Sheba

QUEEN OF SHEBA AND BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP 135
Christian philosophy was developed under political pressure by a recently
converted pagan Roman emperor. Islam was almost immediately a
successful world religion, and Muslims could write with confidence about
their origins and development from recent eyewitnesses and from easily
accessible documents. It is probable that they had a better knowledge of
certain aspects of Christian history than the Christians themselves had.
According to Yemeni tradition, Nazarene Judaism was founded about
400 years before Christ in Najran by a virgin named Mary (sic). 6 The
Qur’anic description of the Virgin Mary is of a strong-willed Levitical
priestess who chastised the temple priesthood for doubting her son Isa had
been fathered by Ruah (the Holy Spirit). This extraordinary tradition is of
interest considering the nebulous nature of Christ’s mother in the New
Testament and the fact that her sister’s name was Mary, something most
unsatisfactorily explained by Christian commentators who suggest they had
the same father but different mothers. This tradition will be discussed later
in the chapter concerning Israelite influences in Ethiopia, another area
sharing a general Semitic cultural heritage.
Islam appealed deeply to the Arab psyche, particularly through the
beautiful poetic nature of the Qur’an. The Arabs had long despaired of
having their own prophet. The revelations and dictates of Muhammad
ultimately evoked a pan tribal fiercely nationalistic spirit and to ascribe this
to Jewish influence would be a mistake. Charles Cutler Torrey (1863-1956),
professor of Semitic Languages at Yale suggested in his book The Jewish
Foundations of Islam (1933) that there was a substantial Jewish presence in
Arabia that was highly influential in Islam, stating that “both in its
beginning and its later development by far the greater part of its essential
material came directly from Israelite sources.” The Qur’an does in fact state
(7:156) that Muhammad took the Hebrew Torah as his model for his own
code of law but revised and improved it for the new circumstances and the
Arab tradition. It is however highly noteworthy that Muhammad’s
legislation does not reflect the post-exilic form of Judaism, indicating that
the type of Judaism in Hijaz was from an Israelite tradition outside that of
the restored Jerusalem community. Jewish Bedouin women were veiled,
and Babylonian Jews acknowledged Hijaz Jews were outside their
jurisdiction but nevertheless respected their differing customs and spoke
well of Simeon, a Jew from Taima, as a theological scholar. There are only
80 references in the Qur’an to laws, as opposed to 613 in the Torah.
Muhammad made judgments according to his revelations and his own