Islam Critiqued finds comfort in discredited scholarship; Yehuda Nevo?

In answer to the video "Abraham and the Kaaba: From Borrowed Stories to Sacred Scripture"

In the mid-seventies, Crone and Cook, 2 orientalists, stated

“There is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century, ...”

adding that in the 2nd century of hijra the textual state of the Quran

“... may have differed considerably in content from the Koran we now know”.

Both were echoing the views of Wansbrough who believed the Quran was not completed until the 3rd century of hijra at the earliest. It is worthwhile noting John Wansbrough himself stated that

"of genuinely textual variants exhibiting material deviation from the canonical text of revelation, such as are available for Hebrew and Christian scripture, there are none".

His contemporary, John Burton (1977) contended that Muhammad himself had already established the final edition of the consonantal text of the Quran. Nöldeke himself once commented that the Quran

“is the work of Muhammad, and as such is fitted to afford a clue to the spiritual development of that most successful of all prophets and religious personalities".

Wansbrough also espoused a massive conspiracy about Islam being the product of the Mesopotamian clerical elite that wrote Muslim history as they adopted Judeo-Christian beliefs. Such fantasies, purely conjectural by Wansbrough's own admission were nevertheless parrotted by polemicists with even weaker theories.

One such candidate was Yehuda Nevo who could not grasp why Muhammad's name was absent from a monotheistic rock inscriptions in the Negev desert (600km away from where Islam originated!). He did not even conduct research closer to Islam's origins, like Mecca or Medina. Also, the early Muslim generations lacked any interest in architectural works, especially when it came to mosques, making the lack of early Islamic inscriptions that mention Muhammad a red herring. Nevo, and the editor who compiled the work of this amateur archaeologist posthumously, Koren, argue that Muhammad, the early caliphs and the entire list of Muslim conquests were invented myths. Muhammad isnt the name of a specific prophet but of "a praised one", in reference to prophets in general. It was an anti-Christian propaganda that originated in Abd-al malik's era, to counter the notion of God having a son.

 No reasonable explanation is given for the reference of a Saracen prophet in the Doctrina Jacobi dated to the 630s. Most scholars continue to regard the Doctrina Iacobi as the earliest known non Muslim piece of writing to claim that the teachings of an Arabian prophet provided the impetus for the conquests. Near contemporary surviving Syriac manuscripts makes reference to series of incursions by “the Arabs of Muḥammad”  into Palestine and Syria as well as their clashes with Roman forces. These two texts however, one named BL Add. 14461, and a brief historical notice penned by Thomas the Presbyter do not come as close to the description made in the Doctrina Jacobi of conquests inspired by a religious leader.

Robert Hoyland sums up how Non-Muslim writers of the first century AH (622-719CE) saw Islam. They

"attest that it was strictly monotheistic (Sebeos, John bar Penkaye, Anastasius of Sinai) and iconoclastic (anti-Jewish polemicists, Germanus); that its adherents had a sanctuary, their "House of God" (Bar Penkaye), of Abrahamic association (Chronicler of Khuzistan, Jacob of Edessa), called the Ka'ba (Jacob of Edessa), towards which they prayed (Jacob of Edessa) and at which they sacrificed (Anastasius of Sinai) and reverenced a stone (Anastasius of Sinai, Germanus); and also that they followed Muhammad (Thomas the Presbyter, Sebeos, Chronicler of Khuzistan), who was their "guide" and "instructor" (Bar Penkaye), whose "tradition" and "laws" they fiercely upheld (Bar Penkaye) and who prescribed for them abstinence from carrion, wine, falsehood and fornication (Sebeos). It is also noted that the Muslims held Jerusalem in honour (John Moschus, Arculf, Maronite chronicler, Anastasius of Sinai), were hostile to the cross (Sophronius, Isaac of Rakoti, Anastasius of Sinai), denied that Christ was the son of God (Isaac of Rakoti, Hnanisho, Anastasius of Sinai, Jacob of Edessa) and conducted their worship in specific places bearing the name masjid (John Moschus, Anastasius of Sinai). It is thus evident that the early Muslims did adhere to a cult that had definite practices and beliefs and was clearly distinct from other currrently existing faiths.
This is also confirmed by archaeology for the period beginning AH 72/691, when inscriptions proclaiming allegiance to Muhammad and his religion are found in abundance on buildings, milestones, rocks, coins, papyri, textiles and so on".

Continuing with Nevo's conclusions, Muslim lands on the other hand, were supposedly ceded peacefully and without any valid reason to their Arab vassals who werent even Muslim but pagans at the time. Arabian paganism to him by the way, was inexistant in the Hijaz and instead was extent in the Negev region. Of course, this is the only area in which he carried his archaelogoical flimsy research. The site in question, Sede Boqer, is instead seen by other scholars as nothing more than an agricultural settlement.

And then, as is expected, Nevo offers no explanation as to why would the Byzantines even want to happily rid themselves of vast slices of territories to those Hijazi pagans who adopted the paganism of another region. According to this massive conspiracy that went on completely undetected, the Byzantines themselves encouraged the rise of local heresies, like the Monophisytes, to sow hatred of the emperor among the population.

This policy was supposedly carried on for centuries under a complete governement cover up. in Gabriel S Reynolds's words

"Certainly many scholars will see Crossroads to Islam as a work of arrogance and folly".

