What’s your comparison baseline? Compared to the screen in front of your face, he’s not certain. Compared to pretty much anyone born in the VI century, he is quite certain.
You don’t count the Koran as “intact own writings”? :-) Yes, I am well aware that it was compiled quite some time after his death from a collection of records and that, by tradition, Muhammad was illiterate.
The Arab society around VII century wasn’t big on writing—the cultural transmission was mostly oral. However external sources mention Muhammad already in 636 AD.
You’re referring to the phrase “many villages were ravaged by the killing of the Arabs of Muhammad”, written after Muhammad’s supposed death, “Arabs of Muhammad” meaning ‘Muslims’ the way “people of Christ” means ‘Christians’. That Muslims and Christians existed doesn’t mean the characters they invoked to justify violence, supremacism, etc. existed as actual humans.
Criteria for considering Muhammad and Jesus near certain are so lax, we’d have to consider some Greek/Roman gods near certain.
So you’re arguing that by 632 the violent and supremacist Arab hordes were justifying their violence and supremacism by inventing an imaginary prophet who lived merely a few decades before (so some of “his” contemporaries were still alive). Because they were so tricksy they made him not a terribly appealing character—an illiterate merchant’s apprentice who married a cougar and then went a bit crazy—and attributed to him a whole book of poetry clearly written while on acid. And hey—it worked! Their creation (I guess it was a joint effort—takes a village and all that..?) was so successful that it caused the fastest massive conquest in human history.
The criteria for the historicity of Greek/Roman Gods and Muhammad/Jesus are not the same.
The Roman Gods are for the most part just Romanized versions of Greek Gods. If you examine the different characteristics closely, then the Greek Gods have much in common with Gods in the pantheons of other Indo-European peoples. For example Zeus is the God of Thunder, Thor is the God of Thunder in Germanic mythologies, and Perun serves the same purpose in Slavic mythologies.
Based on these similarities you can trace these stories to the stories of some common ancestral Gods of the old Indo-European nomads on the steppes of Russia and the Ukraine… So these stories are so ancient that any link to anyone living whether man or whatever is highly unlikely.
However stories of Jesus and Muhammad are much more likely considering since they occured at times when writing was already invented and shortly after their death, we can see stirrings of historical events linked to them. With Jesus, we have historical writing of him maybe 50 years after his death, including by his enemies. So a historical figure of Jesus is highly likely, although the miracles and stuff attributed to him are made up.
With Muhammad the probabilities are even higher. Shortly after his death, there were conquests of neighboring lands done by people who were saying they were his friends (meaning they saw him live). While most of the stories about him are probably highly exaggerated, there most likely was a historical Muhammad.
What’s your comparison baseline? Compared to the screen in front of your face, he’s not certain. Compared to pretty much anyone born in the VI century, he is quite certain.
Then why don’t you just point to evidence of his existence being more likely than others’? We have bodily remains, intact own writings, or historical records made during the lives of many born in 6th century, e.g. Columbanus, Pope Gregory I, founding emperor of Tang Dynasty, Radegund, Venantius Fortunatus, Theodora). So why don’t we have any one of those types of evidence about Muhammad?
You don’t count the Koran as “intact own writings”? :-) Yes, I am well aware that it was compiled quite some time after his death from a collection of records and that, by tradition, Muhammad was illiterate.
The Arab society around VII century wasn’t big on writing—the cultural transmission was mostly oral. However external sources mention Muhammad already in 636 AD.
You’re referring to the phrase “many villages were ravaged by the killing of the Arabs of Muhammad”, written after Muhammad’s supposed death, “Arabs of Muhammad” meaning ‘Muslims’ the way “people of Christ” means ‘Christians’. That Muslims and Christians existed doesn’t mean the characters they invoked to justify violence, supremacism, etc. existed as actual humans.
Criteria for considering Muhammad and Jesus near certain are so lax, we’d have to consider some Greek/Roman gods near certain.
So you’re arguing that by 632 the violent and supremacist Arab hordes were justifying their violence and supremacism by inventing an imaginary prophet who lived merely a few decades before (so some of “his” contemporaries were still alive). Because they were so tricksy they made him not a terribly appealing character—an illiterate merchant’s apprentice who married a cougar and then went a bit crazy—and attributed to him a whole book of poetry clearly written while on acid. And hey—it worked! Their creation (I guess it was a joint effort—takes a village and all that..?) was so successful that it caused the fastest massive conquest in human history.
An interesting theory.
The criteria for the historicity of Greek/Roman Gods and Muhammad/Jesus are not the same.
The Roman Gods are for the most part just Romanized versions of Greek Gods. If you examine the different characteristics closely, then the Greek Gods have much in common with Gods in the pantheons of other Indo-European peoples. For example Zeus is the God of Thunder, Thor is the God of Thunder in Germanic mythologies, and Perun serves the same purpose in Slavic mythologies.
Based on these similarities you can trace these stories to the stories of some common ancestral Gods of the old Indo-European nomads on the steppes of Russia and the Ukraine… So these stories are so ancient that any link to anyone living whether man or whatever is highly unlikely.
However stories of Jesus and Muhammad are much more likely considering since they occured at times when writing was already invented and shortly after their death, we can see stirrings of historical events linked to them. With Jesus, we have historical writing of him maybe 50 years after his death, including by his enemies. So a historical figure of Jesus is highly likely, although the miracles and stuff attributed to him are made up.
With Muhammad the probabilities are even higher. Shortly after his death, there were conquests of neighboring lands done by people who were saying they were his friends (meaning they saw him live). While most of the stories about him are probably highly exaggerated, there most likely was a historical Muhammad.