The Mecca Mystery: Probing the Black Hole at the Heart of Muslim History by Peter Townsend

There is a debate over the "Nazareans" in the Quran (Nasara in modern Arabic). It could be related. The main criticism to this possible connection is the long period between the 1st and 6th/7th century (the plague of Justinian and related phenomena must be still going on) so that the Quran redactors shouldn't know about these "un-orthodoxe Christian". If on the other hand one consider like Heinsohn that the Roman 1st century history belongs to much later...

Edit: Attached is a paper I found about the Nazorean term in the Quran
The Quran includes the Sabians as Children of Scripture along with Christians and Jews. I thought it odd because they're essentially Mandaeans gnostic duelists linking into Zoroastrianism and therefor un-orthodox. The Sabians were also equated with the Elcesaites - a Jewish Christian sect - that looks to tie in with Nazarenes and both herald John the Baptist over and above Jesus Elcesaites - Wikipedia

I don't know how much stock is put into Blavatsky, but she states http://theosophy.ph/encyclo/index.php?title=Nazarenes

Helena P. BLAVATSKY wrote that the Nazarenes were Jewish Gnostics who “were the descendants of the Scripture nazars, and whose last prominent leader was John the Baptist” (IU II:132). The Nazars, or NAZARITES, were a group of Jews who dedicated themselves to their religion, such as Samson and Samuel. They were also called the Baptists or John’s Christians, and often identified with the Sabians and EBIONITES. She wrote, however, that the later Nazarenes recognized only John the Baptist, and did not consider Jesus Christ as the Messiah. (Theos. Glossary, “Nazarenes”). “The true followers of the true Christos were all Nazarenes and Christians, and were the opponents of the later Christians” (SD I:198 fn). The scripture of the Nazarenes was the CODEX NAZAREUS


Also, I remember reading in the Templar Revelation by Picknett and Prince that there are no records of the place "Nazareth" until after the battle of Masada in 70AD, I don't know if thats relevant? Its curious though, that Nazareth is today the capital of the predominantly Muslim Arabs of Israel Nazareth - Wikipedia

Nazareth is known as "the Arab capital of Israel".[2]
 
Hi, mkrnhr:
It seems that you know about this matter, if you can tell me about some reliable text or source that narrates the Arab to Palestinian invasion.

I found this:

The text describes the Arab invasion in Palestine from a Judaic 7th century apocalyptic perspective, as a part of the Salvation against the Byzantine suppression. Mohammed is seen as the Jewish messiah who along with the Ishmaelite will restore the world order. Two of the related extracts go as follows:
“Do not be afraid, mortal, for the Holy One, blessed be He, is bringing about the kingdom of Ishmael only for the purpose of delivering you from that wicked one (that is, Edom [Rome]). In accordance with His will He shall raise up over them a Prophet. And he will conquer the land for them. And they shall come and restore it with grandeur. Great enmity will exist between them and the children of Esau.”

“He raises over them a crazy prophet, possessed by a spirit, and he conquers the land for them. And they come and seize dominion in greatness and there will be great enmity between them and the sons of Esau.”
 
These texts are attributed to a certain Rabbi Shimon b. Yohai. They are separate secondary sources that preserve how some Jews may have perceived the Arab conquests. In fact, many chronicles around those times talk about a alliance of Saracens and Jews, maybe in a polemic manner.

Several closely related apocalyptic texts describe Rabbi Shimʿōn’s visions of the Islamic conquests, each giving a slightly different version of events that seems to depend on an earlier common source. The earliest of these works, and also the most important, is The Secrets of Rabbi Shimʿōn b. Yoḥai, an apocalypse written sometime around the middle of the eighth century whose visions cover the period between the Islamic conquests and the ʿAbbāsid revolution. As The Secrets begins, Rabbi Shimʿōn reflects on the “Kenite” of Numbers 24:21, which
is revealed to him as a prediction concerning the Ishmaelites and their coming dominion over the land of Israel. When he cries aloud with frustration, asking if the Jews had not yet suffered enough oppression at the hands of Edom (that is, Rome), the angel Metatron comes to him and reassures him that God will use the Ishmaelites to free the Jews from Byzantine oppression. “Do not be afraid, mortal, for the Holy One, blessed be He, is bringing about the kingdom of Ishmael only for the purpose of delivering you from that wicked one (that is, Edom [Rome]). In accordance with His will He shall raise up over them a prophet. And he will conquer the land for them [ והוא מעמיר עליהם נביא כרצונ
ויכבוש להם את הארץ ], and they shall come and restore it with grandeur. Great enmity will exist between them and the children of Esau.” The revelation continues as Metatron responds to Rabbi Shimʿōn’s questions by equating Israel’s liberation through this Ishmaelite prophet to the messianic deliverance foretold by Isaiah’s vision of the two riders (Isa. 21:6–7)

