2. In the Qurʾān: Muḥammad

Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Mahomet, Albin Michel, 1957, p. 4. Rodinson republished a paperback edition of this “comprehensive survey” (1969)

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 5.

Maxime Rodinson, Mahomet, Seuil, 3^rd ed., 1974, p. 67.

Régis Blachère was a French orientalist, Arabist and Islamic scholar (1900-1973). He held the Arab Philosophy Chair at the Sorbonne and was the director of the Institute of Islamic Studies (Institut des études islamiques) in Paris. He published a history of Arabic literature (1952), a study on the problem posed by Muḥammad (1952), a translation of the Qurʾān (1950 and a new version in 1957), and an introduction to the Qurʾān (1959). He also co-authored a grammar of classical Arabic with Gaudefroy-Demombynes. Throughout his analysis, Brother Bruno refers to Régis Blachère’s translation of the Qurʾān, along with Denise Masson’s, for they are the only recent translators who show some concern for critical methods. Blachère and Masson will only serve Brother Bruno occasionally to emphasise the inconsistencies and contradictions of the “accepted meaning.” He does not systematically compare his exegesis with theirs. You will come to understand how totally pointless this would be as you advance in Brother Bruno’s commentary.

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 5.

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 7.

Gustav Weil (1808-1989) was born in Sulzbuig, Baden, to a rabbinical family. Like his forebears, he was to have been a rabbi, and he studied Talmud under his grandfather at the Talmudic School in Metz. He, however, abandoned this at the first opportunity, entering the University of Heidelberg at the age of twenty. There he studied philology and history, as well as Arabic. In 1830, he went to Paris to study under Silvestre de Sacy, and from there he accompanied the French forces which occupied Algeria, as a correspondent for an Augsburg newspaper. In 1831 he proceeded to Cairo, where he spent more than four years teaching French at the new Egyptian medical school. In Egypt he perfected his Arabic and acquired Turkish and Persian.
After some months in Istanbul, he returned to the University of Heidelberg, where he served as a librarian for almost twenty-five years. In 1843, Weil published a life of Muhammad entitled Mohammed der Prophet. It was the first Western biography of Muhammad that was free from prejudice and polemic. It was based on a profound yet critical knowledge of the Arabic sources. For the first time, he gave the European reader an opportunity to see Muḥammad as the Muslims saw him. Weil achieved this through an exacting and exhausting use of manuscripts then available in Europe. Although trained in philology, Weil came to regard himself as a historian of Islam. From 1846 to 1862, Weil published the first complete history of the Egyptian and Spanish caliphates, written according to the demands of European criticism and composed from the original sources. Weil reproduced the narrative style of his Arabic sources, resulting in an account that was neither dramatic nor analytical.  In 1861, Weil was given a professorship at the university.
Gustav Weil’s contribution to the foundation of early Islamic studies is not always given recognition. For instance, Theodor Nöldeke’s prize-winning dissertation on the Qurʾān owes a substantial debt to Weil’s earlier work on the topic, yet it is Nöldeke, rather than he, who is remembered as the great father of Qurʾānic studies.

Leone Caetani (1869-1935) was an Italian orientalist, historian and Member of Parliament. Born into the ancient aristocratic family of Rome, he studied classical history at La Sapienza University, presenting in 1891, a thesis on a papal legation in Paris. However, he became fascinated with the Orient at an early age and made a number of journeys there. His most important journey took place in 1894 from Egypt to Persia. At La Sapienza, he also attended courses in Arabic language and literature, and in Semitic languages. He soon mastered several oriental languages, including Arabic, Turkish and Persian. He participated in his first international congress of orientalists in London in September 1892. Thanks to the family fortune, he was able to build up a rich library on Arab-Muslim civilisation, including a remarkable collection of photographs of manuscripts.
He also conceived very early on what was to become his magnum opus: a meticulous analytical history, year by year, of the early days of Islam from the Hijrah in 622 to the death of the Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib in 661 (year 40 of the Hijrah). Caetani collected as exhaustively as possible all the “historical” material transmitted by ancient authors, and treated it by the critical methods of modern science. The result was the Annali dell’ Islam, a monumental ten volume work, published between 1905 and 1926. Caetani conceived and began this great work alone, but later enlisted the help of collaborators.
In 1919 he became a full member of the Academy of the Lynceans (of which he had been a correspondent since 1911), but he did not really return to his work on the Annali dell’ Islam, which he had planned to continue until the fall of the Umayyads in 750. In 1924 he created a Fondazione Caetani per gli studi musulmani at the Academy of the Lynceans, to which he bequeathed his splendid orientalist library, and of which he had initially planned to become active president. His notorious opposition to fascism led him to leave Italy for Canada in 1927. He acquired a property in Vernon in the Vancouver hinterland, where he led a secluded and rustic life, interspersed with brief stays in France and England. Having adopted Canadian citizenship, he was stripped of his Italian nationality by the Fascist regime in April 1935, and thereby disbarred from the Academy of the Lynceans a few months before his death.

