compare with what the community of Qumran awaited, and with the meaning of the first light in this book. But no fragments of the "Parables of Enoch," the section in which the Son of Man stands out, have been found at Qumran. So we distinguish them from the sections to which the Aramaic manuscripts there bear witness, and we leave the question of their dating to the discussion that belongs to them among researchers.

The Qumran-Ethiopian Bridge: Enoch and Jubilees between the Caves and Aksum

It is the fragments of Qumran that allow us to verify this preservation, since we can compare their text with the Gǝʿǝz text. The Aramaic fragments of Enoch were found between 1947 and 1956, among them the texts of Cave 4 numbered 4Q201 to 4Q212. J. T. Milik later published them in The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4 (1976), and from the forms of the script he dated them to between the third and the first centuries BCE. So we have in our hands ancient material that we can compare with what Gǝʿǝz preserved afterwards.

The complete text had been absent from Western circulation for a long time, between the fourth and the eighteenth centuries, until James Bruce carried Gǝʿǝz copies of Enoch from Abyssinia to Europe in 1773. When the Aramaic fragments appeared at Qumran, it became possible to compare their passages with the Ethiopian text, and much of the structure and content turned out to agree, with differences that arose in the transmission of the text, since its Gǝʿǝz translation came by way of Greek. So the stone and the caves revealed the antiquity of material that an African church had gone on reading, while a large part of it had dropped out of sight elsewhere.

The "Parables of Enoch" (37–71), in which the figure of the heavenly Son of Man stands out, are a special case, because no fragments of them were found at Qumran. Researchers propose dating them to the turn of the Common Era and after. So when we read the image of the heavenly chosen one in them and compare it with early Christianity, we read it together with this discussion of its date, and we keep it apart from the date of the sections that were found in the caves.

Jubilees is in the same position: we have Hebrew fragments from Qumran, which we compare with the complete text that Gǝʿǝz preserved. We see a book that passed from one tongue to another, and that dropped out in one place and survived in another. This alone does not draw a route along which an institution moved from Qumran to Aksum. It does show us how translation, including translation through the Greek intermediary, preserved a heritage that was liable to be lost.

What Gǝʿǝz preserved extends to the ordering of religious time itself. The Qumran texts, Jubilees and the "Astronomical Book" of Enoch all share a schematic priestly calendar of three hundred and sixty-four days, by which the times of worship and the services of the priests are regulated, as we see in the Mishmarot texts 4Q320–330. This material remained in Gǝʿǝz, although the calendar that the Ethiopian church actually follows is the solar Alexandrian one. Our main support here is the study of James VanderKam (1979), the critical editions that R. H. Charles produced of Enoch and Jubilees (1895–1912), and before them the work of Dillmann (1851 and 1859). These works had prepared the material for comparison decades before the Qumran fragments appeared.

The Abyssinian example is a picture of what the book presents about the history of memory: a report may remain in a tradition far from its first place, and then discoveries come and show its antiquity and the road it travelled. That is what Abyssinia adds to our argument. The identity of the two Masīḥs, or the identification of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) with Nabonidus, rests on the comparisons that belong to it in their places in this book.

A number of exegetes connect Idrīs with Enoch. This link comes from the exegetical tradition, because the verse itself does not mention the name Enoch. If we adopt it, we compare the image of the prophet with the material of the book that bears his name.

The Ebionite Heritage Preserved in Practice

The books were not all that remained. Alongside them there remained practices that preserve the character we knew among the Ebionites, in which holding fast to the Law lies at the heart of faith in the Masīḥ. Edward Ullendorff collected these Hebrew elements in Abyssinian Christianity in his study Hebraic-Jewish Elements in Abyssinian (Monophysite) Christianity (1956), and we read them as a surviving trace of the heritage of the first community that committed itself to the Law:

• The Sabbath is kept alongside Sunday, so the holy days retain the standing they had in scriptural memory.
• Circumcision and the rules of food, though communities differ in how they interpret and practise them.
• Fasting, washing and preparation for worship, which are widespread in the Eastern Christianities and elsewhere.
• The Ark in the Ethiopian church. In liturgical use it is a sacred tablet that symbolises the Ark of the Covenant, and it need not be a chest like it. The claim that the original Ark is kept with them in Aksum is a tradition of faith, and we present it as such.

These practices show us ancient layers still alive inside an institution that has also developed its own theology. We benefit from what this institution has preserved of the heritage, even where we differ with it in interpreting it. The Ark in particular brings us back to the sacred relics in the reports of Nabonidus, and the question returns with it: how do objects and places preserve a community's connection with the prophets, and how does the written inheritance meet what people hand down in their rites?

The Tewahedo in the Arc Resisting Chalcedon

The word "Tewahedo" means union in the Masīḥ, and by it the church affirms that his divinity is complete and his humanity is complete together, as the church's explanation of the doctrine of union makes clear. The word describes the relation of divinity to humanity in the faith of the church, and for this reason it differs from the monotheism that denies the deification of the Masīḥ.

The resistance to Chalcedon has a history tied to Alexandria and to eastern and African churches that kept their own languages and institutions. But the map of this dispute does not coincide with the boundaries of any one race, nor of one language family, for Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian communities lived in neighbouring regions.

Among the languages of these churches are Syriac and Gǝʿǝz, which are Semitic, and Coptic and Armenian, which are not. What joins these languages is that they are present in the Christianities of the East; their linguistic origins differ, and their positions are not identical on every question.

We read this diversity as a factor that helped several ways of keeping books and rites to survive. A local language may protect a memory that the institution of the centre does not protect, though it does not shield that memory from every change or influence.

So we read the Tewahedo with all that it gathers of texts and practices and with its own interpretation of the station of the Masīḥ. We understand what it says about union and about the Word as we understood the language of light in the earlier places, and then we mark the point at which we differ from it. When we understand this heritage from within, the value of what it preserved appears to us.

Gǝʿǝz and the Course of Names

Gǝʿǝz opens another road to the study of the name of the Masīḥ. We have met the Arabic root m-s-ḥ and seen that it is connected with anointing and consecration; we set it against the root m-s-kh in our title as a literary contrast, and then we stopped at the phrase "Mšiha Kdaba" in Mandaic. Let us now turn to the letters of Gǝʿǝz, to see what they preserve of historical Semitic sounds.

Gǝʿǝz writing has symbols for historical Semitic sounds, among them two letters that correspond to ḥ and ḫ in scholarly transliteration. Some of these sounds, however, merged in later pronunciation, so the form of a letter does not always show how it is pronounced today:

• ሐ (ḥa), which is transliterated in studies as ḥ.
• ኀ (ḫa), which is transliterated in studies as ḫ.

These letters help us trace names as they travel, if we read them together with the history of their pronunciation, because a script may keep a distinction that disappeared from speech at a later time. Among the works to which one turns for comparing Gǝʿǝz with Arabic and Hebrew is Wolf Leslau's comparative dictionary of Gǝʿǝz (1987).

Gǝʿǝz preserves two things together: the title of the Masīḥ, taken from the Semitic stem connected with anointing, and ḥ and kh as two distinct letters in its script, though their pronunciation merged in later recitation. In it we see, in a living tongue, how the two pharyngeal letters come to be confused until they become one sound. In this confusion there is a picture of the turning of the Masīḥ into the Masīkh, the turning that the book traces.

This is exactly where the benefit of the comparison lies. Gǝʿǝz preserves a name and a text in another tongue, whereas the contrast between the Masīḥ and the Masīkh is our own formulation, with which we distinguish the origin from its disfigured image. The doctrinal transformation we have in mind is wider than the change of a letter or a dot.

Each tongue has its own work to do. Arabic allows us to set the two roots against each other as a rhetorical contrast, Mandaic preserves the charge of lying in its polemic, and Gǝʿǝz preserves the name in another church tradition. We gather these different works in order to learn how the word acted in each of these environments.

When we read the tongues in this way they become roads to the history of memory, and we learn that every religious meaning draws its significance from the way the text used it.

What Does Abyssinia Bear Witness To?

The biography of the Najāshī brings us back to the human being himself: a man hears, recognises what he heard, and then chooses. A believer's membership of a church does not by itself describe everything in his heart, nor everything he understands by the expressions of his creed. In this space we read religiosity, before rigid classifications take hold of it.

Abyssinia gives us two things, and neither should be lost: ancient texts that it preserved, and the report of the Najāshī, which shows how a person can recognise the Qurʾānic message. The two witnesses differ in nature, yet both widen our picture of the continuity of guidance.

When we compare the Najāshī with Heraclius, we are comparing the position each took toward the call that reached him, and his relation to it from his place in government. The prayer over the Najāshī preserves his special station in the biography, but it alone does not suffice for ranking the churches by their nearness to the creed of this book.

This reading widens the picture the book draws, so that it goes beyond conflict alone: a community may preserve a book, and an individual may preserve a meaning, and then a new meeting comes and discloses the kinship between what had been scattered. The return of the truth is to recover what remained of the light and to distinguish what veiled it, without erasing what people lived.

From Abyssinia we return to the Syriac and Arabian East, where other churches, schools and communities lived that no single authority joined together. There we shall see how knowledge travelled between the book, the temple, the school and the road.

Chapter 17: The Church of the East and the Fractured Christian World: From Ephesus to the Eve of the Mission

In the preceding chapters we met voices and communities, each of which preserved an aspect of the Christian heritage. We now place them in their wider world. These communities lived among churches that each had its own institutions, schools and political patrons, and many Arabs lived in this world and took part in its disputes. Once we know this world we can understand how the ancient meanings passed into the environment that the Qurʾān addressed, and how knowledge was preserved at the time when doctrine was undergoing transformation.

From Dispute to a Plurality of Churches

We saw earlier how the councils codified doctrine, and we now want to see what they left in the institutions. Some disputes drew the churches apart, and then a period followed in which each church organised its own affairs and found political patrons to look after it, until the separation settled. Some of these churches, however, had an institutional life older than the council whose name came to be linked with their dispute.

In 431 CE the Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorius. The controversy concerned the title of Maryam and the manner in which divinity and humanity were united in the Masīḥ. The Church of the East afterwards received Antiochene theological traditions, the very ones that its opponents linked to it when they called it Nestorian; but the church itself was organised before Nestorius and before the council. This priority matters a great deal, because it explains the church's independence, its ties with al-Ḥīra and Persia, and its extension toward the east.

Then came the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE, which deepened the division over the formula in which the relation of divinity to humanity is explained. But the independent institutions were not all born on the day the council met: the Church of the East had an organisation older than it, and the structures of other churches settled only after decades of conflict. In time three great families emerged in this field:

• The Chalcedonian churches, which affirm two natures in one person.
• The non-Chalcedonian Oriental Orthodox churches, which affirm the unity of the incarnate Masīḥ together with the perfection of his divinity and his humanity.
• The Church of the East, of the East Syriac tradition, which expresses the union of divinity and humanity in its own terminology.

These families differed in their formulas, and the difference was bound up with the rivalries of politics and institutions. They kept their heritage in a number of languages, among them Syriac, Coptic, Gǝʿǝz and Armenian, alongside Greek and others. No single Semitic kinship joins these languages. What joins them here is that they were many vessels that carried religious memory.

This plurality explains how reports and practices that had lost their central place in one church could survive in another. It also explains how memory travelled: schools, scribes, monks and families carried it, and the roads of travel bore it along. It is something that lives in the life of people, not an idea suspended outside it.

How Do We Compare the Language of the Churches?

To understand the language of a church, we read it in its complete expression and ask: what does it mean by the Word, by light, by priority? How does it describe union, and how does it describe worship? Once we know these meanings, its position becomes clear, and so does the distance between it and the other conceptions with which we compare it.

In the comparison we put three questions to every tradition:

• How does the tradition describe the relation of the Masīḥ to God, and does it affirm for him an eternal divinity or a derived rank?
• How does it understand his humanity and his connection with the Word that precedes the human appearance?
• What texts and practices did it preserve, and how did its institutions transmit them?

These questions tell us what to take from each tradition. A church may preserve a text that we need, and its spiritual language may open a door to comparison with the Muḥammadan Reality, and yet it parts from us in its understanding of the station of the Masīḥ. Only the details show us where the connection lies and where the difference lies.

The table sets before us, in each formulation, the thing we compare. Where a meaning of derivation or manifestation occurs, we read it, and beside it we read what the churches affirm of the divinity of the Masīḥ, because the doctrine of each church is understood from both sides together.

The Church of the East: Humanity and the Word

The Church of the East has a claim to a reading of its own, for it preserved a precise Syriac language of distinction and of union. Its common designation, "Nestorian," has affected it, and it has come to be received through its opponents. For that reason we return first to its explanation of itself, and then consider what it can add to the comparison.

The Church of the East affirms that the Word is eternal and that divinity and humanity are perfect and united, so it neither confines the Masīḥ to a human prophethood nor rejects the principle of the Trinity. But its Syriac terms carry their own meaning: the word qnōmā does not mechanically correspond to the concept of the separate person as it is used today. We read how this language distinguishes the human appearance from the reality of the Word, and how it expresses the connection between them, because that is where the spiritual comparison that concerns us is to be found.

We place this understanding beside the Qurʾānic warning against the deification of the Masīḥ and his mother:

﴿وَإِذْ قَالَ اللَّهُ يَا عِيسَى ابْنَ مَرْيَمَ أَأَنتَ قُلْتَ لِلنَّاسِ اتَّخِذُونِي وَأُمِّيَ إِلَٰهَيْنِ مِن دُونِ اللَّهِ ۖ قَالَ سُبْحَانَكَ مَا يَكُونُ لِي أَنْ أَقُولَ مَا لَيْسَ لِي بِحَقٍّ﴾ (wa-idh qāla Allāhu yā ʿĪsā ibna Maryama a-anta qulta li-al-nāsi ittakhidhūnī wa-ummiya ilāhayni min dūni Allāhi qāla subḥānaka mā yakūnu lī an aqūla mā laysa lī bi-ḥaqqin) ("And when God said, 'O ʿĪsā son of Maryam, did you say to the people, Take me and my mother as two gods besides God?' He said, 'Glory be to You; it is not for me to say what I have no right to say,'" al-Māʾida 5:116)

Those who use the title "Mother of God" explain it by the identity of the one born and by the union of divinity and humanity in him; they do not mean that Maryam brought the eternal divinity into being, or that she became a goddess. This book, for its part, looks at what the title produced in religious practice and at the excess connected with it. In the same way we understand Nestorius' objection to some uses of the title, an objection that came from a man who believed in the divinity of the Word. The disagreement lies first in the meaning, and then in the effect that the expression leaves on the life of believers.

What the Church of the East adds is another textual and spiritual experience of the same question: how is there attributed to a human being what belongs to a reality prior to him? We shall return to this question in Chapter 18, when we reach Sufism, for the language of light and reality there may help us to understand texts before we judge them.

The Church of the East: An Independent Institution East of Rome

The Church of the East arose in Mesopotamia and in the sphere ruled by the Sasanians, far from Roman ecclesiastical authority. It had a primacy that ordered its own affairs, and dioceses, schools and monasteries. The existence of such an institution is enough to show that the history of Christianity is wider than the decisions of Constantinople and Rome, and that the East followed a course of its own in preserving and teaching the books.

The see of the church was at Seleucia–Ctesiphon on the Tigris, the Sasanian capital that came afterwards to be known as al-Madāʾin, and then it moved to Baghdad in the Abbasid age. At the head of its organisation stood the Catholicos. One of the most important stages this organisation passed through was the council of 410 CE. It met under the presidency of the Catholicos Isaac and under the patronage of Yazdegerd I, and Marutha of Mayyāfāriqīn attended it as an envoy from the Roman side. The participants ratified the Nicene canon and organised the dioceses and metropolitanates under the primacy of the Catholicos of Seleucia–Ctesiphon. The proceedings of this council, together with those of later councils, were preserved in the Eastern Synodicon (Synodicon Orientale), which J.-B. Chabot published in 1902.

After the council of 410 had organised the church, its council of 424 CE affirmed that the authority of its Catholicos was independent of the West. This was before Ephesus and Chalcedon, though not before all the great Christian disputes. Administrative and political independence, as these stages show, has a history of its own, and it is too wide to be reduced to a single doctrinal label.

This organisation extended from al-Ḥīra and Maysān to Jundishapur in Khuzestan, and to Merv in Khorasan, until it reached the coast of the Gulf known as Bēth Qaṭrāyē, whose bishops' reports appear in the context of the councils from 410 CE. We have met the report of about forty monasteries in al-Ḥīra, which belongs to the material studied by Isabel Toral-Niehoff in Al-Ḥīra: eine arabische Kulturmetropole, and J. M. Fiey documented aspects of it in Assyrie chrétienne. So we are before a church wide in range, Arab in part of its flock, in which Syriac and Arabic ran side by side in one religious life.

Here, then, is a church that administered itself independently and nevertheless affirmed the Nicene canon from 410 CE. So we read its emphasis on the humanity of the Masīḥ within its belief in the eternal Word, and we look at the connection between the two; we do not take its independence from the West as evidence that it rejected deification.

Those whom the Qurʾān addressed lived beside churches and schools that circulated shared words, and then the revelation came with its own exposition, addressing this knowledge and correcting it. When we know this wide environment, we understand the religious language they knew, and we know the addressees and their connections. Even so, the Qurʾān does not become the follower of any of those schools.

The Schools of Nisibis and Jundishapur: The Syriac Mind

The schools of the East taught scripture, philosophy and medicine, but the centres did not take an equal share of all this: Nisibis stood out in theology and exegesis, and Jundishapur was known for its physicians and scholarly families. For this reason we draw the picture of the teaching in each centre from its own reports.

Nisibis produced generations of bishops, scribes and exegetes, and a teaching grew up there that read scripture in the Antiochene manner. Syriac was the language of study and worship, and it was closely tied to the Aramaic heritage. Whoever wants to see the breadth of this scholarly life should look at the journey of Mar Aba I, who presided over the church about 540–552 CE. He was a Persian by origin and a Zoroastrian, and he converted to Christianity, then sought knowledge in Nisibis, Edessa, Alexandria and Constantinople, and afterwards returned to al-Madāʾin, where he reformed the canon of the church and dealt with its division. In the life of one man, then, several centres come together, which the journey in search of knowledge linked across political frontiers.

As for Jundishapur, it appears in the reports of medicine and in the reports of the families that served the Abbasid caliphs afterwards. These connections point us to a road along which knowledge travelled, but the Sasanian institution itself remains less clearly pictured than people suppose when they describe it as a university hospital and a translation academy. We know the work of the physicians and we know their movement, but the scale of the ancient organisation is something the available evidence does not settle.

One of the most important roads of knowledge was its transmission from Greek into Syriac and then from Syriac into Arabic. Alongside it there were those who translated directly from Greek and those who compared copies in different languages. The Abbasid translation movement rested on earlier traditions and schools and benefited from them, and then it enlarged the work and changed its audience and purposes. In this way we understand the role of the Eastern Christians in the history of science.

What concerns this book in all this is that the people of this teaching went on with their work in the Islamic centuries. Here are particular examples of families and scholars who continued in medicine, translation and dialogue:

• The Bukhtīshūʿ family: a family of Nestorian physicians of Jundishapur, who moved almost in their entirety into the service of the Abbasid caliphs from the reign of al-Manṣūr (about 765 CE), and continued to serve the court as physicians, generation after generation, while remaining Christian. Michael Dols documented this transfer in his study of the origins of the Islamic hospital.
• Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (d. about 873 CE): an ʿIbādī Nestorian of al-Ḥīra origin, the master of translators, who mastered Syriac, Greek and Arabic, and transmitted Galen and Hippocrates and much of the heritage of the Greeks through Syriac into Arabic by a precise critical method. He is the living link that joins the mind of Nisibis and Jundishapur to the age of al-Maʾmūn.
• The Catholicos Timothy I (780–823 CE): the head of the Church of the East at the height of its flourishing, who moved his see to Baghdad beside the caliphal palace, and held a public theological disputation with the caliph al-Mahdī about 782 CE, preserved in a text known as the "Apology" (published by A. Mingana in Woodbrooke Studies), in which the patriarch addressed the caliph on a respected level of equality.

Our criticism, for its part, turns to another moment of the same history. In 218 AH al-Maʾmūn ordered that scholars be examined on a doctrinal formula his authority had adopted, wanting by it a single reference on which the state could settle, and so the Miḥna came about. The most famous of those who endured it was Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, author of the Zuhd, which preserved fifty sayings of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him). Knowledge may expand at court, but doctrine, once the state imposes it, becomes an examination of consciences, as it was at Nicaea.

So this environment remained alive after the change of rule: the schools went on teaching, the scribes went on translating, and the men of religion went on holding dialogue, though the doctrines of the participants differed. On this continuity, in its persons and its works, knowledge and memory crossed from one age to another.

Al-Ḥīra and Ghassān between Persia and Rome

In Chapter 9 we presented the life of the Ghassanids and the Lakhmid Mundhirids, and here we want to see the place of the two houses between the two empires. Al-Ḥīra was tied to the Sasanians and al-Jābiya to Byzantium, so the two Arab houses entered the rivalry between Persia and Rome. Each of them had, along with this tie, different ecclesiastical connections, and so the Arabs became participants in the political and religious conflict of the East.

Al-Ḥīra was an Arab centre under Sasanian political patronage; it had a Christian presence and monasteries, and ties with the Church of the East. But the Lakhmid kings were not all of one religion in every age. The Ghassanids, on the other side, were tied to the Romans in politics and to the non-Chalcedonian tradition in religion: an Arab may live beside a state and ally himself with it and yet not follow its doctrine.

The best illustration of the effect of this role is the report of al-Ḥārith ibn Jabala, whom the Greeks call Arethas. He ruled about 529–569 CE, and Justinian raised him to the rank of patrician. This Ghassanid king remained attached to the doctrine of the united nature, and about 542 CE he sought to have Jacob Baradaeus ordained as an itinerant bishop. Jacob began to travel the East, ordaining bishops and priests, until he had reorganised the church that persecution had burdened, and the name "Jacobites" became attached to his name. John of Ephesus, a contemporary of the events, told this history, and Irfan Shahid studied it in Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century. Here, then, we have an Arab patronage that had an effect on the survival of a whole ecclesiastical institution.

An Arab king put his political influence at the service of one branch of the Christianity of the East, supporting it against the policy of the Byzantine centre. The Arabs in this report take part in protecting communities and in shaping their relations, and they are anything but spectators of conflicts far from them.

In al-Ḥīra and in Ghassān we see the Arabs patronising churches and schools and taking part in the controversy. Each of the two environments had its own books, rites and scholarly connections, and its own doctrine, which is read in its own sources. The difference between the two kingdoms is too complex to be reduced to a simple division: a human prophet here, and a God there.

Then the "prepared land" becomes a religious life that we can see and touch: monasteries and schools, roads along which delegations travelled, and readers reading in many languages. In such a life the reports of the Masīḥ could pass from hand to hand and be read again. Here institutional history joins the question of this book: where did the origin survive behind these transformations?

Taghlib and the Continuity of Arab Christianity

In the tribe of Taghlib we have an example of the continuity of Arab Christianity in the Islamic ages. This presence is established, though it would not be right to attribute all its clans to one church, because the doctrinal ties in the Euphrates Jazira were varied and changing.

The books of the kharāj preserve an arrangement that shows the place of Taghlib. Its men disdained to pay the jizya under that name, and negotiated to pay a doubled ṣadaqa, that is, twice the zakāt of the Muslims, and to remain in their religion. Abū Yūsuf, the pupil of Abū Ḥanīfa, recorded this report in the Kitāb al-Kharāj, among the rulings of fiscal policy. In this arrangement we see how tribal identity and religious affiliation interacted with the system of the new state.

From Taghlib came al-Akhṭal, Ghiyāth ibn Ghawth, who remained a Christian and yet became one of the poets of the Umayyad court and a panegyrist of its caliphs. Reports relate that he entered upon ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān with his cross on his neck. The Arab Christian presence here goes beyond a community on the margins of the state: it reaches a poet who addressed the state's public and defended its authority from the caliph's own assembly.

In these two reports, then, we have two images of survival: a community preserving its religion through a fiscal arrangement, and a poet living the life of the court while remaining a Christian. By events like these the old social and religious life continued inside the new age.

Religious change did not efface the earlier society in a single moment. Communities of it remained, negotiating their place and preserving their religion and tongue. So memory passed within an interlocking world, and those communities were not isolated blocs, each beginning where another disappears.

Ḥimyar, Najrān and Aksum, then the Persian Intervention

If we turn to the south, we find the reports of Ḥimyar, Najrān and Aksum connected with the Persian intervention that followed. These transformations extended from the 520s to about the 570s, and in them religious and political competition ran together with the trade routes in a single field.

We begin with the conversion of Ḥimyar that we presented earlier. Christian Julien Robin and his colleagues at the CNRS studied the royal inscriptions and found them shifting, about 380 CE, from the mention of the old gods to the invocation of the "Lord of heaven and earth," and in some of them "the God of Israel." Monotheism, in its Jewish colouring, so entered the discourse of the state more than two centuries before Islam. Among the last independent kings of Ḥimyar was Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar, known as Dhū Nuwās after his locks. He was a Jew, and his rule is dated to about 515–525 CE.

Then come the reports of the persecution of the Christians of Najrān about 523 CE, which the Syriac and Greek sources relate, while the inscriptions record beside them the campaigns of Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar and his commanders. We gather these materials, but we distinguish the subject of each, because the numbers of the dead in the campaigns taken together do not necessarily concern the event of Najrān alone. Beside all this we then place the reading of the exegetes of the People of the Trench against the background of these events.

﴿قُتِلَ أَصْحَابُ الْأُخْدُودِ * النَّارِ ذَاتِ الْوَقُودِ * إِذْ هُمْ عَلَيْهَا قُعُودٌ * وَهُمْ عَلَىٰ مَا يَفْعَلُونَ بِالْمُؤْمِنِينَ شُهُودٌ﴾ (qutila aṣḥābu al-ukhdūd * al-nāri dhāti al-waqūd * idh hum ʿalayhā quʿūd * wa-hum ʿalā mā yafʿalūna bi-al-muʾminīna shuhūd)("Destroyed were the companions of the trench, the fire full of fuel, when they were sitting by it, and they were witnesses to what they were doing against the believers," al-Burūj 85:4–7)

The verses put the faith of the victims and their steadfastness at the heart of the scene. When we read them against the report of Najrān, we see the memory of the believers who came before the mission present in the Qurʾānic discourse. As for the doctrines of those people in detail, they are to be sought in their own historical material, outside this general description.

In 525 CE the army of Aksum crossed the Red Sea with Byzantine support. It was led by Kaleb, also called Ella Asbeha, a king other than the Najāshī Aṣḥama ibn Abjar, the subject of the report of the emigrants. Procopius, in the Wars (I.20), relates that the king of Ḥimyar was defeated and killed and that Sumūyafaʿ Ashwaʿ (Esimiphaios) was installed in his place, while the narration of Ibn Isḥāq and al-Ṭabarī preserves the report of Dhū Nuwās plunging into the sea with his horse. The independent Jewish rule came to an end, and a Christian rule subordinate to Aksum took its place. Here the connection appears between the Ethiopian intervention and the Christians of Najrān, whose report the exegetes tied to the verses of the Trench, the connection that Chapter 16 took up.

Then Abraha rebelled against Sumūyafaʿ Ashwaʿ and took power on his own about 535 CE, and he ruled Christian Ḥimyar for about thirty years. The inscription of the Marib Dam, CIH 541, dated to the year 658 of the Ḥimyarite era, that is 548 CE, in the edition of Walter Müller (1974), states that Abraha received delegations from Aksum, Rome, Persia, al-Mundhir the Lakhmid and al-Ḥārith ibn Jabala the Ghassanid. So the powers mentioned earlier in the north of the same field meet in the court of the south. After that the Persians entered Yemen under Wahriz about 570 CE, and its political position changed again. Through all these stations authority passed from hand to hand while religious life stood on in its place.

This is the history of communities that knew the book, worship and martyrdom, and that lived at the same time in the thick of the rivalry between kingdoms. The protection of believers sometimes went together with the interests of rule, and the contending parties differed in their doctrines. From this entanglement we understand the connection of religion with kingship in the environment of the book, which is one of the questions with which the book began its discourse on ʿĪsā the prophet (peace be upon him), the king.

Stations of Transformation in the South of the Peninsula

We gather these stations in a table that shows, for each, who acted, what happened and what the witness to it is, and that places the Syriac, Greek and Sabaean material beside the Qurʾānic and exegetical reading:

From the persecution of Najrān to the Persian intervention is about half a century, and the table adds to it an older religious transformation in Ḥimyar. The evidence for these stations is not all of one grade: some of it is a contemporary inscription and some a later narration, so the strength of each date and each detail varies. The field nonetheless remains rich for comparison.

"Al-Raḥmān" as a Name before the Revelation: The Testimony of the Ḥimyarite Stone

In the Ḥimyarite inscriptions, beside the political events, there is a linguistic witness: they use rḥmnn as a divine name in texts that precede Islam. We read this use with the history of the formulas of invocation and the history of authority, and then we set it against the place of "al-Raḥmān" in the Qurʾān.

The designation rḥmnn occurs in inscriptions of Jewish context, and then in Christian texts that mention the Masīḥ and the Holy Spirit. The name continues through all these usages, whatever their doctrinal formulas. When we set it against the Qurʾān, we are not saying that those beliefs are identical, just as the definite markers in Sabaic and Arabic are not to be judged merely by the absence of al- in the old spelling.

The inscription of Abraha, CIH 541, concerning the Marib Dam, opens with this formula: "By the power of al-Raḥmān and His Masīḥ and the Holy Spirit." Here is a Christian king recording a building work, and he mentions "al-Raḥmān" as a divine name before the mission. The inscription is a witness that the name continued in the language of invocation, although it came here in a Christian formula.

As for the Qurʾān, the sūras open with the basmala, except al-Tawba, and in it there comes ﴿قُلِ ادْعُوا اللَّهَ أَوِ ادْعُوا الرَّحْمَٰنَ﴾ (qul udʿū Allāha aw udʿū al-raḥmāna) ("Say: Call upon God, or call upon al-Raḥmān," al-Isrāʾ 17:110). We set the antiquity of the name in the inscriptions beside this Qurʾānic exposition, and we see that what continued is the word, while the question remains about the meaning that the revelation restated. The continuity of the name opens a door for us to the history of religious discourse, but the doctrine in its detail is taken from the context in which the name occurs.

A Map of the Churches and the Arab Communities

We now gather the features of the environments that we have passed through. The picture we draw is a picture of tendencies and regions, so it should not be read as fixed doctrinal boundaries that wholly separate the inhabitants of each region.

The great churches on this map all affirm divinity and humanity, and then differ in explaining the relation between them and in their organisation. What we take from this diversity is that the ways of preserving the heritage were many and that they have a connection with Arabic; then we read the place of the human being and the Word in each tradition according to its own expressions.

In the Roman sphere Chalcedonian churches lived beside non-Chalcedonian ones, and in the Sasanian sphere the Church of the East expanded. Between these churches languages and methods of teaching lay side by side, and books and persons crossed the frontiers in more than one direction. The East was not wholly one sect, and the West was not isolated from this circulation.

The Arabs took part in this world: the Ghassanids, the people of al-Ḥīra, the ʿIbād, Tanūkh and Taghlib, with differing histories and ties. What concerns us in their presence is that they were active in the monasteries, in teaching and in political patronage. So when we say that names and reports were transmitted, they were transmitted on a concrete social ground.

The most important of these environments appear in the following table:

The Arab in this field lived with the questions of prophethood, the Word, the Spirit and the book. So when the correction of doctrine came, it addressed an earlier knowledge in him, and the words of the revelation entered a religious life that had its history. Yet the Qurʾānic discourse keeps its own significance, by which we measure what they knew.

The Great War of 602–628 and the Exhaustion of the Two Empires

The religious map that we drew in the preceding pages was not a still picture, for the conflicts of the churches interlocked in it with the wars of states. Among the most prominent examples of this interlocking is the great war between Rome and Persia (602–628 CE), which lasted twenty-six years and left the two empires in severe exhaustion. In this war we see how wars affect the life of religious communities and their relation to authority, and how doctrinal division meets political and military weakness, and together they make the conditions of the region.

The spark began in 602 CE, when the Roman emperor Maurice was killed in a bloody coup that installed the soldier Phocas in his place. Khosrow II (Parviz), shahanshah of Persia, took the killing of his ally as a pretext for war, and invaded the possessions of the Romans in the East. Disasters quickly followed upon the Romans: Antioch fell, then Damascus, until the Persians reached the height of the shock in 614 CE.

In 614 CE the army of Khosrow took Jerusalem, with the participation of local allies, plundered it and carried the wood of the Cross to Ctesiphon on the Tigris. The loss of the city and its sacred relic had a severe impact on the Christians, and the monk Antiochus Strategos described the catastrophe in an account that survives in a Georgian version. Then the Persians entered Egypt, and in 626 CE they joined the Avars in the siege of Constantinople. The war thus threatened the centres of the empire from distant extremities, and the religious communities began to live its direct effect.

Heraclius, who ruled from 610 to 641 CE, began his counter-campaign in 622 CE, heading north through Armenia and Azerbaijan, and carried the fighting into the land of Persia. He then won a victory near Nineveh in 627 CE and advanced toward Ctesiphon. Khosrow II was killed in a coup in 628 CE, and the peace led to the return of the provinces that Persia had taken. Heraclius recovered Syria and Egypt, and returned the Cross to Jerusalem about 630 CE. The war ended with a reversal of the balance, after years in which Roman authority in the East almost collapsed.

The two powers came out of the war exhausted, and the war had burdened their provinces, so it was one of the conditions of the scene which the conquests entered. But the inhabitants were not of a single allegiance: the interests of communities differed, and so did the responses of cities and governors. For this reason we count exhaustion and religious conflict among the causes of the transformation, and we do not claim that all the inhabitants of the East had abandoned the two authorities in advance, or that they awaited a change of rule in the same manner.

When this war is connected with the Qurʾānic text, as in the exegesis in common circulation, the opening of Sūrat al-Rūm is cited:

﴿الم * غُلِبَتِ الرُّومُ * فِي أَدْنَى الْأَرْضِ وَهُم مِّن بَعْدِ غَلَبِهِمْ سَيَغْلِبُونَ * فِي بِضْعِ سِنِينَ ۚ لِلَّهِ الْأَمْرُ مِن قَبْلُ وَمِن بَعْدُ ۚ وَيَوْمَئِذٍ يَفْرَحُ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ﴾ (alif-lām-mīm * ghulibati al-rūmu fī adnā al-arḍi wa-hum min baʿdi ghalabihim sa-yaghlibūna * fī biḍʿi sinīna lillāhi al-amru min qablu wa-min baʿdu wa-yawmaʾidhin yafraḥu al-muʾminūna)("Alif Lām Mīm. The Romans have been defeated in the nearest land; but after their defeat they will prevail, within a few years. To God belongs the command before and after, and on that day the believers will rejoice," al-Rūm 30:1–4)

The exegesis in this connection reads the defeat of the Romans, and their victory after it, against the background of their struggle with the Persians, and it ties "the nearest land" to the arena of the war in Syria and Palestine. The verses themselves do not name Heraclius or Khosrow and do not mention a particular year; the identification of events and dates comes from reading the reports of the war beside the text. What appears directly in the discourse is that reports of the Romans, their war and their victory were present in the world of the addressees, and that their religious hope was tied to what occurred around them.

So in this history the ecclesiastical conflict meets the life of states. In the exegetical reading of the verses of al-Rūm we see the hope of the believers tied to the news of the world in which they lived, and the Arabs are part of that world, knowing its wars and transformations. When the authority that protects a doctrine weakens or grows strong, the condition of communities changes. In this setting we understand the call to monotheism as a reform that touches the life and the religion of people. That is the prepared land: a society that knows the religious question and lives its effects, and so, when it hears the discourse of reform, finds in it an answer to a present crisis.