....
numerous scholars have observed that The Secrets of Rabbi Shimʿōn almost certainly depends on a much earlier source “A Prophet Has Appeared” for its description of these events. It is hard to imagine that a Jewish author of the mid-eighth century would have written so glowingly of the advent of Islam, painting Muhammad and his followers in such messianic hues over a century later.
....
“the messiah belongs at the end of an apocalypse and not in the middle” as one finds in The Secrets, an anomaly that also seems to indicate the inclusion of older material.

and then,

a fragment preserving the opening section of The Secrets of Rabbi Shimʿōn survives among the Cairo Geniza texts, and according to this version, “He raises over them a crazy prophet, possessed by a spirit, and he conquers the land for them [ [והוא מעמיר עליהם נביא שוטה ואיש הרוח והוא מכבש לפניהם את הארץ and they come and seize dominion in greatness and there will be great enmity between them and the sons of Esau.”
 
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Thanks, mkrnhr.

This caught my attention, reply 18:
"In fact, many chronicles around those times talk about a alliance of Saracens and Jews, maybe in a polemic manner".
------------------
I think that this may be related to the society of alchemists of the Pyrenees and, later, definitely influenced the development of Europe.
 
Thanks, mkrnhr.

This caught my attention, reply 18:
"In fact, many chronicles around those times talk about a alliance of Saracens and Jews, maybe in a polemic manner".
------------------
I think that this may be related to the society of alchemists of the Pyrenees and, later, definitely influenced the development of Europe.

Or not. I don't think enough data has been collected to even form a hypothesis in that direction.
 
Haven't finished yet, but so far it's very interesting. It's quite shocking that it was hundreds of years after Muhammad's death that compilers started to write about him, with new information suddenly popping up even later. "It will immediately be obvious that these compilers all lived roughly 200-400 years after the time of Muhammad. This means that we are asked to accept the historicity of documents that supposedly circulated orally for six to seven generations before being committed to paper."

About the hadiths:

"We are asked to believe that thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people independently undertook the mammoth task of hadith memorization despite the absence of any encouragement whatsoever from Allah or Muhammed to do so. It should be obvious from the above that the official explanation behind the composition of the hadiths is exceedingly hard to credit and this significantly increases the suspicion that they were simply invented at a later date to serve the political agendas of future generations of Muslim leaders."

Also very interesting is that "Mecca is absent from records that record even tiny hamlets and insignificant little tribes" while it is said to have been "the most important city in all of Arabia". Wow! I wonder how many Muslims know about any of this.

:read:
 
Also very interesting is that "Mecca is absent from records that record even tiny hamlets and insignificant little tribes" while it is said to have been "the most important city in all of Arabia". Wow! I wonder how many Muslims know about any of this.

:read:

Vanishingly few, I suspect. Muslims in general are much akin to Christian fundamentalists in teaching and believing that even reading a mildly critical historical review of the influences that may have led to the creation of their belief system, is to throw oneself into the hands of Satan. It's the old, old story of a pack of lies having to protect itself from the truth by a commandment: "Thou shalt not ask questions."
 
About the hadiths:

"We are asked to believe that thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people independently undertook the mammoth task of hadith memorization despite the absence of any encouragement whatsoever from Allah or Muhammed to do so. It should be obvious from the above that the official explanation behind the composition of the hadiths is exceedingly hard to credit and this significantly increases the suspicion that they were simply invented at a later date to serve the political agendas of future generations of Muslim leaders."
Muslims (Sunnis particularly so) are first and foremost shaped by the hadiths and sunnah - NOT the Quran. After spending time talking to Muslims at any length about their religious standing, it becomes apparent that the hadiths and sunnah are placed in authority OVER AND ABOVE the writings of the Quran. This means the already muddy waters of Islam is made muddier - being further distanced from the already distorted rip-off fabrications of its original source: the Quran.