Caetani, Annali dell’Islam, quoted by Blachère (Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 9).

Maxime Rodinson, Mahomet, Seuil, 3^rd ed., 1974, p. 12

Maxime Rodinson (1915-2004) was linguist, sociologist, ethnologist and philosopher. He was born in Paris into a family of Russian-Polish immigrants who had settled in France at the end of the 19^th century. Although he spent his childhood in a family climate – that of the Ashkenazi milieu of Central European Yiddish-speaking Jews –, his parents were irreligious internationalists who instilled in their child the ideas of the Enlightenment and secular and republican values. His proletarian parents were active in the Socialist Party, then in the new Communist Party in 1920.
Rodison received an ordinary primary education. At 14 years of age, he began working as a messenger to earn a living. At the same time he undertook to study alone in order to take the competitive entrance examination for the École des langues orientales, which he passed in 1932. He plunged into academic work with meticulous passion and a rigour. The learning of Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic testifies to his interest in Semitic languages and in comparative linguistics (he approached some thirty languages), but it was Ge’ez, the ancient Ethiopian language, which became his specialty.
Mobilised at the beginning of the Second World War, he asked to be sent to Syria to put into practice what he had learned at the School of Oriental Languages. From Syria, he was soon sent to Lebanon. After being demobilised, he managed to find various jobs there. He eventually returned to France after is application to the French Institute of Damascus was not accepted, because of his membership in the Communist Party.
Upon his return to France, he found a job at the National Library, where he was assigned to the Department of Oriental Prints. In 1955, he began a career as an academic at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where he taught Ge’ez and the historical ethnography of the Near East for more than forty years.
His work includes nearly a thousand articles for scientific publications as well as for the press, and numerous works accessible to a wide audience. His books can be grouped into three categories, those devoted to the Arab-Islamic world, those dealing with the Jewish people and Israel, and general works.
At the instigation of a friend, he wrote a biography of Muḥammad, applying to this work the methodological approach of the social sciences. Published in 1961, the book that made him known to the general public.

Maxime Rodinson, Mahomet, Seuil, 3^rd ed., 1974, p. 14

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 10

Father Henri Lammens (1862–1937) was a prominent Flemish Belgian-born Jesuit and Orientalist of Saint Joseph’s University in Beirut, Lebanon. He was the first to venture applying the rules of the modern historical and critical method to the Qurʾān. Father Lammens based his work on the Professor Ignác Goldziher concerning the historical value of the Tradition. He adopted Goldziher’s viewpoint and pursued the inquiry. Lammens’ conclusions are firm and represent a considerable advance over Goldziher’s. The latter had shown the profoundly “tendentious character” of the Tradition. Father Lammens showed its “apocryphal” nature. He positively demonstrated that the ḥadīṯs are nothing but pure inventions, that the so-called ‘eyewitnesses,’ the authorities of the Ḥadīṯ, are fictitious. Thus, the Sīrah has no historical basis other than the Qurʾān, of which it is nothing more than an imaginary elaboration: “Since the Tradition arises from the affirmations recorded in the Qurʾān,” Father Lammens stated, “it does not provide a verification or complementary information, but an apocryphal elaboration.” He was therefore able to conclude that “the Sīrah remains to be written, just as the historical Muḥammad remains to be discovered.” To do this he advocated rejecting the ‘Tradition’ in its totality, replacing its fanciful exegesis by a scientific exegesis. Although he recommended this, he never carried out this work. When Father Lammens passed away, the Jesuits of Beirut put his works under seal, and since then it has been a law of Islamology to ignore his discoveries.

