robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)

from someone deciding to divide what appears in the Dome of the Rock inscriptions as a unified passage.
What is most unusual about the Dome of the Rock inscriptions, however, is that they may not refer to
Islamic theology at all. This may seem to be an outrageous statement at first glance: After all, when the
inscription warns the “People of the Book”—primarily Jews and Christians, and in this context,
Christians only—not to “exaggerate in your religion” by claiming that Jesus is the Son of God, it is
articulating a staple of Islamic theology and an oft-repeated assertion of the Qur'an.
But there is a grammatical difficulty with the traditional explanation of the first inscription above.
Muhammad, remember, means “praised one” in Arabic—and, accordingly, could be a title as well as a
proper name. Al-muhammad would be precisely the “praised one,” but the word muhammad here without
the definite article al- could be a gerundive meaning “praising” or “being praised,” and hence also “the
one who is being praised.” Christoph Luxenberg, a philologist, explains that in the context of the Dome of
the Rock inscription, the phrase commonly translated as “Muhammad is the servant of God and His
messenger” is more correctly understood as reading “praised be the servant of God and His messenger.”
Luxenberg elaborates with reference to Arabic grammar: “Therefore, by using this gerundive, the text here
is not speaking of a person named Muhammad, which was made only later metaphorically into a personal
name attributed analogically to the prophet of Islam.” 29
A compelling case can be made that this inscription refers not to the prophet of Arabia at all but to
Jesus himself, whom the inscription clearly calls “a messenger of God,” “a servant unto God,” and finally
“Your messenger and Your servant.” 30
In fact, the entire inscription makes much more sense as a literary and theological statement if one
understands muhammad as referring to Jesus. Then the whole passage is about Jesus being but a
messenger of God rather than his son. By the standard Islamic interpretation, the inscription mentions
Muhammad essentially in passing, identifying him as a messenger from God and his servant; then, without
explanation, it turns away from Muhammad to Jesus, calling him also a messenger from and a servant of
God, and spends the bulk of its time correcting Christian Christology.
If the inscription does not speak of Muhammad or reflect Islamic theology, why would it challenge the
divinity of Christ? It may well offer a version of Christian theology differing from that of the Eastern
Roman (Byzantine) Empire and the great church in Constantinople.
At the time the Dome of the Rock was constructed, the Church of Constantinople was still in the throes
of a centuries-long battle to determine the exact nature of Jesus Christ. Five ecumenical councils had been
held to discuss aspects of this; those who believed that Jesus was a created being, albeit a demigod, were
anathematized at the first of these, held across the Bosphorus from Constantinople in Nicaea in 325.
Because of the institutionalized discrimination that these heretical groups then faced, many of them left the
Byzantine Empire and headed for points east. It is therefore possible that the Dome of the Rock
inscription is a surviving expression of the theology of a heretical Christian group that viewed Jesus
solely as a divine messenger, not as the Son of God or Savior of the world. 31
The specific theology of such a group has not come down to us in the many denunciations of heresies