Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

22 t CHAPTER ONE
any evidence that the Prophet was reading the Bible (or anything
else, for that matter; he obviously was, as the Muslim tradition
insists, an ummi [7:157–158], a “scriptural illiterate”). What he
got, he heard at Mecca, though we do not know precisely from
whom.
Was the midrashic background buzz that provided the Quran’s
richly textured version of the history of monotheism Jewish or
Christian? Both groups shared the same biblical accounts, of
course, and given the syncretizing tendencies of religious communities
on the margins of culture, as the Jews and Christians of the
Hejaz were, there is little to choose between them as sources for
the biblical perspectives on view in the Meccan suras of the Quran.
But there are clues. The notion that the Jews were highly factionalized,
the repeated insistence that Jesus was of the Banu Israil
(43:57–59), and Muhammad’s own exalted, though hardly mainstream
Christian, view that Jesus was both mortal and the prophetic
Messiah (3:59; 4:171–172) all suggest that we are dealing
in the Meccan environment, and perhaps at Medina as well, with
some version of a Judeo-Christian remnant surviving in Arabia in
the early seventh century.
Jesus in the Quran
Jesus (Isa ibn Miryam) is often spoken of in the Quran, some
thirty-five times in all, though never in an extended or consecutive
account, since he was, like the other prophets, being cited merely
as an example. The Quran sometimes echoes the canonical Gospel
accounts and in other places diverges from them quite remarkably.
We are told, for example, that Mary, who is identified as the
daughter of Imran—which is also the name of Moses’ father and
suggests to some, chiefly Christian polemicists, that the Quran has
confused the two Marys, the mother of Jesus and the sister of
Moses—enjoyed the protection of God. Zachariah, the father of
John the Baptist, whom the Quran also regards as a prophet and
speaks of at some length, was chosen to be her guardian—Mary’s
father is called Joachim in the Christian Apocrypha—and she lived