Father Gabriel Théry (1891-1959), Dominican, must be considered the founder of “the scientific exegesis” of the Qurʾān. Historian, theologian et author, Doctor of theology, professor at Saulchoir and at the Institut catholique de Paris, he was consultor for the Historic Section of the Congregation of Rites. He was a reputed medievalist in the scientific research community. In 1926, he co-founded with Étienne Gilson the Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge (ahdlma). In 1955, he self-published under the pseudonym Hanna Zakarias the first two volumes of his work, De Moïse à Muḥammad. A third volume was published posthumously in 1963. His forth volume remains unpublished. It was Father Théry's brilliant contribution to have understood that it was necessary to begin by comparing the Qurʾān to the Bible. He succeeded in solving the very difficult question of the literary genres of the sūrahs of the Qurʾān. He distinguished three series of texts: a Prayer of Praise, Sūrah I; a dogmatic book of which only fragments remain, which he called the Corab; finally a history book, a true chronicle, which he called the Book of the Acts of Islam.” His monumental work became known to a great extent through the reviews that Father de Nantes wrote on it to stimulate a debate. He wrote: “Hanna Zakarias had the freedom of mind to read the Qurʾān as a document of the past and to seek to explain it by the simplest laws of the historical method.” The inspired intuition that occurred to Father Théry was that the author of the Qurʾān used the Hebrew language to give a religious vocabulary to the Arabs.

Bertram Johannes Otto Schrieke (1890-1945) was a Dutch anthropologist and sociologist. He studied at the University of Leiden, where he obtained a doctor’s degree in “languages and literature of the East Indian archipelago.” He then studied sociology at the University of Amsterdam.
Schrieke was not a theorist. Rather he took exception to existing theories as being too one-sided or too narrow. He held the view that “a culture forms an organic whole, which cannot be split up into different parts as if these components had no relation to each other.” As demonstrated by his lifelong work in the social and economic aspects of the history of Indonesia, at that time a Dutch colony, Schrieke’s forte lay in maintaining a critical attitude toward the generally accepted approaches to these subjects, which relied on archaeology and colonial history.
In his doctoral thesis, (1916), he analysed the text of a manuscript, written in Javanese and ascribed to a legendary Muslim saint. His study of this manuscript, as well as of the early history of the Portuguese and Dutch trade contacts with Indonesia and of the published material on the voyages of Chinese and Arabs in the previous centuries, enabled him to revise the existing theory that the Islamisation of the archipelago had come about pacifically. He came to the conclusion that Islamisation, hitherto considered to be primarily the product of trade relations, had been equally influenced by political conflicts and military struggles. Schrieke suggested that it is “impossible to understand the spread of Islam in the archipelago unless one takes into account the antagonism between the Muslim traders and the Portuguese.”
During the 1920s, when Schrieke was acting as adviser on native and Arab affairs to the Netherlands Indies government, he was called upon to conduct an inquiry into the communist uprisings on the west coast of Sumatra in 1926. In order to explain the success of the communists’ tactics, Schrieke incorporated in his report facts relating to the historical background and structure of society. He was thus able to point to the factors in this transitional period which had helped to foster the antigovernment attitude of the population. Here again his natural approach was to gather any relevant data, including the seemingly unimportant and the controversial.
When he was professor of sociology in the law school at Batavia, from 1924 to 1929, and later at the University of Amsterdam, from 1936 to 1945, Schrieke’s exerted influence in sociology and history. He fostered surveys of research on both Indonesia and the Netherlands Caribbean territories. Schrieke died suddenly in London in September 1945 while attending a United Nations conference as a Netherlands government delegate on Indonesian affairs.