Chapter 18: The Living Way: From Wisdom to Sufism

Religion is preserved in the book and the institution, and it is preserved also by a human being who learns from a human being how to look at himself, how to discipline his will and how to know his Lord. From this relationship this chapter begins. In distant traditions we find a teacher and a disciple, we find a retreat and remembrance, and we find an etiquette that precedes the claim to knowledge. The book sees behind this similarity one inheritance, which is the prophets’ way of purifying the soul as the elect among their followers have lived it in every age. Its reports and ways spread with the movement of the Masīḥ and his followers and were then carried by communities of ascetics and worshippers, generation after generation, before the mission of the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) and after it, until they were organised in the Sufi orders. As we read this inheritance in names and biographies, so we now read it in practice.

Ten Shared Features in the Ways of Training

These practices are similar ways of educating the human being, and each tradition then interprets their end in its own language. If we compare the non-self of the Buddhist with the fanāʾ of the Sufi, we compare them in meaning, and if we look at Christian deification, we understand it from the side of participation by grace, as its adherents explain it. From this detail the place of kinship becomes clear, and it is easier for us to trace its history.

For academic depth in the comparison: Toshihiko Izutsu, Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts (1984), the classic reference in comparing Ibn ʿArabī with Chuang Tzu. And Reza Shah-Kazemi, Paths to Transcendence: According to Shankara, Ibn Arabi, and Meister Eckhart (2006). And Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi (1969), on the Sufi-Iranian convergence. And Muhammad Legenhausen, Islam and Religious Pluralism (2006), for the philosophical perspective. And from the church perspective, Kallistos Ware, The Inner Kingdom (2000), on Hesychasm and its Eastern convergences.

Remembrance and Retreat: How Does Knowledge Become Experience?

The Sufi repeats a name or an invocation in his dhikr, and the Hesychasts repeat the like in the Jesus Prayer, and in both cases the repetition may be joined with the breath and with attention of the heart. The near aim in the two practices is that the self should gather itself and seek presence, and then the expressions and doctrinal interpretations vary. In this kinship we see a trace of an experience that passed between communities and that the people of each path then formulated in their own language.

The retreat performs a similar function: in it the learner withdraws for a time from distractions, until his knowledge becomes an experience he lives. The forty is present in the report of Mūsā and in some fasts and retreats, and in other traditions we find seven weeks, that is forty-nine days, or three months. The duration varies, but the function is the same: attention is trained and the will is disciplined.

The People of the Ṣuffa and Companionship with the Teacher

The People of the Ṣuffa are an early image of those who received knowledge in the company of the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam). They lived beside the mosque, learning, in nearness and neediness. The members of this group changed, and so did their number, but its report preserved the meaning of training through sitting together and example. For this reason it had its place in Sufi memory, before the names of the orders and their institutions settled. We compare this bond with the teacher with what other traditions preserve of chains of reception:

• The Buddhist Sangha lineage going back through the patriarchs to the Buddha
• The lineage of the Taoist paths going back through the patriarchs to Laozi
• The lineage of Christian monasticism going back through the Desert Fathers to the first circle around the Masīḥ

Sufism, then, is a continuation of the path of purification and knowledge that is in the message, and a continuation of the communities of ascetics and worshippers who carried this path before it; it was not an invention that began on the day the names of the orders settled. The Qurʾān has its lexicon in this domain: al-ṣirāṭ, al-sabīl, al-hudā, al-taṭhīr and al-minhāj. From this lexicon the wayfarers drew the language of their experience, though they later formulated more specialised terms.

The Network of Words: Ṣuffa, Ṣūfī, Ṣafā, Sophia, Kepha

Around this path meet the names ṣuffa, ṣafāʾ and ṣūfī, and alongside them the word "sophia." Philosophy in its first form, as we understand it, is love of wisdom and of those who bear it, and in it knowledge is connected with the disciplining of life. Al-Bīrūnī had already connected the name of the Sufis with the Greek "sophia," in Taḥqīq mā li-l-Hind, and so made the Sufis, in the origin of the name, the people of wisdom.

They differed over the derivation of the name ṣūfī, and Abū Naṣr al-Sarrāj in the Kitāb al-Lumaʿ, al-Qushayrī in the Risāla and al-Kalābādhī in the Taʿarruf preserved the discussions that went on about it. Some said it comes from the wool (ṣūf) worn by the ascetic, some from the purity (ṣafāʾ) that the heart seeks, some from the ṣuffa known through companionship with the Prophet, and some from the first row (ṣaff) before God. The derivations differ, but all of them call up a similar picture of a life of detachment and reception.

We find in the Arabic heritage the name "Shimʿūn al-Ṣafā," and al-ṣafā in Arabic is the plural of ṣafāt, the smooth rock, as in Lisān al-ʿArab (root ṣ-f-w). The Arabic title is, in fact, an exact translation of the Aramaic Kepha and the Greek Petros, and in it the meaning of rock and the meaning of purity (ṣafāʾ) come together. We read the station of Shimʿūn in the memory of the disciples beside the station of James in the community of Jerusalem, and we read al-ṣafā, al-ṣuffa and al-ṣūfī side by side, as one field of names that meets among the people of the Way.

The reports of Pythagoras also give an image of a community that learns, practises the virtues and keeps rules in its way of living. Many of the details reached us in later biographies, among them the report that he chose for himself the description "lover of wisdom." We call this image to mind because it joins knowledge to practice and companionship, and it is on these three that this chapter turns. We describe it as its reports describe it, and then compare it with the system of reception that the Sufi orders came to know afterwards.

Sophia and Ṣafāʾ: Word and Meaning

• ἄλφα (alpha) (alif, a letter of the alphabet) ← Canaanite ʾāleph
• χρυσός (khrysós) (gold) ← Akkadian ḫurāṣu
• κάμηλος (kámēlos) (the camel) ← Semitic gamāl
• σάκκος (sákkos) (the sack) ← Semitic śaq
• μύρρα (mýrra) (myrrh) ← Semitic murr
• σήσαμον (sḗsamon) (sesame) ← Akkadian šamaššammū
• κιννάμωμον (kinnámōmon) (cinnamon) ← Semitic

These words point to an ancient connection between Greek and the tongues of the East, through which Semitic names entered the vocabulary of writing, gold, trade and perfume. We read "sophia" in this same field, and what strengthens this reading is that Beekes's etymological dictionary of Greek (2010, pp. 1374–1375) counts the origin of σοφός (sophos) as unknown and mentions the possibility that it comes from a language earlier than Greek.

We connect the pursuit of wisdom with purity (ṣafāʾ) and purification, and we see in the philosophical movement a religious aspect that its later classification should not hide from us. The reports of Pythagoras and his connections with the East help this view, though we recognise the distance in time between his life and the biographies that transmitted his journeys. Moreover, the places of teaching in Anatolia, Syria, Iraq and Egypt show us the history of wisdom in its wide field, beyond the borders of modern Greece.

For this reason Ḥarrān returns to the comparison: it is the city we knew from the biography of Nabonidus, and it later became a centre of the philosophy and sciences of the Sabians. And in the Christian context we find the name Hagia Sophia, that is, the Holy Wisdom. Wisdom is present in all these places, in the temple, in the school and in the church, and what links them is a teaching that passed from place to place. In this one field we read sophia, ṣafāʾ and Sîn as a connected field of names of wisdom and light.

The names around which the comparison turns may be gathered in this way:

• "Sophia": wisdom in Greek; it has a connection of meaning with the path of learning and conduct.
• "Al-Ṣuffa": a place in the mosque associated with a group of the Companions, which Sufi memory calls to mind as an image of detachment and reception.
• "Kepha": the rock in Aramaic; al-ṣafā corresponds to it in Arabic in the same sense, and by it the Arabs translated the title of Shimʿūn, and from its consonantal frame k-f we read al-Kūfa and kāffa.
• "Al-Ṣūfī" and "purity of the heart": the name gathers the fruit of the Way in purity, and the wisdom through which al-Bīrūnī connected the name with sophia.

We read these names as turning around connected meanings: that the heart should become pure, that wisdom should be received, that there should be companionship, and that the wayfarer should travel toward knowledge. Every time the history of a linguistic connection among them becomes clear, the picture grows clearer, and the spiritual practice itself remains a field of comparison among speakers of different tongues.

We know the People of the Ṣuffa from the biography and the ḥadīth, and the exegetes place them in the revelation itself: on the words of God Most High ﴿لِلْفُقَرَآءِ ٱلَّذِينَ أُحْصِرُوا۟ فِى سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ لَا يَسْتَطِيعُونَ ضَرْبًۭا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ﴾ (li-l-fuqarāʾi lladhīna uḥṣirū fī sabīli llāhi lā yastaṭīʿūna ḍarban fī l-arḍi) ("for the poor who are restrained in the cause of God, unable to move about in the land," al-Baqara 2:273) al-Baghawī said that they are the poor among the Emigrants, "and they are the companions of the Ṣuffa," and al-Qurṭubī mentioned that a ṣuffa was built for them in the mosque of the Messenger of God ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), so they were called the People of the Ṣuffa. So the Qurʾān calls them "the poor" (al-fuqarāʾ), the name that remained for the people of the Way after them.

"The Way" in the Naming of the Call

The connection of knowledge with conduct is plainest in a word chosen to describe religion itself: the Way.

The first community of the followers of the Masīḥ did not call itself "Christian." It called itself "the Way" (ἡ ὁδός (hē hodós)), which is the name most frequent for it in the Book of Acts: it occurs in chapter 9 (verse 2), in chapter 19 (verses 9 and 23), in chapter 22 (verse 4), and in chapter 24 (verses 14 and 22). As for the word "Christian," it was applied to them from outside in Antioch (Acts 11:26), and scholars observe that the book itself goes on afterwards to call them by their earlier names, that is, the title is the title people gave them, and the name is the name they gave themselves.

In every rakʿa the Muslim asks his Lord: "Guide us to the straight path." Guidance is a journey: it has a direction that one aims at and a guide who leads to it, and it has stations and stages. This image brings the language of the Christian Way close to the language of Islamic wayfaring, for religion in both languages is an action by which a person moves from one state to another.

The Qurʾān joins the Way to its people in a comprehensive text: in Sūrat al-Shūrā (13) that what was enjoined upon Nūḥ, Ibrāhīm, Mūsā, ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) and Muḥammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) is one religion, and that division in it is forbidden by the text. And the Way by which the first community named itself is this very same one religion.

On this basis we read the saying of the Masīḥ in John: "I am the way." We take it to mean the station of the guide who leads people by his life and teaching, and we compare it with the saying of the Exalted: "Say: If you love God, follow me, and God will love you" (Āl ʿImrān 3:31). Whoever follows arrives at the knowledge and love of God, and the teacher is the one who points to the goal. This is the prophetic reading we offer of the phrase, and we set it against a reading that confines the goal to the person of the teacher.

Here we come back to the transformation at which we stopped in "and he calls you: my son": the word used to describe the call and the station of its bearer, and then it came to affirm a reality independent in itself. The teacher used to point to the way, but now his image becomes the way and the goal together.

The Monks in Particular: The People of the Way in the Verse

In the verse of affection the Qurʾān explains the nearness of these people to the believers by qualities in their community: ﴿ذَٰلِكَ بِأَنَّ مِنْهُمْ قِسِّيسِينَ وَرُهْبَانًا وَأَنَّهُمْ لَا يَسْتَكْبِرُونَ﴾ (dhālika bi-anna minhum qissīsīna wa-ruhbānan wa-annahum lā yastakbirūna) ("that is because among them are priests and monks, and because they are not arrogant," al-Māʾida 5:82). The verse mentions the priests and the monks, and joins their mention with the fact that they are not arrogant.

In this explanation lies what we need for the comparison: persons who teach and worship, and hearts that are not arrogant toward the truth. The monks in the verse are the people of the Way in Christianity, organised communities of ascetics and worshippers whose members receive training in the monastery at the hand of a shaykh and keep remembrance, retreat and obedience. We find this same picture in the Sufi orders after them, in the zāwiya, the ribāṭ and the chain of transmission (silsila), because the two groups are links on one line of the elect who follow the prophets in their conduct. The ṭarīqa is a system for this conduct, whose people gather around a shaykh and live among others, marrying and working; giving up marriage was something the monks added to the Way, and the next verse is directed at it.

In Sūrat al-Ḥadīd (27) we read that they invented monasticism seeking the pleasure of God, and then did not observe it with due observance. It was an addition they made to what had been prescribed for them, including the giving up of marriage and withdrawal from people, as the verse says: ﴿وَرَهْبَانِيَّةً ٱبْتَدَعُوهَا مَا كَتَبْنَٰهَا عَلَيْهِمْ﴾ (wa-rahbāniyyatan ibtadaʿūhā mā katabnāhā ʿalayhim) (“and monasticism, which they invented; We did not prescribe it for them,” al-Ḥadīd 57:27). The people of the Way in Islam followed accordingly, for the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) said to the group one of whom had resolved to keep away from women: “But I fast and I break my fast, I pray and I sleep, and I marry women; whoever turns away from my sunna is not of me” (al-Bukhārī 5063, Muslim 1401). The reproach in the verse is directed also, as we understand it, at their neglect of what they had committed themselves to in seeking that pleasure, so that the form of their Way stayed and its meaning weakened.

The Fuqarāʾ: The Name of the People of the Way

In every link of this history we find "the poor" as a name for the people of the Way. The Qumran community calls itself the "congregation of the poor" (עדת האביונים (ʿădat hā-ʾevyōnîm)) in the commentary on Psalm 37 (4Q171), and Paul mentions "the poor of the saints who are in Jerusalem" (Romans 15:26; see Galatians 2:10), and the name of the Ebionites came from the same Hebrew word. Then the Qurʾān calls the People of the Ṣuffa "the poor," and the name remains afterwards for the wayfarer in faqīr and darwīsh. The name passes from community to community, and carries with it, wherever it has passed, the meaning of detachment and neediness toward God.

The kinship appears also in an act that the wayfarer repeats. The Sufi remembers (dhikr) until the heart grows familiar with what the tongue repeats, and the Eastern monk repeats a short prayer with the breath, seeking stillness, or "hesychia" (ἡσυχία (hēsychía)). John Climacus says: "Let the remembrance of Jesus be present with every breath." In his book are thirty steps that we compare with the stations of the Way, as we compare the shaykh and the murīd with the father and his disciple, the chain of transmission with the chain, and the patched robe with the garment. These are details of a life in which ways of training resemble one another, and then each tradition explains their meaning and aim.

The kinship of practice does not efface the difference of beliefs, but it calls us to listen before we judge. The Sufi may understand what the monk says about light and presence, because he has an experience in carrying an expression over from the sensory to the meaning. The fairness that we seek for ancient texts begins from this living human experience: how does a person express his nearness to God without claiming independence from Him?

The Prior Light: A Witness Older than Ibn ʿArabī

The language of the Muḥammadan Light is older than Ibn ʿArabī. In the commentary ascribed to Sahl al-Tustarī, who died in 283 AH, a light prior to creation is mentioned at al-Najm 13, and it is then described in this short phrase: "He stood in servitude before Him." The text joins loftiness of rank to neediness before God, and the light in it is created, however early it comes. The priority it speaks of reaches beyond the Prophet's years on earth, and yet servitude stays at the heart of its description. (The commentary of al-Tustarī, al-Najm 13; and the translation of Annabel and Ali Keeler, p. 213.)

Let us set beside it some early Christian speech. In chapter 61 of the Dialogue with Trypho, Justin says that the Word proceeded from God by His will before creatures, and he explains this by the image of a fire kindled from a fire, where the first is not diminished when the second is lit. He also calls him Wisdom and Son, says that he obeys the will of the Father, and gives him the name God. Here we see why the comparison reaches so wide: the talk is of a reality that preceded the human appearance and stays bound to the source from which it came. (The Dialogue, chapter 61.)

Read the words of each text and the difference shows. Al-Tustarī joins creation to servitude; Justin joins generation by the will of the Father to the name of God. Priority alone cannot explain the two doctrines. Nor is the denial of independence enough by itself, for a speaker may affirm that the Word proceeds from God and then give it, in worship, a meaning different from the one the Sufi gives the light. In these details we see where the language meets and where its meaning changes, and criticism becomes more exact because it strikes the transformation that actually took place.

Justin himself, however, opens a door that leads toward the universality of guidance. In the First Apology 46 he gives humans a share in the Word and counts among those who lived according to it Socrates, Heraclitus, Abraham and Elijah. He is trying to join the wisdom that preceded the appearance of Jesus to a Christian meaning wide enough to hold it. We meet him in seeking the unity of knowledge behind the scattering of names, and we part from him when he confines the universal truth to the identity on which he built his edifice. The comparison between the light and the Word tells the history of a living idea, one that at times widened the human understanding and at times narrowed it. (First Apology, chapter 46; and for the language of worship in it, chapter 6.)

After this witness the question we put to the Christian text changes. The language of the Muḥammadan Light also knew a priority over the human appearance, so we begin by understanding the rank and its relation to God and to the human being. We see the ʿĪsawī movement as a road to knowing the light from which all humanity benefits, and the final message as the completion of this opening in knowledge and ethics. Then we compare the two conceptions in their details, and it becomes clear where the kinship lies and where lies the transformation we criticise.

The Meaning Preserved by Teaching and Companionship

In this chapter we see the unity and continuity of the message from two sides:

• The doctrinal side: the principle of the confirmer, in which every prophet confirms what came before him, and the Qurʾān confirms what is between its hands, ﴿مُصَدِّقًا لِّمَا بَيْنَ يَدَيْهِ﴾ (muṣaddiqan li-mā bayna yadayhi) ("confirming what was before it").
• The institutional side: the organisation of the Way, the preservation of purification and reception in a chain of master and disciple, alive across the four civilisations to our day.

This means that the unity of the message is kept by words, and kept alongside them by the ways of training that bring the human being back to its meaning. Form may survive while content weakens; content may remain and then appear in a new organisation. So we read the traces of preservation and the traces of transformation together, since the robe or the chain alone does not guard its bearer from error.

The Survival of the Way as Institutions Change

We see images of this survival in distant religious fields:

• Among the communities of the wilderness there appeared ways of asceticism, purity and teaching outside the prevailing institutions.
• In Christianity monasticism arose before Nicaea and continued after it, interacting with the state at times and distancing itself from it at others.
• In the traditions of Asia the schools of contemplation and of the transmission of wisdom multiplied, and their relation to kingdoms and institutions changed.
• In Islam companionship, purification and reception took over this inheritance from the People of the Ṣuffa and from the older communities of ascetics and worshippers, and then were organised in the orders with the names and forms as known.

From these communities we read one line of pure religion and of following the prophets in their practical conduct: the line of Ahl al-Ṣuffa, of purity (al-ṣafāʾ) and of the elect (al-ṣafwa). It runs unbroken before the coming of the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) and after it, and in the time of every prophet it is carried by the elect among his followers. The Sufi orders are its link in Islam, while the monastic orders and the communities of ascetics and worshippers that came before them are earlier links on the same line, sharing with them one source, the conduct of the prophets. The people of this line may take the road of renunciation as the people of the Ṣuffa took it in the presence of the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam): some cross it as a stage from which they pass on to a life of work, and some keep to it all their lives. The ṭarīqa is a system for this conduct. Each community has its own way of worship and an aim on which its members gather, and is known by the name of its founder or by an attribute, and its members marry and work among people. Syriac Christianity before Islam knew the "Sons and Daughters of the Covenant," who were vowed to worship and chanting; the monastic orders afterwards took the names of their founders and their ways, among them, at a later age, the "Society of Jesus" of the Jesuits. And in Yathrib itself there was a community whose name carried this meaning: the Banū al-Najjār, the followers of "al-Najjār" in its Aramaic form, a ṭarīqa traced to its founder, whose girls received the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) with a song, as we read in Chapter 6.

Here our criticism falls on the codification of religion in the organs of rule, among it what the Abbasid state did when it wanted for itself a reference by which to govern and a credibility on which to stand: it fixed religion in an approved interpretation that it endorsed and made form and obedience the measure of belonging to it, so that the spiritual meaning narrowed within its official institution. Yet the Abbasid age itself had its Sufis and people of knowledge, and books of wisdom were written in it, so the struggle we mean goes on inside the understanding of religion. Does it lead the human being to know, to bear responsibility and to show mercy, or does it shut him in a rigid form of worship beyond which he sees nothing? The people of the Way carried on, and their survival bears witness that the organ of the state alone did not settle this struggle.

The shaykh and the murīd, remembrance and retreat: we find them in places far apart, and then we add to them what the reports preserve of journeys, names and places. When all this comes together we see in the call of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, a near source of this kinship and a great link in the line of the elect that extends with all the prophets, and we see what befell the meanings in the ways they spread.

On this horizon we read the Buddha, Laozi and Zoroaster as images of the life of the Masīḥ himself, told by different cultures. Some of those narrations may have joined the report of the teacher to the reports of those who carried his way, so it does not follow that he visited every country himself. What we see is one light of guidance whose circles widened, and which the people of wayfaring kept seeking. From here we pass to the Dajjāl: how does the understanding of this light go astray, and how does it veil people from the origin that came to illuminate their lives?

Chapter 19: The Dajjāl in the Two Memories: A Reading of the Fitna and the Antichrist

In Chapters 4 to 18 we followed the biography and the communities that carried it, and it is time to turn to the meaning we give to the Dajjāl. We shall dwell on this meaning in four chapters: we begin here with the memory of the fitna and the “Antichrist”, then set out its doctrinal form in Chapter 20, follow its effect in civilisation in Chapter 21, and join it to the religious image in Chapter 22.

al-Masīḥ al-Dajjāl: The Inverted Testimony

The narrations call the Dajjāl “the Masīḥ”, describe him travelling over the earth, and tell of days of his, one of which is like a year, another like a month and another like a week. Why does the Dajjāl bear this name? In the shared name we read the meaning of the fitna itself: falsehood may imitate the form of the truth and range over the earth with it, carrying what resembles the truth while turning it from its course. That is why we set al-Masīḥ against al-Masīkh; the small dot that separates them in the script, as the table of Chapter 3 set it out, is a rhetorical picture of the great transformation that may befall a meaning. How that transformation took place in history is another matter. It may have been a deliberate act by those who made it, or narrations and interpretations that piled up generation after generation, and this is what the chapters of the book trace.

The Doctrinal Fitna and Its Images

The books of ḥadīth describe the Dajjāl in plain physical terms. He is blind in the right eye (al-Bukhārī 7407, Muslim 2933), curly-haired, and between his eyes is written “kāfir”, which the believer can read (al-Bukhārī 7131, Muslim 2933). In the ḥadīth of al-Nawwās ibn Samʿān he emerges “from a khalla between al-Shām and Iraq” and stays forty days (Muslim 2937). The inherited reading started from this material and understood from it a person who appears at the end of time. We read these images as a doctrinal and civilisational fitna that people lived through, and we see their significations as linked, gathered under one meaning.

The reports also say that the Dajjāl does not enter Mecca or Medina, and that angels stand in ranks at their passes, guarding them (al-Bukhārī 1881, Muslim 2943). Read in the sense of the fitna as we have explained it, this means that a deification propped up by authority does not enter the place where the first tawḥīd returned. His emerging “from a khalla between al-Shām and Iraq” is, in our reading, a description of the land where the wars over formulas of belief between the Church of the Romans and the Church of the East grew fiercest.

For us the Dajjāl is the name of a crisis lived through by those who believed in the Masīḥ. They saw a formula backed by the emperor take the place of what they had known of their religion, and then saw its acceptance become the condition for their faith to be recognised. The wording changed, and with it the identity, and the change acquired an authority that forced it on people. In this experience we place the meaning of the fitna: a doctrine that carried the name of Jesus after his death, and a religious and political crisis whose effects spread until they entered the lives of people.

This name did not come from the message of the Masīḥ, and the Church did not choose it for itself; we understand it as the expression of the suffering of people who saw the message change in their hands. What most particularly marks this crisis, as we link it, is that the image of Jesus of Nazareth was put in the place of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, and that this image was then deified and propped up by the authority of the state. For these people it was no quarrel over words, because the question touched what they worshipped and what they were compelled to accept.

On this basis we read the sign that “every believer reads, literate or not” (al-Bukhārī 7131, Muslim 2933). It is, in our interpretation, an insight that recognises distortion even when the awe of authority and sanctity surrounds it. For the heart may know where the flaw lies before its owner knows how to read letters.

One-Eyedness: Blindness to the Truth

The Arabic word ʿawar (one-eyedness), and likewise its counterparts in Hebrew עָוֵר (ʿawīr) and in Syriac ܥܘܝܪܐ (ʿwīrā), turns on blindness and defect. The word can pass from describing the body to describing perception. As for the right eye, we read it with the connotations of good fortune and blessing that it carries in the language and the culture, so that when it is blinded this becomes, in the symbolic image we follow, a severance from seeing the truth and the good, and from the source of light.

This single eye sees matter, profit and power, while the spirit and the meaning, which give them their direction, are absent from it. Close to this image is what Muhammad Asad wrote in The Road to Mecca, criticising modern civilisation: it advances in industry and grows in capability, and yet it lacks knowledge of what the human being needs in his spirit. For this reason some readers found in his description something that brings the Dajjāl nearer to understanding; they understood him from the side of the defect in his vision, since there is no weakness in his power.

Reading the Images of the Ḥadīth

Back to the ḥadīth of al-Nawwās. We set the point from which the Dajjāl emerges, “between al-Shām and Iraq”, beside the movement of meanings and the conflicts in the East that we have already followed. The khalla is a place or a track lying between the two regions, and from this geography we draw the picture of a gap in which religious and civilisational dispute widened. This is our interpretation of the place, built on the history we have set out.

The noble ḥadīth says: “He has with him a paradise and a fire, but his fire is a paradise and his paradise is a fire” (it is also in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim), and in this phrase the most particular trait of the Dajjāl appears: he turns things completely upside down. In the reading we follow, the promise of prosperity and power hides a fitna when it makes consumption the goal of the human being and buys his comfort at the price of enslaving his heart. Commitment to the truth and the purification of the soul, by contrast, may look like a constriction to the one who practises them, while in fact they open to him the tranquillity of the heart and the freedom of the spirit. Prosperity and ease of life are good so long as they serve the human being and keep his dignity; the heart falls only when through them he seeks a happiness that makes him independent of God. In the same way this book reads the deified image fitted onto the name of Jesus: a construction offered to people as the perfection of faith, by which the meaning that this book recovers was veiled.

In the ḥadīth of al-Nawwās ibn Samʿān the forty days are described, one like a year, another like a month and another like a week (Muslim 2937). Imran Hosein read this image as stages in history through which the influence of the Dajjāl passes, and he has identifications of his own that we do not all adopt. What we take from him is that time in this image can be read as a difference in extent and effect, and we then read it as tied to the widening of capability and to the speed with which knowledge reaches people.

If the days differ in length, we can picture the fitna differing in the same way in extent and effect. To tie each period to a particular state or century is an effort of application, and it cannot serve as a chronology by which the stages of history are reckoned.

In this course we see first the authority of the Church and the Empire, then the forms of colonialism and modern domination, and the stages may overlap. What changes from one stage to the next is the means of persuasion and subjugation and how far they spread, until they become a familiar part of life. Once they reach that point it is hard for a person to see in what he has inherited an image he may be asked about, because he has grown so used to it that he takes it for the truth itself.

From here we understand “and the rest of his days are like your days”: the fitna reaches such familiarity that people’s attention to what has changed in religion and in standards grows weak. Its extension becomes the history of a doctrine that enters the life and the institutions of people, carried by individuals whose names change from generation to generation. These are holders of roles in the fitna; the name of the Dajjāl in our interpretation points to the construction that is repeated through them, and not to a single awaited person who closes their stages.

Indeed, the bearer of the idea may himself believe that he serves the truth, once the fitna has become familiar. Then it is hard to expose, because it is no longer a strange thing that people condemn; it has become the standard by which they look at everything else.

“Shubbiha lahum” (“It Was Made to Appear So to Them”): The Transmission of the Report and of Identity

The key to our reading of the confusion of identity is the word of the Exalted, “And they did not kill him, and they did not crucify him, but it was made to appear so to them” (al-Nisāʾ 4:157). The verb shubbiha came in the passive, and that drew our attention to the confusion that befell them. After the earlier comparisons we see this confusion as the effect of what accumulated in narration and memory: the roles of those who transmitted it differ, and reports gather until they are attributed to a person other than their first subject.

The root sh-b-h turns on likeness and confusion: a person sees this and takes it for that. We read this meaning in the passing on of the biography, where the image of the earlier teacher, in the minds of the listeners, fits a man who came after him; then the identification settles in the report and afterwards in doctrine. The original may then become a stranger to the very memory that carried his teaching.

We have pictured this transformation by a literary contrast between ḥ and kh in al-Masīḥ and al-Masīkh: the difference in the writing is slight, the difference in meaning great. We recall the picture here to bring closer what we see as having happened between ʿĪsā the prophet, peace be upon him, and the deified image attributed to Jesus: names, attributes and symbols drew close to one another, and that closeness brought with it a transformation in the identity and the standing of the bearer of the message.

On this basis we understand ﴿شبه لهم﴾ (shubbiha lahum) (“it was made to appear so to them,” al-Nisāʾ 4:157): identity and report became confused, so that the events of Jesus were attributed to ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and the biography of the later man took up the reports of the earlier prophet. The passive opens the door to confusion, and the comparisons gathered in the book then show its aspect and its extent. The ḥ and kh in our title picture rhetorically the difference between the original and the distortion (maskh), while the evidence of the transition itself lies in the reports, the names and the times.

Maryam and Myrrh: A Legitimate Symbol in an Inverted Narrative

Among the symbolic comparisons we have put forward is the linking of Maryam with myrrh (murr) and with the anointing oil. By this link we read the field in which consecration, priesthood and the name meet, but we do not adopt it as a settled derivation of the name Maryam, since the proposals for the origin of this name are many. Before any symbolic reading of the name, her link with ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, remains that of mother, lineage and election.

When we read anointing in the context of the sufferings of Jesus, we find that its function has changed. In John 12:3, Mary the sister of Lazarus anoints his feet with perfume; she is not Mary Magdalene, although the two images were confused in Western traditions from the sixth century. The perfume then enters the account of the preparation of the body for burial. So we see the old material of consecration present in the story of death, and then see the Pauline and Nicene interpretation tie its meanings to redemption and the crucifixion. Across generations of reading, the symbol had moved to a new interpretive centre.

Anointing, the Masīḥ, Maryam, myrrh and the Nazirite share one thing: they are words and symbols with a Semitic history, which entered new texts and were then explained afresh according to another doctrine. When we compare the contexts in which they occur, we see what remained of the symbol and what changed in its function.

The “Antichrist” in Christian Texts

The expression “Antichrist” (ἀντίχριστος) (antichristos), that is, “against the Masīḥ”, opens another door for comparison. In the letters of John there is a dispute over the identity of the Masīḥ, and in other texts, Revelation among them, there are images of one who leads people astray and claims divine standing for himself. We read each image in its context and then set it against the Qurʾānic measure. When they have all come together before us, we ask: can a manufactured image take the place of the original? And we know that each of these writers has his own position and names his adversary as he sees fit.

The Fitna and Identity in the Testimonies

The Second Letter to the Thessalonians (2:3–4) describes “the man of sin, the son of perdition” as exalting himself and showing himself to be God in the temple of God. The passage does not use the word “Antichrist”; the two images were joined by interpretive traditions that came after it. We read it as a description comparable to making a creature the centre of worship inside the sacred institution. That the Nicene construction is what it refers to is an application the book proposes, and the letter does not name it.

And in the First Letter of John (2:22): “the liar who denies that Jesus is the Messiah”. Here the writer defends the identification of Jesus with the Messiah and makes rejecting it a dividing line in faith. This is the aspect of the testimony that concerns us: the identification itself was a matter of dispute. Then we return to our historical question: is Jesus of Nazareth the subject of all these reports, or did the reports of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, which are older than he, come together in him? The comparisons we have presented make the replacement of the prophet by the later image, and then its deification, one of the aspects of the resemblance that we read. So the letter preserves for us a position within the dispute, the book examines the identification that this position defends, and the relation of this dispute to Nabonidus is shown by the wider material we have presented.

The Book of Revelation draws the images of the beast, the woman, Babylon and the seven mountains, and these open the way to a comparison with Rome and with the tie between worship and the empire. We then link this pattern with what came after in the history of the imperial Church, when authority came to draw from the sacred an inviolability that protected it. But Revelation is earlier than Nicaea, so tying it to the council is an application we propose for the meaning of the image, and the council is not named in it.

In Revelation there is a mark that the followers of the beast carry on the hand or the forehead, whereas the narrations of the Dajjāl mention writing between his own eyes. What we notice is that the mark is present in both images, though its bearer and its function differ. The similarity here lies in the language by which the fitna is marked out, and does not reach a literal identity in every detail of the scene.

John also says that “now there have come to be many antichrists” (2:18), besides what his addressees had heard about the coming of the Antichrist. So the hostility in his discourse belongs to his own time, and its agents are many, which helps us understand the fitna in a way that goes beyond the single individual. Then we ourselves identify the later church crisis as a referent of the suffering of the believers and of the history of distortion. Testimony and interpretation should each stay in its place: the plural dispute is in the letter, the imposed doctrine in the reading of this book.

When the Warning Returns to the Institution Itself

These texts have stayed in the New Testament and Christians have passed them around; they have differed in interpreting them, and some have used them to criticise other church institutions. Here we put the question to every institution that reads them: can the pattern of the fitna it warns against appear within itself? The measure goes deeper when the reader turns it back upon himself and upon what he belongs to.

So the comparison between the Christian and the Islamic reports widens, for both speak of a deception that clothes itself in the sacred, an authority that protects it, and signs by which the believer recognises it. The texts differ in whom they identify, and the book gathers them in order to trace the history of the Christian image. The dialogue in this reading begins from the very wording of the testimonies.

Islamic Thinkers and Rational Understanding

We were not the first to read the fitna intellectually; this reading has precedents in modern Islamic writing. Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā called for rational inquiry in understanding the inherited tradition. Saʿīd Ayyūb, in al-Masīḥ al-Dajjāl (1987), tied the Pauline turn to the history of the fitna and to the change in the image of the Masīḥ. We also benefit from ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Masīrī’s critique of materialism, when we set a civilisation that exalts profit and power beside the eye that sees only one face of existence. We meet these readings in the question, and then present our own construction on the identity of the Masīḥ and the meaning of distortion.

The Books of Fitan and the Widening of the Scene

Nuʿaym ibn Ḥammād, who died in 228 AH, collected extensive narrations in “al-Fitan”, which makes him earlier than the deaths of al-Bukhārī and Muslim. We read his book beside the two Ṣaḥīḥs because his way of collecting differs from theirs, his material differs from theirs, and for the religious and political images it preserves. The history of these books and their subjects is too varied to be drawn as a single line that begins with a brief report and then grows with the passing of time alone.

Even the narrations of Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim itself contain a lengthy description, as in the ḥadīth of al-Nawwās ibn Samʿān. From this physical material we set out to the symbolic reading, and we ask: what meaning joins the parts of the image to one another?

Then we ask what happens if all attention turns to an event that is postponed. The believer may then lose sight of the imposed doctrine he lives in and the authority that protects it, and put off resisting distortion to a distant future. For this reason we choose to interpret the Dajjāl as the doctrinal crisis itself, while presenting alongside it the personal reading known in the tradition. The responsibility for the later construction stays with those who carried it, separate from Jesus, whom we see as a righteous man.

The Multiplicity of Reports on the Crucified and the Question of Resemblance

Al-Ṭabarī, that great exegete, mentions in his commentary several possibilities and narrations about the identity of the crucified. In one, a disciple of the Masīḥ volunteered and the likeness was cast upon him; in another, it was Judas Iscariot the traitor whose appearance was transformed; and there are others among what the narrations passed on. The idea of substitution is not the preserve of Islamic exegesis, either: Irenaeus (Against Heresies 1.24.4) transmitted from Basilides the statement that it was Simon of Cyrene who was crucified in his place, a Christian witness from the second century on the same axis.

The narrations about the crucified differ because the identity of the substitute and the details of the scene never settled in one report, and this very unsettledness bears witness to the confusion we read in the verse of resemblance. As for the scene, we read it as we set it out in its place: the one who was tried and tortured is Jesus of Nazareth, and he may have been tortured until he swooned and then rose from his swoon, or God gave him life. From that arose the report of the resurrection, which travelled on in the later narrative until it reached Paul. Then the two biographies came together and the event was attributed to ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and the interpretation of this coming together rests on all the comparisons the book has presented.