Islamicists have considered the reality of the conquests based not on whether or not contemporenous proofs exist. Evidence rather lies in their aftermath, and meaning, which both Nevo and Koren deliberatly brush aside or werent aware of. Nothing other than Islam can explain the zeal and energy by which previously scattered and disunited Arab tribes have gathered together and occupied a vast chunk of the Byzantine Empire.

Along those lines of examples there is a mid 7th century apocalyptic history in Iraq speaks of the conquests of Egypt and southern Iraq. Even seen through the lens of the critical and skeptical school of Islamicists, Nevo's amateurish work betrays a political agenda.

Chase Robinson; "The problem of how Palestine became Muslim, if the conquest did not take place, is neatly solved by the claim that the Byzantines willingly withdrew, handling it to the not yet Muslim Arabs (The claim is preposterous, and no positive adduced)".

Due to his extreme and complete rejection of anything Muslim sources have preserved and reconstructed of Islam's origins, his work has been labelled by some who have taken the time to read it, as one of the most iconoclastic study of Islam. For example one of the major flaw in his methodology lies in that this leads him to exclude

"any later accounts that might be based on valuable but lost contemporary or near contemporary sources. Yet the bulk of Byzantine and Arabic historical writing on the conquests is made up of precisely such accounts, dating mostly from the ninth century and (scholars believe) based partly on lost Syriac and Greek Christian sources, some perhaps ultimately oral. The later writers include Nicephorus (eighth century) and Theophanes on the Byzantine side, and al-Baladhuri, al-Tabari, al-Yaqubi, and al-Kafi among others on the Arabic side".

When a non-Muslim source very close to the events, such as Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem speaks of the conquest, it is dismissed based on the circular argument that anything agreeing with the traditional account is unreliable. Nevo and Koren reject, repeatedly, all such sources. Deliberatly and without evidence. They do not interrogate their sources. Others from the skeptical school have equally stated, that even though radical revisionism might sometimes have benefits in that it allows one to sharpen the evidence in favor of a theory, such as with Holocaust denial, in this case with Nevo's work

"surely this book fails to cross it. Crossroads to Islam is so unsound — so uninformed in its welter of detail, so specious in the contrivance of its arguments, and so tendentious in its barely hidden agenda — that it’s hard to imagine anyone taking it seriously enough to reassess anything, except possibly his or her decision to pick it up in the first place" (Colin Wells).

This and other similar theories developped in complete isolation from the abunding early manuscript evidence (and much more awaiting publication), inscriptions on buildings, coins (Some early Islamic coins have been dated to 35AH/655CE), rocks, such as the recently discovered inscriptions dated to 78AH and containing the full shahada with Muhammad's name, papyri etc. all distibuted geographically from Cyprus down to Sanaa.

The sum of these scattered Quranic texts, along with the damaged and partially preserved manuscripts dating back to the 1st century hijri surpasses 90% of the current Quranic text. This wide geographical distribution of the Quranic text shows that the Quran was already codified and became a public property even a little before Uthman's standardization.

The Paris manuscript is dated from between 30-50 years after the prophet's death, meaning by people who lived with and knew him. In addition, according to Francois Deroche the manuscript seems to be based on another copy. We see again, the same pattern of empirical evidence confirming the traditional Muslim account on the compilation of the Quran. We see again, the same pattern of empirical evidence confirming the traditional Muslim account on the compilation of the Quran. Whichever way one looks at it, there is no reason to assume the Quranic text is any different of what Muhammad himself uttered. That is why, as a side note, one sees more and more the Judeo-Christian critics abandoning the idea of late compilation by unknown authors, admitting to the authenticity of the text, while maintaining that authenticity does not equal to what they deem as "truth".

Dismissing Wansbrough's theory for a late compilation of the Quran, as others did, Noseda in his research reached the figure of 80% by using 1st century manuscripts known to him.

The fact is that None of the revisionist theories are actually based on studies of the available manuscripts. As more and more manuscripts are coming out and being analyzed, the best explanation for their existence is none other than the Muslim traditional narrative. This is an accepted reality among the actual Islamicists who have analyzed the available, physical data. Nobody would make up a story the way Muslims did. Who would invent the story that their most venerated book, the pillar of their belief was not even written down and compiled by the hand of their prophet?

Instead we have the faithfully transmitted reports showing how the process was gradual and put into place by others than the prophet. Another thing to keep in mind is that western scholars, particularily the Christian critics approaching Islamic history, do so with a flawed methodology. Islamc did not rise in a lettered environement.

Whereas one must expect finding an abundance of Greco-Roman historical records attesting to the minutest details, let alone the spectacular events described in the NT, and yet we find none, not even of Jesus himself, one can certainly not apply the same standards to Islam. That is why most early physical references to Islam are not from Muslims but by the established lettered societies of the Christian empire, as Islam entered their lands with the first conquests. The more the Muslim society transitionned from an oral to written tradition, the more its history was put to writing. 

Further, as any historian knows, ancient physical sources deteriorated quickly. Subsequent scholars and historians had to constantly rewrite the material either based on actual sources or hearsay. Sources about Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great, seen as undisputable historical characters come centuries later. Diodorus Siculus wrote first about Alexander 265 years after the events, but we dont have the original. We have a rewritten copy from 1500 years later yet all historians accept it as a source for Alexander. What we have from Plato comes 1300 years after his death, for Caesar it is 900 years. Muhammad's earliest sira comes 200 years later by ibn Hisham who copied from ibn Ishaq. This genre is very specific about locations and events which can be corroborated archeologicaly today. Nothing can account for the available evidences other than the events described in the sira.