Muslim = not even wrong!
 
Vanishingly few, I suspect. Muslims in general are much akin to Christian fundamentalists in teaching and believing that even reading a mildly critical historical review of the influences that may have led to the creation of their belief system, is to throw oneself into the hands of Satan. It's the old, old story of a pack of lies having to protect itself from the truth by a commandment: "Thou shalt not ask questions."

Yeah, I also think that's sadly the case.

Muslims (Sunnis particularly so) are first and foremost shaped by the hadiths and sunnah -

While there are numerous contradictions in the hadiths themselves as Townsend points out:

"We see, for example, that there is a hadith in Sahih Bukhari (by far the most respected Sunni collection) that states that Muhammad performed only one ablution before praying, the very next hadith states that he did so twice only to be contradicted by the next one where it states that it should be done three times. So much for the supposed accuracy and soundness of the oral traditions that we find in the hadith collections."
 
thank you, Laura, for the recommendation! I put it on my list. Sounds very promising. I have read Heinsohn and Scholl-Latour, Sieferle, Unger and a lot of others. I am german and I see a lot of urgency in the topic.
 
I just have to read his final chapters on 'alternative theories', but from what I gleaned of Townsend's work so far, it makes sense that Islam too was crafted long after the fact and projected back in time. As I understand it, the 'Saudis' of the day broke out of the Arabian Desert - with a leader who may have claimed he was "doing God's work", but who can't have been the Muhammad of Islamic lore - to institute an ethnic Arab nation, complete with Arabic language/alphabet, and with its capital initially located in Damascus. For some reason though, the first 'mosques' (if that's what they even were initially) were built to line up with... Petra.

Petra is an ancient city in southern Jordan, near the Israeli border, and once the capital of the Kingdom of Nabataea. [Cool sidenote: Petra is that place in Raiders of the Lost Ark:
!] This is interesting because Nabataea was a kind of early 'Saudi Arabia' until the Roman Empire annexed it in 106. It strikes me that the initial 'Arab conquests' attributed to Mo and his 'tribe' could have essentially been a national effort to retake sovereignty of this 'old country' from Rome, and that Petra was sacred ground to them for this reason? In any event, their 'reconquest' developed into mega-empire-building over the next century. And they still hadn't created Islam yet...

The first mention of a 'Muhammad' is made in an inscription at the first purposefully-built 'Islamic' shrine... in Jerusalem, at the Dome of the Rock, which was originally built in 691 - i.e., 60 years after the death of Mo. That's significant because it amounts to a high-profile 'unveiling of Islam' to the world in the most spectacular way possible: at the site of the Jewish Temple Mount in a city then largely populated by Christians.

From there a religion begins developing, drawing from various regional influences (Zoroastrian, Christian, and pagan, but predominantly Jewish). The Koran, Mo's biography, and Islam as such all came later, sometimes much later. The impetus at the time, it seems, was to give a religious gloss to regional (re-)conquest, and a competitive edge over the other big religions, especially Christianity. The key take-home for me here is that 'the Muslim conquests' can't have been motivated by religion - they were initially national, then later geopolitical/colonial in nature. Full-clothed Islam doesn't appear until the 9th century, some 2-300 years later.

I still don't get how a half-baked tribal-religious-nationalist enterprise can be accepted so quickly by much of the Byzantine and all of the Persian empires, but I guess that's for another book. Environmental catastrophes must have been significant in why what happened when. So, far from being channelled lock-stock by God to Mo in one go, 'held in people's memories for several decades', then finally committed to writing in the form of the Koran, Islam seems to have begun as an 'open source' religion that absorbed/adapted neighbors' religious beliefs/practices as its political-military adherents absorbed their territories. It's only from the 9th century that Islam begins being codified into the monotheistic religion we're familiar with today.

There are several references in Townsend's book to Jews and Saracens (as in the Arabs, who only later came to be called Muslims) being 'allies', which makes me wonder... Later, 'finalized' Islam is adamant that The Jew is The Enemy, but it seems to me that somebody protesteth too much because the Koran even includes a 'massacre of Jews' that never actually took place. Instead, contemporary non-Arabic sources say things like this:

The Doctrina Jacobi (written between 634 and 640 CE) is a Greek Christian tract. It is perhaps the earliest document that came down to us in which some of the elements of the Arab conquest is described in some details. A key passage reads:

"And they were saying that the prophet had appeared, coming with the Saracens, and that he was proclaiming the advent of the anointed one, the Christ who was to come. I, having arrived at Sykamina, stopped by a certain old man well-versed in scriptures, and I said to him:

"What can you tell me about the prophet who has appeared with the Saracens?"