What, Then, Is the Dajjāl?

If we wanted to gather this chapter into one word, we should say that the Dajjāl is the name of the fitna in the memory of the believers who saw the religion of the Masīḥ being altered upon them, according to the reading that this book proposes. A theological image attributed to Jesus appeared and was imposed by the power of the state, and its authority then widened over hearts and institutions. Jesus of Nazareth himself is not the Dajjāl, and the book does not attribute to him the invention of this construction or its imposition after his death. What the book calls imposture (dajal) is putting the manufactured image in the place of the true Masīḥ, and what it calls resistance to the fitna is recovering the distinction between the prophet and his message on the one hand and the doctrine that was carried upon his name on the other.

Iconography and One-Eyedness: A Pointer to Chapter 22

In Chapter 22 we follow the link between the description of one-eyedness and the religious image. We look at the two sides of the face in the Sinai icon and the asymmetry between them, and at the meaning and history of the image, without describing the icon as having a missing or closed eye. One question joins that chapter to what has gone before: how does an image keep inherited elements, and how does a later reading then load them with another meaning?

Chapter 20: The Dajjāl as Doctrine: The Central Thesis

The Meaning We Have Reached

The preceding chapters brought us to understand the Dajjāl as a doctrinal fitna lived through by the believers when the religion of the Masīḥ was changed for them. In the book’s reading, the reports of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, became mixed with the reports of Jesus of Nazareth, and the name of Jesus then bore a deified image that the institution and the authority of the emperor fixed in place. Those who differed from this formula met exclusion and were drawn into conflict, until the matter became part of their lives. In this setting we understand the Muḥammadan call to the worship of God and the rejection of excess (ghuluww): it was an answer to a crisis present in people’s lives. In this chapter we trace how the fitna settled in doctrine and institutions, and how its pattern then extended to wider forms of the life of civilisation.

Why Does the Book Read the Dajjāl as a Doctrinal Crisis?

Most commentators read the descriptions of the eye, the writing, the paradise and the fire, and the days as the attributes of a person who comes at the end of time. We read them from within the crisis we have described, when truth mixes with falsehood, an image clothes itself in sanctity, and authority combines persuasion with coercion. This is the direction the book chooses in understanding the Dajjāl, and it chose it after presenting the material from which the inherited reading set out.

On this reading, one-eyedness is a defect in vision, the writing is a deception exposed before the believer’s insight, and the unequal days are a change in the extent and effect of the fitna. We keep the wording of the narrations as it is, and read it in this historical and symbolic sense, for which we established the context in the earlier chapters.

Two Persons and a Doctrinal Construction: ʿĪsā, Jesus and the Deified Image

For this reason we distinguish three: ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, whom we identify with Nabonidus; Jesus of Nazareth, the righteous man who came after him; and then the deified image that bore the name of Jesus. The first two are persons, while the image is a doctrinal construction that took shape after them, and it is the place of imposture (dajal) in our interpretation. If a polemical narrative attacks Jesus himself, our position stays as it is: we separate the man from what was made in his name. Recovering the truth corrects belief, and it also lifts the confusion from the two subjects of the biography.

The Content of the Fitna in the Verses

God the Exalted says in Sūrat Maryam: ﴿وَقَالُوا اتَّخَذَ الرَّحْمَٰنُ وَلَدًا لَّقَدْ جِئْتُمْ شَيْئًا إِدًّا. تَكَادُ السَّمَاوَاتُ يَتَفَطَّرْنَ مِنْهُ وَتَنشَقُّ الْأَرْضُ وَتَخِرُّ الْجِبَالُ هَدًّا﴾ (wa-qālū ttakhadha l-Raḥmānu waladan laqad jiʾtum shayʾan iddan. Takādu l-samāwātu yatafaṭṭarna minhu wa-tanshaqqu l-arḍu wa-takhirru l-jibālu haddan) (“And they say, ‘The Most Merciful has taken a child.’ You have indeed brought forth a monstrous thing. The heavens almost burst apart from it, and the earth splits open and the mountains collapse in ruin,” Maryam 19:88–90). The meaning of iddan in the Arabic tongue is the dreadful matter that neither the heavens nor the earth nor the mountains can bear. Ibn Kathīr cites, from the Musnad of Aḥmad, in a report of Jābir, may God be pleased with him, the saying of the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam): “There has been no fitna, and there will be none until the Hour is established, greater than the fitna of the Dajjāl” (al-Bidāya wa-l-Nihāya, mention of scattered ḥadīths on the Dajjāl). When this warning is joined to the Qurʾān’s description of the dreadfulness of the claim of sonship, the book sees a link between them that ties the doctrinal fitna to the deification of a creature, because this deviation touches the root of worship, and its effect then extends to the lives of believers and their world.

When the Qurʾān criticises excess and deification, it leaves the door of return open: ﴿أفلا يتوبون إلى الله ويستغفرونه والله غفور رحيم﴾ (a-fa-lā yatūbūna ilā Llāhi wa-yastaghfirūnahu wa-Llāhu ghafūrun raḥīm) (“Will they not repent to God and seek His forgiveness? And God is Forgiving, Merciful,” al-Māʾida 5:74). The aim of this exposition is that the human being return to the knowledge and worship of God, and the return is itself part of the meaning on which this book turns.

We have already read the Word and the light as a meaning derived from God. For us excess begins when the reality of guidance is confined to one individual, or a power independent of its source is attributed to him, or an institution monopolises the road to salvation in his name. We read this shift from the explanations of the holders of the doctrine themselves and from their practice; they may affirm divinity without expressing it as two independent gods, so the point of disagreement with them is fixed by what they mean by union, participation and worship.

Then the narrations about al-Kahf connect the fitna with this Qurʾānic context from another side. In the ḥadīth of Abū l-Dardāʾ, may God be pleased with him, from the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), in Abū Dāwūd: “Whoever memorises ten verses from the beginning of Sūrat al-Kahf is protected from the fitna of the Dajjāl” (Sunan Abī Dāwūd, 4323), and in Muslim with the wording “protected from the Dajjāl” (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 809). The fourth of these ten verses says: ﴿وَيُنذِرَ الَّذِينَ قَالُوا اتَّخَذَ اللَّهُ وَلَدًا﴾ (wa-yundhira lladhīna qālū ttakhadha Llāhu waladan) (“and to warn those who say, ‘God has taken a child,’” al-Kahf 18:4). Here the book sees a key to understanding the doctrinal fitna, because the verses to which protection has been tied state outright the claim of deification, the very claim that lies at the heart of this book. Chapter 23 will expand on this reading, gathering the narrations about al-Kahf and the supplication of seeking refuge together with the content of the opening of the sūra.

How the Meaning of an Attribute Is Inverted

In the early chapters we presented the meanings of purification and consecration that anointing (masḥ) carries, and set it against maskh, the turning away from the original. We now apply this contrast to attributes. Healing occurs by God’s leave, and may then be interpreted as an innate power; blessing may become the foundation of the institution’s authority; and the wandering (siyāḥa) that carries guidance may turn into the spreading of an image that veils it. In all of this the features of the first attribute remain, while the meaning by which it works changes.

The Image That Took Shape and the Objection to It

Here the two bodies of material we treated at length meet: the early images of the Masīḥ, some of which settled into the faith of the Church, and the memory of the Mandaeans, which kept their objection in the Mšīḥā Kdābā. The first shows us how the conception was built, and the second how another community objected to it. Between the construction and the objection we see the history of the image that people inherited.

The Dajjāl as a Mode of Being in Civilisation

In this reading the Dajjāl is a construction in thought and in action, reproduced generation after generation, each time under a new mask. The book traces its mechanism as it extends from the doctrine fixed by the authority of the councils to religious coercion and colonialism, and then reads its parallels in contemporary life, when the self, or power, or money, or technology is made an absolute reference. The human being discovers, invents and builds up the earth by what God has opened to him, but the meaning of this capability is inverted when he thinks it stands by itself, and takes it as proof that he has no need of God and has authority over others. This is the spiritual one-eyedness we mean: a vision that widens in matter, and an insight that closes to the source of existence and its end.

Whoever understands this shift is better able to resist it. Knowledge and power may give their holder the illusion that he has no need of God, and a person or an institution may think that it owns the light and confine its road to itself. When that happens, the gift that opens the door of nearness becomes a veil from the Giver, and the defect lies in the direction in which it is used.

The reading of this book starts from the premise that God willed great knowledge and power for the human being, and willed him to be a manifestation of the meanings of His most exalted names, so that he knows, shows mercy, judges with justice and does well what he makes. The wider his power, the wider the field in which these meanings appear in his action. And “There is no power and no strength but with God” is a knowledge of the source of strength that goes with the human being as he learns, invents and builds, and turns his heart back to God with every opening. When it goes with him, his breadth lies in mercy (al-raḥmāniyya), his tranquillity in the presence of God, and his work is directed toward the divine will. But when he ascribes all the favour to himself and seeks a power and an immortality with which to contend against God, he has made the gift a veil from the Giver, and his strength enters the realm of the satanic and of distance from God.

Within Islamic history itself there are reports of excess (ghuluww) concerning Imam ʿAlī, peace be upon him, and of what is transmitted about his refusal to be raised above the station of servanthood. The material of these reports differs according to their sources: some describe the sects, others are reports about Ibn Sabaʾ and the punishments. But the question that concerns us in them is one: followers may attribute to a man a station from which he disowns himself, as ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, disowns in Sūrat al-Māʾida the call of people to deify him. On this pattern we understand the comparison, though each incident has its own history, fixed by its own evidence.

Chapter 21: The Dajjāl as Civilisation: al-Masīrī, Asad, Hosein and al-Nursī

From Doctrine to Civilisation

The fitna does not stop at the building of doctrine; it extends to the way of living and to the way power and knowledge are organised. When the self makes itself an origin sufficient unto itself, everything it possesses becomes a means of fixing this illusion: people are measured by their production or their wealth, domination is sought for its own sake, and the moral and spiritual end is pushed out of the meaning of progress. This is the civilisational pattern that the book criticises. The widening of knowledge, the multiplying of skills, the advance of technology and the easing of information and of life are another matter: they are among the aspects of expansiveness that open new possibilities to the human being, and his advance is complete when this expansiveness is accompanied by self-knowledge, mercy to creation and connection with God.

The Place of These Readings in the Thesis of This Book

We draw on the readings of al-Masīrī, Asad, Imran Hosein, al-Nursī, Heidegger, Guénon and Illich to understand what reduces the human being and what subjugates him, and we link them with the mechanism of deification and monopoly that we have traced, in which what points to God becomes a reference that veils Him. This comparison is the work of the book, and each of these thinkers has his own interpretation of history. We read the pattern where it appears, knowing that useful knowledge and mercy remain a living possibility in the same age.

The link that joins the two transformations in our reading is indwelling: a god who indwells a human being, then a human being who takes the place of God. Feuerbach wrote in 1841 that “the mystery of theology is anthropology”; he read the doctrine of the incarnation as a human being’s worship of his own essence, and made his rule that man is a god to man. And what al-Masīrī called the doctrine of indwelling (ḥulūliyya) is the same road when it reaches its end.

al-Masīrī and the Reduction of the Human Being to Matter

ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Masīrī distinguishes between two secularisms: a partial secularism, which concerns the separation of religion from the administration of the state, and a comprehensive secularism, which extends to the vision of existence and of the human being. When he speaks of the first, he discusses the arrangement of institutions; when he speaks of the second, he discusses the exclusion of the sacred and of the purpose that transcends matter, and the making of the human being a self-sufficient judge of truth and value.

In this comprehensive secularism the human being becomes an economic and consuming creature, whose worth is measured by what he produces and enjoys, and the meaning of whatever transcends matter weakens in his life. Al-Masīrī presented this analysis in Partial and Comprehensive Secularism (2002), and we read in it a modern face of the fitna with which this book deals. After the deification of a person, the idea of the human being himself may be deified, and the creature made an absolute measure of everything. The language has changed, and another language has taken the place of the language of doctrine, but the root of the problem remains as it was: power is separated from its source, and what guides it is abolished.

Muhammad Asad: The One-Eyed Civilisation

In The Road to Mecca Muhammad Asad tied the image of the Dajjāl to the civilisation whose material eye widens while its spiritual vision weakens. It knows how to discover, how to make, how to heal and how to increase wealth, and then it may be unable to give the human being tranquillity or meaning. What affects us in this image is that it brings power and deficiency together in one scene: one-eyedness arises when a single side alone directs the means, however many the means may be.

The picture we draw from this critique is that vision is completed when the eye of the spirit opens together with the eye of material knowledge. The medicine that heals, the machine that lifts toil, and the knowledge that eases people’s lives can all carry the marks of mercy and benevolence. One-eyedness begins only when the reality of the human being is confined to these benefits, or when his power over them is taken as proof that he has no need of God. What guides power to its end is the advance of mind and heart.

Imran Hosein: The Historical Stages

Imran Hosein explains the inequality of the Dajjāl’s days by the shifting of modern centres of power, and then applies this to particular political and financial questions. What we take from him is that he opened the way for a civilisational reading and drew attention to the acceleration of the instruments of domination. To define the Dajjāl as the doctrinal fitna itself is the choice of this book, and each of Hosein’s applications is to be judged on its own.

Saʿīd al-Nursī: The Outer and the Inner Dajjāl

Saʿīd al-Nursī distinguishes between “the Greatest Dajjāl” in the Christian world and “the Sufyānī” in the Islamic world, so that for him the fitna is both outside and inside. We add, from the side of conduct, a look at the soul that commands to evil, because the lust for domination and the exaltation of the self that it carries are what the structures of tyranny in people’s lives lean upon. For this reason the critique of civilisation goes together with work in the heart. A person may raise his voice in protest against tyranny and yet remain a captive of the same meaning, in himself and in his relation with others. If he refines his will, his resistance to the fitna has a truer effect.

On this footing the victory of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, over the Dajjāl has a meaning on the path of spiritual wayfaring (sulūk): when the truth is unveiled in the heart, the authority of the illusion that had enslaved it falls away. In the reading this book adopts, the spirit triumphs when it guides the soul and material power to their end, so that knowledge becomes a door of understanding, work a door of benevolence, and power a means of mercy. And to the degree that this transformation is realised in people, the structures of tyranny lose what they lean upon in people’s souls.

The Widening of Human Capability in the Twenty-First Century

The technologies of the twenty-first century make this question more pressing: what does the human being do with his capability now that it has widened? Artificial intelligence, medicine and engineering enlarge what we can do in learning, healing and working, and put in our hands the means to understand ourselves and the world. They may be borne by the aim of mercy and the cultivation of the earth, or the illusion of absolute sovereignty may seize them. For this reason we read the philosophical critique that follows, in order to understand the moment when the means is inverted into an authority over the human being, and when the increase of capability becomes a veil from its source.

Heidegger’s critique of technology helps us here. With the concept of “enframing” (Gestell), and his description of beings turned into “standing reserve” (Bestand), he considers the way in which nature and the human being are reduced to resources for domination and investment. We read the image of the Dajjāl who “commands the sky and it rains, and the earth and it brings forth plants” with this question in mind: the capacity to harness causes may be used to dazzle people and subdue them, until its holder thinks that he owns the sources of life by himself. This is the point of comparison we propose; for a human being to know the causes and benefit from them in the service of creation is among the forms of power that God has granted him.

René Guénon, ʿAbd al-Wāḥid Yaḥyā, investigates in The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, and especially in the chapter “The Great Parody, or Spirituality Inverted”, how the spiritual meaning is turned into a counter-image that imitates it and uses its symbols. From this side we draw on him to understand the difference between power that is connected to its origin and power that veils it from that origin (Chapter 39). Ivan Illich, in Tools for Conviviality, investigates the limits of institutions and tools, since when they swell they rob people of their capacity to act, and he asks for tools that widen their freedom and participation (Tools for Conviviality). What concerns us here is that the life of the human being be eased and his agency preserved, and that we resist the turning of the means made for his service into systems that enslave him.

The questions raised by this capability appear clearly in transhumanism, the movement for enhancing human capacities by technology. Its declaration speaks of widening possibilities and of going beyond the limits that ageing and cognition impose, and also of well-being and of the risks of technologies (the movement’s declaration). Ray Kurzweil presents his conception of the singularity, in which human and machine intelligence merge (his presentation of the singularity), while Yuval Noah Harari in “Homo Deus” discusses the human ambition for immortality, happiness and godlike capacities, and the dangers and questions this opens. This book holds that treating disease, lengthening life and widening cognition can enter the service of mercy and the cultivation of the earth. The project of the “immortal human god” enters the fitna when what it wants is a human being who subsists by himself, independent of God and contending against Him. The judgement concerns this claim and its aim; those who work on enhancing capacity or on artificial intelligence are under no obligation to adopt it.

Let us take a clear example. A medical system that helps detect disease early and makes treatment available to those who were denied it widens the capability of the human being in the direction of mercy. If the same tool is used to monopolise people’s treatment, or to control their bodies against their will, it becomes a means of domination. The fitna, then, lies in the aim, and in the conception the holder of power has of his relation to God and to creation; the increase of knowledge is innocent of it.

In this sense the book joins the fitna of deification in its ecclesiastical form with its forms in civilisation. In both, what appears in the human being of knowledge, light or power is cut off from its source, and a self-subsistence is then attributed to him by which he dispenses with God. This mechanism may speak the language of doctrine, or of authority, or of technological promise, but a return to the origin stays possible in each of them: that the human being know that his strength is by God, and that his thought and his heart widen with it, so that his effect in the world is mercy and benevolence.

Successive Images of the Fitna and the Possibility of Transcending Them

These images come together in a single age, and alongside them, in the same age, live useful knowledge and progress in morals and spiritual understanding. In history capability widens and the struggle over its aim goes on at the same time. And whenever understanding of the self and knowledge of God accompany capability, it can itself become a road of deliverance from the fitna.

History does not slide down an irreversible slope. The tools that widen the authority of illusion may also widen people’s capacity to expose it, knowledge that is monopolised may become available to people, and the light that was confined to an image may be known anew in its reality. Here the reading of the Dajjāl meets the reading of the Hour: we face a widening of perception and capability whose direction is determined by the knowledge, the mercy and the need of God that the human being carries.

Chapter 22: The Image and the Cross: How Does a Symbol Carry a Doctrine?

The Depicted Face and the Meaning of Gazing

The image teaches the eye how to see the sacred. A believer looks at the face, the hand, the book and the signs of kingship, and understands from them meanings whose explanation he has not yet read in the texts. When we look at the images of the Masīḥ, whatever their differences in date and function, we see how art took part in fixing belief.

Among the best-known examples is the icon of the Masīḥ as “Pantocrator” (the Ruler of All) in Saint Catherine’s Monastery, which was made in coloured wax on a panel and is dated to the sixth century. The Masīḥ holds a book in it and raises his hand in blessing. Between the two sides of his face there is an asymmetry that some have read as mercy on one side and judgement on the other, and others as divinity and humanity. It is an image for contemplating the meaning of the face, not a crucifixion scene, and nothing in it establishes that one eye is gouged out or closed.

The image follows doctrine, and one witness to this is the Gero Cross in Cologne (c. 965–970 CE), the oldest known Western image of the Masīḥ dead on the cross; radiography has established that its eyes are closed. Before it, the crucified one was depicted alive with open eyes. When the crucifixion became, in doctrine, a sacrifice that atones for sins, his face in the image became the face of the dead and suffering one.

The Dajjāl and the One-Eyedness

The narrations differ in describing the one-eyedness. Some mention the right eye, some the left, and in some the eye is described as extinguished. The commentators have discussed these wordings and sought ways of reconciling them. What concerns us here is the door this image opens to understanding a deficiency of vision.

We read one-eyedness as a seeing that looks in one direction and is veiled from another, and we link it with the material power, discussed earlier, that is not accompanied by insight into the source and the end. This interpretation draws its meaning from the fitna we have described; the discussion of the wording of the narrations belongs to the inherited commentary.

In this sense we look at the icon, and we ask: how does the depicted face carry a promise of perfection, and how does the worshipper understand what he sees in it? What we compare here is the significance of the image, and what the eye learns when it sees the disparity of gaze in the sacred face. This is the book’s reading of the image, and we claim no report about the artist’s intention by it.

Kurt Weitzmann studied the asymmetry of the two sides of the face in the Sinai icon while he was working on the icons of the monastery, and its significance has remained open to artistic and religious interpretation. We set it here as one aspect of contemplating the image, and then we link it with the wider question of the image’s place in worship and authority.

The closest image to this description is the Golgotha crucifix in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It is painted above the altar that the Church venerates as the place of the crucifixion, and the eyes of the crucified in it are painted closed. Yet on 29 March 2017 two priests of the Church published pictures of it in which one eye appeared open and the other closed, and said that it had remained so for a whole day; the pictures spread through the Christian world. The reports then differed in confirming the event, and no official statement was issued about it. What concerns us in all this is that people saw the most famous cross in Christianity, standing above the place of the crucifixion as the Church reckons it, with one eye open and the other closed.

The Cross: A Symbol Older Than the Crucifixion

Civilisations older than Christianity knew crossed signs, and for them the signs carried different meanings. If we trace the form of the cross, we find that it has a history wider than the event of the crucifixion, and that each of its remains had a function for its people. So we ask of it: what did it mean to them, and how was it connected with what came after?

The Four Quarters and the Image of the King

Narām-Sîn bore the title “king of the four quarters”, and kingdoms after him took it up; texts older than he had already known the image of the king whose dominion extends from the Lower Sea to the Upper Sea. All these titles express a sovereignty that encompasses the known world. We set them as a background for the comparison between the king and the form of intersection, though the text establishes the title alone; the sign that was joined with it is shown by the pictorial remains.

We read the cross as a symbol of kingship and sanctity, and we see in it a relation to ʿĪsā the king, peace be upon him. The form + gathers the four quarters over which the kings of Mesopotamia held the title of lordship, and its intersection is compared to the movement of the sun and the two equinoxes. The pictured artefact bears witness that the sign was joined with the king: in the stele of Shamshi-Adad V of Assyria, from the ninth century BCE, the king wears on his chest a cross as an amulet, which the British Museum identifies as a symbol of the sun god (British Museum, 118892). Each artefact after that is read according to what it meant to its own people.

What the Words for Crucifixion Tell Us

Gunnar Samuelsson studied the words for crucifixion in his book Crucifixion in Antiquity, among them the word σταυρός (stauros), which in ancient Greek usage extends to the stake and to the instrument of hanging. His study helps us to tell apart what the word indicates and what we ourselves add to its image from a later conception. The word alone does not tell us the shape of the instrument in a particular event, whether a single stake or one with a crossbeam; that is known from a context wider than the word. One may consult Samuelsson’s presentation of his research.

Researchers ancient and modern have presented different forms of the instruments of hanging and execution, among them the simple stake and among them the crossed forms. This variety teaches us to read every witness together with what surrounds it, and that a form does not become the more probable merely because it appears on the list of possible forms.

Justus Lipsius was among the first to set out these forms, in his De Cruce (1594). He distinguished the simple cross (crux simplex), a single beam on which the condemned is hung, from the composite cross (crux compacta) of two beams, and then divided the composite into three kinds: the X-shaped, the T-shaped and the intersecting. The variety of forms, then, is old in the scholars’ own books.

The same is true of the word ξύλον (xylon), which means wood or a piece of timber. The word indicates the material; the number of pieces and the way they were assembled are shown by the rest of the description, because the word by itself does not draw the instrument.

From the Memory of the Crucifixion to the Symbol of the Institution

The crossed form of the cross was present in Christian expression before Nicaea. In Justin’s First Apology, Chapter 55, which is of the second century, Justin compares the cross with various forms, among them the form of a human being when he stretches out his arms. If the symbol was present in this way so early, how did its standing grow in the Constantinian age and after?

When the Constantinian age came, and after it, the presence of Christian signs widened in scenes of authority, art and architecture. Here the Chi-Rho sign, composed of the letters of the name of the Masīḥ, must be told apart from the cross in its various forms. The history we are tracing is a history of use, spread and interpretation, in which state, worship and memory became interlocked.

The Inversion of Values in Its Deepest Form

Our criticism is directed at what the function of the symbol becomes when it is transformed. A symbol may begin as a reminder of guidance or of pain, and end as a foundation by which the meaning of salvation is monopolised. This can happen in an old form as it can in a new one, for what counts is the standing and the doctrine that the image has carried. Here too we separate Jesus, the righteous man, from the construction that was set up in his name.

Monotheistic Insight

The Christian reads in the cross a language of sacrifice and hope, alongside the remembrance of pain that it holds. We begin by understanding this meaning as he lives it, and then we ask about the direction of worship in it: does the symbol point to God, or does it become an end that veils Him? The insight we mean is that we understand before we judge.

People are born into traditions that give images their meaning before they ask about their history, and a believer may be sincere in seeking God through what he has inherited, even if we differ with him in understanding the image and the doctrine. For this reason we direct our criticism to the history of the construction and its meaning, and we keep for the human being his sincerity and his experience. In this there is an opportunity we all share, to understand what we have inherited and how familiarity forms until some meanings seem self-evident and in no need of a question.

Chapter 23: Sūrat al-Kahf: Its Opening Explains the Fitna of the Dajjāl

The Ḥadīth of the Ten: The Content of the Verses and the Nature of the Fitna

Abū Dāwūd narrated from Abū l-Dardāʾ, may God be pleased with him, from the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam): “Whoever memorises ten verses from the beginning of Sūrat al-Kahf is protected from the fitna of the Dajjāl” (Sunan Abī Dāwūd, 4323). Muslim narrated the ḥadīth with the wording “protected from the Dajjāl” (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 809), and in another route it came “from the end of al-Kahf” (the other narration). In the supplication of seeking refuge after the tashahhud, the worshipper says: “and from the evil of the fitna of the Masīḥ al-Dajjāl” (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 588). So the expression “the fitna of the Dajjāl” is present both in the ḥadīth of protection and in the supplication, and beside it stand narrations that mention the Dajjāl in the shorter wording. All these texts warn and ask for deliverance, and then the narrations of al-Kahf come and tie this deliverance to the Qurʾān.

And the content of the verses defines the fitna meant in the reading of this book. The verses with which protection has been tied warn those who said that God has taken a child, criticise a saying that sons inherit from fathers without knowledge, and caution that the adornment of the earth is a trial. When we gather these meanings to the expression “the fitna of the Dajjāl”, we read the fitna as a crisis in belief and vision, in which the creature is confused with the Creator, the inherited claim acquires authority over souls, and the believer is put to trial in his religion under the pressure of the community and of authority. The Dajjāl in this book is a doctrinal construction whose fitna people lived, and whose effects they inherited generation after generation. We build this inference on the interconnection of the narrations, on the content of the sūra, and on the context in which we read it.

If the opening of al-Kahf is a fortress against this fitna, what knowledge does it place in the believer’s hand? The answer begins from the saying of the Exalted: ﴿وَيُنذِرَ الَّذِينَ قَالُوا اتَّخَذَ اللَّهُ وَلَدًا﴾ (wa-yundhira lladhīna qālū ttakhadha Llāhu waladā) (“and to warn those who say, ‘God has taken a child,’” al-Kahf 18:4), and then from the description of this saying as inherited without knowledge. The ḥadīth ties protection to the verses, and the verses make clear the doctrinal flaw and give the believer a criterion by which he can distinguish it. For this reason we read the first ten verses verse by verse.

Reading the Ten Verses

The first ten verses of Sūrat al-Kahf are:

﴿الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ الَّذِي أَنزَلَ عَلَىٰ عَبْدِهِ الْكِتَابَ وَلَمْ يَجْعَل لَّهُ عِوَجًا * قَيِّمًا لِّيُنذِرَ بَأْسًا شَدِيدًا مِّن لَّدُنْهُ وَيُبَشِّرَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ الَّذِينَ يَعْمَلُونَ الصَّالِحَاتِ أَنَّ لَهُمْ أَجْرًا حَسَنًا * مَّاكِثِينَ فِيهِ أَبَدًا * وَيُنذِرَ الَّذِينَ قَالُوا اتَّخَذَ اللَّهُ وَلَدًا * مَّا لَهُم بِهِ مِنْ عِلْمٍ وَلَا لِآبَائِهِمْ ۚ كَبُرَتْ كَلِمَةً تَخْرُجُ مِنْ أَفْوَاهِهِمْ ۚ إِن يَقُولُونَ إِلَّا كَذِبًا * فَلَعَلَّكَ بَاخِعٌ نَّفْسَكَ عَلَىٰ آثَارِهِم إِن لَّمْ يُؤْمِنُوا بِهَٰذَا الْحَدِيثِ أَسَفًا * إِنَّا جَعَلْنَا مَا عَلَى الْأَرْضِ زِينَةً لَّهَا لِنَبْلُوَهُمْ أَيُّهُمْ أَحْسَنُ عَمَلًا * وَإِنَّا لَجَاعِلُونَ مَا عَلَيْهَا صَعِيدًا جُرُزًا * أَمْ حَسِبْتَ أَنَّ أَصْحَابَ الْكَهْفِ وَالرَّقِيمِ كَانُوا مِنْ آيَاتِنَا عَجَبًا * إِذْ أَوَى الْفِتْيَةُ إِلَى الْكَهْفِ فَقَالُوا رَبَّنَا آتِنَا مِن لَّدُنكَ رَحْمَةً وَهَيِّئْ لَنَا مِنْ أَمْرِنَا رَشَدًا﴾ (al-ḥamdu li-llāhi lladhī anzala ʿalā ʿabdihi l-kitāba wa-lam yajʿal lahu ʿiwajā * qayyimān li-yundhira baʾsan shadīdan min ladunhu wa-yubashshira l-muʾminīna lladhīna yaʿmalūna l-ṣāliḥāti anna lahum ajran ḥasanā * mākithīna fīhi abadā * wa-yundhira lladhīna qālū ttakhadha Llāhu waladā * mā lahum bihi min ʿilmin wa-lā li-ābāʾihim kaburat kalimatan takhruju min afwāhihim in yaqūlūna illā kadhibā * fa-laʿallaka bākhiʿun nafsaka ʿalā āthārihim in lam yuʾminū bi-hādhā l-ḥadīthi asafā * innā jaʿalnā mā ʿalā l-arḍi zīnatan lahā li-nabluwahum ayyuhum aḥsanu ʿamalā * wa-innā la-jāʿilūna mā ʿalayhā ṣaʿīdan juruzā * am ḥasibta anna aṣḥāba l-kahfi wa-l-raqīmi kānū min āyātinā ʿajabā * idh awā l-fityatu ilā l-kahfi fa-qālū rabbanā ātinā min ladunka raḥmatan wa-hayyiʾ lanā min amrinā rashadā) (“Praise be to God, who has sent down upon His servant the Book and has placed in it no crookedness, straight, to warn of a severe punishment from Him, and to give glad tidings to the believers who do righteous deeds that theirs will be a good reward, abiding in it forever; and to warn those who say, ‘God has taken a child.’ They have no knowledge of it, nor had their fathers; grave is the word that comes out of their mouths; they speak nothing but a lie. Then perhaps you would consume yourself with grief over their footsteps if they do not believe in this narration. Indeed, We have made what is on the earth an adornment for it, that We may test them as to which of them is best in deed. And indeed, We will make what is on it barren ground. Or have you thought that the companions of the cave and the inscription were a wonder among Our signs? When the youths took refuge in the cave and said, ‘Our Lord, grant us mercy from Yourself and prepare for us right guidance in our affair,’” al-Kahf 18:1–10).

If we read them together with the ḥadīth of protection, we see how they move from the knowledge of God to the criticism of the inherited saying, and then to the trial that the human being lives on the earth.

The Book and Crookedness: The Criterion of Discernment

The verses make the Book a scale by which warning and glad tidings are given. By this scale we read the rest of the religious inheritance, weighing it against the tawḥīd that the Qurʾān establishes, and then we ask: what meanings remained in it, and where did interpretation change the face of the message? A difference in wording alone is not enough for us to judge so, for we have seen how the language of the Word and the light draws close while real differences remain in belief.

This scale brings us back to the texts on which the deification of the Masīḥ was built. We presented earlier the differences among their narrations and the plurality of their layers, together with the research into the attribution of some letters and into what scribes added. Among this is what Bart Ehrman discusses in Forged (2011) on “pseudepigrapha”, that is, writings attributed to persons other than their authors. All of this material asks about the foundation on which the doctrinal construction stood, and helps in distinguishing the report from the commentary attached to it.

Sonship: The Nerve of the Fitna

Then the fourth verse comes with a specific warning: ﴿وَيُنذِرَ الَّذِينَ قَالُوا اتَّخَذَ اللَّهُ وَلَدًا﴾ (wa-yundhira lladhīna qālū ttakhadha Llāhu waladā) (“and to warn those who say, ‘God has taken a child,’” al-Kahf 18:4). For us this warning lies at the heart of the link with the fitna of the Dajjāl, whose doctrinal meaning we explained in Chapter 19, because it directs the gaze to the very claim that heads our criticism of deification. Every construction that grants a creature the station of the divine Son or of the incarnate god finds here a direct declaration that confronts it: ﴿اتَّخَذَ اللَّهُ وَلَدًا﴾ (ittakhadha Llāhu waladā) (“God has taken a child,” al-Kahf 18:4). So we read the opening of the sūra as an explanation of the content of the fitna from which the narrations asked for protection.

The sound prophetic ḥadīth contains what confirms that this meaning lies at the core of the matter: “The son of Adam denied Me, though he had no right to do so, and he reviled Me, though he had no right to do so. As for his denying Me, it is his saying: ‘He will not bring me back as He originated me’; and as for his reviling Me, it is his saying: ‘God has taken a child,’ while I am the One, the Eternal, who has not begotten and has not been begotten, and there is none equal to Me” (narrated by al-Bukhārī). So God, glory be to Him, calls the claim of a child reviling, which is graver than a mere doctrinal error. And Sūrat al-Kahf places this reviling at its opening and makes the warning against it the beginning of protection.

Knowledge and the Fathers: The Fitna Feeds on Inheritance

Then comes ﴿مَّا لَهُم بِهِ مِنْ عِلْمٍ وَلَا لِآبَائِهِمْ﴾ (mā lahum bihi min ʿilmin wa-lā li-ābāʾihim) (“They have no knowledge of it, nor had their fathers,” al-Kahf 18:5). The verse joins the saying of the sons to what they received from their fathers, and returns the question to the knowledge on which this saying stands. What is inherited may gain strength from its age and from passing from one generation to the next, until people forget that a saying does not become sound by being repeated; it needs a foundation to stand on.

The authority of what is inherited grows stronger when the belief of the fathers becomes part of the community’s system and power. The churches argued, wrote and interpreted, and not everyone who inherited a saying was incapable of thinking about it; but once doctrine was joined to law and to exclusion, reviewing it became heavier for the individual and for the community. This is the aspect that concerns us as we read the Qurʾān’s warning against speaking without knowledge.

From this question the review of the inheritance begins: what do we truly know about this saying, and what have we accepted because we were used to it? The question does not remove the fathers’ right to respect, but it returns belief to knowledge and keeps familiarity from standing in the place of proof.

“Grave Is the Word”: The Magnitude of the Claim

The Masīḥ in the Qurʾān is a word from God and a spirit from Him, so not all language about the Word departs from tawḥīd. Denial falls where a child is made for God, or where the tie with God turns into an equality that lifts the servant above servanthood. When we tell the one from the other, we understand the gravity of the saying, and at the same time we preserve the field of the spiritual language that speaks of light and of drawing sustenance.

The word kaburat describes the gravity and enormity of the saying. The matter is that something is ascribed to God without knowledge, until there enters into the conception of divinity what revelation negates of it; for this reason the criticism of the word here is connected with the root of worship.

Beside this description we then set the history of the saying, over which commentaries piled up and whose authority over people grew strong. The verse shows the magnitude of the claim; how it moved through history, and what was added to it until it veiled the first bearer of the message, is what the comparison of the doctrines makes clear.