Josef Horovitz (1874-1931) was a German Orientalist, and son of a prominent orthodox rabbi. Educated in Frankfurt, he studied at the University of Berlin with Edward Sachau, where he also began to teach. In 1905-1906, he travelled through Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, on commission to find Arabic manuscripts. From 1907 to 1914, he lived in India, where he taught Arabic at the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligar. He also served as the curator of Islamic inscriptions for the Indian government. Due to his German nationality, he lost these positions at the beginning of the First World War.
In 1914, he was appointed to profess Semitic languages at the University of Frankfurt, where he would teach until his death. His range included early Islamic history, early Arabic poetry, Qur’anic studies, and Islam in India. Horovitz produced an amazing number of outstanding students during his rather brief tenure at Frankfurt, and his influence upon all of them was strong. He was a very reserved man, but when set talking he was an inexhaustible source of knowledge about the East, past and present, and a paragon of philological exactitude. In the 1920s, as a member of the board of trustees of Hebrew University in Jerusalem from its inception, Horovitz created the department of Oriental studies, became its director in absentia, and initiated its collective project, the concordance of early Arabic poetry. At first Horovitz devoted himself to the study of Arabic historical literature and then to early Arabic poetry. His major work was a commentary on the Qurʾān, which he did not complete. He was not a fervent Zionist, and his political sympathies lay with Brit Shalom, the intellectual movement, comprised largely of German Jews, that abjured a Jewish state. Nevertheless, he gave crucial scholarly legitimacy to a fledgling organisation in Jerusalem, which would later provide a haven for many of the Jewish refugee scholars fleeing Nazi Germany.
Horovitz is best known for his study: The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and Their Authors, published in 1927 It is the first comprehensive work on the early accounts of Muhammad’s life making full use of the available sources. It traces the emergence and growth of the Sīrah tradition from the generation of Muslims following the Prophet’s death down to the biographical dictionary of Ibn Sa’d in the 9 century, and thus covers many of the most important developments in the formative stage of Arab-Islamic tradition. Horovitz examined relations between Islam and Judaism in his Jewish Proper Names and Derivatives in the Qurʾān.

Theodor Nöldeke (1836-1930) was a German orientalist. He studied in Göttingen, Vienna, Leiden and Berlin. Along with Ignaz Goldziher, he is considered the founder of modern Islamic studies in Europe. In 1859 his history of the Qurʾān won for him the prize of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and in the following year he rewrote it in German (Geschichte des Qorâns). Nöldeke admitted: “In the end, I renounce exploring the mystery of the historical personality of Muḥammad.” Nöldeke is best known for his reordering of the 114 Sūrahs of the Qurʾān to match what he considered to be their true historical occurrence. Nöldeke based this work on the sequence of revelation with the development of content and the origination of new linguistic styles. The Nöldeke Chronology divides the Sūrahs of the Qurʾān are into four groupings: the First Meccan Period, the Second Meccan Period, the Third Meccan Period, the Medinese Period. Nöldeke considered this arrangement to be more coherent and comprehensive. Despite this attempt made by Noldëke, and later on by Schwally, Blachère, etc., Brother Bruno believes that there is no reason to give the “Sūrahs” an order different from the one found in the accepted “vulgate.”

Carl Heinrich Becker (1876-1933) was a German orientalist and politician. He was one of the Wilhelmine period’s most eminent orientalists and is considered a co-founder of modern and contemporary Oriental studies in Germany. He was at the same time an important reformer of academics in the Weimar Republic. In 1921 and from 1925 to 1930, he was Prussian Minister of Education.
His comparative analysis of Christianity and Islam, entitled Christentum und Islam (1907), represents the first major work of modern oriental studies. For Becker, Christianity and Islam present a complex parallel historical development, being religious systems that are fundamentally similar, which only diverge at the point of the Renaissance. Becker was introduced to oriental studies through Old Testament criticism, the field’s traditional point of entry. He quickly adopted the modern Orient as his object of study. In 1908, Becker accepted an appointment at the Kolonialinstitut in Hamburg, an important training ground for Germany’s colonial and overseas administrators. While in Hamburg, Becker aggressively advocated the implementation of Islamwissenschaft (the scientific study of Islam) on behalf of Germany’s colonial project. Becker’s first publication at Hamburg, Islam and the Colonisation of Africa (1910), a none- too-subtle treatise on racial and religious hierarchies in Africa, exemplified his deep commitment to Islamwissenschaft. Becker had a tendency to adapt his writings for use by the colonial establishment that he served. The publication of Christianity and Islam represents a liminal moment in Becker’s academic career when was no longer a traditional orientalist but not yet a crude mouthpiece for German colonial ambitions.

