muslim1 wrote:xingu wrote:This is silly. How do you know Muhammad never heard Biblical stories.
and
xingu wrote:Muhammad was very aware of the religion of the Christians and Jews.
1) The Arabic version of the Bible was not present at the time of the Prophet (Peace and blessings be upon him). In fact, the earliest Arabic version of the Old Testament is that of R. Saadias Gaon of 900 C.E. - more than 250 years after the death of our beloved Prophet (Peace and blessings be upon him). The oldest Arabic version of the new Testament was published by Erpenius in 1616 C.E. - about a thousand years after the demise of our Prophet (Peace and blessings be upon him).
How then,
xingu, could the Prophet (who does not understand a language other than Arabic) have "heard Biblical stories"?
2) The extremely prominent Quraish nobles who followed the Prophet (Peace and blessings be upon him) and accepted Islam were wise and intelligent men who would have easily noticed anything suspicious about the way in which the Prophet (Peace and blessings be upon him) brought the revelations to them - more so since the Prophetic mission lasted 23 years.
3) The enemies of the Prophet (Peace and blessings be upon him) kept a close watch on him in order to find proof for their claim that "he was a liar" - they could not point out even a single instance when the Prophet (Peace and blessings be upon him) may have had a secret rendezvous with particular Jews or Christians.
And Allah knows best.
Ac 19:10
And this continued by the space of two years; so that a
ll they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.
Comment:
All of Asia was taught the word of God... The Greeks had conquered Persia long before Christ.
Are you saying there were no Persians that knew the Greek language after being their vassal for several hundred years? The Persians did not need the new testament translated into Arabic because they simply knew how to speak Greek and most likely Hebrew also.
I don't know how to speak Spanish but I know what a taco is..
Galatians 1:17
Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me;
but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus.
Comment:
During the time of Christ and shortly after Iran/Mesopotamia was full of tribal clans and traveling and trading in the region was not unheard of...
Parthian Persia (150 BC-AD 226)
Parthia was a region north of Persia in what is today northeastern Iran. Its rulers, the Arsacid dynasty, belonged to an Iranian tribe that had settled there
during the time of Alexander.
During the Parthian period, Hellenistic (Greek) customs
partially gave way to a resurgence of Persian culture.
This just is a testament that the Persians were not purely Arab speaking people during the time of Christ but had still retained many Greek influences including the ability to speak the Greek language...
I am sure in two hundred and twenty six years the name Jesus may have come up a few times in Parthian literature...
You imply as if there was not a single person in Persia at the time that could speak Greek.
Intercultural prejudice is a modern faction of radical Islam... (probably borrowed from the Hebrews.) The Jews of the time of Christ were against most intercultural interaction matched only by radical Islam of today...
Also, remember the wise men (magi) "from the east" that came to Jesus as a young child bearing gifts? They were most likely from Persia. How did they talk to Mary and Joseph if they did not know Greek or Hebrew? How did they talk to Herod the Great?
Nebuchadnezzar was a Persian too... Much is written of his reign in the Hebrew Bible...
Also Daniel ruled as second in command in Persia/Babylon at around 580 BC...
The Hebrew Bible did not have to be translated into Arabic for the Persians to have heard the "good news"... Many of the Persians at the time could read and write Greek quite fluently due to almost 500 years in Greek captivity...
Also the message of Christ was passed on by word of mouth for many years before it was actually even written down... Yet, it still managed to spread and all of Asia heard the gospel in the space of two years (long before it was ever written down)...