Grief and Adornment: The Believer’s Stance toward the Fitna

Then the Qurʾān addresses the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam): ﴿فَلَعَلَّكَ بَاخِعٌ نَّفْسَكَ عَلَىٰ آثَارِهِم إِن لَّمْ يُؤْمِنُوا بِهَٰذَا الْحَدِيثِ أَسَفًا﴾ (fa-laʿallaka bākhiʿun nafsaka ʿalā āthārihim in lam yuʾminū bi-hādhā l-ḥadīthi asafā) (“Then perhaps you would consume yourself with grief over their footsteps if they do not believe in this narration,” al-Kahf 18:6). The scene brings together his concern for the people and his sorrow at their turning away, and the address comes to him as gentleness and as guidance for whoever follows him. However severe the warning, mercy remains with it toward the one who has fallen into error, and conveying the message does not require its bearer to destroy himself in grief over the one who did not accept.

The adornment of the earth and the trial by deed follow: ﴿إِنَّا جَعَلْنَا مَا عَلَى الْأَرْضِ زِينَةً لَّهَا لِنَبْلُوَهُمْ أَيُّهُمْ أَحْسَنُ عَمَلًا * وَإِنَّا لَجَاعِلُونَ مَا عَلَيْهَا صَعِيدًا جُرُزًا﴾ (innā jaʿalnā mā ʿalā l-arḍi zīnatan lahā li-nabluwahum ayyuhum aḥsanu ʿamalā * wa-innā la-jāʿilūna mā ʿalayhā ṣaʿīdan juruzā) (“Indeed, We have made what is on the earth an adornment for it, that We may test them as to which of them is best in deed. And indeed, We will make what is on it barren ground,” al-Kahf 18:7–8). We link this meaning with the fitna of belief, because a saying may also draw its authority from the wealth, awe and appearance that surround it, and so the Qurʾān recalls that the adornment of the earth is passing. Then the story of ﴿أَصْحَابِ الْكَهْفِ وَالرَّقِيمِ﴾ (aṣḥābi l-kahfi wa-l-raqīm) (“the companions of the cave and the inscription,” al-Kahf 18:9) begins in the ninth and tenth verses, and the opening of the sūra joins the criterion of faith with the experience of the youths who needed it in their lives.

The Map of Protection

These verses place before the believer a road of discernment. It begins with the Book, then passes through the glorification of God and the seeking of knowledge, then through patience and through understanding the adornment of life and the trial that lies in it.

All these meanings meet in the question of knowledge of God: what do we know, from whom did we take our knowledge, and when does the inheritance become a veil from the origin of the message? The fitna of the Dajjāl, as this book reads it, occurs when the distorting saying acquires the strength of the known and the sacred, so that the reality of the Masīḥ who came with guidance disappears behind it.

As for the connection between seeking refuge from the fitna of the Dajjāl and holding fast to Sūrat al-Kahf, it is that memorising the verses is accompanied by reflection on the meanings they carry: tawḥīd, the seeking of knowledge, patience over what we have not encompassed, and resistance to the human being’s delusion by his own authority. In these meanings we seek protection from the doctrinal fitna that the book discusses.

Meeting with the Axis of the Book

Here the sūra brings us back to the axis of the book. We see that the confusion of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, with Jesus, and then the building of a deified image in the name of Jesus, were at the heart of the crisis that the believers endured. We read the Muḥammadan call to the worship of God as a revival of the origin to which the Masīḥ called, because the religion in the two messages is one, and once what was attached to the Masīḥ is removed, the believers regain their knowledge of this origin. The narrations of warning and of seeking refuge are therefore joined to a present need, which is deliverance from distortion.

The inference here rests on three things: that the warning against the fitna of the Dajjāl is repeated in the narrations, that protection was tied to the opening of al-Kahf, and that those verses warn against the claim of divine sonship and against speaking about God without knowledge. Tying all this to the historical crisis is the reading of the book, which joins it to what the book presented in the earlier chapters.

al-Kahf and the Dajjāl: Five Stories Against Five Fitnas

When we pass beyond the first ten verses to the stories of the sūra, we see how the meanings of protection extend through its structure. The ḥadīth of al-Kahf with which we opened the chapter ties deliverance to the Qurʾān, and the stories show us what the Qurʾān gives the believer of steadfastness and insight when the forms of fitna confront him.

In the rest of the sūra we read five scenes, each corresponding to an aspect of the fitna: persecution in the story of the companions of the cave, being deluded by wealth in the story of the owner of the two gardens, judging before knowledge encompasses in the story of Mūsā and al-Khaḍir, the test of authority in the story of Dhū l-Qarnayn, and then the corruption that needs someone to repel it in the scene of Yājūj and Mājūj (Gog and Magog), which we single out from the story of Dhū l-Qarnayn for the purpose of comparison. Then we look at the lesson each scene offers to the life of the believer.

The Comprehensive Table of Parallels

How the Scenes Connect

Aspects of Formation in the Stories

These scenes complete one another in the formation of the believer. The People of the Cave teach him steadfastness before the pressure of the community, the owner of the two gardens shows him the danger of delusion by wealth, and the story of Mūsā and al-Khaḍir calls him to patience over what knowledge has not encompassed. Then Dhū l-Qarnayn presents the image of the authority that protects, and Yājūj and Mājūj show what corruption does when it becomes general. Through these lessons the stories connect with the meaning of protection.

From Weakness to Power

In the sūra the reader goes on from weakened believers to a proud owner of wealth, then to the limits of human knowledge, then to one who holds power and employs it for the protection of people. We need not make this order a literal calendar of the history of the world in order to see its unity, for faith, knowledge and power all test the human being’s relation to his Lord. The meaning is completed in the conclusion of the sūra, where the words of God do not run out and the Messenger is commanded to declare his humanity: the widening of knowledge does not make a human god, and dignity does not abolish servanthood (al-Kahf 18:109–110).

Why Ten Verses from Its Beginning?

The narration of Abū l-Dardāʾ, may God be pleased with him, singles out the first ten verses for mention, and we see the reason: these verses carry the doctrinal key to the sūra. They declare God’s transcendence, warn against the claim of sonship, and distinguish between knowledge and the inherited saying without clear proof. Once we hold this key, the later stories connect with the axis of tawḥīd, and the memorising of the verses joins with reflection on their meaning in the method of protection that the chapter explains.

Protection as Knowledge and Practice

So we read Sūrat al-Kahf here as a method of protection. From the People of the Cave the believer learns steadfastness under pressure, from the owner of the two gardens humility before wealth, from Mūsā and al-Khaḍir, peace be upon them both, insight beyond the outward, and from Dhū l-Qarnayn justice in authority; and Yājūj and Mājūj alert him to the danger of comprehensive corruption. All these lessons are arranged around the origin which the opening of the sūra disclosed: that God alone be worshipped, and that the human being be freed from speaking about Him without knowledge. From this origin we understand how memorising the verses and reflecting on them brings the believer to deliverance from the fitna.

Chapter 24: “And Indeed He Is Knowledge of the Hour”: The Raising and the Descent as an Epistemic Movement

The Comprehensive Verse

﴿وَإِنَّهُ لَعِلْمٌ لِلسَّاعَةِ فَلَا تَمْتَرُنَّ بِهَا وَاتَّبِعُونِ هَٰذَا صِرَاطٌ مُسْتَقِيمٌ﴾ (wa-innahu la-ʿilmun li-l-sāʿati fa-lā tamtarunna bihā wa-ttabiʿūni hādhā ṣirāṭun mustaqīm) (“And indeed he is knowledge of the Hour, so do not doubt it, and follow me; this is a straight path,” al-Zukhruf 43:61). Ibn Kathīr and others mention views about the pronoun, among them that it refers to the Masīḥ ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, and this is the view that the reading of this book adopts. We read his connection with the Hour from the side of knowledge as well: when his reality is uncovered and people recover the meaning of his message, a knowledge that had been veiled opens to them. This uncovering, in this reading, belongs to the knowledges of the time of the Hour and its signs.

Here we must distinguish between the time of the Hour and the establishing of the Hour. We live, in the book’s conception, in its time, the time in which the transformations are unveiled, whereas its establishing has not occurred, and its appointed time is known only to God. And we sense in the Hour (al-sāʿa) an allusion to capaciousness and expansion (al-saʿa, al-ittisāʿ): the human being’s awareness widens and his skills widen, he perceives himself, and technology comes to him and eases information and life for him, until realities that were veiled become available. The return of the knowledge of the Masīḥ is part of this opening, and through it this chapter connects with what we explained in Chapter 21 on the power that the heart guides to mercy and the cultivation of the earth.

The Multiplicity of Images of Expectation at Qumran

We return to Qumran because it preserved for the expectation images wider than the later ecclesiastical image. In its texts there is mention of the prophet and the two Messiahs of Aaron and Israel, and there are other formulas that combine titles and functions in different ways. In this diversity are figures and meanings whose effect remained in memory.

The Community Rule (1QS 9:11) mentions the prophet and the two Messiahs of Aaron and Israel, while the Damascus Document has places in the singular: “the Messiah of Aaron and Israel”. In the ceremonial Rule of the Community (1QSa 2) the priest takes precedence in the blessing, and the Messiah of Israel attends the scene of the banquet. We set out these differences in Chapter 10; it is material that shows how the functions are connected before we identify their holders.

We connect the “Messiah of Aaron” with lineage and priestly consecration, together with what we establish of the union of prophecy and kingship in ʿĪsā, peace be upon him. The expectation is wide enough for two aspects that we read together, and the texts preserve both: that the two awaited ones are Yaḥyā and ʿĪsā, sons of the one Aaronic house, or that they are ʿĪsā and Muḥammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) within the horizon of successive messages. The succession we see in the messages is wider than a division of spirit and rule between two men.

4Q541: The Image of the Priest Who Faces Opposition

In the fragments of 4Q541, usually published among the Aramaic texts connected with Levi, there appears a priestly figure whose teaching widens in effect and who faces hostile speech, and atonement is mentioned with him. We compare it with the image of the teacher who is tested and suffers, and we read atonement in its priestly context. As for the name of the owner of the fragment and the interpretation of his work, that is an open question, and the description alone does not imply that he offered his body as a sacrifice.

The King and the Teacher in Our Reading

ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, in the identification that this book adopts, is Nabonidus king of Babylon, a king and a chosen prophet whose life joined rule, knowledge and healing. We read his ordeal as a test in his journey to God and an ascent in his knowledge, just as trial preceded the completion of leadership in the story of Ibrāhīm. His choosing did not begin after the illness, and his healing does not mean that an unbelieving king passed to belief. In the Prayer of Nabonidus a man of the Children of Israel is present at his healing, whom we read as Yaḥyā, his teacher on this path, though the Prayer itself leaves him nameless; the Gospels, for their part, preserve the other face of the experience in the form of baptism and the appearance of the Spirit.

As for the later Nazarene biography, it has Davidic lineage, messianic expectation, and a dispute in the time of Roman rule that ends with the charge of kingship and the placard “King of the Jews”. This is a setting that differs from the rule of Nabonidus and from his remains in Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula. We see that the reports and attributes of the prophet-king became mixed with the reports of Jesus, and then a divine station was attributed to this composite figure. The difference we mean is the difference of time, of biography, and of the meaning that doctrine carried; as for the union of rule and guidance in ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, it is established in the reading of the book.

James D. Tabor, in The Jesus Dynasty (2006), investigates the possibility that Jesus and John were both connected with the expectation of the two Messiahs, and Collins presents in The Scepter and the Star (1995) how the awaited ones varied among the prophet, the priest and the king. These discussions help us to understand Christian memory, how it gathered the roles or distributed them, and we then add to them our own reading of identity and time. The union of kingship and priesthood is possible, for us, in ʿĪsā–Nabonidus, peace be upon him, and the objection is directed only at attaching divinity to human beings, not at the union of functions in them.

Four Stages in the Fate of Knowledge

We can now trace the fate of this knowledge in four connected stages:

The raising: The inscriptions of Nabonidus and the reports of his reign remained, but people’s knowledge of his prophetic identity and of the reality of his message was dispersed and then lost, in the reading that the book proposes. What was raised is the knowledge connected with the man; his existence and his remains were not erased. The memory of kings may preserve his name and deeds, while other communities preserve a teaching and a biography that they no longer connect with that name, and this connection is what the book recovers.

The dispersal of memory: The following centuries were not complete silence, and had the message been cut off in every respect, nothing would remain of what we know today. Communities, narrations, rituals and ways of knowledge carried it, and the names changed with languages and places. What disappeared, in the reading of the book, is the knowledge of the origin on which these reports converge; the reports themselves did not all disappear.

The resemblance (shabah): Jesus of Nazareth appeared in a milieu that had inherited something of this heritage, and we see him as a righteous man who did not deliberately deceive people. Then the reports of his life mixed with the reports of the earlier Masīḥ; such mixing may begin in good faith and then connect with a doctrinal construction and official authority. Jesus may have been tortured until he swooned and then rose from his swoon, or God gave him life, and from that arose the report of his resurrection; it reached Paul, and Paul had a central effect in the formulation that made Jesus the axis of faith and salvation. When this construction veils the origin and monopolises its meaning, we read in it the fitna of the Dajjāl.

The return of knowledge: Through inscriptions, the reading of manuscripts and the comparison of traditions, we are now able to gather what had been scattered. The Prayer of Nabonidus is a Qumran text, written after the time of the king, that preserves the account of his illness and healing; the remains document his reign and his connection with Taymāʾ; and the reports of the communities show how the understanding of the Masīḥ varied. Each of these witnesses has its own subject, and the reading of the book rests on joining these subjects. The return of knowledge the book means is that the human being should see the connections that the centuries had veiled.

The Raising and the Descent: A Movement of Knowledge, Not of the Body

We read the raising and the descent in the fate of the knowledge of the Masīḥ: his reality is absent from people, and then it is unveiled to them anew. In the Qurʾānic usage meaning descends upon the heart, as in the saying of the Exalted ﴿نَزَلَ بِهِ الرُّوحُ الْأَمِينُ ۝ عَلَىٰ قَلْبِكَ﴾ (nazala bihi l-rūḥu l-amīnu ʿalā qalbika) (“The Trustworthy Spirit has come down with it upon your heart,” al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:193–194). We read the word in this sense, so the return of the Masīḥ is for us the return of his reality and his message to awareness and life.

This understanding has an explicit precedent in the Injīl itself, concerning the return of another prophet. Malachi closed his book with a promise: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the day of the Lord, the great and dreadful day” (Malachi 4:5). The scribes were waiting for Elijah to return in person, and in their reports he had gone up in the whirlwind into heaven (2 Kings 2:11). When the disciples asked about this, the Masīḥ said: “But I say to you that Elijah has come already, and they did not know him, but did to him whatever they wished” (Matthew 17:12), and Matthew comments: “Then the disciples understood that he spoke to them of John the Baptist” (17:13). He had said earlier of Yaḥyā: “And if you are willing to receive it, this is Elijah, who was about to come” (11:14). Then Luke explains the whole promise in the angel’s announcement of Yaḥyā: “And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children” (Luke 1:17), and the end of that phrase is the very wording of Malachi 4:6.

The prophet who had been raised, then, returned in his spirit, his power and his message in another man, and those who waited did not know him because they were watching for the return of the body. On this we read the return of the Masīḥ: his reality returns and his teaching returns, and the one who awaits the descent of a person misses it. This reading came on the lips of the Masīḥ himself in the Injīl, and his disciples understood it so.

We understand the killing of the Dajjāl as the nullifying of the deception when the reality of the Masīḥ is unveiled. The distorted system was built on veiling the truth, and whoever confronts it needs this truth to appear; when the veil falls, its authority over the one who has come to know it ends. This is the meaning we call to mind from the saying of the Exalted: ﴿وَقُلْ جَاءَ الْحَقُّ وَزَهَقَ الْبَاطِلُ إِنَّ الْبَاطِلَ كَانَ زَهُوقًا﴾ (wa-qul jāʾa l-ḥaqqu wa-zahaqa l-bāṭilu inna l-bāṭila kāna zahūqā) (“And say, ‘The truth has come and falsehood has vanished; indeed falsehood is ever bound to vanish,’” al-Isrāʾ 17:81).

If the reader asks, what was raised, and what returns? the answer lies in one name that ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, was given: the Injīl.

The Injīl: Revelation, Knowledge and the Book

Before us stands the question of the Injīl that God gave ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and taught him together with the Book, the wisdom and the Torah, as in Āl ʿImrān 3:48 and al-Māʾida 5:46. If we place ʿĪsā in the sixth century BCE, what is the relation of this Injīl to the Gospels that were written down in the first century CE? To answer, we return first to what the Qurʾān describes as the Injīl, and then we distinguish it from the books that later bore the name.

The word occurs in the Qurʾān only in the singular and definite form, in twelve places: “the Injīl” and not “the Gospels”, and in no place is it joined in construct to the name of a writer. As for what the revelation establishes for it, they are distinct layers: the sending down, for Āl ʿImrān 3:3 reports that God sent down the Torah and the Injīl, and Āl ʿImrān 3:65 couples the two as an equal with an equal, both being sent down; the giving, as in al-Māʾida 5:46 and al-Ḥadīd 57:27; the teaching, as in Āl ʿImrān 3:48 and al-Māʾida 5:110; the containing, for al-Māʾida 5:46 reports that in it are guidance, light and exhortation, and al-Māʾida 5:47 commands its people to judge by what God sent down in it; the confirmation of what lay before it of the Torah; the writing among its people, for al-Aʿrāf 7:157 reports that they find the description of the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) written down with them in the Torah and the Injīl; the establishing, which in al-Māʾida 5:66 and 5:68 is the act of a deed that is established; then the ascription of one particular parable to it in al-Fatḥ 48:29. And against all this there is not in the Qurʾān a letter saying that ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, wrote it with his hand, or that it was set down in his lifetime, or that it is books having chapters.

The reading known among most exegetes is that the Injīl is a book sent down and given to ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, as the Torah was given to Mūsā. This reading has support: the Qurʾān couples the Injīl with the Torah in the sending down (Āl ʿImrān 3:65), commands its people to judge by what is “in it” (al-Māʾida 5:47), reports that they find the description “written” among them (al-Aʿrāf 7:157), and ascribes a parable to it in al-Fatḥ 48:29. It is a reading that stands consistently within the chronology we propose as well: ʿĪsā was given revelation in his time, then the record of his message was dispersed, and part of it flowed into texts that bore other names. So the search for his Injīl is part of the search for his knowledge, whose link with his name and biography was lost.

The descriptions of the Injīl in the Qurʾān hold another side connected with the first: it is among what ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, is taught, in it are guidance, light and exhortation, and its people are asked to establish it. For this reason we do not exhaust its meaning if we imagine collected pages; it is also knowledge, glad tidings and a way of guidance and action. Some of this knowledge may remain among people for as long as it remains, even if their connection with its source is lost or the biography of its owner is mixed up among them. The search for its text does not contradict the search for the living meaning it carried.

To this reading is joined a linguistic aspect from Arabic itself. It is well known among scholars that “injīl” is an Arabisation of the Greek euangelion, meaning good news, which entered Arabic through Syriac or Ethiopic, and Arthur Jeffery holds this in The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān. And Lisān al-ʿArab, under the root n-j-l, gave another view: that the word is on the pattern of “iklīl” and “ikhrīṭ”, “and it is of the pattern ifʿīl”, and “its derivation is from al-najl”. It explained al-najl in that place as origin and nature, and in the same entry, from the field of bringing out: najaltu the thing, I brought it out; al-najl is the child and offspring; al-najl is the seepage that comes out of the earth; and the minjal is that with which one harvests. On this view it is permissible to read “injīl” as a reading of the instrument: that by which the hidden of the Book is brought out, a sickle that harvests the field and does not replace it; and it is more fitting to what the Qurʾān described of the Injīl, confirming the Torah before it. It is suited by the fact that the only parable the Qurʾān ascribes to the Injīl, in al-Fatḥ 48:29, is the parable of a seed-crop that brings out its small shoot, so it grows strong and stands on its stalk, and the bringing out is the pivot of the root. And in this the two derivations meet: the Arabic describes what the Injīl does to what came before it, and the Greek, which is more widely held among scholars, describes its good news, and both end in a good news that is conveyed.

As for the circulating Gospels, they present a biography and teaching attributed to Jesus. We see that these writings preserve material from the original reports of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, in which they became mixed with the reports of Jesus of Nazareth, so we neither discard them all nor make them a pure record of one person. What the comparison must do is ask of each scene in them: what does it preserve of the earlier report, and what connects it with the later context?

Whether we look at the Injīl as a text sent down or as knowledge and guidance, the book’s question is one: how do we connect what remained of the message with its first bearer? The axis of this question is that we attribute it to ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, in his time. As for the form in which it was first written down, and the amount that remained of it in the later writings, choosing one of the two descriptions does not settle them.

Muḥammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) and the Renewal of the Message of the Masīḥ

“After a Break in the Succession of Messengers”

The Exalted says: ﴿يَا أَهْلَ الْكِتَابِ قَدْ جَاءَكُمْ رَسُولُنَا يُبَيِّنُ لَكُمْ عَلَىٰ فَتْرَةٍ مِنَ الرُّسُلِ﴾ (yā ahla l-kitābi qad jāʾakum rasūlunā yubayyinu lakum ʿalā fatratin mina l-rusul) (“O People of the Book, Our Messenger has come to you, making clear to you after a break in the succession of messengers,” al-Māʾida 5:19). Here we call to mind the time that stretched between the two messages and the scattering of meaning within it, and we do not draw from the word fatra a number of years. The time of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, is fixed in this book by the identification we propose with Nabonidus, and not by a calculation implicit in the verse.

The Interval and the Six Hundred Years: Text or Calculation?

Yet our chronology is confronted by a famous narration that makes the interval between ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Muḥammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) six hundred years; if we count it from the mission in 610 CE, we land in the first century CE, in agreement with the known date of Jesus. And because the report is in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, we read it first from the side of who said it and what it establishes, and then we look at the origin on which the period was calculated.

We begin with the difference between the verse and the report. The Qurʾān mentions “a break in the succession of messengers” (al-Māʾida 5:19) and gives no number of years for it; fixing its measure comes in the narrations, and we read it together with what their narrators knew of the time of the two figures.

Al-Bukhārī transmitted the report in the “Book of the Virtues of the Anṣār”, “Chapter on the Islam of Salmān al-Fārisī”, number 3948 in the well-known numbering, from Abū ʿUthmān from Salmān: “The interval between ʿĪsā and Muḥammad, may God bless them both and grant them peace, was six hundred years.” The saying stops at Salmān, and he did not attribute it to the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam). The chain establishes that the Companion said it; as for the estimate of the period, it is a historical question in which we ask: how did he know it, and on what chronology did he build it?

Moreover, the other sayings differ in their estimates of the interval by more than two centuries:

• 620 years: Wahb ibn Munabbih, who adds twenty to the six hundred.
• 600 years: Salmān al-Fārisī, may God be pleased with him, and the like is related from Qatāda, Muqātil and al-Ḍaḥḥāk.
• 569 years: al-Kalbī.
• 560 years: Qatāda, transmitted by ʿAbd al-Razzāq from Maʿmar from him, as quoted by Ibn Ḥajar.
• 540 years: al-Kalbī again, in another narration from him.
• “four hundred and thirty-odd”: al-Ḍaḥḥāk.
• 400 years: a saying without attribution, which Ibn Ḥajar relates with the formula “it is said”.

Ibn Ḥajar mentions in Fatḥ al-Bārī the disagreement of the sayings, and says: “and it was countered that the disagreement on that is reported”. So before us are multiple estimates, each with its origin and its method of calculation, and the examination of them does not stop at the soundness of their attribution to their owners.

There remains an unavoidable question about the source of the calculation: was this period transmitted as independent knowledge, or was it reckoned on the basis of the current dating of Jesus? The figure may be an echo of that dating, and the brief report does not explain how it was reckoned. For this reason we read the estimate of the period together with the evidence by which its two ends were fixed.

Our answer on the six hundred years begins from the question of who the calculation starts from. If the circulating narration has joined ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Jesus in one person, as we propose, that was reflected in the estimate of the interval. For this reason we return and set the reports against the Babylonian record of Nabonidus. As for the agreement of many traditions on the known dating, we understand it from the side that the composite narrative settled and spread, and this connection is part of the interpretation that the book builds on the evidence it has gathered.

Daniel 7: The Son of Man

In Daniel 7:13–14 there is the image of “one like a son of man” who is given dominion and a kingdom that does not pass away. We compare this horizon with the message of Muḥammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), with the community and state arranged by it, and with its extension across lands. The apocalyptic image has multiple readings, some of which go beyond the earthly king. We present the comparison from the side of the breadth of the message’s effect, and ʿĪsā–Nabonidus, peace be upon him, remains a king in our reading; the identification does not rest on denying kingship to him.

The Paraclete and Aḥmad

The Gospel of John promises the Paraclete, and the Greek word in the available text signifies a helper, intercessor or comforter. In turn the Qurʾān relates the glad tidings of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, of a messenger who will come after him ﴿اسْمُهُ أَحْمَدُ﴾ (ismuhu Aḥmad) (“his name being Aḥmad,” al-Ṣaff 61:6). We read this glad tidings in the book in the sense of the perfection of praise and the appearance of the teacher who restores clarity to the message. As for the root ḥ-m-d, the meanings of praise, desire and belovedness lie side by side in it across languages, and this does not mean that every word from it becomes a name for the Prophet or a translation of the word Paraclete. The axis of our inference here is the Qurʾānic glad tidings and the descriptive reading of the name, and the comparisons then come after them and widen their horizon.

The Completion of the Circle

Here the threads of continuity that the book traces meet. ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, whom we identify with Nabonidus in the sixth century BCE, was a king and a prophet who carried the message of tawḥīd and opened a way of knowledge and healing; then people inherited his message, and the narrations about it differed. In the reading of the book, a doctrinal image was later fitted onto the name of Jesus of Nazareth and veiled the origin, and Paul and those after him had a role in establishing it. Then the Muḥammadan message came, confirming what preceded it and completing its way: ﴿تَعَالَوْا إِلَىٰ كَلِمَةٍ سَوَاءٍ بَيْنَنَا وَبَيْنَكُمْ﴾ (taʿālaw ilā kalimatin sawāʾin baynanā wa-baynakum) (“Come to a word equitable between us and you,” Āl ʿImrān 3:64). Its completion, in the reading we build, includes the refinement of morals and thought, the human being’s knowledge of himself, and the opening of the door of purification and knowledge to whoever walks it. The human being is called to have the light realised in him, and mercy and wisdom to appear in his knowledge, his work and his cultivation of the earth, and all the power that opens to him remains by God and through Him. In this way we understand the continuation of the path in Sufism and the return of the meaning of the Masīḥ in hearts and in life.

In this way a person can share in the light of guidance and come to know what had been hidden from him. When the language of prophecy or of anointing is used in this setting, only its figurative meaning is intended: conveying news through knowledge, purification, and contact with the unseen by God’s leave. It is not a prophecy of legislation, and it is no call to a new religion. The completion of noble character takes in refinement of thought as much as good dealing, so a human being grows in power without forgetting that his strength is from God.

Kinship of Function: A Ritual Note

If we set the coverings of the Tabernacle in the Book of Numbers (3:25–26) beside the covering of the Kaʿba, we see how much care religious traditions have given to guarding the sanctity of a place and to serving it. The text records that the sons of Gershon were in charge of the coverings and the curtains, and in the Islamic tradition the service of the House and the renewal of its covering go on. Here we see an opening for comparing what service and consecration mean, allowing for the difference of place, rite and history.

This similarity is tied to what we set out about the service of the House. The chiefs of the gatekeepers, the Levites, were over the house of God, “and the key was upon them,” and they opened it morning after morning (1 Chronicles 9:26–27). That is the function of the ḥijāba in Mecca, which remains with the Banū Shayba to this day. So the meanings of the House, its preservation and its service run on through the heritage of Ibrāhīm, the Children of Israel and the Arabs, and each rite after that has its own account of how it was handed down.

Chapter 25: The Conclusion: The Threads of the Book Converge

Where We Have Arrived

The journey through the chapters has been long, and it is time to return to the aim that has held the threads of this book together from the start: to uncover the truth of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, behind the names and narratives into which religious memory was scattered.

We propose that ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, is the king whom the Babylonian records preserve under the name Nabonidus, and that his ordeal, his knowledge and his connection with Taymāʾ are chapters of a prophetic biography whose unifying identity people forgot. In the figures of Zoroaster, Gautama and Laozi we then read probable accounts of the same personality, carried by different languages and lands, which gave him different faces; perhaps this happened because he travelled to those lands himself, or because his disciples moved through them and their reports merged with his. We go on to see that material from that older biography passed into the reports about Jesus of Nazareth, the righteous man who lived centuries after him. Once the transfer was complete, a doctrinal structure took shape behind it and veiled the origin of the message, until the Qurʾān raised anew the question about the Masīḥ and his reality.

On the historical side we began with what the monuments preserve about Nabonidus, his kingship and Taymāʾ, and then gathered the indications that, in our view, connect him with ʿĪsā, peace be upon him. When we moved on to the Asian narratives, our attention widened to names and to the ways in which stories are carried. Each of these connections has its own material, and the reader can go back to it in its place and weigh what it rests on; the picture we have offered was formed only from all of them together.

Three ways of working came together here: reading the language, comparing the reports, and studying the monument and the place. Each lights up what the others leave dark, and when we put them together we can see what lay scattered across the sources.

The Three Chains

In language we went back to the names of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, of Maryam and of the Masīḥ, and to whatever matches or approaches them in other traditions. We began with the lexical material, and then proposed to recover words and meanings that, in our view, transmission had veiled. The name we were used to receiving became a question again, and understanding it came to depend on the text, the setting and history.

In history we began with Nabonidus, king of Babylon from 556 to 539 BCE, who spent about ten years of his reign at Taymāʾ. We then took up the Prayer of Nabonidus, the Qumran account of his ordeal written after his time, and set it beside the reports of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, of Yaḥyā and of Zakariyyā; we also followed the images of the Masīḥ as the communities knew them. The comparison we built rests on what these reports bring together about the king, the healing, the teaching and the dispute over identity.

In geography, Taymāʾ, Ḥarrān, Babylon and the Arabian oases turned our eyes back to the eastern sphere in which the king moved and in which communities handed on their heritage. The Ḥarrān stele names his stations: Taymāʾ, Dadan, Fadak, Khaybar, Yadiʿ and Yathrib, and he spent ten years moving among them. Mecca lies on the same road, south of Yathrib, so it is quite likely that he reached it. Wādī Nakhla and the trunk of the palm tree keep a Hijazi layer of his story, alongside the report written in Iraq. Later, al-Ḥīra and al-Kūfa became two centres from which knowledge was passed on. Put together, all this gives that sphere back its role in the story the book treats.

The Mechanism of Distortion: From the Masīḥ to the Masīkh

The church’s image of the Masīḥ did not form along one simple line, and its elements did not all begin at the same time. In Paul’s early letters we find for Jesus a standing that exceeds human prophethood; in the Gospels we find reports and layers of differing kinds; then we watch the councils formulating belief and tying it to the boundaries of the community and the authority of the state. For this reason we see distortion as having occurred in all of these together: in the transmission of the report, in the changing of its meaning, and in the imposing of its interpretation. Our measure here has no quarrel with the language of light and the Word on the ground that it is lofty. It asks what that language does to the human being’s relation to God. Does it open for him the way of knowledge and servanthood, or does it confine the truth of the light to a deified image that an institution monopolises?

Testimonies That Converge and Questions That Connect Them

We read ﴿وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ وَمَا صَلَبُوهُ وَلَٰكِنْ شُبِّهَ لَهُمْ﴾ (wa-mā qatalūhu wa-mā ṣalabūhu wa-lākin shubbiha lahum) (“they did not kill him and they did not crucify him, but it was made to appear so to them,” al-Nisāʾ 4:157) as a key to the distinction from which we set out. Beside the verse stand other witnesses, each of which preserves one side of the report: the monuments preserve the biography of the king, the Prayer of Nabonidus preserves his ordeal, the communities preserve the divergent images of the Masīḥ, and the eastern traditions preserve the reports of the teacher and the sage. The work of the book is to join these materials to one another. As for “the Masīḥ” and “the Masīkh”, they are our literary picture of the difference between the origin and what befell it, as we explained in their places.

Where We Stand Among Earlier Studies

On this road we have drawn on Western studies that re-examined the Christian texts, their history and the images of the Masīḥ in them. At some points their questions met ours, and at others our answers parted from theirs; it is in where we met and where we parted that the contribution of this book becomes clear.

The scholars we have drawn on differ in method. Ehrman studies the diversity of early conceptions and the history of the attribution of certain writings; Maccoby gives Paul the role of founder in the new Christian formulation; Vermes returns Jesus to his Jewish setting; and Pagels examines plurality and the struggle over defining correct belief. Price and MacDonald go far in studying literary construction and comparison with older texts. All of these are studies and theses that we discuss, and their conclusions do not agree on any single alternative identity for the Masīḥ.

Our own question is a different one: does some of the Gospel material have behind it a biography older by centuries? And was Nabonidus a historical figure who could reconnect that biography? At this question we part from many of the scholars whose works we used. We benefit from their criticism, but the identification that the book offers is the book’s own statement, not theirs.

The Original Contribution

We rely on works that preceded us in investigating the individual parts. Schoeps studied the Ebionites, Beaulieu investigated the history of Nabonidus, Milik published the Prayer of Nabonidus, Eisenman researched James and the early communities, and Lawson studied the history of the interpretation of the crucifixion verse. Each of these works has its own subject and method, and results that are open to discussion. What the book adds is that it gathers the questions these works raise about memory and identity, and then offers a new picture of what connects them.

Our method, then, is gathering and comparison: we join history to language, inscription to narrative, and geography to memory, and we read all of it in the light of the Qurʾān. The gathering grows stronger each time it explains a detail that was obscure. Its aim is to make the connections visible, and each thread stays open to revision if something appears that changes it.

The Book in Its Reader’s Hands

We have set out where we arrived. It remains for this to be set against what we know and against material still to appear that we have not seen. We welcome whatever clarifies the connection and whatever exposes an error in it, because our aim is to draw nearer to the truth and to understand the Book of God. The basic view may prove sound while its details need correcting, and an objection may itself open a road we had not seen. In this spirit we place the book in its reader’s hands.

The Last Word

When we read ﴿وَإِنَّهُ لَعِلْمٌ لِلسَّاعَةِ﴾ (wa-innahu la-ʿilmun li-l-sāʿa) (“and indeed he is knowledge of the Hour,” al-Zukhruf 43:61) with the pronoun returning to ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, as Ibn Kathīr and others mention, we see in uncovering his reality and recovering the meaning of his message a door into the knowledges of the time of the Hour that we have explained. It is a time in which a human being’s knowledge of himself widens, and so does his ability to reach what was veiled from him. The aim of this widening remains that knowledge and the heart be guided together, and that power return to the service of mercy and the flourishing of civilisation (ʿumrān). This book humbly seeks to contribute to that unveiling, and we hope that his name will return to its meaning, as it returned in the Qurʾān.

ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, in the reading with which this book closes its journey, is a prophet and a king. We call him by his Qurʾānic name, and we see his life in the reports of Nabonidus. We propose that his image was told in other lands under the names Zoroaster, Gautama and Laozi, and that reports from these later passed into the biography of Jesus of Nazareth. The traces of the man remained, and knowledge of his reality was scattered; then the Qurʾān preserved his name and message, and that let us ask the question again. We hope this reading will join the remains of memory to the meaning of guidance.

The return for which we work is that the message of the Masīḥ be unveiled in knowledge, in hearts and in people’s lives. The clearer the connection becomes between the bearer of the message and what remains of his report, the weaker the veils that surrounded him grow. We hope this book will have a share in that journey, so that the Masīḥ returns to people’s knowledge, and knowledge of him returns to their lives as a trace of guidance and mercy.

O God, if we have striven sincerely, forgive our shortcoming and our deficiency. If we have erred, show us the error clearly and plainly. If there is truth here, keep us firm upon it and spread it in hearts. If there is falsehood here, hasten to refute it and to put an end to it.

