Ah yes, academia. The bastion of free inquiry and free thought.
However I’m somewhat familiar with the early history of Islam and the idea of a “high level conspiracy” doesn’t fit well. When Muhammad started having his revelations, he was basically a nobody and even after that for quite a while his fate was very touch-and-go.
The Qur’an wasn’t written down until a while after Muhammad’s death, by which time there was an incentive for leaders to edit it for their own benefit.
See also Emperor Constantine I’s efforts to quash dissent within the Christian community in order to make it more politically unified.
The Qur’an wasn’t written down until a while after Muhammad’s death, by which time there was an incentive for leaders to edit it for their own benefit.
True, but so what? I am sure there was editing, but I am also sure that the post-standardization Koran was very similar to the floating set of surahs at the time of Muhammad. You can’t just substitute one set of religious teaching for another this way.
Yes, that’s precisely my point. Religious doctrines get sorted out over centuries so that the most viable survive. People who deliberately set out to create their own cult can’t match this.
Sure, but (without even mentioning how much it takes from mainstream Christianity) Mormonism is… 150 years old. How many Quakers do you see these days?
What is the point that you are making? Religions get born, go through natural/social selection, some survive—for some time, some do not. This is all uncontroversial, as far as I know.
When you set up a new religion, you don’t know how successful will it be, but the probability of it becoming very successful is not zero.
I admit it’s possible for components of a religion to be taken from political propaganda (certain parts of the NT fit the bill), but inventing the idea as a whole… I can’t see how that would work out. Except maybe in the case of Islam, but even then it was just grabbing on to the coattails of Judaism and Christianity.
I’m not sure it counts. Muhammad certainly existed. Most of the theology wouldn’t have been made up as you describe. I’m really just talking about the origin story, since whether Islam actually came from Arabia isn’t certain.
The idea as I know it comes from Patricia Crone, but it’s been picked up by other historians like Tom Holland. Basically, it claims that Muhammad came from Jordan and the idea of Islam originating in Medina was an attempt to ‘Arabize’ the new religion.
Ah, interesting. But it seems that this “Revisionist” school is about critically analysing Koran and hadiths—basically not taking them at their word which is entirely reasonable. The claim that Islam didn’t originate in Arabia is mostly limited to Crone and even she looks to have abandoned this claim: Wikipedia says “Later, Patricia Crone refrained from this attempt of a detailed reconstruction of Islam’s beginnings”.
Um… did you read the following sentence? She didn’t abandon the idea at all. And there’s at least one major work that argues for it: ‘In the Shadow of the Sword.’
I did read the following sentence and noted that it does not have any footnotes attached to it—as far as I can see it’s an unsubstantiated assertion by some Wikipedia editor.
Besides “I’m not going to admit I was wrong, I just will stop talking/writing about this” counts as abandonment in my book.
As to Tom Holland, he is a writer, not an academic. Pop science, of course, has a rather large liking for outrageous claims.
Refraining from a ‘detailed’ reconstruction seems quite reasonable. In history, you don’t generally have to explain how something happens to assert that it did.
Holland is indeed something of a pop author, but once you’ve translated Herodotus it’s hard to claim that you have no real expertise in history.
That does not apply to outside-of-the-mainstream views.
It does indeed. Evidence that x is true is not the same as an explanation of how x occurred. For instance, we can see that an ancient city was burned down around a certain year, but not know for what purpose or by whom.
History is a very big subject. Translating Herodotus does not give you any insights into VI-VII century Arabia.
With straightforward archeological evidence, yes, it does. But if you are talking about a different interpretation of well-known sources, it’s not like you have new facts—what you are offering is a new narrative and that needs, basically, to make sense. “Making sense” here implies fitting into a larger context better than the old narrative which, in turn, involves better explanations of how and why things known to happen happened.
You just complained that he wasn’t an academic.
The point of that was to draw your attention to the criteria for his work. An academic (outside of gender studies and such) generally has to be very careful about his claims and very explicit about the evidence he uses. There are a lot of safeguards against jumping to conclusions and shoddy scholarship tends to be ruinous to a reputation.
A popsci writer, on the other hand, has incentives to produce an exciting and controversial story which will sell well.
Ah yes, academia. The bastion of free inquiry and free thought.