Michael Jan de Goeje (1836-1909) was a German-speaking Dutch Orientalist, (1836-1909) From 1854 to 1858, Goeje studied theology and Oriental languages at the University of Leiden, and became particularly proficient in Arabic. After taking his Doctorate of Letters there in 1860, he did postdoctoral studies at the University of Oxford, where he collated the Bodleian Library manuscripts of the important medieval Arabic geographer Al-Idrīsī. In 1883, he became a professor of Arabic at Leiden until his retirement in 1906.
Goeje exerted great influence not only on his students, but also on the theologians and eastern administrators who attended his lectures. In 1886, he became Foreign correspondent of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. He headed the International Congress of Orientalists in Algiers in 1905. He was a member of the Institut de France, was awarded the German Order of Merit, and received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University. At the time of his death, he was President of the newly formed International Association of Academies of Science. He became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1869.
During his career, Goeje edited many Arabic works, the most important of which was the 13-volume medieval history Annals of Tabari (1879–1901). He was also chief editor of the first three volumes of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (1908). His numerous editions of Arabic texts are still of great value to scholars today.

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 28.
_______________
Martin Lings (1909-2005) was a British religious scholar, museum keeper, and author. Lings was an authority on Sufism and Islamic culture. Raised in a Protestant family, he abandoned his religious beliefs as a young man. He attended Magdalen College, Oxford, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1932. While lecturing in Anglo-Saxon and Middle English at the University of Kaunas in Lithuania for four years, he earned a Master of Arts in 1937. In 1939, Lings travelled to Cairo, Egypt, to visit a friend then working as an assistant to philosopher René Guénon, whose work sparked Lings’ curiosity. Lings became Guénon’s new assistant, and of necessity he learned to speak Arabic. Converting to Islam, he adopted the Islamic name of Abu Bakr Siraj ad-Din and took a job as a lecturer in Shakespeare at the University of Cairo in 1940, remaining there until 1952, when riots against the British compelled him to return to England. Having become interested in Arabic culture, he matriculated at the University of London to earn a bachelor’s degree in Arabic in 1954 and a doctorate in 1959. While at the university, Lings became a disciple of metaphysical philosopher Frithjof Schuon, who taught him about Sufi doctrine and methods. His doctoral thesis was later published as the biography A Moslem Saint of the Twentieth Century: Shaikh Ahmad al-Alawi (1961). Lings then embarked on a second career as a writer and keeper of museum book and manuscript collections, specialising in Arabic and Oriental works. From 1955 to 1974 he was an assistant keeper, then keeper, of Oriental manuscripts and printed books at the British Museum. Meanwhile, he produced such books as a comprehensive volume on Sufi doctrine (The Book of Certainty), an introduction to Sufism entitled What is Sufism? (1975), and a definitive biography Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources.

Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Mahomet, Albin Michel, 1957, p. 57

Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Mahomet, Albin Michel, 1957, p. 58

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 37

Maxime Rodinson, Mahomet, Seuil, 3^rd ed., 1974, p. 69

Maxime Rodinson, Mahomet, Seuil, 3^rd ed., 1974, p. 39

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 39

Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Mahomet, Albin Michel, 1957, p. 63

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 39

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 39

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 41

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 46

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 47

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 34

Maxime Rodinson, Mahomet, Seuil, 3^rd ed., 1974, p. 97

Maxime Rodinson, Mahomet, Seuil, 3^rd ed., 1974, p. 99

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 39-40

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 42

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 41. Cf. Rodinson, Mahomet, Seuil, 3^rd ed., 1974, p. 100

Rodinson, Mahomet, Seuil, 3^rd ed., 1974, p. 101. Without departing from a serene objectivity, allow us to emphasise the aberrant nature of such an explanation. Click on the arrow to discover Brother Bruno’s more scientific explanation of these initials.

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 53. Cf. Rodinson, Mahomet, Seuil, 3^rd ed., 1974, p. 110

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 53

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 61

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 61. Cf. Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet, p. 42-43.

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 65

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 98

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 106

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 101-105

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 118

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 124. Lings quotes Ibn Isḥāq. Cf. Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Mahomet, p. 93-99

QURʾĀN 2:285

Raziel believed in what had descended upon him from his Master, and his faithful all believed in God, in his angels, in his Scriptures, in his messengers of the secret. We make no distinction between one of his messengers of the secret [and the others]. And they said: “We heard and we erred. Forgive us, our Master. Towards you [turns the one who is in] affliction.”