﴿وَقُلِ الْحَقُّ مِنْ رَبِّكُمْ فَمَنْ شَاءَ فَلْيُؤْمِنْ وَمَنْ شَاءَ فَلْيَكْفُرْ﴾ (wa-quli l-ḥaqqu min rabbikum fa-man shāʾa fa-l-yuʾmin wa-man shāʾa fa-l-yakfur) (“And say: The truth is from your Lord, so let whoever wills believe, and let whoever wills disbelieve,” al-Kahf 18:29)

﴿قُلْ جَاءَ الْحَقُّ وَزَهَقَ الْبَاطِلُ إِنَّ الْبَاطِلَ كَانَ زَهُوقًا﴾ (qul jāʾa l-ḥaqqu wa-zahaqa l-bāṭilu inna l-bāṭila kāna zahūqan) (“Say: The truth has come and falsehood has vanished; indeed falsehood is ever bound to vanish,” al-Isrāʾ 17:81)

And God knows best, and judges most wisely, by His perfect wisdom.

Appendix 1: The Prayer of Nabonidus (4Q242): An Aramaic Witness to the Roots of Healing-Through-Forgiveness

The “Prayer of Nabonidus” (4Q242) preserves an Aramaic account of the king of Babylon and of an illness that struck him at Taymāʾ. Forgiveness is mentioned in it, and so is a person described as a gāzer of the sons of Judah. It is among the most important texts with which we compare the reports of ordeal and healing, because it names the king and the place together. We read in it the report of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, in his ordeal at Taymāʾ, and we see in the gāzer who announced to him God’s pardon the figure of Yaḥyā; the book then joins this account to the royal record that Babylon preserves of Nabonidus.

The Condition of the Fragments and How They Are Presented

The prayer has not come down in a complete manuscript, only in leather fragments from Cave 4 at Qumran. We present here the transliteration given by Takuma Sugie, who follows John Collins’s edition in DJD XXII, and then a translation of it. Square brackets mark restored letters and words, while a gap that cannot be completed is left as a gap. The editors differ over some restorations, most of all over how to join the clauses of forgiveness and healing.

What remains of the beginning of the text is parts of the title, the report of the illness, and the mention of the seven years at Taymāʾ. Elsewhere letters and words have been lost, sometimes enough space for two or three words. So we put [...] where a gap has not been completed, and [the text in brackets] where a restoration is proposed from the context. With these signs the reader can see where the surviving letter stands and where the reading stands that joins what is broken.

We set the text beside Collins’s edition (1996, pp. 83–93) and beside the texts and translations in García Martínez and Tigchelaar’s The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, and then move on to our comparison with the reports of the prophets. The literary scene that follows the text is meant to bring the experience of the ordeal closer, as we imagine it, and for that reason we have kept it apart from the translation and the editing.

The Material That Survives of the Prayer

The text gives the name of the king and the place where he was. It tells that his illness lasted seven years, then mentions forgiveness, a person described as a gāzer from the sons of Judah, and a command to proclaim and to write in order to exalt the name of God. Gods made of different materials also appear in it, a detail whose significance we set out at the end of this appendix. The helplessness of the physicians and sorcerers, and the youth of the guide and his work in the palace, are matters the surviving fragments do not state.

Transliteration and Literal Translation

This is the transliteration of the Aramaic letters, line by line, according to the open-access study that follows Collins’s edition in DJD XXII (1996). Brackets enclose what the editor has completed from the lost places:

(1)  mly ṣ[l]tʾ dy ṣly nbny mlk [bb]l mlk[ʾ rbʾ kdy ktyš hwʾ]
(2)  bšḥnʾ bʾyšʾ bptgm ʾ[lh]ʾ btymn[ʾ ʾnh nbny bšḥnʾ bʾyšʾ]
(3)  ktyš hwyt šnyn šbʿ wmn [dy] šwy ʾ[lhʾ ʿly ʾnpwhy wʾsʾ ly]
(4)  wḥṭʾy šbq lh gzr whwʾ yhwdy m[n bny glwtʾ ʿl ly wʾmr]
(5)  hḥwy wktb lmʿbd yqr wr[bw] lšm ʾ[lhʾ ʿlyʾ wkn ktbt ʾnh]
(6)  ktyš hwyt bšḥnʾ b[ʾyšʾ] btymn [bptgm ʾlhʾ ʿlyʾ]
(7)  šnyn šbʿ mṣlʾ hwy[t qdm] ʾlhy kspʾ wdhbʾ [nḥšʾ przlʾ]
(8)  ʾʿʾ ʾbnʾ ḥspʾ mn dy [hwyt sb]r dy ʾlhyn h[mwn]
(9)  [      ]t [ ]myhwn[

Its literal translation, with the brackets kept in their places:

(1) The words of the pra[ye]r that Nabonay, king of [Baby]lon, prayed, the Ki[ng, the Great, when he was smitten]
(2) with a malignant ulcer by command of G[o]d in Taymā[ʾ. I, Nabonay, with a malignant ulcer]
(3) was smitten for seven years, and from [the time] that G[od turned His face to me, He healed me]
(4) and my sin He forgave for him. And he was a “gāzer”, and he is of the sons of Judah, fr[om the sons of the exile; he came to me and said:]
(5) “Proclaim and write, that you may make honour and gre[atness] for the name of G[od Most High.” And so I wrote: I]
(6) was smitten with a ma[lignant] ulcer in Taymāʾ [by command of God Most High,]
(7) for seven years. I was praying [before] the gods of silver and gold, [bronze and iron,]
(8) wood, stone and clay, because I [used to th]ink that they were god[s]

In the text, then, we read the name of the king, Taymāʾ, the ordeal and forgiveness. The account joins forgiveness and recovery in a single report, just as spiritual purification precedes the completion of bodily healing in Mark 2:5–11; in the book’s reading, forgiveness is the gateway to healing. It is true that the phrase of healing in the third line comes from the restoration, but the meaning stands in the account itself, since it joins forgiveness and recovery.

The fourth line is the place on which the whole function turns. In the transliteration it reads “and my sin, He forgave it for him”, and then the gāzer is mentioned. Some translations in circulation make the gāzer himself the one who forgave the king his sin, as in the text published on Livius.org: an exorcist pardoned my sins. Collins, by contrast, links the forgiveness to the divine act, and makes the gāzer the one who came to the king and commanded him to proclaim and to write. Whichever view we take, the gāzer performs what the Gospels preserved for Yaḥyā, “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4): he conveys God’s pardon to the repentant king.

Source: Sugie Takuma, “Nabonidus and the Curse of the Moon-God: On the Relationship between Daniel 4 and the Prayer of Nabonidus”, Bulletin of the Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan 61/1 (2018), pp. 1–12, with the text on p. 2. The study and the published text.

The Aramaic script here rests on twenty-two letters. When we set it beside Arabic, familiar words appear behind the difference in sound: “dahab” beside dhahab (gold), and “arʿā” beside arḍ (earth). Such differences belong to the history of the tongues and the shifting of their sounds, and they are what restores to the reader the connection between what seems strange and the nearby language he knows.

Among the words whose letters remain outside the brackets of restoration:

• וחטאי (waḥaṭṭāy), “and my sin”: an evident kinship between the Aramaic word for sin and the Arabic one.
• ודהבא (widahabā), “and the gold”: the correspondence of the Aramaic dāleth with the Arabic dhāl in this word.
• די (dī), an Aramaic relative particle: compare the relative forms in the Semitic languages, among them the Arabic dhī.

We also find words for which common Arabic uses counterparts from other roots: כספא for silver, פרזלא for iron, אבנא for stone, and פתגם for a command or a word, a term that entered Aramaic from Persian. The comparison shows us what the two tongues hold in common, where their usage parted, and what came in by borrowing; once we know these things, we can see the picture of this tongue and its relation to Arabic.

The word šbq (“to leave, to forgive”), which occurs in the context of forgiveness, links the fragment to a well-known Syriac usage in the Lord’s Prayer: “washbuq lan ḥawbayn” (Matthew 6:12 in the Peshitta). The form differs, but the sense of leaving and remitting remains. This helps us in the history of religious language, and it points to the route by which the prayer, with its reports, reached the monasteries, among them those of al-Ḥīra, whose life Kufa in part inherited.

The word for the ailment itself links the prayer to the books of the Hebrew scriptures. In the second line, in letters that survive outside the square brackets of restoration in Collins’s edition, we read that the king was struck בשחנא באישא (bišḥanā biʾīšā), “with an evil ulcer”. The Book of Job describes the affliction of its hero in the same words: “and he smote Job with an evil ulcer from the sole of his foot unto his crown” (Job 2:7), which in Hebrew is בִּשְׁחִין רָע (bišḥīn rāʿ). The noun is the same, Hebrew šḥīn and Aramaic šḥnā, and the adjective is the same in meaning. The Hebrew expression occurs again in Deuteronomy 28:35, which the Arabic Van Dyck translation renders there “with a malignant ulcer”, the wording we chose in translating the line.

The Book of Job knows Taymāʾ by name: “The caravans of Taymāʾ looked, the travelling companies of Sheba hoped for them” (Job 6:19), which in Hebrew is תֵּמָא (tēmā). Its hero is a man from the land of Uz, “perfect and upright, one who fears God and turns away from evil” (1:1). He is struck with the evil ulcer and endures, and then God restores his health to him. In this book we read the same picture of ordeal that we read in the seven years of Nabonidus in the oasis: a righteous man tried with an evil ulcer, who endures and then recovers, in the horizon of the caravans in which Taymāʾ lies. The time of Job and the location of Uz are matters on which scholars differ, and so the link we affirm here is a link in wording and in theme.

Even the king’s name varied between “Nbny” in the Prayer and “Nabû-naʾid” in Akkadian, an example of how a name changes as it passes from one tongue to another. For that reason we gather the dated forms of each name we compare, to learn where something was dropped and where it changed.

The oases of the Ḥarrān inscription offer a clear example of how proper names are read: Taymāʾ, Dadān, Fadak, Khaybar, Yadiʿ and Yathrib. These names occur in a dated monument, so we can compare their ancient forms with what was later known of their places and wording. Here the method shows itself plainly, because it lets us set our reading against material that can be returned to and checked.

Seven Years in Taymāʾ

The scene that follows is the book’s own composition; it draws on the ordeal of Nabonidus as we read it, an experience of conduct and patience, and it is independent of the translation of the fragments and of the completion of what was lost from them.

The king, in this scene, looked at all the authority that had gathered to him and found in it nothing that could lift the pain of the body or the desolation of the question. His bond with his Lord was not severed, but the ordeal was opening within it a door he had not known before.

The years passed over him while he learned patience, and tested the difference between a human being’s knowing the name of his Lord and his heart’s finding rest in His being with him. Whenever the outward means of strength narrowed upon him, he returned to the strength that no king possesses and no throne grants.

Then a guide from among the people of knowledge sat with him, to help him reach the completion of what had been chosen for him. This guide was Yaḥyā, who prepares the way, and water in his company carried the meaning of purification and the beginning of a new stage. The king, the chosen one possessed of authority, was receiving from him what his authority did not excuse him from learning.

Then the door of well-being opened, and the healing of his body came to him together with the unveiling of meaning. The ordeal was no longer lost time in his eyes. It had become a road on which he came to know his Master and to know the weakness of his own soul. From this knowledge he goes out to the people with mercy, carrying to them the guidance and healing whose effect he had tasted in his own life.

Reading the Text in Its Context

The Language of the Text and Its Royal Form

The account takes the shape of a royal proclamation: it speaks in the king’s voice and gives his title in the heading. This is one way his report was kept, and it has reached us in a Qumran copy made centuries after his time. For that reason we compare it with the inscriptions nearer his time, to learn how his religious memory was shaped and what of the biography remained in it.

Supplication and Healing in the Structure of the Account

The account joins supplication, forgiveness and the glorification of the name of God. The fragments do not tell us of the physicians’ failure, and healing in the account is wider than any supposed contest between medicine and faith. We see healing knowledge itself as an opening from God, and we see the means a person learns as His gift.

The Gāzer Is Yaḥyā: The Function That Preserved Its Bearer

We read the gāzer in the Prayer as Yaḥyā, for two reasons: Nabonidus is ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and the fragment preserves for the man the very function of Yaḥyā. He is a man of the sons of Judah, and, in the restoration of the line, of the sons of the exile, who announces to the king God’s pardon and commands him to exalt the name of the Most High. This is exactly what the Gospels preserved for Yaḥyā, “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4), and what Mandaean memory in the land of the two rivers preserved of him as the bearer of teaching and of purification by water. His name, too, carries the meaning of life, from the root ḥ-y-y, and the uniqueness of his naming matches the uniqueness of the function that remained to him. The fragment preserves the description, and the comparison with the life story of Yaḥyā restores the name to it.

Healing Joined to Forgiveness

In Mark 2:1–12 the paralytic is told that his sins are forgiven, and then he is healed. In the Prayer of Nabonidus the account joins ordeal to forgiveness and the restoration of well-being. The older report of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, at Taymāʾ in the sixth century BCE preserves the same pattern that Mark related some six centuries later of Jesus of Nazareth: forgiveness that comes before healing, and a body that recovers when the soul has recovered. Each story has its own details and wording, but the pattern in both is one.

Structural Parallel with the Gospels

The image of healing through forgiveness passed from the older report to the later one, in a shared memory whose accounts took many forms. On this basis we compare the two stories: the bearer of the older biography is ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, the narrative pattern goes back to him, and the book connects it with what it has gathered of names, history and geography.

From the Publication of the Text to the Differences in Its Readings

Milik published the Prayer in 1956, and discussions followed about the arrangement of the fragments, their restoration and the meaning of their phrases. Among the most important works are Cross’s study of 1984 and Collins’s edition of 1996. These differences of reading belong to the history of the published text itself: what lies before us is not a complete text over whose interpretation alone the commentators differed.

The dating of the script places the surviving fragments in the first century BCE, though scholars differ over how far the range can be narrowed. The time when the account was composed is estimated by comparing it with Daniel and with the Babylonian traditions. The reader can also compare the arrangement and reading of the text with the presentation Andrew Perrin has prepared of the fragments and their images, keeping Collins’s edition at hand. (Perrin, “The Prayer of Nabonidus”.) In the fifth chapter we set out the comparison between the two kings, and then between the Prayer and the reports of baptism, so that the account may be read here alongside those details.

The Prayer also belongs to a wider inquiry, the inquiry into the announcement of forgiveness by a human being. Tobias Hägerland treats this subject in Jesus and the Forgiveness of Sins (Cambridge University Press, 2012). What matters to us in his work is the question of the difference between one who announces God’s pardon and one who claims an authority independent of Him; this difference accords with our fairness to the language of mediation and guidance in the traditions we compare.

The Testimony of the Babylonian Talmud

In the Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 41a, a report ties the sick man’s rising from his sickness to the forgiveness of his sins, and rests this on Psalm 103. We place it beside the Prayer of Nabonidus and the Gospel report to see that the meaning extended into the Jewish tradition as well, though we distinguish the late date at which it was compiled from the era in which the idea arose.

The Historical Context of the Babylonian State

Paul-Alain Beaulieu, in his study published by Yale (Beaulieu, Yale 1989), set out the history of Nabonidus the king and his long residence at Taymāʾ in the north of the Arabian Peninsula, in what is today Saudi Arabia. The records confirm that he was absent from Babylon for years of his reign. This spatial and historical framework meets the account of the Prayer, and gives the comparison a basis outside the Qumran text itself.

The Archival Sources That Support the Text

Among the most important documents is the “Nabonidus Chronicle”, kept in the British Museum as BM 35382, which sets out the events of his reign and his residence at Taymāʾ; its text is published on Livius.org as ABC 7. To it we add the Nabonidus stele from Taymāʾ, listed in the CDLI as P519700, a witness from the place itself to the king’s presence. The “Tayma Stone”, in the Louvre as AO1505, bears an Aramaic inscription going back to the fifth century BCE, concerning the organisation of worship and religious reforms in the oasis. Then came the publications of the Saudi-German excavation, in cooperation with the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), which expanded this material in Taymāʾ I–III with the inscriptions, remains and study of the environment through the ages that they gather. Each of these documents has its place and time, and when we compare them we learn the history of the oasis in which the account of the Prayer is set.

The Echo of the Story in the Noble Qurʾān and Arab Memory

The Prayer attributes to the king prayer to gods of silver, gold and the rest in the years of his ordeal. We have kept the phrase in the text, but we read it as a verdict passed on him by the later transmitters, with an echo of the image drawn for him by his opponents among the priests of Marduk and preserved by the “Verse Account of Nabonidus”, when he exalted the Most High, whom his inscriptions call Sîn, above Marduk. The ordeal itself is a test of the chosen one and an ascent in knowledge. Babylon preserves the record of the king and what his opponents said of him, the Qurʾān preserves the report of the prophet ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Arab memory preserves his road from Taymāʾ to Yathrib.

Announcing Forgiveness Is a Message from God

In Mark’s story of the paralytic, some of the scribes ask: who can forgive sins but God? The Prayer of Nabonidus, written centuries before Mark, contains an answer to that question: a man with a religious function announces to the king God’s pardon. On the strength of this comparison Dupont-Sommer read the Prayer as a witness that the announcement of forgiveness by a human voice is older than the Gospels. One who announces forgiveness only conveys God’s pardon, and draws what he announces from his Lord.

If forgiveness in the fourth line is ascribed to God, the guide still has the task of directing the king to proclaim and to write. And if the reading joins the announcement of forgiveness to the guide himself, his mediation falls within the divine act. In both cases the function shows what is ascribed to its bearer and what he draws from his Lord.

This question reaches into the religious sphere in which knowledge, healing and God’s pardon came together, whether a direct transmission between the Prayer and Mark is established or the link between them remained in a shared heritage. When these acts entered a later doctrinal construction, their interpretation changed.

This connects with the measure the book adopts for the language of light and the Word: the loftiness of a function does not mean that its bearer is independent of God. For this reason we first recover the meaning of guardianship (walāya), guidance and healing, and then trace how some of the expression of them turned into a claim of deification.

The Place of the Prayer in the Argument

The Prayer gathers in one religious account the name of the king, Taymāʾ and the ordeal, and this is why we compare it with the reports of the prophets. The sick Nabonidus at Taymāʾ is ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, in his ordeal, and the gāzer who announced to him God’s pardon is Yaḥyā. This is what the book adds to the material. The inscription connects the king with a known history, the account preserves his ordeal, and then the comparison uncovers the prophetic identity that was lost from his royal record. Once these directions come together, we can see why the Prayer holds its place in the book.

Appendix 2: The Complete Chronology: From the Sixth Century BCE to the Seventh Century CE

Introduction

This appendix presents a detailed timeline covering about twelve hundred years of religious and civilisational history. It concentrates on the points where Babylonian, Hebrew, Jewish-Christian and Islamic history intersect, and in it we see how the great events interlock, from the fall of Babylon to the mission of our master Muhammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam).

How to Use the Table

We set out the events and texts according to their commonly accepted dates, and then show in the last column how we read them in the book. Anyone following the table sees two men some six centuries apart: ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, who is Nabonidus, in the sixth century BCE, and Jesus of Nazareth in the first century CE; and then he sees the deified image that was built after them. In this table the date of copying a manuscript remains distinct from the time the story was composed and from the time of its protagonist.

The Detailed Timeline

These stations help the reader follow the sequence, and return to the chapters that set out their sources and connections.

The Babylonian Era and the Axial Age: 605–450 BCE

The Intertestamental Period and the First Century CE: 450 BCE to 100 CE

Imperial Suppression and Codification: 100–400 CE

The Changing World around the Arabian Peninsula: 400–632 CE

Appendix 3: Comparative Lexicon of the Book’s Key Terms: A Semitic-Linguistic Reading of the Thesis’s Master Keys

Introduction

In this lexicon we have gathered the words on which the book turns, and we examine them again from within the Arabic tongue and from the side of its connections with its sister Semitic tongues. We proceed from a conception of Arabness (ʿurūba) wider than the Arabic that was written down in a single age, so we trace a word through its stages and ask what it meant before the current translations settled. The entries are not all of one kind: some are lexical explanation and some are a reading the book proposes, and the reader can tell which is before him by looking at the witness and seeing how we move from it to the meaning.

Arabic is rich in its derivations, and it shows us meanings that may escape us if we receive names merely as foreign sounds. So we begin with it when we ask about a word, and then set it beside its forms in Aramaic, Akkadian and other tongues, and look at the shift of sound it underwent and the context in which it was used. In doing this we learn how ancient the meaning is and what it is connected with, and at the same time we distinguish the stages of the tongues that preserved it.

The entries cover the names and titles of persons, the names of communities and places, and then words that are keys to the book, such as raising, returning and cutting. They also include comparisons of meaning, such as reading the inscription on the cross in the light of covering and distortion, and the reader must not confuse these comparisons with the literal translation of a word or with its linguistic derivation.

How Is This Lexicon Used?

Each entry begins with the word, gives its witness and its meaning, and then moves to our reading of it. Beside the phonetic comparison we give the history of the word’s use and what we know of the life or function of the bearer of the name. When all these aspects come together, the reader understands why we propose the match we do.

Here are some examples. The meaning of “Ebionim” is the poor, and that belongs to the material of the lexicon. Connecting “ʿĪsā” with ʿaysh and al-ʿīs, on the other hand, is the book’s reading, in which root, sound and meaning come together. “The Masīkh” in our title is an image with which we draw disfigurement. INRI is a Latin abbreviation with a known meaning, whose significance we consider without altering its translation. These examples show the difference between the material of the lexicon and what we do with it when we interpret it.

Names of Persons and Titles

1. ʿĪsā: The Name and the Reading of Life

In our reading the name “ʿĪsā” is connected with life and living (ʿaysh), and in healing and giving life we see a meaning that illuminates the name. We connect it also with al-ʿīs, which is made of the letters of the name itself; in Lisān al-ʿArab: “al-ʿīs and al-ʿīsa is a whiteness mixed with something of ruddiness (shuqra), and it is said to be a white colour tinged with clarity.” When the two aspects meet, the name carries the meaning of life and the meaning of whiteness and clarity together. The correspondence of sīn and shīn here follows well-known patterns among the Semitic correspondences, in which the letter changes and the meaning stays, as Arabic sana corresponds to Hebrew shānāh, and salām to shālōm. Al-Jallad and al-Manaser have studied the inscription ʿsy, and their study adds a witness that the name was in circulation in its Arabic form in northern Arabia before Islam.

This meaning grows stronger when we read the words of the Exalted on the tongue of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him: ﴿وَأُحْيِي الْمَوْتَىٰ بِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ﴾ (wa-uḥyī l-mawtā bi-idhni llāh) (“and I bring the dead to life by God’s leave,” Āl ʿImrān 3:49). Life and healing stand at the heart of the image the Qurʾān draws of him. For this reason we take the name as a key to knowing the function of its bearer, and then test this key against the remaining evidence.

When we turn to “Yēšūaʿ”, we find its derivation lies in another field, that of salvation. The two names go back to different roots and carry different meanings: ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, is the Living One who gives life, and Yēšūaʿ is the Saviour. Arthur Jeffery counted the name ʿĪsā a riddle that can be reached from “Yēšūaʿ” only by rearranging the letters (The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān, 1938, pp. 218–220). The difference between the names agrees with what the book sets out of the reports of their two bearers: the life stories differ, the times differ, and each person has his own name and life story.

2. Jesus of Nazareth: The Hebrew Root y-š-ʿ (Salvation and Deliverance)

“Yēšūaʿ” goes back to the Hebrew root y-š-ʿ (yod-šin-ʿayin), which turns on salvation, deliverance and rescue. From this root come yəšūʿāh, deliverance, Hōšēaʿ, “he rescued”, and Yəšaʿyāhū, “Yahweh saves”. This is the meaning we set against what we propose in reading the name of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him.

Life is the name of one person, and salvation the name of another. Their life stories and their times differ, and yet their reports came together in memory: the first is ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, the prophet whose name the Qurʾān preserved, and the second is Jesus of Nazareth, whose report the Gospels carried. The significance of the two names supports this separation between them, and adds to what the book has gathered of reports and monuments.

The pre-Islamic inscription, moreover, shows that the Arabic form “ʿĪsā” is older than the late Arabic translations that rendered “Yēšūaʿ” as “Yasūʿ”. Each of the two forms has the history through which it travelled, just as each of its two bearers has his own life story.

3. Aḥmad / ܚܡܝܕܐ (ḥamīdā): The Semitic Root ḥ-m-d in Syriac and Arabic

In Arabic the words ḥamīd, maḥmūd, Aḥmad and Muḥammad turn on praise and commendation. In Hebrew and Syriac the root turns on desire and approval, and from it come the beloved and the desired. The meanings are close while the usage differs, so we first translate each form according to its place, and only then compare what unites their fields.

We see that a Semitic description from this field may have entered the history of the annunciation that is rendered by the Paraclete. The Greek text we have carries παράκλητος (paraklētos), the helper or intercessor. περικλυτός (periklytos) means renowned, but it is not an attested reading in its place in the manuscripts. For this reason we enter into the meaning of praise through the Qurʾānic annunciation of “Aḥmad”, and from it we trace the linguistic comparisons around it.

The Exalted says ﴿وَمُبَشِّرًا بِرَسُولٍ يَأْتِي مِنْ بَعْدِي اسْمُهُ أَحْمَدُ﴾ (wa-mubashshiran bi-rasūlin yaʾtī min baʿdī smuhū aḥmadu) (“and giving good news of a messenger to come after me, whose name is Aḥmad,” al-Ṣaff 61:6). The name is a known proper name of the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), and we read it at the same time as a description indicating the perfection of praise. Read in this way, it lets us see how a description passes from one tongue to another, without ascribing to ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, a particular Syriac formula whose text we do not possess.

Muḥammad and Aḥmad: Name and Meaning

In this book we ask the name what it says about its bearer. “Muḥammad” is a passive participle of the intensive form (tafʿīl), which indicates that praise is repeated and abundant. “Aḥmad” is an elative (afʿal of preference), and it can mean the one most worthy of praise or the one who praises his Lord most. In origin the two words are descriptions that became proper names, as happened with many Arabic names. On this relation between attribute and name we also built part of our reading of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and of Yaḥyā and Zakariyyā.

Once we understand the name in this way, we see in the verse of al-Ṣaff a sign carried by its meaning: praise that increases, and a perfection realised in the final message. This field has probable parallels in the words of annunciation, among them ḥemdâ in Haggai 2:7, though the word keeps its Hebrew meaning in its context, since sharing a root does not make every place where the word occurs an explicit name of one person.

Praise that is repeated joins the name to the continuing effect of the message and to the remembrance of its bearer after his death. On this understanding the name speaks the function, and the life story embodies its meaning. So we read in Muḥammad and Aḥmad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) a description of praise that rises and of effects that are renewed, just as in the names of the prophets we read the guidance that appeared through them.

4. The Masīḥ: The Semitic Root m-š-ḥ (Anointing, Purification and Honouring)

Al-Rāghib says in al-Mufradāt: “Anointing (al-masḥ): passing the hand over a thing, and from it masḥ al-arḍ, when one measures it.” The uses of the word then widen in Arabic. It serves for purification, as in wiping the head in ablution, and for honouring and blessing, as when the Messenger ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) wiped the head of an orphan. In Hebrew and Aramaic the ritual anointing with oil stands out, by which a king or a priest is consecrated: מָשִׁיחַ (māšīaḥ) is taken from מָשַׁח (māšaḥ), and corresponding to it in Aramaic is ܡܫܝܚܐ (məšīḥā). As we see it, all these meanings turn on passing purity and blessing over the thing touched, and the breadth of Arabic lights up for us the aspects of meaning in its sister tongues.

This noble word occurs in the Noble Qurʾān as a title of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, peace be upon him, in several places, among them the words of the Exalted: ﴿إِنَّمَا الْمَسِيحُ عِيسَى ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ رَسُولُ اللَّـهِ﴾ (innamā l-masīḥu ʿĪsā bnu Maryama rasūlu Llāhi) (“the Masīḥ, ʿĪsā son of Maryam, is only a messenger of God,” al-Nisāʾ 4:171), and His words: ﴿إِذْ قَالَتِ الْمَلَائِكَةُ يَا مَرْيَمُ إِنَّ اللَّـهَ يُبَشِّرُكِ بِكَلِمَةٍ مِّنْهُ اسْمُهُ الْمَسِيحُ عِيسَى ابْنُ مَرْيَمَ﴾ (idh qālati l-malāʾikatu yā Maryamu inna Llāha yubashshiruki bi-kalimatin minhu smuhu l-masīḥu ʿĪsā bnu Maryam) (“when the angels said, O Maryam, God gives you good news of a word from Him, whose name is the Masīḥ, ʿĪsā son of Maryam,” Āl ʿImrān 3:45). The Qurʾān ties the title to ʿĪsā by way of his function, and points through it to a prophet who is purified, blessed and honoured in God’s sight. That differs from what the later Nicene deification held, when it took him as a god or the son of a god.

5. The Masīkh: The Arabic Root m-s-kh (Disfigurement, Transformation and Distortion)

The ḥadīth reports mention “al-Masīḥ al-Dajjāl”, with ḥāʾ, and this is the word known in them. In the title of the book we use “al-Masīkh”, with khāʾ, as a literary counterpart to the Masīḥ, and we mean by it an image that was transformed from its origin. Our argument does not rest on this spelling being the origin of the ḥadīth, nor on an error in the diacritical dots having given birth to the doctrine.

The Arabic root m-s-kh turns on the meaning of “transformation from a beautiful form to an ugly form”, as in His words concerning the Children of Israel who transgressed on the Sabbath: ﴿كُونُوا قِرَدَةً خَاسِئِينَ﴾ (kūnū qiradatan khāsiʾīna) (“Be apes, despised,” al-Baqara 2:65), and it has been stated in the interpretation of this transformation in the Qurʾān and the Sunna that it is a change of creation and form. So maskh in the Arabic language is the changing of a shape into what is uglier than it, and mamsūkh is that whose original form was effaced and replaced by a disfigured form.

On this contrast we built the literary image in “the Masīḥ and the Masīkh”:

The Dajjāl in our reading is the construction that distorted the image of the Masīḥ and veiled his message. The return of the Masīḥ is the uncovering of his reality in a way that voids the authority of that construction. This is the meaning served by the contrast between ḥāʾ and khāʾ; it does not accuse Jesus of Nazareth himself of deceit.

6. The Dajjāl: Lying and Covering

In Arabic the root d–j–l turns on covering, disguising and lying, and corresponding to it is the Syriac d–g–l, which is also among the words for lying there. The comparison shows that the linguistic environments are close; which of the two tongues took from the other, and when, is a separate question. The meaning we need here is the mixing that hides the origin beneath a persuasive image.

In this sense we understand how the ḥadīth describes the Dajjāl: “He will come forth with a paradise and a fire with him, and his fire is a paradise and his paradise a fire.” He disguises the image until a person sees things the opposite of what they are, and truth is mixed up with falsehood for him. Deceit in this sense is wider than an isolated lie unconnected with a structure of meanings.

When we put “the Masīkh”, “the Dajjāl” and “the great liar” (al-kadhdhāb) together, we see that they describe between them the doctrinal image that we criticise: it disfigures the origin, it disguises things until the difference is hidden, and it says what contradicts the truth. As for Jesus in his own person, we keep him separate from this construction, though the construction bore his name.

The INRI Inscription of the Cross and the Meaning of Covering

7. INRI: The Meaning of the Inscription and Its Reading in the Book

INRI is a Latin abbreviation of the phrase “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”, and it is common on crosses in the Western tradition, though even this Latin form is not used on every cross in every church. The Gospels, for their part, tell of the inscription on which the charge of kingship was written, and they differ in how they give its wording; John 19:19–20 says it was written in Hebrew, Latin and Greek.

In the story of the trial the title was a charge laid against him, that he was a king, and the devotional image later carried it into another setting. So we begin by translating it as it stands, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”, and then show how its function changed. As for “the Nazarene”, we read it in two senses that its letters hold together, the one vowed (al-mandhūr) and the helper (al-nāṣir), as Chapter 8 set out; even so, the translation of the Latin phrase stays as it is.

The root k-f-r in the Arabic language turns on the meaning of “covering, concealing, veiling”. Al-Rāghib said in al-Mufradāt: “Kufr in the language is the veiling of a thing, and the night is described as kāfir for its veiling the persons, and the sower for his veiling the seed in the earth.” And from it come His words: ﴿كَمَثَلِ غَيْثٍ أَعْجَبَ الْكُفَّارَ نَبَاتُهُ﴾ (ka-mathali ghaythin aʿjaba l-kuffāra nabātuhu) (“like the likeness of a rain whose growth pleases the sowers,” al-Ḥadīd 57:20), that is, the farmers who cover the seed with soil. Then the legal usage developed so that kufr became the covering of the divine truth and its concealment after it had appeared.

Next we compare the sign above the head of the crucified with the writing between the eyes of the Dajjāl, and we look at the image with the eye of faith: what does the believer see in it? The two places are different, and INRI keeps its Latin meaning. What links the two for us is that the sign in both cases points to the fitna; the letters and their position do not correspond.

So the comparison is aimed at the system that adopted the image and gave it its doctrinal meaning, and it does not condemn the righteous man to whom the image is attributed. What we see as a covering of the truth is what veiled ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and the message of light. The name of Jesus written on the inscription is not in itself the object of criticism.

Names of Communities: The Naṣārā, the Anṣār and the Ebionim

8. Naṣārā / Anṣār / Nāṣorāyē: The Root n-ṣ-r (Support and Aid)

Nuṣra in Arabic means aid and support, and in other Semitic tongues words from the root n-ṣ-r carry the sense of keeping and guarding. The two meanings are close, though they do not coincide in every usage. We draw on this whole field when we read the name of the community and ask what its function was.

When we set the designation “al-Naṣārā” beside the answer of the disciples, “We are the helpers (anṣār) of God”, we read in the name the meaning of support. It carries as well the meaning of the vow that “the Nazarene” bears, for the Nazarene is the one vowed to God and the helper of His religion, as Chapter 8 showed. From the same root come the name of Nazareth and the Eastern Aramaic titles, and what unites them all is the religious meaning, which is the origin. Matthew Black also observed that the form Nazōraios, which predominates in the Gospels, does not match what we would expect in an attribution to a town.

The verse al-Ṣaff 14 shows the meaning of support that we read in the name, and shows that it continued among the believers. Then we turn to the history of the designation as the linguistic evidence has preserved it.

François de Blois discussed the background of these religious terms, and their link with the communities that came before Islam, in his study “Naṣrānī and Ḥanīf” (2002). We draw on it when we ask how far names tell us about their bearers. We do not, however, treat the title naṣrānī as a ready-made verdict of denial of the Masīḥ’s divinity, since different traditions have borne it; a community’s doctrine is known from its reports and its teachings.

9. The Ebionim (אֶבְיוֹנִים (ʾEvyōnīm)) and the Poor: The Root of Voluntary Poverty

“Ebionim” is the plural of ebyon, which in Hebrew means the poor or the needy. By this name were called the Ebionite communities that knew the true Masīḥ as a human prophet from the Children of Israel, held fast to the law and rejected the authority of Paul and his letters, as Chapter 12 set out. The poverty here we read as detachment and lowliness (maskana) in conduct, because Ebionite memory preserved poverty as a practice and as glad tidings. Most of what reaches us about their members, however, reaches us from the writings of their opponents.

Corresponding to this word in Arabic is the word miskīn, from the root s-k-n, a root different in sound from the Hebrew root ʾ-b-y, but meeting with it in the depth of meaning. The miskīn in Arabic is “one whom poverty has made to settle (askanahu) and has kept sitting”, that is, he whom want of means has kept from movement and earning. And the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) made of this state a lofty religious value in his words: “O God, make me live as a miskīn, make me die as a miskīn, and gather me in the company of the masākīn on the Day of Resurrection” (related by Ibn Mājah and al-Tirmidhī; some ḥadīth scholars have declared it weak because of a weakness in its chain, and its meaning is current in other sound ḥadīths).

The name carries the meaning of dependence on God, a meaning we meet in the various ways of asceticism, and communities outside the churches and inside them have known it. For us it is a spiritual value too wide to be bounded by any single name. What we criticise is something else: that interest and power seize the message and alter its meaning.