However I’m somewhat familiar with the early history of Islam and the idea of a “high level conspiracy” doesn’t fit well. When Muhammad started having his revelations, he was basically a nobody and even after that for quite a while his fate was very touch-and-go.
The Qur’an wasn’t written down until a while after Muhammad’s death, by which time there was an incentive for leaders to edit it for their own benefit.
See also Emperor Constantine I’s efforts to quash dissent within the Christian community in order to make it more politically unified.
True, but so what? I am sure there was editing, but I am also sure that the post-standardization Koran was very similar to the floating set of surahs at the time of Muhammad. You can’t just substitute one set of religious teaching for another this way.
Yes, that’s precisely my point. Religious doctrines get sorted out over centuries so that the most viable survive. People who deliberately set out to create their own cult can’t match this.
They can get lucky. Example: Joseph Smith.
Sure, but (without even mentioning how much it takes from mainstream Christianity) Mormonism is… 150 years old. How many Quakers do you see these days?
What is the point that you are making? Religions get born, go through natural/social selection, some survive—for some time, some do not. This is all uncontroversial, as far as I know.
When you set up a new religion, you don’t know how successful will it be, but the probability of it becoming very successful is not zero.
It’s a safe assumption that any religion with ancient roots was not made up by someone for political purposes.
I don’t see why. Religions mutate and evolve.
I admit it’s possible for components of a religion to be taken from political propaganda (certain parts of the NT fit the bill), but inventing the idea as a whole… I can’t see how that would work out. Except maybe in the case of Islam, but even then it was just grabbing on to the coattails of Judaism and Christianity.
So you can see. And the example is the second most popular religion in the world.
I’m not sure it counts. Muhammad certainly existed. Most of the theology wouldn’t have been made up as you describe. I’m really just talking about the origin story, since whether Islam actually came from Arabia isn’t certain.
I haven’t read anything which doubts that. What is the alternative theory?
The idea as I know it comes from Patricia Crone, but it’s been picked up by other historians like Tom Holland. Basically, it claims that Muhammad came from Jordan and the idea of Islam originating in Medina was an attempt to ‘Arabize’ the new religion.
Ah, interesting. But it seems that this “Revisionist” school is about critically analysing Koran and hadiths—basically not taking them at their word which is entirely reasonable. The claim that Islam didn’t originate in Arabia is mostly limited to Crone and even she looks to have abandoned this claim: Wikipedia says “Later, Patricia Crone refrained from this attempt of a detailed reconstruction of Islam’s beginnings”.
Um… did you read the following sentence? She didn’t abandon the idea at all. And there’s at least one major work that argues for it: ‘In the Shadow of the Sword.’
I did read the following sentence and noted that it does not have any footnotes attached to it—as far as I can see it’s an unsubstantiated assertion by some Wikipedia editor.
Besides “I’m not going to admit I was wrong, I just will stop talking/writing about this” counts as abandonment in my book.
As to Tom Holland, he is a writer, not an academic. Pop science, of course, has a rather large liking for outrageous claims.
Refraining from a ‘detailed’ reconstruction seems quite reasonable. In history, you don’t generally have to explain how something happens to assert that it did.
Holland is indeed something of a pop author, but once you’ve translated Herodotus it’s hard to claim that you have no real expertise in history.
That does not apply to outside-of-the-mainstream views.
History is a very big subject. Translating Herodotus does not give you any insights into VI-VII century Arabia.
It does indeed. Evidence that x is true is not the same as an explanation of how x occurred. For instance, we can see that an ancient city was burned down around a certain year, but not know for what purpose or by whom.
You just complained that he wasn’t an academic.
With straightforward archeological evidence, yes, it does. But if you are talking about a different interpretation of well-known sources, it’s not like you have new facts—what you are offering is a new narrative and that needs, basically, to make sense. “Making sense” here implies fitting into a larger context better than the old narrative which, in turn, involves better explanations of how and why things known to happen happened.
The point of that was to draw your attention to the criteria for his work. An academic (outside of gender studies and such) generally has to be very careful about his claims and very explicit about the evidence he uses. There are a lot of safeguards against jumping to conclusions and shoddy scholarship tends to be ruinous to a reputation.
A popsci writer, on the other hand, has incentives to produce an exciting and controversial story which will sell well.