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 125-126

Maxime Rodinson, Mahomet, Seuil, 3^rd ed., 1974, p. 182.

Gaudefroy-Demombynes, Mahomet, Albin Michel, 1957, p. 243. Blachère does not have the same interpretation: “These marital unions at a later age can certainly be attributed to the awakening, in the Prophet, of a sexuality hitherto contained.” (Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. p. 109)

Maxime Rodinson, Mahomet, Seuil, 3^rd ed., 1974, p. 169 sq.

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 99

Maxime Rodinson, Mahomet, Seuil, 3^rd ed., 1974, p. 194 sq.; Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet, p. 105 sq.

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 110-111

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 110-111

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 115

Régis Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet. Essai de biographie critique du fondateur de l’Islam, P.U.F., 1952, p. 116

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 377

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 378

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 382 sq.; Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet, p. 120 sq.

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 395 sq.; Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet, p. 127.

Martin Lings, Muḥammad, his life based on the earliest sources, London, 1983; translated from English by Jean-Louis Michon: Le Prophète Muḥammad. Sa vie d'après les sources les plus anciennes, Seuil, 1986, p. 401 sq.; Blachère, Le problème de Mahomet, p. 127 sq.

J 1028-12: rbHD bmḥmd, “Lord of the Jews. By the Praised One” (closing formula). (Biella, Dictionary of Old South Arabic, article ḤMD, p.179).
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Joan Copeland Biella (1947-....) was an American researcher and member of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem. She is the author of the Dictionary of Old South Arabic, 1982.

The Song of Songs 1:13-16

¹³ My beloved is to me a bag of myrrh, that lies between my breasts. ¹⁴ My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of Engedi. ¹⁵ Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful; your eyes are doves. ¹⁶ Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly lovely.

The prefix m of the Arabic word muḥammadun replaces the noun ʾîš, “man,” of the biblical expression, by virtue of the general principle laid down by Fleisch following Bauer and Nyberg. Nouns that bear the prefix “m” are derived from what used to be a sentence composed of the relative pronoun mâ to which has been appended a verbal or nominal predicate. In this set phrase, the relative becomes agglutinated to the predicate; for example mā raḥab “that (is) vast, wide” became marḥhab « vast, wide place » (place name). (Fleisch, L'Arabe classique, p. 84.)

The Gospel According to Saint John 13:23

One of His disciples, whom Jesus loved, was lying close to the breast of Jesus.

The Gospel According to Saint John 19:26

Jesus saw His Mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing near.

The Gospel According to Saint John 20:2

So Mary Magdalene ran, and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved.

The Gospel According to Saint John 21:7

That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter: “It is the Lord!”

The Gospel According to Saint John 21:20

Peter turned and saw following them the disciple whom Jesus loved.

Histoire de la littérature arabe, vol. 1, p. 58.

Enno Littmann (1875-1958) was a German orientalist. For his 15^th birthday present, he asked for a book to self-study Arabic. He showed so much interest in this study that his father’s present to him the following Christmas was 20 grammar books of oriental languages. This is how he entered the field of oriental studies. He finally mastered around 20 languages, modern and ancient.
Littmann studied theology, classical and oriental languages at the universities of Berlin, Greifswald and Halle. In 1898-99 he continued his study of Oriental languages at the University of Strasbourg. In the following years, he participated in two archaeological expeditions to Palestine and Syria. Then, in 1905-06, he led the German Axum Expedition. Its work represents a monumental collection of linguistic and ethnological material that remains the basis of Ethiopian archaeology and epigraphy. In 1906 he succeeded Theodor Nöldeke as Chair of Oriental languages at the University of Strasbourg. Later he was professor of Oriental languages at the universities of Göttingen, Bonn and Tübingen.
Though Littmann had actively contributed to many diverse spheres of oriental scholarship, he principally excelled in the field of Ethiopian studies. It was the Semitic Tigre language of Northern, Eastern and Western lowlands of Eritrea that engaged his attention first and foremost.

Florilegium Melchior de Vogùé, Paris, 1909, p. 387.