Names of Places and Their Connection with the Life Story

10. Bethlehem / the Tribe of Lakhm: Eastern Arab Christianity

“Bayt Laḥm” in Hebrew literally means “house of bread” (bayt = house and abode, laḥm = bread in Hebrew, not meat as in Arabic). It is the Palestinian city to which the Gospels ascribe the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Set against it we find in the Arab heritage the “Banū Lakhm”, an ancient Arab tribe that settled al-Ḥīra in Iraq and embraced the Christianity of the East early; the evidence for them at al-Ḥīra goes back to the fourth and fifth centuries CE. They then founded the state of the Manādhira under Persian protection, and so stood against the Ghassānids, who followed the Byzantines.

“Laḥm” and “lakhm” are written alike in Hebrew, because the letter ח (ḥet) in it carries the two sounds that Arabic distinguishes as ḥāʾ and khāʾ; so the name Bethlehem and the name Lakhm meet in Hebrew writing, letter for letter. Arabic, on the other hand, preserves the difference between l–ḥ–m and l–kh–m. Behind the two forms there are either two origins whose distinction Arabic has kept, or one origin whose meaning branched out in the tongues, as Chapter 7 set out. We enter the question by its historical door, the presence of the Manādhira and the churches of al-Ḥīra, and from there we connect this milieu with the reports of Bethlehem.

The presence of the Manādhira, the Ghassānids and Taghlib shows that the Arabs took part in the life of the churches before Islam. Their affiliations varied, and some of them became independent of Byzantium without that independence being a denial of the divinity of the Masīḥ. In this milieu we can understand how reports, words and knowledge came to circulate, and in it we feel for the traces of the older message.

11. Nabonidus: The Name of the King and the Reading of Prophethood

The name Nabû-naʾid is usually translated “Nabû is glorified” or “Nabû is praised”, and Nabû is a well-known name in the Babylonian record, linked with writing and wisdom. Alongside this direct meaning, we read in the name the meaning of the announcer who is raised up, because Nabû corresponds to the Semitic root n-b-ʾ, and because nāʾid comes from the Akkadian verb naʾādu, which denotes exaltation and elevation. We should not confuse two periods: the king’s residence at Taymāʾ lasted about ten years, whereas the seven in the Prayer are the duration of the illness as the account relates it.

Because Nabû is linked with writing and wisdom, we read it as close to nabaʾ and nubuwwa (prophethood). This nearness adds the question of the name to what we have already gathered: the reports of the king and his mother, the account of his journey, and Taymāʾ itself. Our match rests on all these elements together, and the name among them is a way into the meaning; it does not declare the prophet’s identity on its own.

On this match the sick king is ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and we read the guide Yaḥyā as his teacher. The ordeal then becomes a stage in the chosen one’s conduct and learning, and we compare it with the healing and knowledge that appeared in ʿĪsā. Appendix 1 set out the fragment and its restoration, and then the literary scene that draws on this reading.

12. The Dao (道 (dào)) / al-Ḥaqq: Laozi and the Qurʾān on Divine Transcendence

The Dao (道 (dào)) is an ancient Chinese philosophical concept taught by the sage Laozi (approximately 604–531 BCE, a traditional dating that is disputed) in his book “Dao De Jing” (道德經). The Dao in its literal meaning is “the way”, but in its deep philosophical meaning it is “the absolute reality that cannot be described, the highest law on which existence runs, the force latent in the universe”. Laozi expressed it in the famous phrase with which he opened his book: “The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao, and the name that can be named is not the eternal name.” This highest transcendence meets in meaning with the word al-Ḥaqq in the Noble Qurʾān, which is one of the names of God the Exalted, as in His words: ﴿ذَٰلِكَ بِأَنَّ اللَّـهَ هُوَ الْحَقُّ وَأَنَّ مَا يَدْعُونَ مِن دُونِهِ هُوَ الْبَاطِلُ﴾ (dhālika bi-anna llāha huwa l-ḥaqqu wa-anna mā yadʿūna min dūnihi huwa l-bāṭilu) (“that is because God is the Truth, and what they invoke besides Him is falsehood,” al-Ḥajj 22:62).

The Dao and al-Ḥaqq meet in three meanings that overlap. Both point, first, to the absolute reality that description cannot encompass. Both point, second, to the “upright way” that a person should walk: the Dao is the way, and the straight path is the road that leads to the Truth. Both point, third, to a divine transcendence that rejects likening and representation: the Dao has no name, and God is ﴿لَيْسَ كَمِثْلِهِ شَيْءٌ﴾ (laysa ka-mithlihi shayʾun), “there is nothing like Him” (al-Shūrā 42:11).

This meeting serves the conclusion of Chapter 4, that we read in the life story of Laozi, together with those of the Buddha and Zoroaster, cultural images of the personality we call ʿĪsā, peace be upon him. This claim is more specific than saying that reformers appeared at one time. The idea is to set the narratives against one another, to look at their dates and at the ways they were transmitted, and to leave the meanings of the “Dao” in its own texts first, and only then to connect it with the concept of al-Ḥaqq.

Names and Reports for Comparison

13. Imruʾ al-Qays and the Namāra Inscription of 328 CE: Arab Christianity before Islam

We place the Namāra inscription here because it shows us an Arab context that predates Islam. But we keep what it indicates in history apart from any linguistic comparisons that might be suggested about the name of its owner.

The owner of the Namāra inscription is Imruʾ al-Qays ibn ʿAmr, and the inscription is dated to 328 CE, so he is not the Kindī poet who lived in the sixth century. The inscription describes him as king of the Arabs and lists his deeds, but it does not state his creed; for that reason the claim that he was a Christian remains a suggestion that we build on the context and on other reports.

What we take from al-Namāra is its direct witness to Arabic and to an Arab king before Islam, and we add this witness to what we know of the political and religious life around the Peninsula. Whether Imruʾ al-Qays and Mark (Marqus) come close in wording is another question, and this inscription does not answer it.

14. Kēpā (ܟܐܦܐ): Peter the Monotheist in the Eastern Tradition

In this comparison we take up the standing of Peter in the Eastern tradition. Connected with it is the Qurʾānic word kāffa, which shares a single consonantal frame of kāf and fāʾ with Kēpā, as Chapter 7 showed.

Kēpā (ܟܐܦܐ) is the original Aramaic name of Simon son of Jonah, who was surnamed “Peter” in Greek (Πέτρος (Pétros) = the rock). The Aramaic word kēpā (ܟܐܦܐ (Kēpā)) means “the rock” literally, and is from an ancient Semitic root k-ʾ-f. The name occurs in its original Aramaic form as Κηφᾶς (Kēphâs) in John 1:42 and in the letters of Paul (Galatians 1:18, 2:9, and 1 Corinthians 1:12), which indicates that this designation is the oldest form, nearest to the first community of believers in Jerusalem.

In the Clementines Peter appears as a defender of the Law, and he enters into a dispute with Simon Magus. Some scholars have read in certain of its passages an allusion to Paul; this is an identification that scholarship proposes, and not every text states it explicitly. The material matters to us because it shows that the Christian heritage itself knew, from within, a conflict over the interpretation of the message and over authority.

In this Eastern Petrine tradition we see one way in which the Law was preserved, and the prophetic memory too, at whose expense the Pauline and Nicene course expanded. Then we connect the Arabic kāffa with the Aramaic Kēpā: the vowels between kāf and fāʾ alternate from dialect to dialect and from age to age, while the meaning remains, a community standing on a firm foundation, and from it comes the name al-Kūfa, as in Chapter 7.

15. Tanūkh (the Tribe) and Tanakh (תנ״ך (Tanakh)): One Name for Union

“Tanūkh” and “Tanakh” are two names whose letters sound alike: the first is the name of tribes that united and were gathered under one name, and the second is the name of three groups gathered by one book: Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim. Both are thus a name of a union into one.

The Tanūkhids had a Christian presence in Iraq and the Levant, while “Tanakh” is an abbreviation of the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings. Many of the Tanūkh settled in al-Anbār and al-Ḥīra, where the two schools of Pumbedita and Sura arose, and in their learning this abbreviation took shape. The two names also share a Semitic root whose meaning is abode and the preserved trust, as Chapter 9 showed.

The comparison takes us back to the surroundings in which the Arab, Jewish and Christian communities lived, where their words and traditions lay side by side, and we see how dense religious life was before the mission. The two names meet from four directions, and these four are the basis of the connection between them: they meet in sound, in the meaning of union, in the root in which the Torah says “and the ark rested” (Genesis 8:4), and in the land that brought together the scholars of the Tanakh and the tribes of Tanūkh.

The Lexicon and the Book’s Question

In this lexicon we have followed several paths side by side: sometimes we trace linguistic kinship, sometimes we look for the fit between a name and its function, and sometimes we compare in symbol. These paths serve us so long as each of them stays distinct, so that the reader knows when we are translating a word and when we are presenting our reading of it.

The difference between ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Jesus is a pillar of the book’s reading of identity. What we read in the two names of the meaning of life and the meaning of salvation gives this difference more weight, and beside it stands the history by which the book separates the two personalities.

When we set the Masīḥ against the Masīkh, we are describing an origin that returns and a distortion that is uncovered. We are not speaking of a body that descends to break an image with its hand, but of a knowledge that returns the image to the balance of truth.

The inscription of the cross we translate first as it stands, and then we look at its place in the doctrinal construction. As for extracting the divine name from the initials of newly composed Hebrew words, the text of the original inscription gives it no support, and so we do not rely on it in the argument.

The entries on the Naṣārā, the Ebionites and the disciples (ḥawāriyyūn) link language with the community and with the road by which memory is carried. The name of a community describes its function, and its reports, its teachings and its history support that description.

This lexicon offers keys by which the reader can return to the places where the argument rests: from the name to the root, from meaning to usage, and then to the report and the place. These words have opened questions that do not appear to someone who reads only the current translation. When we review them at their sources, our knowledge of the history of the messages and of the ways they were related grows wider.

We see in Arabness (ʿurūba) a memory that kept meanings older than the modern boundaries between languages and cultures. We look for these meanings by returning names to their forms and their evidence, and by distinguishing what changed in transmission from what differed between the stages of the tongue. The more clearly we hear the ancient text, the better able we are to recover the meaning we seek.

The following entries complete the keys of place, returning and cutting.

16. Thaniyyat al-Wadāʿ and Banū al-Najjār: The Arrival from the North

Memory has preserved the reception that the people of Yathrib gave the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) with chant and tambourine. He ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) passed by some girls of Banū al-Najjār who were beating their tambourines and saying: “We are girls of Banū al-Najjār; how good it is that Muḥammad is a neighbour!” (Ibn Mājah, Book of Marriage, chapter on singing and the tambourine, 1899, on the authority of Anas; al-ʿIrāqī in Maḥajjat al-qurb and al-Albānī in Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Mājah declared it sound). Al-Bayhaqī relates, by way of Ibn ʿĀʾisha, that the women, boys and girls began to say: “The full moon has risen over us from the passes of al-Wadāʿ… Gratitude is due from us as long as one calls to God” (Dalāʾil al-nubuwwa 2/506–507); its chain is broken (muʿḍal) according to al-ʿIrāqī and Ibn Ḥajar, and the chant is widely attested in the books of the biography.

The passes of al-Wadāʿ lie to the north of Medina, on the Syrian road. Ibn al-Qayyim said, concerning the report of the return from Tabūk, after relating the chant: “Some of the narrators err in this and say that it was only when he arrived at Medina from Mecca, and this is an evident error; for the passes of al-Wadāʿ lie only on the Syrian side, and one coming from Mecca to Medina does not see them and passes by them only if he is heading for Syria” (Zād al-maʿād 3/551). And in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, in the Book of the Campaigns (al-Maghāzī), al-Sāʾib ibn Yazīd went out with the boys to Thaniyyat al-Wadāʿ to meet the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) on his arrival from the campaign of Tabūk. So the chant greets one arriving from the north, from the road that joins Yathrib with Taymāʾ and then with Babylon. This is the road that the stele of Nabonidus at Ḥarrān mentions: “On the road to Taymāʾ, Dadan, Fadak, Khaybar, Yadiʿ, as far as Yathrib; ten years I moved among them,” and the Encyclopaedia Britannica states that he organised an Arab province at Taymāʾ with the help of Jewish mercenaries. And “the full moon” (al-badr) in the chant is the sign of the Most High in the heavens, and the Most High is the one whom Nabonidus exalted under the name Sîn and in whose house at Ḥarrān we read “the house of the crescent and the tahlīl.” As for “as long as one calls to God,” it makes the joy renewed with every one who calls to God, so the chant is a reception that recurs for everyone who carries the call.

And we read in “Banū al-Najjār” the name of a group that traces itself to al-najjār, the title that the Gospels carry for Jesus: “the carpenter” in Mark 6:3 and “the carpenter’s son” in Matthew 13:55, which in Syriac Aramaic is ܢܓܪܐ (naggārā). In the Babylonian Talmud the scholar able to solve a difficult problem is alluded to as “the carpenter, son of a carpenter” (Avodah Zarah 50b), and Rashi explains it as a scholar who is the son of a scholar. Ibn Sīrīn relates that their ancestor Taym al-Lāt was called al-Najjār because he “was circumcised with an adze” (Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Istīʿāb, entry on Ubayy ibn Kaʿb), and with the adze Ibrāhīm, peace be upon him, was circumcised in the ḥadīth of al-Bukhārī (3356). So the name combines the Abrahamic practice of circumcision with the title of the scholar and the teacher.

We read Banū al-Najjār as an order of followers of the Carpenter, on the model of the later Christian monastic orders, as the Jesuits are called “the Society of Jesus”: a community that walks the way of its founder and traces itself to him, that may have a monastery in which it gathers for worship and training (and there is no fault in a monastery), and whose members nonetheless marry and inherit lineage. Their daughters are a choir that chants for every new caller to God. This choir has a counterpart in the Syriac church: the “Daughters of the Covenant” ܒܢܬ ܩܝܡܐ (bnāt qyāmā), choirs of consecrated women whose founding Syriac tradition ascribes to Ephrem, and who perform praise in the churches (Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “Revisiting the Daughters of the Covenant,” Hugoye 8.2, 2005). These communities of ascetics and devout worshippers are earlier links on the line along which the Sufi orders run. It was with Banū al-Najjār, the maternal uncles of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, that the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam) alighted, and on their land his mosque was built; and the lineage that the genealogists relate stands beside this meaning, so the name combines lineage and the way.

Roots of Returning and Cutting: Three Keys

Among what stood out in the later chapters of this book are three roots that deserve to be set apart in this lexicon:

ḥ-w-r

The root ḥ–w–r means returning, as in ﴿إِنَّهُ ظَنَّ أَنْ لَنْ يَحُورَ﴾ (innahu ẓanna an lan yaḥūra) (“he thought he would never return,” al-Inshiqāq 84:14), and it occurs as well in the field of whiteness. We gather the two meanings when we read in the disciples (ḥawāriyyūn) their purity, their return and their support. Then we compare their name with Ḥawrān, Ḥarrān and al-Ḥīra, which are distinct places; we look at what connects each of them with the name of the community, and set this beside the spiritual comparison.

h-w-d

We read ﴿إِنَّا هُدْنَا إِلَيْكَ﴾ (innā hudnā ilayka) (“we have turned to You,” al-Aʿrāf 7:156) in the sense of returning and repentance, and we bring this meaning to mind in “those who were Jews” (alladhīna hādū). But we distinguish it from the institutional identity as it formed in history. A designation may settle while its bearers keep some share of the meaning of turning back, or that share may weaken, and the form of the name alone does not tell us which; the life of the community and its teachings do.

j-z-r

The origin of j-z-r according to Ibn Fāris is cutting; from it the butcher (jazzār) who cuts, and cutting itself, and the island (jazīra) because the water cut it and separated it from what surrounds it. And this very meaning runs in the sister languages: in Hebrew “גְּזֵרָה (gəzērāh)” (gezerah) is a land of cutting and separation, as in “the land of gezerah” (Leviticus 16:21–22), where the sin is carried to a land cut off and severed, and in Ezekiel 37:11 “נִגְזַרְנוּ (nigzarnū)” (nigzarnū) “we are cut off” on the tongue of the people who said that our hope is lost. From this same origin comes “al-Jazīra” (in Syriac Gazartā), upper Mesopotamia, and Edward Lipiński set out this correspondence in Aula Orientalis 17/18. The book’s reading: the land of exile in its first image is a land of cutting (qaṭʿ) and jazr, and the return is the undoing of that cutting.

Appendix 4: The Seven Ecumenical Councils: How the Doctrine Was Built Layer upon Layer

Introduction

The churches present the councils as a statement of an inherited doctrine. This book looks instead at what the councils made: they drew up an official, binding formula, and from among contending languages they chose one language for faith. Many of the ideas are indeed older than the councils, but it was the determination of what might be taught, who is recognised and who is excluded that changed the life of the communities and the fate of their books. In this sense we study the construction of official doctrine, and we ask: what was chosen? How was it formulated? And by what authority did it become the prevailing voice?

This appendix completes the table of Chapter 13 and follows how codification and authority affected belief; then we read what the dissenters themselves preserved. The objection of some may come close to the meaning of divine oneness (tawḥīd), and the dispute of others may fall within a shared faith in the divinity of the Masīḥ, so we work through each case in detail until we know its point of comparison.

This appendix is read together with the table of the seven councils in Chapter 13. There the reader finds the complete picture on a single page, arranged in a table, and here finds it explained in four connected aspects.

From Dispute to Binding Belief

In 325 the Council of Nicaea affirmed that the Son is equal to the Father in substance, and in doing so it confronted Arius, who affirmed for the Son a standing prior to the world but did not make him equal to the Father in eternity. The Constantinopolitan creed of 381 then expanded the statement on the Holy Spirit. After these, Ephesus and Chalcedon dealt with the formulas that describe the union of divinity and humanity. So the questions followed one another and changed, and at each stage what could be accepted as doctrine was fixed anew.

What we criticise is this shift: a particular formula for understanding the text becomes a condition of belonging, and then it is joined to political punishment. The dissenters may well have been sincere in seeking the meaning, but when the state favours one of them by force it changes the conditions of the inquiry itself. The history of an idea then becomes also the history of whoever was able to impose it, to preserve its books, and to exclude those who contested it.

The Role of Rule in the Decisions

Constantine called the Council of Nicaea, and his concern was the unity of the empire after the political and religious struggle it had passed through. Theodosius I called the council of 381, after the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 had favoured the Nicene faith. Rule and belief are interwoven in these events, yet the theological debate came before the decisions and went on beside them, and this interweaving did not erase it.

Ephesus too was tied to court policy and to the rivalry among the church sees, and Chalcedon was convened in the reign of Marcian, after the balance of authority had changed. What became the law of doctrine, then, also passed through historical and institutional conditions, which a researcher can study in the records of the councils and in the letters of their parties.

Among the correspondence of Cyril of Alexandria there is a letter that preserves a list of gifts he sent to officials of the court in Constantinople after the Council of Ephesus. It is Letter 96 in the collection of his letters, and with it goes the letter of his archdeacon Epiphanius. Volker Menze studied this correspondence in “Blessings, Bribes, and Bishops” (2022). Money and influence, then, had their share in tipping the formula.

We set this history beside the Qurʾānic warning against taking the rabbis and the monks as lords, and we ask: where does human interpretation exceed its rank and become binding like revelation? In the records of each council and its reports we see how this meaning was realised in its actual setting.

The Defeated Are Closer to Tawḥīd

We see that many of the voices the institution defeated preserved aspects closer to the origin of tawḥīd. Arius objected and rejected equality in substance, though he affirmed for the Son a standing prior to the world. Those who differed over the Spirit brought other formulas, and their adherents did not agree in the rest of their belief. When we specify what each party rejected and what it affirmed, the significance of its resistance appears to us.

The Church of the East stressed the humanity of the Masīḥ, and yet it believes in his divinity. The opponents of icons raised a different question, about image and veneration, and the fundamentals of Christian belief remained with both parties. In the motives that led these groups to affirm God’s transcendence, and in their teaching, we look for what remains of the trace of the first message.

This material widens our picture of the past, so that we no longer see only the doctrine that prevailed. The dissenters preserved questions and readings, and some of these help us recover the trace of the message that we see as older than all the contending formulas.

Speaking about God without Knowledge

In Āl ʿImrān 78 and al-Baqara 79 the Qurʾān separates the speech of God from what human beings ascribe to Him. We bring this distinction to mind whenever we see an interpretation turning into a creed, and we ask: what did the text say, and what did the explanation add to it? Then we follow the reports, and they show us who the authors of the formulas were and how those formulas gained their authority.

In the verse ﴿لَا تَغْلُوا فِي دِينِكُمْ وَلَا تَقُولُوا عَلَى اللَّهِ إِلَّا الْحَقَّ﴾ (lā taghlū fī dīnikum wa-lā taqūlū ʿalā Llāhi illā l-ḥaqq) (“do not go to excess in your religion, and do not say about God anything but the truth,” al-Nisāʾ 4:171) we have a criterion by which to criticise deification. We read it knowing that the churches affirmed the humanity of the Masīḥ as well, and differed over its union with divinity. What we discuss is the attribution to him of the divine station, and what that means as the adherents of each confession explained it.

What Imposition Changes in the Fate of the Text

In the history of the councils we see meanings that were once disputed turning into laws that draw the boundaries of the community. When these laws are joined to the state, disagreement leads to exile, confiscation and conflict, though this varies from age to age and from ruler to ruler. For that reason, understanding the history of authority is a condition for understanding the texts that survived and those that were lost.

Here we read the doctrinal aspect of the institutional construction of the fitna of the Dajjāl: an imposed formula veils the origin of the message and then forbids the human being to question it. Its other aspect, the civilisational one, is set out in Chapter 21. The Qurʾānic reading from which the book proceeds returns the Masīḥ to the station of servanthood and messengerhood, and still preserves for him that he is a word from God and a spirit from Him, keeping the elevated language of the spirit in its proper place.

Appendix 5: The Suppressed Line: Voices of the Monotheists That Did Not Die Out

Introduction

The history of the victorious church preserved a wide part of the heritage of its adversaries, because it reported their sayings in its refutations of them. If we want to hear those voices, we read the refutations beside what survives of the communities’ own texts, and we distinguish between what an adversary says about another’s belief and what a person says about his own. When we recover the defeated voices in this way, the picture of early Christianity and of what followed it widens before us, and it is no longer reduced to a single doctrine that moved on without dispute.

Chapter 15 presented communities whose positions differed on deification and on church authority. In this appendix we gather what links their experiences, how they resisted imposition and how they met suppression, while keeping the differences among their beliefs. For kinship among them in the question of tawḥīd runs along two paths at once, as the table of that chapter shows: one community inherits tawḥīd as a line passed down from an older community, and another returns at a later time to the same texts and recovers it from them.

This appendix is read together with Chapter 15 (the map of the suppressed monotheist communities); the map and the table are in the main text, and the deepening of knowledge is in these pages.

The Thread of Tawḥīd across the Centuries

The question of the deification of the Masīḥ kept returning, generation after generation, from the Ebionites to those who rejected the Trinity in the age of the Reformation. Those who raised it were not of one mind: the Arians are not the Ebionites, and the reports of the Paulicians and the Cathars bring in other questions, such as dualism and the attitude to the material world. When we set out these differences, the various aspects of opposition become clear to us, and we learn what each rested upon.

This map goes back to the texts to which the dissenters returned and to the meanings they understood from them, and it shows us how divergent readings came out of a single heritage. Objection also never ceased to be renewed, and in its renewal we see a witness that the prophetic origin can be recovered, and that the question of the relation between God and the Masīḥ stayed alive after every official formulation.

The Geography of Tawḥīd: The Margins Confronting the Centre

The East was close to the tongues that carried the message and to their settings, and communities there preserved its reports: the Ebionites in Transjordan and the Levant, the Mandaeans in Mesopotamia, the monasteries of al-Ḥīra, from whose life Kufa inherited something, and the Arabian Peninsula, which we read as the peninsula of tawḥīd. Yet the East itself was also the home of great schools that formulated the theology of deification, just as the Western lands for their part knew opponents of it. For this reason we trace the geography by the routes along which people learned, ideas travelled and communities became independent, to see how ideas worked in the centres and in the margins.

When meaning passes from one tongue to another and from one country to another it changes, and it may be reorganised until it stands in a new construction. This is what we read in Paul: in the content of his letters, in their effect and in what was attached to them. In them the report of the Masīḥ passed into a new construction that made death and resurrection the centre by which salvation is interpreted.

Exclusion and Its Effect on Memory

In a number of these conflicts one scene recurs: the dissenter is stigmatised in his religion, the institution excludes him, and the political authority punishes him. The routes to this differ; debate may precede the decision, and a king may rely on one community and then be turned against it by his successor. So we study each case in its own history and then draw out the pattern that unites them, which is that the institution can turn a difference in understanding into a danger to the dissenter’s life, his place and his books.

As a result memory became distorted, so that more of the victor’s books reach us than of the vanquished’s. The discoveries have restored some balance, but they do not all carry a single monotheistic belief: what was found at Qumran, at Nag Hammadi and in the manuscripts of the churches is material of great diversity. Their benefit is that they let us hear history in more voices than the one to which authority settled.

An example is a gospel under the name of Barnabas, whose title was known in late antiquity and then rejected. The Decretum Gelasianum lists it in the words Evangelium nomine Barnabae apocryphum, “a gospel under the name of Barnabas, apocryphal”, and the List of Sixty Books has it as “the Gospel according to Barnabas.” The title was current and it was forbidden, and nothing known of its text has survived. The Italian text that circulates today under that name is late, written in the sixteenth century or thereabouts, and it is not cited as an ancient text.

Islam: The Great Return of the Suppressed Line

The Qurʾān came down in a milieu that knew religious disputation, in which the Arabs had links with the churches, and it addressed that milieu with a call to tawḥīd, which we read as a continuation of the message of the prophets and a correction of what had entered into the understanding of it. The people’s response to the call came over a long history of transformation. A region may pass under a new rule and its inhabitants embrace a new religion; the two are connected, though the time and rhythm of each may differ.

In Muhammad and the Believers (2010) Fred Donner draws the first movement as a movement of “believers”, which included Jews and Christians before the boundaries between the communities settled into their later form. We connect this reading with the revival of the prophetic origin that the book presented: the call returned to tawḥīd, and the station of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, was again set out apart from deification. And in ﴿قُل هُوَ اللَّـهُ أَحَدٌ﴾ (qul huwa Llāhu aḥad) (“Say: He is God, One,” al-Ikhlāṣ 112:1) we read the origin on which the messages meet, and by which what entered into the understanding of them is corrected.

The Return of the Voices to History

With this map we meant to return the dissenters to history, with their names and their ideas, and to show the suppression that voices of monotheism met. Once they are back in it, the questions that kept being renewed appear, and the past looks more diverse than the account of the prevailing doctrine alone suggests.

In our book these questions connect with the Muḥammadan message, which renewed the knowledge of God, corrected the image of the Masīḥ and opened the way of purification and knowledge. The tawḥīd the book means is older than the institutions that contended over representing it, and the voices of the dissenters illuminate what remains of its trace.

Appendix 6: Studies the Book Engaged With

Introduction

The idea of this book took shape from reading the Qurʾān and the Arabic tongue, and along its way it met studies whose authors treated parts of the same questions. We gather their names here, with the places where we benefited from them, in acknowledgement of what they achieved and of what they opened for research, and then we state the path the book followed afterwards when it gathered these parts and compared them.

Table of Studies

Where the Book Stands in Relation to These Works

G. R. S. Mead asked a bold question in “Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.?” (1903): does the Masīḥ have a history older than the one people have agreed upon? The boldness of his question helped us, but we answer it with other material and a different dating. We distinguish the Qurʾānic ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, from the Jesus of the first century, and we read the former in the record of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, in the sixth century BCE. Our path diverges from his in the source to which we go back and in the way we make the match.

Salibi distinguished between ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Jesus, as part of his reading of the geography of the texts, and Muhammad Mansur then developed his own project in books that include The Messiah of Mecca and Tawrāt Makka wa-l-nabī al-muntaẓar (“The Torah of Mecca and the Awaited Prophet”). We benefited from both because they opened the question of identity and because of the material of names and reports they gathered. Our identification of Nabonidus, however, rests on another course, which joins the Qurʾān to the Babylonian record and to Taymāʾ. From Salibi and Mansur we take their questions and their reports, and we leave their geography.

Mansur’s usefulness shows in practice when he calls for a review of a Hebrew word, or draws out a report that the usual reading missed. Among these are the reports he gives of the Ark, ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Kaʿb ibn Luʾayy (Tawrāt Makka wa-l-nabī al-muntaẓar, pp. 294–295 and 347), the figure of Joshua the priest in Zechariah 6 (pp. 344–345), and his reading of names as attributes and functions. We ourselves went back to the report of the Ark in al-Tījān and compared it with the report of al-Iklīl (“The Crown”), and then set it beside what Nabonidus did when he recovered the traces of those before him. What we took from Mansur is material for research; his interpretation of light and spirit and his identification of places we do not carry into this book as a ready-made result.

Muhammad Shahrour, in the modern Arabic reading, took an interest in the differences between the words of revelation. We agree with him that the meaning of a word deserves attention, and then we go on in the spiritual and historical interpretation in the way this book has presented.

Each of these scholars has his own question and material. Schoeps studied Jewish Christianity, Shlomo Pines published the material of Tathbīt dalāʾil al-nubuwwa, Eisenman investigated the relation of James the Just to the Qumran texts, and Maccoby made Paul the founder of the new Christianity. From their works we take the evidence and the discussions that bear on the subject of our book, and then we connect them with one another in the reading we present.

Paul-Alain Beaulieu presented in “The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon” (1989) one of the fullest studies written on Nabonidus, treating the documents of his reign, his religious reform and his residence at Taymāʾ. He returned in “Nabonidus the Mad King” (2007) to reconsider the image of the “mad king”, and in his research he compared the Prayer of Nabonidus with the story of Daniel 4 and traced the memory of Nabonidus that stands behind the name of Nebuchadnezzar. The book reads the Babylonian record and the Qurʾānic mention as two memories of one person.

François de Blois analysed in “Naṣrānī and Ḥanīf” (2002) the background of the two words naṣrānī and ḥanīf, and Christian Julien Robin published what the Ḥimyarite inscriptions attest of religious life before Islam. We go back to the first for the history of names and to the second for knowing what the stone preserved, and through the two together we read the relation of the tongue to the communities that carried it.

Among the more recent studies are what Ehrman wrote on the history of conceptions of the standing of Jesus, what Donner wrote on the formation of the community of believers, Lawson on the interpretation of the crucifixion verse, and what Akyol presented of the image of the Masīḥ in Islam. Gallez put forward a hypothesis of his own on the connections of Jewish Christianity with Islam. Each of these works has its place in the book. The identification of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, with Nabonidus, however, is a reading that belongs to this book alone, and it founds that reading on the record of Babylon and Taymāʾ and on the mention in the Qurʾān.

We also benefited from Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā in their renewal of outlook, from Saʿīd Ayyūb in his study of the Dajjāl, from al-Masīrī in his critique of modern civilisation, and from Imran Hosein in his readings of the signs of the Hour. We have shown in the chapters where we benefited, and alongside this we have stated our own understanding of the return, of knowledge and technology, and of the purpose of human power.

Those, then, are the people with whom the book engaged, and this is what their studies added to its material. The match between ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and Nabonidus, and the rereading of memory, names and geography on its basis that followed from it, is what this book itself adds.

Appendix 7: Index of Key Terms

In this index we have gathered the terms to which the reader returns often, and we have explained the meaning of each in the context of the book, particularly those that need explanation or that we use in a way that differs from the familiar one.

Theological and Doctrinal Terms

Linguistic Terms

Historical Terms

Philosophical and Civilisational Terms

Key Qurʾānic Terms

When we say “metaphorical prophecy” we mean knowledge, purification and the announcing of what is absent by God’s leave; we do not mean a new prophecy of legislation. When we compare the Muḥammadan Reality with the First Light and the First Intellect, we compare them in how they describe the connection between God and creation, and then we read their ranks as each school sees them. The place of the Holy Spirit among them is a separate question in this comparison.

Note

Whoever wants to go further into the meaning of one of these terms and into its argument should return to the place in the main text where it was discussed. This index was made as an aid to reading; the detail of usage and its evidence is in the chapters.

Appendix 8: Core Academic Bibliography

First: Primary and Classical Sources

Foundational Religious Texts

1. The Noble Qurʾān

The muṣḥaf in the transmission of Ḥafṣ from ʿĀṣim. The references in the main text point to the sūra and the verse number; the interpretive reading is distinguished from the wording of the quotation.

2. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (d. 256 AH)

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, the chapters on the ḥadīths of the prophets, on the trials, and on the merits of the Anṣār. The numbers are checked against the name of the book and the chapter because the numbering differs between editions; among the places to which the book refers is the report of Salmān about the interval between ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) and Muḥammad ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), number 3948 in the common numbering.

3. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (d. 261 AH)

Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, the Book of Trials and the Portents of the Hour, the ḥadīths of the Dajjāl and the descent of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him); the Book of the Prayer of Travellers, the ḥadīth of the opening verses of al-Kahf, number 809; and the Book of the Mosques, seeking refuge from trials, number 588, in the numbering of Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī.

Classical Islamic References

4. Imām al-Qāsim ibn Ibrāhīm al-Rassī (d. 860 CE / 246 AH)

• “al-Radd ʿalā al-Naṣārā” (“The Refutation of the Christians”)

One of the earliest Islamic replies to Christianity; it concentrates on the purity of divine oneness (tawḥīd) and on reason; preserved in Islamic libraries.

5. al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (d. 463 AH)

• “Tārīkh Baghdād” (“The History of Baghdad”)

Contains information about the Eastern and Nestorian churches in Baghdad.

Ancient Christian and Jewish Texts

6. The Book of Daniel (Old Testament)

• 2nd century BCE in its final form; the story of chapter 4 preserves the memory of Nabonidus behind the name of Nebuchadnezzar, as Beaulieu compared it with the Prayer of Nabonidus
• Visions and predictions about the end of time and the Messiah to come
• The references to the four beasts and the little horn

7. The Book of Enoch (1 Enoch)

1 Enoch, a composite work made up of sections of varying dates; Ge’ez preserves its complete text, and its Aramaic fragments at Qumran correspond to it. The dating of one section does not automatically carry over to the Book of Parables or to all the layers of the collection.

8. The Targums (Targumim), the Aramaic Translations of the Bible

The Targum Onkelos on the Torah and the Targum Jonathan on the Prophets, with differing dates for the material and for its collection and transmission. The passages are checked in the particular text, and not by assigning all the Targums to a single century.

9. The Qumran Scrolls (Dead Sea Scrolls)

• 4Q242 "Prayer of Nabonidus"

An Aramaic text about Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king; it speaks of the king’s illness at Taymāʾ and his healing after forgiveness; of decisive importance for linking the Qurʾān with Babylonian history. The book reads in it Nabonidus as ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and the Jewish gāzer as Yaḥyā (Appendix 1).

• 4Q246 "Son of God Aramaic Apocalypse"

An apocalyptic text about the “Son of God”; it reflects Jewish messianic expectations.

• Damascus Document (CD)

Rules of the religious community (the Essenes).

Second: Western Academic Studies

Babylonian and Ancient Near Eastern Studies

10. Beaulieu, Paul-Alain

• The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon 556-539 B.C.
• Yale University Press, New Haven, 1989
• The most comprehensive modern academic study of Nabonidus
• Includes: the historical context, the religious reforms, the residence in Taymāʾ

11. Grayson, A.K.

• Babylonian Historical-Literary Texts
• University of Toronto Press, 1975
• Original Babylonian texts relating to Nabonidus

12. Beaulieu, Paul-Alain

• "Nabonidus the Mad King: A Reconsideration"
• In: M. Heinz and M. H. Feldman (eds.), Representations of Political Power, Eisenbrauns, 2007, pp. 137–166
• A critical chapter that re-evaluates the policy of Nabonidus

Studies of the Bible and Early Christianity

13. Collins, John J.

• Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel
• Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1993
• A comprehensive analysis of the Book of Daniel and of the messianic visions

14. Dupont-Sommer, André

• The Essene Writings from Qumran
• Blackwell, Oxford, 1961
• Translation and analysis of the Essene texts from the Dead Sea

15. García Martínez, Florentino

García Martínez, Florentino. The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English. Brill / Eerdmans, 1994. A translation of a wide range of Qumran texts.