James Février, Histoire de l’Écriture, Payot, 1948, 2d ed., 1959, p. 263.
_________________
James Germain Février (1895-1976) was a French historian and philologist. He was a specialist of the Semitic world, his thesis was on the archaeological site of Palmyra and he did much work on the history of Carthage and the Phoenicians. He was Study Director at the École pratique des hautes études.

François Nau (1864-1931) was a French orientalist and professor. Member of the clergy of Paris. Father Nau held a Doctorate of Mathematics, a Licentiate in Physical Sciences, and he graduated from the École des Hautes Études (philological section). In 1899, he became a professor at the Catholic Institute of Paris. He also translated from Syriac, Greek and Arabic into French.

François Nau, Les Arabes chrétiens de Mésopotamie et de Syrie du VII^e au VIII^e siècle, Paris, 1933, p. 96.

François Nau, Les Arabes chrétiens de Mésopotamie et de Syrie du VII^e au VIII^e siècle, Paris, 1933, p. 98.

Cf. our volume I, pp. 135, 309-310, 327-328

The Epistle to the Romans 1:1

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an Apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God

The Epistle to the Romans 6:3-4

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death? ⁴ We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

The Epistle to the Romans 6:8-9

But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. ⁹ For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again.

The Epistle to the Romans 6:11

So you [those have been baptised into Christ Jesus] also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

The Epistle to the Galatians 5:24

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

The Acts of the Apostles 2:38

Peter said to the men of Israel: “Repent, and be baptised every one of you in the Name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the Gift of the Holy Spirit.”

The Acts of the Apostles 3:6

Peter said: “I have no silver and gold, but I give you [a man lame from birth] what I have; in the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”

The Acts of the Apostles 3:18

What God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ should suffer, He thus fulfilled.

The Acts of the Apostles 3:20

Repent, and turn again, that God may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus.

The Acts of the Apostles 5:42

And every day in the Temple and at home the Apostles did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ

The Epistle to the Galatians 4:4

When the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law.

The Epistle to the Galatians 3:28.

Compare with The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 1:1-17; The Gospel According to Saint Luke 3:23-38.

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians 2:2-4

² We [Saint Paul] give thanks to God always for you all [the Thessalonians], constantly mentioning you in our prayers. ³ remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁴ For we know, brethren beloved by God, that He has chosen you.

The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians 1:10

When the Lord comes on that day to be glorified in His saints, and to be marvelled at in all who have believed, because our [Saint Paul’s] testimony to you was believed.

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians 2:2

Though we [Saint Paul] had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the Gospel of God in the face of great opposition.

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians 2:4

² We [Saint Paul] give thanks to God always for you all [the Thessalonians], constantly mentioning you in our prayers. ³ remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁴ For we know, brethren beloved by God, that He has chosen you.

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians 2:6

We [Saint Paul] never sought glory from men, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ.

The Second Epistle to the Corinthians 12:9-10

God said to me [Saint Paul]: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. ¹⁰ For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

The Second Epistle to the Corinthians 12:10

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong

The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 8:20

Jesus said to a scribe: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay His head.”

The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 24:30

Then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

The Book of Daniel 7:13

¹³ I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a Son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him.

This is not all: in Sūrah 3, not only is “Jesus, son of Mary” deprived of His divinity and His Messianic kingship, but He even loses all historical consistency. “Nevertheless,” admits Father Jomier, “His figure remains very vague and it would be quite difficult to represent Him if one relied only on the Qurʾān.” Father Abd-el-Jalil makes the same remark: “The earthly life of Christ, moreover, is of a very vague nature in the eyes of Muslims.”

Father Jacques Jomier (1914-2008) was a French Dominican and Islamologue. He graduated from the Dominican Faculty of Saulchoir with a degree in Theology and a doctorate in Litterature. En 1932, he entered the Dominican Order, and was ordained priest in 1939. Later on he was sent to the Dominican priory in Cairo. It had been founded in 1928 to be an extension in Egypt of the École Biblique de Jérusalem, devoted to the study of archaeology in Egypt in connection with Biblical studies. Unfortunately, international events blocked the project. In 1953, Father Jomier became one of the three founders of the Dominican Institute of Oriental Studies (IDEO) dedicated to Islamic studies aimed at “making Islam better known and appreciated in its religious and spiritual dimensions.”)

Father Jean Mohammed Ben Abd-el-Jalil (1904-1979), was a Moroccan convert to Catholicism who became a Franciscan priest. Ben Abd-el-Jalil was born into a family of Muslim notables from Fez on April 17, 1904, Mohammed Ben Abd-el-Jalil received a bilingual and Muslim education. He began by learning the Qurʾān at the University of Al Quaraouiyine in Fez, and then accompanied his father on a pilgrimage to Mecca at the age of 9. Between 1922 and 1925, he attended the Gouraud High School while boarding at the Foucault School, run by Franciscan Fathers in Rabat, the capital of the French Protectorate in Morocco. It was at this time that Mohammed developed an interest in the Catholic religion. He obtained his baccalaureate in 1925.
That same year, he went to Paris for higher studies to obtain a degree in Arabic language and literature. He was also interested in philosophy and theology, frequenting Jacques Maritain, Maurice Blondel, and especially Louis Massignon, who maintained a long friendship and correspondence with him. The celebration of Christmas 1927 was an important step in his conversion, and he asked to be baptised. He was baptised the following year on April 7, in the chapel of the Franciscan College in Fontenay-sous-bois, with the Orientalist Louis Massignon as his godfather. He chose Jean as his Christian name. In 1929, he entered the Franciscan Order, and was ordained a priest in 1935.
In the 1930s, he published anonymously in the magazine En terre d’Islam, an appeal “proposing to the faithful to devote Fridays to pray for our distant brothers.” He also founded a “Friday Prayer League for the conversion of Muslims.”
In 1936, he was called as a professor at the Institut Catholique de Paris, where he gave a course in Arabic language and literature, as well as a course in Islamology at the chair of History of Religions. He was forced to resign this post in 1964 due to a cancer. He retired to his convent and led a secluded life. He did, however write a report on the current state of Islam for the bishops of France at the Second Vatican Council. He was received by Pope Paul VI in 1966.

The Gospel According to Saint Luke 19:28

And when Jesus had said this, He went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

The Gospel According to Saint Luke 9:51

When the days drew near for Jesus to be received up, He set His Face to go to Jerusalem.

The Gospel According to Saint Luke 13:22

Jesus went on His way through towns and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem.

The Gospel According to Saint Luke 17:11

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.

The Gospel According to Saint John 8:31-59

³¹ Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in Him: “If you continue in My word, you are truly My disciples, ³² and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” ³³ They answered Him: “We are descendants of Abraham, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How is it that You say, ‘You will be made free’?” ³⁴ Jesus answered them: “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. ³⁵ The slave does not continue in the house for ever; the son continues for ever. ³⁶ So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. ³⁷ I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you seek to kill Me, because My word finds no place in you. ³⁸ I speak of what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” ³⁹ They answered Him: “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them: “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do what Abraham did, ⁴⁰ but now you seek to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God; this is not what Abraham did. […] The Jews then said to Him: “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” ⁵⁸ Jesus said to them: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” ⁵⁹ So they took up stones to throw at Him; but Jesus hid Himself, and went out of the Temple.

The Gospel According to Saint John 6:66

The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 27:33 and The Gospel According to Saint John 19:17

The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 16:21

From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 17:22-23

As the disciples were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them: “The Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men, ²³ and they will kill Him, and He will be raised on the third day.”

The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 20:17-19

And as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, He took the twelve disciples aside, and on the way He said to them: ¹⁸ “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, ¹⁹ and deliver Him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and He will be raised on the third day.”

The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 17:5

The Gospel According to Saint Matthew 3:16-17

Verse 140, twice, then again, a third and last time, because the word will no longer appear in the whole Qurʾān.

Cf. Bonnet-Eymard, The Johannine “Soudarion,” Negative of the Divine Glory, communication at the sindonological Congress of Bologna in, La Sindone scienza e fede, Atti Conv., Bologna, 1981, ed. CLUEB, Bologna, 1983, p. 417-436; full texts in Bonnet-Eymard, The Holy Shroud, proof of the death and resurrection of Christ ed. CRC, English edition, no. 142, p. 11, January 1982.