16. Vermes, Geza

• The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective
• SCM Press, London, 1977
• An in-depth study of the Qumran community and the Essenes

Early Jewish Studies and Jewish Christianity

17. Schoeps, Hans-Joachim

• Theologie und Geschichte des Judenchristentums
• Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 1949
• A pioneering study of Jewish Christianity and its influence on Islam

18. Pines, Shlomo

• The Jewish Christians of the Early Centuries of Christianity According to a New Source
• Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Jerusalem, 1966
• Ancient Jewish-Christian texts preserved in ʿAbd al-Jabbār

19. Eisenman, Robert

• James the Brother of Jesus: The History and Legacy of the First Church
• Viking Press, New York, 1997
• An in-depth study of James the Just, the brother of Jesus of Nazareth, and of the Jewish-Christian tradition

20. Eisenman, Robert

• The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians
• Element Books, Rockport MA, 1996
• Linking the Qumran scrolls with the history of early Christianity

21. Maccoby, Hyam

• The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity
• Harper & Row, New York, 1986
• A critical Jewish study of Paul and his role in the deification of Jesus

22. Tabor, James D.

• Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity
• Simon & Schuster, New York, 2012
• A comparison between the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of Paul

Studies of the History of Jesus and of Christianity

23. Van Voorst, Robert E.

• Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence
• Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, 2000
• The most comprehensive academic study, accepted in Western universities, of the external evidence for the historical Jesus (outside the Gospels): the Roman, Jewish and early sources
• Significance: it gathers the Roman and Jewish testimonies about the Jesus of the first century, and so helps to distinguish what is established about Jesus of Nazareth as a historical man from the image that was built after him, a distinction on which the book rests

24. Ehrman, Bart D.

• How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
• HarperOne, New York, 2014
• A secular account of the process by which Jesus was deified after his crucifixion

25. Vermes, Geza

Vermes, Geza. Jesus the Jew: A Historian’s Reading of the Gospels. Collins, 1973; reissued in later editions. A study of the image of Jesus in his Jewish environment.

26. Sanders, E.P.

• Jesus and Judaism
• Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1985
• A Jewish context for the teachings of Jesus

Studies of Early Islam and the Monotheist Movement

27. Donner, Fred M.

• Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam
• Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2010
• The theory of the early monotheist movement (Believers Movement)
• Significance: it explains how the first Islam was a monotheist movement that included different religions

28. Hoyland, Robert G.

• Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam
• Routledge, London, 2001
• A comprehensive Arabian context before Islam
• Includes: monotheism, Arab Christianity, Judaism

29. Hoyland, Robert G.

• Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam
• Darwin Press, Princeton, 1997
• Contemporary non-Islamic testimonies about early Islam

Academic Qurʾānic Studies

30. Lawson, Todd C.

• The Crucifixion and the Qur'an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought
• Oneworld, Oxford, 2009
• A deep Qurʾānic analysis of the crucifixion verses and their implications
• Includes: the opinions of the classical and modern exegetes

31. Lumbard, Joseph E. B. (ed.)

• Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition: Essays by Western Muslim Scholars
• World Wisdom, Bloomington, 2004 (expanded edition 2009)
• A collection of essays by Western Muslim scholars (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Joseph Lumbard, Reza Shah-Kazemi and others) that criticise modern interpretive rigidity and rethink the place of tradition

Semitic and Religious Linguistics

32. Al-Jallad, Ahmad & Al-Manaser, Ali

Al-Jallad, Ahmad, and Ali Al-Manaser. “The Pre-Islamic Divine Name ʿsy and the Background of the Qurʾānic Jesus.” Journal of the International Qurʾanic Studies Association 6 (2021): 107–136. An epigraphic study that holds it likely that the form ʿsy corresponds to the Qurʾānic name of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, and so attests to the circulation of the Arabic form in the north of the Peninsula before Islam. The book reads the meaning of the name in the language from al-ʿīs, which is whiteness and clarity, and from al-ʿaysh, life (Chapters 2 and 7). Al-Jallad also has: “Ancient Allāh: An Epigraphic Reconstruction,” Journal of Semitic Studies 70/2 (2025): 693–748.

33. Ibn ʿĀshūr, Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir (Ibn ʿĀshūr)

• “al-Taḥrīr wa-l-tanwīr”, the commentary on Sūrat Āl ʿImrān, volume three
• Dār Saḥnūn for Publishing and Distribution, Tunis
• Ibn ʿĀshūr discussed the mechanism of the phonetic transition from Yasūʿ/Yashūʿ to ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, by way of phonetic reversal (metathesis); this is the traditional view that counts ʿĪsā as an Arabicisation of Yasūʿ
• Significance: we present it as the classical view that this book opposes; the book reads ʿĪsā from its letters ʿ-y-s, from which comes al-ʿīs, whiteness and clarity, and links it with the field of life ʿ-y-sh, and reads Yashūʿ from the root y-sh-ʿ; so they are two different names (see Chapter 2 and Appendix 3), and ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) is a figure earlier than Jesus

34. de Blois, François

• "Naṣrānī and Ḥanīf: Studies on the Religious Vocabulary of Christianity and of Islam"
• Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 65, No. 1, pp. 1-30
• London, 2002
• A precise linguistic study of key religious words
• Decisive significance: the origins of the words naṣārā ("Christians") and ḥanīf; and the book reads al-naṣārā, together with the Anṣār and the Nazarene, from n-ṣ-r, alongside the meaning of the vowed one (Chapter 8)

35. Ullendorff, Edward

• The Semitic Languages of Ethiopia: A Comparative Phonology
• Taylor's Foreign Press, London, 1955
• A reference study in Semitic-Ethiopic linguistics; useful for tracing the courses of sounds between South Semitic and Arabic/Hebrew

Archaeological and Epigraphic Studies

36. Robin, Christian Julien

• "Arabia and Ethiopia"
• In: Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity
• Oxford University Press, 2012
• An archaeological study of Arab Christianity and monotheism
• Includes: Ḥimyar, the Ghassānids, the Lakhmids

37. al-Ansary, Abdul Rahman

• Qaryat al-Fau: A Portrait of Pre-Islamic Civilisation in Saudi Arabia
• University of Riyadh Press, 1982
• Archaeology of the ancient Arab cities

38. The inscriptions of Taymāʾ published in the Saudi-German excavation project

Taymāʾ II: Catalogue of the Inscriptions Discovered in the Saudi-German Excavations at Taymāʾ 2004–2015. Publications of the German Archaeological Institute. Catalogue of the volume and its text.

39. Healey, John F.

• The Religion of the Nabataeans: A Conspectus
• Brill, Leiden, 2001
• A reference study of the religion of the Nabataeans and their inscriptions

Third: Modern Islamic and Arabic Studies

40. Professor Saʿīd Maḥmūd Ayyūb

• al-Masīḥ al-Dajjāl: Dirāsa naqdiyya fī al-ʿaqīda al-islāmiyya (“The Masīḥ al-Dajjāl: A Critical Study in Islamic Doctrine”)
• Dār al-Hilāl, Cairo, 1987
• An Islamic study of the Dajjāl and the theory of Paul
• One of the first studies to link the Dajjāl with Paul

41. Asad, Muḥammad (Muhammad Asad / Leopold Weiss)

• al-Ṭarīq ilā Makka (“The Road to Mecca”)
• Translated by: ʿAfīf al-Baʿlabakkī
• Dār al-ʿIlm lil-Malāyīn, Beirut
• A personal biography of a Western Islamic thinker
• Includes: a modern understanding of Islam and Christianity

42. Dr ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Masīrī

• al-ʿIlmāniyya al-juzʾiyya wa-l-ʿilmāniyya al-shāmila (“Partial Secularism and Comprehensive Secularism”)
• Dār al-Shurūq, Cairo, 2002
• A critical civilisational study of the modern West
• Includes: the concept of the Dajjāl and material civilisation

43. Shaykh ʿImrān Nadhīr Ḥusayn

• Jerusalem in the Qur'ān: An Islamic View of the Destiny of Jerusalem
• Masjid Jāmiʿah, San Fernando (Trinidad), 2002
• A pivotal book in the Shaykh’s eschatology (the knowledge of the portents of the Hour); it links the Qurʾānic promise in Sūrat al-Isrāʾ with the appearance of the Dajjāl and the decline of the West, and presents an Islamic reading of the prophecies of the end of time
• Complemented by his book: An Islamic View of Gog and Magog in the Modern World, 2009

44. Akyol, Mustafa

• The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims
• St. Martin's Press, New York, 2017
• A contemporary and popular reading of the image of Jesus in Islam

45. Gallez, Édouard-Marie

• Le messie et son prophète: aux origines de l'Islam
• Éditions de Paris, 2005
• A French study of the origins of Islam out of the Christian-Jewish conflicts
• Significance: a bold attempt at writing the history of Islam

Fourth: The Qumran Scrolls (Dead Sea Scrolls), Primary Sources

46. Charlesworth, James H. (ed.)

Charlesworth, James H., ed. The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994–. A series of editions of the texts and their translations; one consults the volume devoted to each text.

47. Qimron, Elisha & Strugnell, John

• Qumran Cave 4.V: Miqsat Ma'ase ha-Torah
• Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994
• A legal text from Qumran

48. Beyer, Klaus

• Die aramäischen Texte vom Toten Meer
• Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1984
• A comprehensive German translation of the Aramaic texts

Specific Important Texts:

4Q242: Prayer of Nabonidus

• The critical edition: J. J. Collins, «242. 4QPrayer of Nabonidus ar», in G. Brooke et al., Qumran Cave 4.XVII: Parabiblical Texts, Part 3 (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XXII), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, pp. 83–93, pl. VI
• The first edition (editio princeps): J. T. Milik, «Prière de Nabonide» et autres écrits d'un cycle de Daniel: Fragments araméens de Qumrân 4, in Revue Biblique 63, 1956, pp. 407–415
• The Aramaic text: it speaks of Nabonidus, the Babylonian king, and of his illness and healing
• Decisive significance: a direct link between Nabonidus and the Jewish religious texts

4Q246: Son of God Aramaic Apocalypse

• The apocalyptic text about the "Son of God"
• It reflects the messianic expectations

Fifth: Archaeology and Inscriptions (Epigraphy)

The Namārah Inscription (An-Namara Inscription, 328 CE)

49. Dussaud, René (avec F. Macler)

Dussaud, René, avec Frédéric Macler. “Inscription nabatéo-arabe d’En-Nemara.” Revue archéologique (1902): 409–421. The first publication of the Namārah inscription, a witness to Imruʾ al-Qays ibn ʿAmr, “king of all the Arabs,” who in the Arabic reports is among the kings of al-Ḥīra, and to Arabic and Arab kingship before Islam; his creed is taken from the context and the reports.

50. Bellamy, James A.

• "A New Reading of the Namārah Inscription"
• In: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 105, 1985, pp. 31–51
• A new reading of the Namārah inscription (328 CE, preserved in the Louvre Museum under number AO 4083)

Primary Archaeological Sources in the World’s Museums

51. The tablet of the Nabonidus records (Nabonidus Chronicle)

• Museum classification number: BM 35382, British Museum, London
• A cuneiform text that records the reign of Nabonidus, including the residence in Taymāʾ
• Available digitally: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_Sp-II-964
• Text and translation: https://www.livius.org/sources/content/mesopotamian-chronicles-content/abc-7-nabonidus-chronicle/

52. The Tayma Stone (The Tayma Stone / the Aramaic tablet of Taymāʾ)

• Museum classification number: AO1505, Louvre Museum, Paris
• An Aramaic inscription from the fifth century BCE describing the religious reforms in Taymāʾ
• It establishes the existence of a multi-layered religious scene in northern Arabia in the Babylonian period

53. The Nabonidus Stele from Taymāʾ

• Archive classification number: CDLI P519700, the CDLI database (Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative)
• Direct material archaeological evidence of the Babylonian presence in Taymāʾ
• Available digitally: https://cdli.ucla.edu/P519700

54. The Taymāʾ academic archaeological series (DAI Series Taymāʾ I-III)

• The joint Saudi-German excavation project
• Publications of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI)
• Taymāʾ I: https://publications.dainst.org/books/dai/catalog/book/61
• Taymāʾ III: https://publications.dainst.org/books/dai/catalog/book/2176
• It covers all the inscriptions, antiquities and the cultural environment of Taymāʾ across the ages, and is the most comprehensive and most specialised reference in the field

Other Inscriptions of Taymāʾ

55. The inscriptions of the Taymāʾ Museum and other collections

Taymāʾ III: Catalogue of the Inscriptions in the Taymāʾ Museum and Other Collections. Publications of the German Archaeological Institute. Catalogue of the volume.

56. The archaeological exploration, the environment and the cultural contact at Taymāʾ

Taymāʾ I: Archaeological Exploration, Palaeoenvironment, Cultural Contacts. Publications of the German Archaeological Institute. Catalogue of the volume.

57. Schaudig, Hanspeter

Schaudig, Hanspeter. Die Inschriften Nabonids von Babylon und Kyros’ des Großen. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2001. A critical edition of the inscriptions of Nabonidus and Cyrus and of related texts.

Other Important Inscriptions

58. Robin, Christian Julien

• "Ḥimyar, Aksum, and Arabia Deserta in Late Antiquity: The Epigraphic Evidence"
• In: Arabs and Empires before Islam, edited by: Greg Fisher
• Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 127–171
• The epigraphic evidence for the Judaism and Christianity of Yemen in the late periods

59. Hoyland, Robert

• "Epigraphy"
• In: Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, edited by: J. D. McAuliffe, Vol. 2
• Brill, Leiden, 2002, pp. 25–43
• The South Arabian inscriptions and their Qurʾānic context

Sixth: Reference Works and Encyclopaedias

60. McAuliffe, Jane Dammen (ed.)

• Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an
• 6 volumes
• Brill, Leiden, 2001-2006
• A comprehensive encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān: the verses, the exegetes, the topics

61. Freedman, David Noel (ed.)

• The Anchor Bible Dictionary
• 6 volumes
• Doubleday, New York, 1992
• A comprehensive encyclopaedia of the Bible and its subjects

62. Brown, Colin (ed.)

• The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology
• 4 volumes
• Zondervan, 1986
• A comprehensive dictionary of Christian words and concepts

Seventh: Secondary References and Critical Studies

63. Stroumsa, Guy G.

• The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity
• Oxford University Press, 2015
• A broad civilisational context for the Abrahamic religions

64. Crone, Patricia & Cook, Michael

• Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World
• Cambridge University Press, 1977
• A critical theory about the origins of Islam (controversial)

65. Wansbrough, John

• Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation
• Oxford University Press, 1977
• A critical study of the origins of the Qurʾānic texts

Eighth: Supplementary Studies and Sources

66. al-Khūrī, Mūsā Dīb

al-Khūrī, Mūsā Dīb. “al-Tawrāh: Kitābāt mā bayna al-ʿahdayn” (The Torah: Writings between the Two Testaments), Dār al-Ṭalīʿa al-Jadīda, Damascus, 1998. An Arabic translation of material from the ancient writings and the Qumran manuscripts; the central passages are compared with the critical editions of the texts.

67. Salibi, Kamal

• al-Baḥth ʿan Yasūʿ: Qirāʾa jadīda fī al-anājīl (“The Search for Jesus: A New Reading of the Gospels”)
• Dār al-Shurūq, Beirut/Amman, 1999
• Note: this reference is cited for information and comparison only; his critical reading of the Gospels agrees in part with the book’s method of reconsidering the Gospel texts, but differs from it in determining the identity of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) and his time
• Significance: it raises the right questions about the Gospels and the history of Jesus, and the book’s identification of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) and his time rests on the record of Babylon and Taymāʾ

68. The Clementine writings (Pseudo-Clementine Literature)

• Recognitions (Recognitiones) & Homilies (Homiliae)
• The Greek-Syriac text: the third and fourth centuries CE, edited from older sources (second century CE)
• English translation: Roberts, Alexander & Donaldson, James (eds.)

Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 8 T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1885 (repr. Hendrickson, 1994)

The Clementines contain the image of the “enemy man” and a dispute over James and Peter. The book reads in them the memory of the first community’s struggle with the Pauline tendency, as researchers have read in the “enemy man” an allusion to Paul, and the text does not name him. Recognitions 1:70–71 and the Letter of Peter to James are to be consulted together with their context.

69. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751 AH)

• Hidāyat al-ḥayārā fī ajwibat al-Yahūd wa-l-Naṣārā (“Guidance for the Perplexed in Answering the Jews and the Christians”)
• Edited by: Muḥammad Aḥmad al-Ḥāj, Dār al-Qalam, Damascus, 3rd ed., 1996
• One of the deepest classical Islamic replies to Christianity and Judaism
• Significance: Ibn al-Qayyim details the evidence for the distortion of the texts of the two Testaments, and discusses the structure of the distorted Gospel in a way that agrees with what Chapter 11 establishes about the distortion of Malachi and Mark

70. Sand, Shlomo

Sand, Shlomo. The Invention of the Jewish People. Verso, 2009; Hebrew original 2008. The Arabic translation Ikhtirāʿ al-shaʿb al-yahūdī (“The Invention of the Jewish People”), translated by Saʿīd ʿAyyāsh, Dār al-Sāqī. He shows that “the Jewish people” as a comprehensive national identity is a modern formulation, and presents the effect of the Hasmonean state in enlarging the community by Judaisation; so he supports the book’s distinction between the Children of Israel and the Jews (Appendix 9).

71. Dupont-Sommer, André

Dupont-Sommer, André. The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Preliminary Survey. Blackwell, 1952. One of the early studies of the manuscripts and of their comparison with Christianity. It is to be consulted together with his book The Essene Writings from Qumran (1961), mentioned above; every conclusion ascribed to him is cited with its location.

72. Collins, John J.

Collins, John J. The Scepter and the Star. Doubleday, 1995; second expanded edition, Eerdmans, 2010. A reference on the diversity of messianic expectation and on the Qumran texts, among prophet, priest and king; from it the book reads the union of kingship and priesthood in ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) (Chapters 10 and 24), and the identification of the awaited figures is the book’s own reading.

73. al-Khālidī, Ṭarīf (Tarif Khalidi)

• The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature
• Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2001
• A collection and critical edition of three hundred and three texts of the sayings and reports of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) in Arabic Islamic literature, with each text referred to its Arabic source by page and number, arranged by century from the second to the twelfth centuries AH
• Significance for Chapter 4: the most extensive documentation available of what we call “the Islamic Gospel”; all its transmitters are from the people of asceticism, and the image of ʿĪsā in it is that of the wanderer who does not build, which is the image of this chapter. Khalidi’s reading of the formation of the corpus differs from the book’s reading, and we have recorded it in its place

74. Mansur, Muhammad Mustafa

Mansur, Muhammad. “Tawrāt Makka wa-l-nabī al-muntaẓar” (The Torah of Mecca and the Awaited Prophet), Kanz Nāshirūn, first edition, 2026, 622 pages, ISBN 978-614-507-104-4. It is useful for reading the wording and following the reports, but his geography and his spiritual conceptions are not adopted automatically. The passages to which the book refers: pp. 294–295, 344–347, 365, 412–414, 423–428, 505–515. He also has “al-Turāth al-maʾthūr” (The Transmitted Heritage) and English works on the subject.

Supplementary Sources for Texts and Comparisons

Inscriptions of the kings of Babylon: Weiershäuser, Frauke, and Jamie Novotny. The Royal Inscriptions of Amēl-Marduk, Neriglissar, and Nabonidus, Kings of Babylon. RINBE 2, Eisenbrauns, 2020. The open-access text; and the digital texts in ORACC, the inscriptions of Nabonidus.

The Prayer of Nabonidus: Sugie Takuma. “Nabonidus and the Curse of the Moon-God.” Bulletin of the Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan 61/1 (2018): 1–12. The study. The Aramaic text is on p. 2, following Collins’s edition.

Healing and forgiveness: Hägerland, Tobias. Jesus and the Forgiveness of Sins: An Aspect of His Prophetic Mission. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

The early Christian strata: Hurtado, Larry W. Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Eerdmans, 2003. And his discussion of the term dyadic devotion. The book distinguishes between the description of worship and the conciliar formulation of the Trinity.

The dating of P52: Roberts, C. H. An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library. Manchester, 1935. Nongbri, Brent. “The Use and Abuse of P52,” Harvard Theological Review 98 (2005): 23–48. Orsini, Pasquale, and Willy Clarysse. “Early New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 88 (2012): 443–474.

The Fathers and the councils: Eusebius, “Church History” 3:27, and “Life of Constantine” 3; Jerome, Letter 112, section 13; and the Nicene canon of the year 325. The descriptions of the groups are compared with their formulations in these sources, and the translations in the collection of the Fathers are consulted.

The Eastern churches: The exposition of the faith on the website of the Ethiopian Church and its statement on the nature and the union. For the contemporary description of the Church of the East: the Common Christological Declaration, 11 November 1994; it is not used as a substitute for the sources of the earlier ages.

The light before Ibn ʿArabī: Sahl al-Tustarī, “Tafsīr al-Tustarī”, commentary on al-Najm: 13. Translation by Annabel Keeler and Ali Keeler, Tafsīr al-Tustarī, 2011, p. 213. The translated edition.

The Magi and the Masīḥ as teacher: The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, chapters 7–8 and 51–52 in the translation published in The Apocryphal Gospels, translated by B. Harris Cowper, 1867. The catalogue of copies and editions. And the Revelation of the Magi in the Chronicle of Zuqnīn; Brent Landau’s catalogue entry.

The narrative of the ark: “al-Tījān fī mulūk Ḥimyar”, attributed to Wahb ibn Munabbih in the transmission of Ibn Hishām, the report of ʿĪsā and Kaʿb ibn Luʾayy, p. 217 in the displayed copy. Compare al-Hamdānī, “al-Iklīl”, vol. 8, edited by Nabīh Amīn Fāris, p. 167; the reference here to the saying of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) and Kaʿb belongs to “al-Tījān”.

The Torah and identity: Collins, John J. The Invention of Judaism. University of California Press, 2017. Adler, Yonatan. The Origins of Judaism. Yale University Press, 2022; and Between Yahwism and Judaism. Cambridge University Press, 2025.

Judaism, identity and the state: Boyarin, Daniel. Judaism: The Genealogy of a Modern Notion. Rutgers University Press, 2018. Cohen, Shaye J. D. The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties. University of California Press, 1999. Finkelstein, Israel. Hasmonean Realities behind Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. SBL Press, 2018. Kratz, Reinhard G. Historical and Biblical Israel: The History, Tradition, and Archives of Israel and Judah. Oxford University Press, 2015. Mason, Steve. “Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 38 (2007): 457–512. Schwartz, Seth. Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. Princeton University Press, 2001. And Josephus, Antiquities 13:257–258 and 318–319; and the First and Second Books of the Maccabees.

The Law as text and practice: Adler, Yonatan, and Omri Lernau. “The Pentateuchal Dietary Proscription against Finless and Scaleless Aquatic Species in Light of Ancient Fish Remains.” Tel Aviv 48 (2021): 5–26. Kloppenborg, John S. “Dating Theodotus (CIJ II 1404).” Journal of Jewish Studies 51 (2000): 243–280. Porten, Bezalel. Archives from Elephantine. University of California Press, 1968. Porten, Bezalel, and Ada Yardeni. Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt. 4 vols. Hebrew University, 1986–1999; the letter on the Festival of Unleavened Bread in it is TAD A4.1. Rajak, Tessa. Translation and Survival: The Greek Bible of the Ancient Jewish Diaspora. Oxford University Press, 2009. Schwartz, Daniel R. “Diodorus Siculus 40.3: Hecataeus or Pseudo-Hecataeus?” In Jews and Gentiles in the Holy Land in the Days of the Second Temple, the Mishnah and the Talmud, edited by Menahem Mor et al. Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 2003, 181–197. And Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca Historica 40:3.

Dating the composition of the books: Davies, Philip R. In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’. JSOT Supplement Series 148. JSOT Press, 1992. Gmirkin, Russell E. Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch. T&T Clark, 2006; and Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible. Routledge, 2017. Lemche, Niels Peter. “The Old Testament – A Hellenistic Book?” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 7 (1993): 163–193. Thompson, Thomas L. The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel. Basic Books, 1999. They are read in Appendix 9 as a dating of the edited form of the books.

The Babylon archive: Pearce, Laurie E., and Cornelia Wunsch. Documents of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia in the Collection of David Sofer. CUSAS 28, 2014. Alstola, Tero. Judeans in Babylonia. Brill, 2020.

Israel and the exile: Staples, Jason A. The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism. Cambridge University Press, 2021. Lipschits, Oded. The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem. Eisenbrauns, 2005. Faust, Avraham. Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period. Society of Biblical Literature, 2012.

The Mandaean texts: Häberl, Charles G., and James F. McGrath. The Mandaean Book of John: Critical Edition, Translation, and Commentary. De Gruyter, 2020. The reports about Yaḥyā and Jesus are consulted in their Mandaean context.

The form of the crucifixion: Samuelsson, Gunnar. Crucifixion in Antiquity. Mohr Siebeck, 2011. And Justin, “First Apology”, chapter 55: an early witness to the understanding of the shape of the cross, earlier than Nicaea.

The Syriac chronicles: Palmer, Andrew. The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles. Liverpool University Press, 1993. The reports of the Maronite Chronicle are read together with their context and the date of their copying.

Banū al-Najjār and the chant of reception: Ibn Mājah, “al-Sunan,” Book of Marriage, chapter on singing and the tambourine, no. 1899, on the authority of Anas; al-Bayhaqī, “Dalāʾil al-nubuwwa,” the report of “Ṭalaʿa l-badru ʿalaynā” by way of Ibn ʿĀʾisha; Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, “al-Istīʿāb,” entry on Ubayy ibn Kaʿb, on the reason Taym al-Lāt was named al-Najjār; al-Bukhārī, no. 3356, on the circumcision of Ibrāhīm, peace be upon him, with an adze; and the Babylonian Talmud, Avodah Zarah 50b, “a carpenter, son of a carpenter.” On the choirs of consecrated women in Syriac: Harvey, Susan Ashbrook. “Revisiting the Daughters of the Covenant: Women’s Choirs and Sacred Song in Ancient Syriac Christianity.” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 8/2 (2005): 125–149.

Consulting the Sources

The images of the Qumran manuscripts are consulted in the digital library of the scrolls, together with the critical editions that show the surviving letters and the restorations.

The inscriptions are consulted by their museum numbers or the numbers of their corpora; a change in the place of display does not change the number of the piece or the text of its publication.

The pages of the heritage books differ between editions; therefore the reference is paired, where possible, with the name of the chapter, the report, or the number of the section.

The appearance of a reference in this list means that it was benefited from or engaged with on a specific subject; as for the identification of ʿĪsā (peace be upon him) with Nabonidus and the rest of the results of the book, it is the book’s own reading, with its evidence.

Places of Textual Comparison

• Aśvaghoṣa, “Buddha-charita”, canto 3; translation by E. B. Cowell: the scenes of old age, sickness and death.
• “Barlaam and Joasaph”, translated by G. R. Woodward and H. Mattingly, 1914, chapters 3 and 5–8: the veil of the palace, the going out, and the meeting with the teacher and his teaching. The text is traditionally attributed to John of Damascus.
• Justin, “Dialogue with Trypho”, 61 on the Word and its coming forth, and 88 on baptism; and “First Apology”, 6 on the language of worship, and 46 on the share of human beings in the Word. Translation by Roberts and Donaldson.
• The commentary of Sahl al-Tustarī, al-Najm 13; and the corresponding text in the translation by Annabel and Ali Keeler, 2011, p. 213.
• Sugie Takuma, “Nabonidus and the Curse of the Moon-God”, the Japanese journal Orient, 61/1, 2018, pp. 1–12. DOI: 10.5356/jorient.61.1_1. The study is in Japanese, and it has an English summary that presents the hypothesis of a divergence in the account of the ordeal.
• Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, edited by E. Kautzsch and translated by A. E. Cowley, second English edition, 1910: section 6 on the guttural letters, and section 145 on the agreement of the predicate with the subject.

Appendix 9: “Judaism as a Movement”: The Distinction Between the Revealed Sharīʿa and the Late Religious Movement

In this book we distinguish three things: the Children of Israel; the revealed Sharīʿa that they inherit; and religion, once it crystallised into an institutional movement with boundaries and rituals that gather its people. We showed in the introduction that this movement crystallised in the Hasmonean age, in the second century BCE. In this appendix we present the research that supports this reading, and what it shows about how late acting upon the Law spread among ordinary people.

The Torah and Identity: Two Paths of Research

Two works support this reading, and both hold that the Hasmonean age was a turning point in the standing of the Torah:

• John Collins, The Invention of Judaism (2017): traces how the Torah became the centre of identity, from Deuteronomy and Ezra to the Maccabean age and Paul. In his account it was in the Persian age the venerated law of the fathers, and in the Hasmonean age it became a law that was interpreted and applied in the details of purity; when people disagreed over its interpretation, the sects arose.
• Yonatan Adler, The Origins of Judaism (2022): asks when evidence appears that ordinary people knew the rulings of the Torah and kept them, and concludes that the wide evidence of this appears in the Hasmonean age, and that we have no convincing evidence of its spread before the middle of the second century BCE. In Between Yahwism and Judaism (2025) he then investigates how worship and culture continued in the early Hellenistic period, before the later transformation took place.

In Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (2001) Seth Schwartz adds a third party, the state. The empires that ruled Judah, from the Persians to the Macedonians and then the Romans until 70 CE, treated the rites of the Temple and the laws of the fathers as a “constitution” for its people. So the authority of the Torah rested on the power of the ruler before it rested on the consensus of the people, until the decrees of Antiochus IV came and broke this policy. From this patronage arose what Schwartz calls the combination of one God, one Torah and one Temple, a structure that cracked after the destruction of the Temple. The Torah became the boundary of the community only when a political authority adopted it, a foreign one first and then a Hasmonean one.

These studies allow us to tell three stages apart: the text comes into existence, then it acquires authority, then the practice of acting on it spreads. Each stage has its own date, and it is on this distinction that we read the relation of the Law to the institutional movement. Readers who wish to follow the two paths can turn to a presentation of Collins’s book and to Adler’s book on the early Hellenistic period.

The Evidence by Which the Spread of Observance of the Law Is Investigated

Here we present the most important evidence that supports this reading:

1. Ezra and Nehemiah: When the story tells how the Law was read to the people and how the festival of Booths was kept, it sets out a project for renewing the community by the Law. The text itself says that the Children of Israel had not done so “from the days of Joshua the son of Nun to that day” (Nehemiah 8:17), so the narrative presents public practice of the Law as a renewal that came after a long interruption. Israel Finkelstein then showed, in Hasmonean Realities behind Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles (2018), that the list of the returnees, the account of the building of the wall of Jerusalem, Nehemiah’s opponents, and the expansion of Judah as Chronicles describes it all fit the geography of the Hasmonean age in the late second century BCE; some parts of these books, then, carry the image of the time in which the movement crystallised.
2. Elephantine: The papyri of the fifth century BCE show us a Jewish community with a temple outside Jerusalem. Alongside Yahu they name several other divine names, and they mention neither Moses nor the book of the Law. Here is a community that bore the name and kept up the worship, but for which the Torah had not yet become the reference in practice. Reinhard Kratz (Historical and Biblical Israel, 2015) reads this community as a model of a “non-scriptural” Judaism, and holds that “scriptural Judaism” began as one community among many Judahite communities and then prevailed. The papyri also preserve a letter on the Festival of Unleavened Bread (TAD A4.1, about 419 BCE) that fixes its days from the fifteenth to the twenty-first of Nisan and gives instructions on purity and leaven, some of which agree with the rulings of the Torah while others are not found in it. But the letter is an administrative directive that makes no reference to the book of Moses: the festival was known, whereas the written book had not yet become the reference for judgement. The papyrus, however, is shattered, and the editors disagree on how to restore some of its lines.
3. Coins and images: The coins of Judah struck in the Persian and early Hellenistic periods bear the Athenian owl, human faces and birds, although the commandments forbid images. When the Hasmonean coins arrive, they carry writing and symbols and no images of living beings. The coinage itself dates the turn in the practice of the Law.
4. Purity and food: The earliest stepped immersion pools in Judah date from the late second century BCE, among them the pools of the Hasmonean winter palaces at Jericho, and stone and chalk vessels then appear in the first century BCE. The pools begin, that is, with the Hasmonean state itself. As for food, fish bones from sites in Judah, among them Jerusalem in the Persian period, show that people ate fish without scales, such as the catfish, and that this fish then almost disappears in the Roman period (Adler and Lernau, Tel Aviv 48, 2021).
5. The plurality of literature: Wisdom writings, visions and the books of the Law each have a concern of their own, and the rulings of Moses are absent from wisdom books such as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. The sources of religious authority were many, then, before the Torah took sole possession of it.
6. Places of assembly: The Theodotus inscription in Jerusalem describes the synagogue as a place for reading the Law and teaching the commandments. The inscription is dated to before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, that is, to the first century CE or a little earlier. The earliest synagogue building known in the land of Judah is a hall of the Hasmonean period at Khirbet Umm al-ʿUmdān near Modiʿin, over which a larger synagogue was built in the time of Herod, and other buildings then appear in the first century CE. The institution that gathers the people came, therefore, with the spread of the practice of the Law.
7. Visions and destiny: Books such as Daniel and Enoch present developed images of judgement and resurrection, and the most explicit text on resurrection in the Hebrew Bible, Daniel 12:2, was written in the time of the Maccabean crisis. The words in which the Pharisees spoke of the afterlife crystallised, then, in the same stage in which the movement itself crystallised. The meaning is older than that, carried by the inheritance of the prophets.

Ezra and the Five Scribes: The Narrative of the Recovery of the Book

Within the heritage itself there is an important narrative that tells how the Book was lost and then dictated anew, and in it we see how memory pictured the preservation and recovery of revelation.

“Fourth Ezra” relates that Ezra asked for the Law to be recovered after it had been burned. The book is usually dated to about the year 100 CE and was preserved in several translations; some English editions place its material in 2 Esdras, chapters 3–14. It is, then, a religious memory of Ezra and his time, and in it we read what his standing later became.

Then the text names the scribes: “So he took with him five men trained to write swiftly: Sarea, Dabria, Selemia, Ethanus and Asiel” (4 Ezra 14:24). Ezra went on dictating to them for forty days. The text closes the report with a striking number: what was written came to ninety-four books, of which twenty-four were made public “to the worthy and the unworthy”, while seventy were kept back “for the wise among your people” (14:44–46).

The narrative, then, divides the books into two groups: twenty-four for the public and seventy for the wise. Twenty-four is the number of the books of the Tanakh in the Hebrew count. So the narrative keeps the memory of a knowledge that stands behind the circulating text and was deposited with the wise, and it tells the story of a book that is lost and then recovered. This very meaning is what we read in the return of the Masīḥ, which for us is the return of the hidden knowledge.

In this narrative Ezra has become the man who recovered the Book after it was lost, a station in which it is easy for veneration to overstep the measure of its object. Let us set this standing beside two consecutive verses: ﴿وَقَالَتِ ٱلْيَهُودُ عُزَيْرٌ ٱبْنُ ٱللَّهِ وَقَالَتِ ٱلنَّصَٰرَى ٱلْمَسِيحُ ٱبْنُ ٱللَّهِ﴾ (wa-qālati l-yahūdu ʿuzayrun ibnu llāhi wa-qālati l-naṣārā l-masīḥu ibnu llāhi) (“and the Jews said, ʿUzayr is the son of God, and the Christians said, the Masīḥ is the son of God,” al-Tawba 9:30), and then ﴿ٱتَّخَذُوٓا۟ أَحْبَارَهُمْ وَرُهْبَٰنَهُمْ أَرْبَابًۭا مِّن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ وَٱلْمَسِيحَ ٱبْنَ مَرْيَمَ﴾ (ittakhadhū aḥbārahum wa-ruhbānahum arbāban min dūni llāhi wa-l-masīḥa ibna Maryam) (“they took their rabbis and their monks as lords besides God, and the Masīḥ son of Maryam,” al-Tawba 9:31). The Qurʾān brings together in one place the one who recovers the Book, the Masīḥ, and the keepers of knowledge. And the report that keeps seventy books back for the wise shows us how this circle begins: knowledge is veiled first, then the one who guards it is magnified, then a man is raised above his measure.

“Fourth Ezra” was preserved in Latin, Syriac, Ge’ez, Armenian and Arabic translations, and the Ethiopian Church counts it among its books. We read it as a religious narrative that tells of Ezra’s authority, of the recovery of the Book and of the concealment of knowledge; the events of the fifth century BCE we look for in their other witnesses.

The revealed Torah and the collected books

In common speech the name “the Torah” is given to the whole Bible, though its original meaning is narrower. For the Jews the Torah תּוֹרָה (tōrāh) is the five books ascribed to Moses, peace be upon him: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Two divisions are attached to it: the “Prophets” נְבִיאִים (nevīʾīm), which contains Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve Prophets, and the “Writings” כְּתוּבִים (ketūvīm), which contains the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles and others. From the first letters of the names of the three divisions the name “Tanakh” was formed, which came up in Chapter 9, and its books in the Hebrew count are twenty-four: five for the Torah, eight for the Prophets and eleven for the Writings, since Samuel, Kings and Chronicles are each counted as one book, Ezra and Nehemiah as one book, and the Twelve Prophets as one book.

The churches differ in counting the Old Testament. For the Protestants it is thirty-nine books, the books of the Tanakh itself in divided form. The Catholic Church adds seven books that it calls “deuterocanonical”: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Joshua ben Sirach, Baruch and the two books of the Maccabees, so that its Old Testament reaches forty-six books. The Orthodox churches add further books, among them the Third Book of Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151. Then comes the New Testament in twenty-seven books: the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the letters and the Revelation of John. The Bible is a library of sixty-six books for the Protestants, seventy-three for the Catholics, and more than that in the Eastern churches, and the Torah in its first sense is five of them.

In the Qurʾān the Torah is a book that God sent down upon Moses, peace be upon him, and in a single verse the Qurʾān brings together the revealed Book and what became of it in the hands of its bearers: ﴿قُلْ مَنْ أَنزَلَ ٱلْكِتَٰبَ ٱلَّذِى جَآءَ بِهِۦ مُوسَىٰ نُورًۭا وَهُدًۭى لِّلنَّاسِ ۖ تَجْعَلُونَهُۥ قَرَاطِيسَ تُبْدُونَهَا وَتُخْفُونَ كَثِيرًۭا﴾ (qul man anzala l-kitāba lladhī jāʾa bihi mūsā nūran wa-hudan li-n-nāsi tajʿalūnahu qarāṭīsa tubdūnahā wa-tukhfūna kathīran) (“Say: Who sent down the Book that Moses brought, a light and guidance for the people? You make it into sheets, which you show while hiding much,” al-Anʿām 6:91). What Moses brought was light and guidance, as the verse of al-Māʾida describes the Torah, whereas the qarāṭīs are scattered sheets, some of which their bearers show while hiding much of them. The Qurʾān also speaks of people who write the Book with their own hands and then ascribe it to God: ﴿فَوَيْلٌۭ لِّلَّذِينَ يَكْتُبُونَ ٱلْكِتَٰبَ بِأَيْدِيهِمْ ثُمَّ يَقُولُونَ هَٰذَا مِنْ عِندِ ٱللَّهِ﴾ (fa-waylun li-lladhīna yaktubūna l-kitāba bi-aydīhim thumma yaqūlūna hādhā min ʿindi llāhi) (“So woe to those who write the Book with their own hands, then say, ‘This is from God,’” al-Baqara 2:79). The name of the Torah in the language of revelation, then, falls on what was sent down upon Moses, while the books in circulation carry as much of that source as they have preserved, and with it what was written by hands.

In modern scholarship there is a school that dates the composition of the books in their present form to the Persian or the Hellenistic age, and its adherents are called in biblical studies “minimalists”. Among its leading figures:

• Philip Davies, In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’ (1992): the “ancient Israel” that the books draw is a literary picture shaped by the scribes of Judah in the Persian age, and it is different from the historical Israel of the Iron Age.
• Niels Peter Lemche, “The Old Testament – A Hellenistic Book?” (1993): the Hebrew Bible in its present form is a Hellenistic book, and the earliest material witness to its text is the Qumran manuscripts.
• Thomas Thompson, The Mythic Past (1999): the stories of the books were written in the Hellenistic age to establish the identity of the community in that age, and the book in our hands is a Hellenistic book.
• Russell Gmirkin, Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus (2006): the five books were written as a whole around 273–272 BCE in Alexandria, the first stories of Genesis rely on the Babyloniaca of Berossus, and the account of the Exodus is in dialogue with the history of Egypt by Manetho. He then argues, in Plato and the Creation of the Hebrew Bible (2017), that the legislation of the books approximates Plato’s Laws, and that the collecting of the book proceeded on the programme Plato draws for a national literature adopted by the state.

We read this school within the frame of our faith. The Torah revealed to Moses, peace be upon him, is one thing, and the books in their edited, circulating form are another. What this school dates is the work of the scribes who collected and edited; revelation came before them. This agrees with what the Qurʾān reports of sheets some of which are shown while much is hidden, and of a book written with the hands and then ascribed to God. It agrees also with the narrative of Fourth Ezra that we met earlier, in which books are rewritten after they were lost, and twenty-four of them are made public to the worthy and the unworthy alike while seventy are held back for the wise. Twenty-four is the number of the Tanakh itself, so here is a narrative from about the year 100 CE that knows the circulating collection was written down anew, and that behind it lies knowledge that was not made public. The time at which this school places the edited form, moreover, is close to the time at which the movement crystallised, and in that closeness we see a correlation between the gathering of the book and its becoming the boundary of the community. Gmirkin’s precise dating remains his own opinion, and it has been met with detailed criticism.

Herodotus Knows the Land, Not the Nation

Among the external sources is Herodotus (about 484–425 BCE), and the value of his report appears when we compare the countries and peoples he names with the names used in the internal texts.

He mentions a people he calls the “Syrians of Palestine” (Σύριοι οἱ ἐν τῇ Παλαιστίνῃ (Syrioi hoi en tēi Palaistinēi)) and says that they and the Phoenicians admit having taken circumcision from the Egyptians (Book 2, 104). He returns to them in the account of the Persian fleet (Book 7, 89) and in his description of the road to Egypt (Book 3, 5). So he knows the people of the land and reports one of their customs, and this is material that should enter the comparison.

But the names he gives are not the names the scriptural narratives give. He does not mention Israel and Judah by name, nor Moses and the Exodus, nor Solomon and his temple. That is striking in a writer who devoted a book to Egypt and took down from its priests the accounts of the kings and the customs. He knows the people of the land, yet knows no nation called Israel, and this agrees with what we read about the late crystallisation of the identity that the scriptures draw.

Two places lie at the centre of the discussion. The first is Cadytis (Κάδυτις (Kadytis)), which for him is a great city in Syria (Book 2, 159; Book 3, 5); many editors judge it to be Gaza, and others propose Jerusalem. The second is the report that Necho defeated the Syrians at Magdolus (Μάγδωλος (Magdōlos)) and then took Cadytis (Book 2, 159), a report compared with the battle in which Josiah died in 2 Kings 23:29. All these identifications come from comparing the sources with one another, while Herodotus’s own names remain as he reported them.

The silence of a single historian bears witness only to the extent of what reached him, but in the fifth century BCE it is a silence with meaning. The names that appeared to him were names of a land and its peoples. The comprehensive identity defined by the Torah appears after him, in the Hasmonean age, which is the age on which research into the spread of the rulings of the Torah concentrates.

How This Evidence Bears on the Framework of the Book

If we distinguish between the older Israelite inheritance and the institution that crystallised after it, we can read ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, in a horizon older than some of the groups the Gospels present. This is what our identification of him with Nabonidus proposes, and the distinction has its effect on how we read the reports:

First, the Qurʾān relates the reports of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, without naming the Pharisees and the Sadducees in them, whereas they appear abundantly in the Gospels. We see in this difference a witness that the biography has two layers: a Qurʾānic report about a prophet who came before these groups crystallised, and a Gospel report about Jesus of Nazareth in the first century CE, who converses with these groups and clashes with their priests.

The very name of the Pharisees points to its time. The received derivation is from the Aramaic pərīshā, “the separated one.” But T. W. Manson proposed in 1938 that it comes from parsāyā, “the Persian,” a nickname their opponents gave them because they held beliefs described as Persian, such as the resurrection, ranked angels and judgement after death. His view has not found many supporters, yet the root p-r-s has been ambiguous since antiquity between division and Persia, and the Book of Daniel itself makes explicit use of the ambiguity: “PERES: thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians” (Daniel 5:28). Whichever derivation is right, the name belongs to the layer that came after the exile.

Second, we put the miḥrāb, the palm tree and the Aaronid lineage of Maryam together and draw from them a picture of the Qurʾānic setting, and then we set this picture beside the evidence we have presented. The significance here comes from the convergence of the details, for we know that palm trees and priestly service continued across many ages.

Third, this distinction lets us read the history of the institution as having a beginning other than that of revelation itself. In this book’s reading, ʿĪsā, peace be upon him, carries the inheritance of Moses and renews it; then the later movement comes and claims for itself the definition of that inheritance and the drawing of its limits. This is an explanation of the course of memory, and it is supported by the archaeological evidence for the late spread of the practice of the Law.

The Law Before the Institution

Adler’s research helps us to know when the observance of the rulings of the Torah spread among the common people. We take from it the distinction between text, practice and institution, and then connect that distinction with the book’s wider question about the course of prophecy. For the history of Moses, the history of each author and the origins of the knowledge of God are different questions, and each has its own material.

The sources of the third century BCE testify that the Law had a text of standing. The report ascribed to Hecataeus of Abdera, about 300 BCE, which Diodorus Siculus preserves (Bibliotheca Historica 40:3), mentions Moses as lawgiver for the people of Jerusalem and organiser of its priests, and states that at the end of their laws it is written that these are words Moses heard from God; whether the passage belongs to Hecataeus himself is disputed among scholars. In the same century the five books were translated into Greek in Alexandria, which is the Septuagint. Around 180 BCE Joshua ben Sirach praises the Law and makes it the book of the covenant of the Most High that Moses commanded, without detailing its rulings.

All of these are witnesses that the text existed and had authority among scribes and rulers. The witnesses to its public practice, in food, purity, images, phylacteries (tefillin) and the synagogue, remain Hasmonean. On these three stages, text, then authority, then practice, the layers of this book rest: the inspired inherited text and its authority belong to the second layer, and the public practice that draws the boundaries of the community and establishes its institutions belongs to the third. So the strongest objection raised against the late date of the movement becomes a witness that we read as pointing to the antiquity of the Law.

In our reading, then, we bring together three things:

• Our faith in the Torah as an inherited revealed text (the second layer)
• Our historical acknowledgement that “Judaism as a movement” is a late phenomenon (the third layer)
• The location of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (peace be upon him) at the place that the Qurʾānic indications demand: a prophet from the Children of Israel with the revealed Sharīʿa, centuries before the crystallisation of the movement

On the strength of this difference we deal with the institution and its interpretation of the inheritance, preserving for the Law its revealed meaning and for the Children of Israel their standing in the history of the prophets.

Appendix 10: The Tawḥīd of al-ʿAlī, the Children of Israel Before Judaism

In this appendix we set out the meaning of “al-ʿAlī” (the Most High) as it recurs in the inscriptions and texts, and we connect it with our reading of Nabonidus and Sîn. The name occurs in the Prayer of Nabonidus within the published restoration, and we then return to the other sources to compare the terms of height, heaven and light that they contain. When these sources are brought together, we see the knowledge of the Most High God continuing, though names and symbols change.

Al-ʿAlī: From Melchizedek to ﴿سَبِّحِ اسْمَ رَبِّكَ الْأَعْلَى﴾ (sabbiḥi sma rabbika l-aʿlā) (“Glorify the name of your Lord, the Most High,” al-Aʿlā 87:1)

The Most High God appears first in the Torah on the tongue of Melchizedek, “king of Salem”, who “was priest of God Most High” (El ʿElyon) and who blessed Abraham, before Moses and before the Law in its movement form, saying: “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth” (Genesis 14:18–19). The Hebrew קֹנֵה (qōneh) in this phrase allows both owner and creator. As for the Hebrew “ʿElyon”, it comes from a root whose meaning is ascent and height, which is the very root of the Arabic “al-ʿAlī” (ʿ-l-w). So when the Qurʾān says ﴿وَهُوَ ٱلْعَلِىُّ ٱلْعَظِيمُ﴾ (wa-huwa l-ʿaliyyu l-ʿaẓīm) (“and He is the Most High, the Magnificent,” al-Baqara 2:255) and ﴿سَبِّحِ ٱسْمَ رَبِّكَ ٱلْأَعْلَى﴾ (sabbiḥi sma rabbika l-aʿlā) (“Glorify the name of your Lord, the Most High,” al-Aʿlā 87:1), it takes up again the earliest Abrahamic name of the One God: the Most High, creator of heaven and earth, whose name, as Nabonidus’s healer commanded the king, was to be “raised”.

“The Most High” as an Attested Object of Worship: From Babylon to the Peninsula

Here is the evidence, set side by side, with the setting in which each name or title occurs:

• Sefire: The Aramaic treaty of Sefire, from the eighth century BCE, mentions “El and ʿElyon.” So the title al-ʿAlī (the Most High) was already current in the Aramaic tongue some two centuries before Nabonidus, even though it occurs here in the treaty’s list of gods.
• Sîn in the inscriptions of Nabonidus: The king raises him above all the other divine names. He makes Shamash, Ishtar, Adad and Nergal the executors of his command, and describes him as “a god whose name no one can interpret.” We read this station in the horizon of the one Most High, so that the other names are commissioned powers, as we showed in Chapter 5.
• Theos Hypsistos: Stephen Mitchell showed that the worship of “the Most High God” spread through the inscriptions of the eastern Mediterranean and Anatolia, and that its adherents revered a single god without an image; he then connected them with the God-fearers (theosebeis) who surrounded the assemblies. The title gathered people from different environments upon a single meaning.
• Baalshamin and the formulae of Palmyra: The Arameans knew the title “Lord of Heaven,” and the Palmyrene dedications then speak of “he whose name is blessed for ever” without naming him. This formula meets the magnifying and exalting of the Name that we trace in the “Sons of the Name.”
• Allāh and al-Raḥmān: The Safaitic inscriptions carry titles of creation and of light, and the Ḥimyarite inscriptions after about 380 CE call the one God “Raḥmanan” and “Lord of Heaven and Earth.” The two names that the Qurʾān preserved were therefore known in the Peninsula before the mission, and this is among the evidence for the “Peninsula of Monotheism” that we set out in Chapter 9.

This material, from Sefire and Babylon to Palmyra and the Peninsula, bears witness that the knowledge of the Most High God goes back to a common origin. After the title, we look in each place at belief, ritual and image, and the meaning that continued appears to us, even as the wording of it varied.

The Exalted Name: The Thread of the “Sons of the Name”

In different traditions the divine Name is magnified and exalted above all likeness. In Mishnah Yoma 6:2, those present on the Day of Atonement prostrate themselves when they hear it pronounced explicitly by the high priest, and say “Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom for ever and ever.” We set this magnifying beside the glorification of the name of the Most High Lord in the Qurʾān. In that sense we read Hāshim as ha-shem, “the Name,” so that the Banū Hāshim are the “Sons of the Name” who guarded the inheritance, and this reading stands alongside the well-known Arabic derivation from h-sh-m, the crumbling of tharīd (bread in broth).

The Children of Israel, Not the Jews: The Description of the Man and His Prophetic Inheritance

In this book we separate the prophetic inheritance of the Children of Israel from the stages in which the Jewish institution took shape. The man in the Prayer is described as yhwdy; we keep the term as it is, and we read it as relating to Judah and its community, centuries before the movement crystallised. So for us the man belongs to the people of the prophetic inheritance among the Children of Israel. He is Yaḥyā, whose role we read in Chapter 5: a teacher who calls the sick king to exalt the name of the Most High God.

The One Thread: The Islām of the Most High from Abraham to Muḥammad

We read all these connections from the unity of religion that the Qurʾān establishes: religion is one, submission to God and knowledge of Him, though languages and generations change. In this book ʿĪsā-Nabonidus carries this meaning, and the Muḥammadan message renews it. We note also the name of Imām ʿAlī, peace be upon him, with the meaning of height in it, in the spiritual memory of Iraq, in Kūfa, the neighbour of al-Ḥīra. Yet the human name carries the attribute of height as a description of one of God’s servants, whereas al-ʿAlī, glory be to Him, is the one worshipped alone.

The Most High had a house at Ḥarrān that the inscriptions call the temple of Sîn, whose name in Sumerian was “Ehulhul,” meaning joy. We read it in this book as “the house of the crescent and the jubilation,” because in the Arabic root h-l-l rejoicing and glad tidings come together with the crescent (hilāl) and the jubilation (tahlīl), just as the joy at seeing the crescent, the sign of the Most High, comes together with the remembrance of God on welcoming it. The comparison here is phonetic and semantic, for Sumerian belongs to another linguistic family. In this reading the symbols of the moon, of height and of rejoicing carry the meaning of worshipping the Most High, with the moon as His sign because He, glory be to Him, is the Most High, a meaning deeper than the image of the idol to which they are sometimes reduced.

Appendix 11: Babylon Is a Heart, Not an Exile: The Homeland and the Older Memory

In this appendix we gather what the book reads in Babylon. For us it is an older homeland and a heart in the memory of the prophets, even though the image of exile, which prevailed over it in a later age, has veiled it. From Mesopotamia Ibrāhīm went out; in it Ezekiel and Daniel received revelation; from it Ezra went up with the Law; and in it the schools of the Talmud stood for centuries. When we look at this whole long history, the captivity appears as one link in a wider movement, in which people and knowledge passed between Mesopotamia and the regions neighbouring it.

Judah Is Not Israel: The Limits of the Two Names

The phrase “the captivity of the Jews” may suggest that the whole nation of the Children of Israel was uprooted from its land and then returned to it. But Judah was the name of a tribe, then of a kingdom in the south, then of a province in the Persian period called Yehud, from which comes the adjective that corresponds to the Greek Ioudaios. Israel is a wider name, bearing the memory of the twelve tribes and the memory of the covenant. Jason Staples studied the relation between the two names in “The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism” (Cambridge, 2021), and he made the Jews a part (a subset) of the wider Israel, whose people kept waiting for the northern tribes to be restored. What Shaye Cohen wrote in “The Beginnings of Jewishness” (1999), and Steve Mason (2007), on the national and geographical sense of the name is also useful here. Then Yonatan Adler, in “The Origins of Judaism” (Yale, 2022), comes with another question: when did observance of the rulings of the Torah spread? The second century BCE stands out in his answer.

These boundaries were mobile, as the reports of the communities show. At Elephantine, in the fifth century BCE, Jews lived far from Judah and called themselves “Judaeans”, so the adjective had left its geographical place. Adele Reinhartz and Daniel Schwartz, in works of 2014, warned against separating the two names in a way that erases the continuity between them. For this reason we read the captivity as a report about specific Judahite groups, and we keep Israel wider than they are, tracing how the two names overlapped and how their use changed.

The Archive of Al-Yahudu: The Life and Settlement of the Deportees

The clearest picture of the life of the deportees in Babylonia comes from the tablets of Al-Yahudu, most of which were published in the work of Laurie Pearce and Cornelia Wunsch (CUSAS 28, 2014). In these tablets we see deported communities living within a system that binds land to service and obligations. We see them make contracts, sons succeed their fathers, and economic life go on year after year. Within a few decades the deportees had become people of land, of contracts and of settled families, and Babylon had become a homeland for them.

Take as an example from the archive tablet no. 10 in Pearce and Wunsch’s edition. It is a promissory note for barley written at Āl-Yāhūdu, “the town of Judah,” on the 23rd of Ṭebētu in the sixth year of Nabonidus, that is 549 BCE, and the debtor in it is a man named Šalam-Yāma son of Nadab-Yāma. On the edge of the tablet five letters are incised in Hebrew script: שלמיה (Shelemyah). Here is a man of the exile signing in Babylon in the script of his fathers, in the reign of the king on whom Chapter 5 turns. Documents of this kind put us in front of people who lived in the very sphere around which the book revolves. The tablets, however, reached us from the antiquities market, so we take their testimony from their texts alone.

The name of the place, Al-Yahudu, “the city of Judah”, and the personal names in it point us to a particular community of deportees, so that we can trace it. But this does not mean that their identity was only administrative or devoid of religious meaning; a single name can hold the adjective, the place and worship together.

If we compare these tablets with the documents of other deportees, such as the people of Neirab, we see how people were deported to Babylon and then how they settled in it. Behind this movement stands an older Mesopotamian origin, to which the reports of the patriarchs, which we present shortly, bear witness; history then has room for movements that went in more than one direction.

“The Empty Land”: The Ideology of Return

Modern criticism has long dwelt on the image of “the empty land” in the narratives of return. In 2 Chronicles 36:21 the land enjoys its “sabbaths” for seventy years, as though it had been emptied of its people throughout the captivity. In Ezra–Nehemiah the community of the “sons of the exile” (bnei ha-golah) moves to the front, and the “people of the land,” who had not gone into exile, recede. Robert Carroll called this conception “the myth of the empty land” (Semeia 59, 1992); Hans Barstad then studied it in a book of 1996, and Ehud Ben Zvi investigated in 2010 its connection with the memory of the Persian age and with the legitimacy of those who returned. The image of a total captivity, then, did a job for the community that shaped the report of the return: by it the community defined itself.

Yes, the war caused wide destruction, although the studies of Lipschits and Faust differ in estimating its extent. But large communities stayed in their land, as in the region of Benjamin according to Lipschits. The image of complete uprooting is the image that the returning community drew of itself.

Babylon as a Heart: Why They Stayed

With time Babylon became a great centre of Jewish life and learning. The schools of Sura, Pumbedita and Nehardea arose in it, and the Babylonian Talmud became a reference of wide influence. Pumbedita is Fum Bedita, that is al-Anbār, and Sura lies some six kilometres from al-Ḥīra; both cities are the abode of Tanūkh, as we showed in Chapter 9. The pride of the Babylonian community in its genealogies, as the sources of tradition preserve it, went so far that it placed Babylon before the land of Israel itself: “All lands are dough compared with the land of Israel, and the land of Israel is dough compared with Babylon” (Babylonian Talmud, Qiddushin 69b and 71a). In the memory of the community itself, then, Babylon is the place where the origin remained at its purest.

For this reason we read Babylon as a living heart in the history of the community. Its Exilarch (Resh Galuta) traced his descent to the house of David, and so lineage, learning and leadership came together in him, as Geoffrey Herman shows in “A Prince without a Kingdom” (2012) and Simcha Gross in “Babylonian Jews and Sasanian Imperialism in Late Antiquity” (Cambridge University Press, 2024). When we look at these institutions and at the learning that came out of them, we see the weight inclining toward Mesopotamia, though each stage of this inclination has its own evidence.

The Oldest Roots: From Ur to Ḥarrān

The reports of the patriarchs preserve a connection with Mesopotamia older than all this. Abraham went out from “Ur of the Chaldeans” to Ḥarrān (Genesis 11–15), Rebekah, Rachel and Leah came from “Aram of the Two Rivers” (Aram-Naharaim), and Deuteronomy says: “a wandering Aramean was my father” (Deuteronomy 26:5). The reports of Genesis 1–11 are likewise compared with Mesopotamian material: the story of the flood, with its ark, its bird and its sacrifice, is set beside “Atrahasis” and the eleventh tablet of “Gilgamesh”, and then beside the “ark tablet” that Irving Finkel presented in “The Ark Before Noah” (2014). The ages of the patriarchs are set beside the Sumerian King List, and the tower of Babel beside the ziggurat. Among the references on these connections are Speiser, Genesis (1964), and Lambert (1965). So the tie with Mesopotamia extends through the memory of origin and the images from which the narrative was built.

The Mesopotamian link is clear in literature and in memory, and the scriptures themselves make Ur, Ḥarrān and Aram-Naharaim the place where the patriarchs sprang from. Many archaeologists, for their part, explain the formation of the Israelite communities in the highlands of Canaan. Yet the two paths meet: the community that gathered in Canaan carried with it the memory of its Mesopotamian ancestors, and this memory is what makes Babylon an older homeland.

The Book of Genesis tells the beginning of the journey as a single movement from Ur to Ḥarrān: “And they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran, and dwelt there” (Genesis 11:31), and then comes the command to Abraham: “Get out of your country, and from your kindred, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you” (12:1). Stephen, in the Acts of the Apostles, makes the revelation come before Ḥarrān: “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran” (Acts 7:2). The call, then, began in the land of the Chaldeans. And Ur and Ḥarrān are the two cities of Sîn whose temples Nabonidus restored.

John Van Seters has looked at this route from another side, the history of its composition. In his study “Dating the Yahwist’s History: Principles and Perspectives” (Biblica 96, 2015, pp. 1–25) he holds that the picture of Abraham’s migration with his Aramean family from Ur to Ḥarrān and then to Canaan was formed on the model of the migration of Nabonidus to Taymāʾ, and he says that the resemblances between them are “too striking to be coincidental” (p. 18). He then places the writer of this layer of the Torah in Babylon, in the late exilic period. We read in his observation a witness that the memory of Nabonidus was distributed over the lives of the prophets: the road the king took between Babylon, Ḥarrān and Taymāʾ stayed traced in the account of the father of the prophets, and for the narrative Babylon was both its source and its place of composition.

The Reversed Captivity: Movements in More Than One Direction

We read that the narrative which made the Babylonian exile its centre has covered over an older Mesopotamian belonging. Alongside the movement to Babylon, which the documents attest, another movement went out from Babylon toward the periphery, and people were deported and returned in more than one direction; among these movements is the journey of Nabonidus himself to Taymāʾ and Yathrib, from which he was absent for ten years. This is what we mean by the “reversed captivity”: a wider map of movement, in which the captivity of Judah to Babylon falls as one link.

The centrality of Babylon in the history of the community, and the origin of the patriarchs in Mesopotamia as the narrative gives it, both bear witness to an older direction, one that ran from Mesopotamia toward the periphery. As for identifying the groups that travelled it and the times they travelled it, each place has its own evidence. The record establishes a deportation to Babylon, and we read behind it, and alongside it, an older Mesopotamian belonging and a movement toward the periphery.

The Living Goat and the Meaning of Bearing Iniquities

In Leviticus 16:21–22 the living goat is sent out bearing the iniquities of the community “to a land cut off” (gezerah), that is, to a severed land. The Talmud itself reads the word in the sense of cutting (Yoma 67b), which is the meaning by which the island (jazīra) was named in Arabic and Syriac. We read “the land of gezerah” as the Euphratean Jazīra between the Tigris and the Euphrates, in which lies Ḥarrān, as we showed in Chapter 9; the severed land to which the goat is sent is the homeland of the origin. Then the rite changed: in Mishnah Yoma 6:6 the goat came to be pushed off a cliff until it was torn apart, and the Epistle of Barnabas made the cursed goat an image of the crucified Jesus (Barnabas 7). So the first memory was the memory of a man driven away alive to the severed land, and the later doctrine then needed him killed. The Qurʾān, for its part, says of ʿĪsā, peace be upon him: ﴿وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ وَمَا صَلَبُوهُ﴾ (wa-mā qatalūhu wa-mā ṣalabūhu) (“they did not kill him and they did not crucify him,” al-Nisāʾ 4:157), and then ﴿بَل رَّفَعَهُ ٱللَّهُ إِلَيْهِ﴾ (bal rafaʿahu llāhu ilayhi) (“rather, God raised him to Himself,” al-Nisāʾ 4:158).

Appendix 12: External Witnesses on the Eve of the Mission, Inscriptions and Documents from Outside the Tradition

We close with what reached us from outside the books of the Prophet’s biography (sīra): inscriptions that mention kings and buildings, and texts that transmitted reports of the Arabs and of the religious groups. These are witnesses in stone and parchment to the “Peninsula of Monotheism” that Chapter 9 presented, where the Arabs had Christian kings, the doors of shrines were written in Arabic, and kingdoms opened their inscriptions with the name of al-Raḥmān.

In these sources we see something of the figure of the king among the Arabs, of how writing spread, and of how the Peninsula was joined to the Levant, Iraq and Abyssinia. We then read two reports, one on the early Arab movement and the other on the visiting of sacred sites, and from them we learn how the neighbours saw this movement and what they preserved of its reports.

The dates we give for the inscriptions and documents are those given in their editions and in the readings of researchers. In each place we take care to distinguish the date of the event that the report narrates from the date at which it is presumed to have been recorded.

The Namārah Inscription (328 CE): “King of All the Arabs”

In the basalt plain of al-Namārah, south-east of Damascus, a gravestone was found in 1901 CE, later moved to the Louvre Museum (under number AO 4083). It is the tombstone of Imruʾ al-Qays ibn ʿAmr, the second of the Lakhmid kings at al-Ḥīra, precisely dated to the year 223 of the Bostra era, that is, 328 CE. The language of the text is Arabic, and its letters are the Nabataean Aramaic script from which Arabic writing arose. In its lines the dead man is called “king of all the Arabs”, and the extent of his authority is drawn from the Euphrates down toward Najrān in the south.

The inscription preserves an Arab royal title and draws a sphere of authority extending from the Euphrates to Najrān, and so it is consulted by anyone who researches the Lakhmids and the history of Arabic. As for the religion of Imruʾ al-Qays, the Arabic reports on the authority of Ibn al-Kalbī transmit that he was a Christian, and Irfan Shahid judged his affiliation to Christianity more likely in “Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century” (1984), although the tombstone itself lacks the formulae and symbols of Christianity.

The authoritative source: the stone itself in the Louvre (AO 4083), with the reading of James Bellamy, “A New Reading of the Namārah Inscription” in the “Journal of the American Oriental Society” 105 (1985).

Zabad, Usays and Ḥarrān: Contexts of Arabic Writing

Before the Qurʾān, Arabic was already being written in religious and political contexts, as early inscriptions attest. Among the best known of the dated ones:

• The Zabad threshold (512 CE): at Zabad, south-east of Aleppo, a threshold from the shrine of Saint Sergius bears three languages side by side, Greek, Syriac and Arabic, and the Arabic among them names its builder.
• The Jabal Usays inscription (528 CE): on the basalt of Jabal Usays, south-east of Damascus, an Arabic inscription records a man sent to a garrison by “al-Ḥārith the king”, that is, al-Ḥārith ibn Jabala al-Ghassānī, king of the Christian Arabs in the Levant.
• The Ḥarrān threshold (568 CE): at Ḥarrān in the Lajāʾ, a threshold written in Greek and Arabic above the door of a shrine built by a man named Sharaḥīl. The Arabic text calls it “al-Marṭūl,” that is, the martyr’s shrine, and the Greek text dedicates it to Saint John, most likely Yaḥyā the Baptist. The Arabic text dates the building to a year after “the ravaging of Khaybar” on the common reading, so that in a single threshold the memory of Yaḥyā and the oasis of Khaybar meet.

Taken together, these witnesses show us Arabic being written alongside Syriac and Greek in a Christian Arab setting: the lintel at Zabad from the shrine of Saint Sergius, the lintel at Ḥarrān from the shrine of Saint John, and the inscription of Usays, which mentions an envoy sent by al-Ḥārith, the Ghassanid king. This means that most of what remains to us of the dated Arabic inscriptions of the sixth century was written on the doors of shrines or in the service of a Christian Arab king.

The authoritative sources: Zabad in the “Répertoire d'épigraphie sémitique” (RES 2640); Jabal Usays in Christian Robin and Maria Gorea in “Arabica XLIX” (2002); and Ḥarrān in the edition of Enno Littmann.

The CIH 541 Inscription (about 548 CE): The Marib Dam and the Delegations of the Five Powers

CIH 541, for its part, is a broad document from which we learn much about Abraha and the relations of Yemen in his age. It stands in the fourth volume of the “Corpus of Semitic Inscriptions”, and Walter Müller published and edited it in 1974. The inscription commemorates the repair of the Marib Dam after it had broken twice, in the years 547 and 548 CE, dates the work to the Ḥimyarite year 658, and mentions Abraha with the title “king of Saba, Dhū Raydān, Ḥaḍramawt and Yamanāt”. It opens with the formula “By the power of al-Raḥmān and his Masīḥ and the Holy Spirit,” as we showed in Chapter 17. One monument carries the report of a building work, draws the picture of a Christian authority, and names al-Raḥmān.

The inscription lists the delegations that came to Marib: the delegation of Aksum of Abyssinia (ḥbš), that of Rome (rwm), that of Persia (frs), and the delegations of al-Mundhir the Lakhmid and al-Ḥārith ibn Jabala the Ghassānid. In this report, then, Marib is a meeting place for the envoys of the great powers, where the north of Arabia and the south come together in a single dated report. This is among the strongest illustrations of the Red Sea network we presented, for we see contemporary kingdoms exchanging delegations, and through them the Peninsula is connected with Abyssinia, Persia and Rome.

The authoritative source: Walter Müller, “Die sabäische Inschrift CIH 541” (1974); with the early works of Sidney Smith and the reading of Christian Julien Robin in “Arabia and Ethiopia” (Oxford 2012).

The Teaching of Jacob: An Early Report of a Prophet Among the Arabs

“The Teaching of Jacob the Newly Baptised” is a Greek polemical dialogue, usually dated to the 630s. It contains a report from Palestine of a prophet who appeared with the Arabs and proclaimed the coming of the Anointed One, the Messiah who is to come. The earliest external witness to the mission therefore places it in the horizon of expecting the Masīḥ, which is the very horizon in which this book reads the return of the Masīḥ as knowledge. The author of the dialogue is a religious opponent of the mission, so what we take from him is a picture of how it was received.

This report preserves one aspect of how the neighbours received the mission: the Jews of Palestine hear that a prophet has appeared with the Arabs, and they ask about the Messiah. As for the dates of the mission and the death of the Prophet ﷺ (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam), we turn for them to the biography (sīra) and the rest of the evidence.

The authoritative source: “Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati”, edition and translation by Gilbert Dagron and Vincent Déroche (“Juifs et chrétiens dans l'Orient du VIIe siècle”, Travaux et Mémoires 11, 1991); and the study by Robert Hoyland “Seeing Islam As Others Saw It” (Princeton 1997).

The Maronite Chronicle and Muʿāwiya’s Visit to the Holy Places

The Syriac Maronite Chronicle preserves reports from the reign of Muʿāwiya to the 660s, and calls him king of the Arabs. It relates that many of the Arabs gathered in Jerusalem in the year 971 of the Greeks (660 CE) and made Muʿāwiya king; he went up to Golgotha and prayed in it, then went on to Gethsemane and went down to the tomb of the blessed Maryam to pray in it. So the first of the Umayyad kings begins his rule by praying in the holy Christian places, among them the tomb of Maryam (peace be upon her).

Muʿāwiya’s prayer agrees with what Chapter 9 presented of the link between Umayyad Damascus and the Christians of the Levant: its chancery had Syriac scribes and advisers, and its king received the oath of allegiance in Jerusalem and prayed in its places. The transition from the Christian Arab Peninsula to the Islamic state took place in the same places and among the same people.

The authoritative source: the “Maronite Chronicle”, in the translation of Andrew Palmer “The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles” (Liverpool 1993); and the survey of Robert Hoyland “Seeing Islam As Others Saw It” (1997).

The Bridge of Texts: From Qumran to Aksum (A Reference to Chapter 16)

Ge’ez preserved two important texts, First Enoch and Jubilees, and the Qumran fragments then came and confirmed that wide parts of their material are ancient. Chapter 16 presented this connection and distinguished, on the one hand, the dates of the compositions and their layers, and on the other the dates of the copies and translations.

When we compare the Ge’ez text with the Qumran fragments, we see an ancient material that remained complete in the Ethiopian tradition, while parts of its original appeared at Qumran. This is a concrete path in the preservation of books: along it the heritage of Qumran passed in Greek translation, and from Greek to Abyssinia, the neighbour of the Peninsula. And because Abyssinia preserved it, our knowledge has widened of a heritage a large part of which was lost to us.

Table of Inscriptions and Documents