He replied, groaning deeply:

"He is false, for the prophets do not come armed with a sword. truly they are works of anarchy being committed today and I fear that the first Christ to come, whom the Christians worship, was the one sent by God and we instead are preparing to receive the Antichrist. Indeed, Isaiah said that the Jews would retain a perverted and hardened heart until all the earth should be devastated. But you go, master Abraham, and find out about the prophet who has appeared."

So I, Abraham, inquired and heard from those who had met him that there was no truth to be found in the so-called prophet, only the shedding of men's blood. He says also that he has the keys of paradise, which is incredible (i.e. 'unbelievable')."

What a curious (apparent) non-sequitur. One moment this eyewitness is talking about the 'anarchists' running around cutting people's heads off in God's name, the next he segues into that 'anti-Semitic trope' about Jews... as if he makes no distinction between them?

On the next page, Townsend includes this non-Arabic contemporary reference to the 'Muslim' conquistadors:

The Armenian Chronicle (written around 660-670 CE) is attributed to an Armenian bishop named Sebeos. Here, finally, we have a reliably sourced reference to Muhammad (called 'Mahmet') in the chronicle), a full thirty years after he was supposed to have died. Even so, the picture presented of Muhammad is, once again, significantly at odds with the traditional Islamic account. It depicts Muhammad as being in alliance with the Jews right up to the end of his life and furthermore implies that Arabs and Jews are still (by 660-670 CE) the closest of friends.

What's that all about? Why overlay positive relations with contrived tales about negative ones? It reminds me of the Israeli-Saudi relationship today: officially eternal enemies, but actually strategic allies breeding al-Qaeda/ISIS... Is the manufactured Clash of Civilizations much, much older than 9/11 and the War on Terror?

Finally, I find it a little freaky that the 'Muslims', before they became known as such, and along with being known then as Saracens, were referred to for a time as... The Migrants :shock:
 
Finally, I find it a little freaky that the 'Muslims', before they became known as such, and along with being known then as Saracens, were referred to for a time as... The Migrants :shock:
That caught my eye too (and please don't refer to Mohammed as Mo ;-D ). The apocalyptic movement that developed later to become the "early moslems" (salaf in arabic, hence the salafists) was called the "muhadjiroun", or the migrants, and at some level was modelled after the legendary Jewish migration where Mohammed = Moises and Omar =Joshua. That's maybe why Mohammed according to legend died before the "conquest" of Jerusalem (lost the battle of Muatta and then Omar did enter it and built a "cubic temple" (according to some contested early testemonies).
 
There have also been some comments made by Dead Sea Scrolls researchers that some of the Dead Sea Sectarians fled into the deserts of Arabia and more or less spawned in the dark age that followed the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome and the later Bar Kochba war.
Maybe the so-called "flight to Pella" (of the Essenes? James church?) is a connected tradition? Pella is in the Decapolis/Syria and they may have then been in contact at some point with the Nabataeans/Ghassanids/Northern Arabs etc.
 
Also very interesting is that "Mecca is absent from records that record even tiny hamlets and insignificant little tribes" while it is said to have been "the most important city in all of Arabia". Wow! I wonder how many Muslims know about any of this.
:read:
In my decades of observations in India, saying any thing negative of muslim religion is even dangerous. They can become very aggressive. I wonder where this sensitivity came from. I don't have experience with fundamental Christians to compare with.
 
While searching for something completly different, came accros these two posts that may be interesting for this thread:

Laura said:
I think it is helpful to understand the origins of the idea that women ought to be draped and have their heads covered: it is a legacy from the Enochian Book of the Watchers (3rd, 2nd century BC) where all the evils of mankind were blamed on angels coming to earth and mating with human women, thus giving birth to "mighty men" which have all the characteristics of psychopaths. That story, in itself, is similar to the Greek legend of the Titans and may actually be describing cometary bombardment and the resulting mutations of humans that produced a particular variant of psychopaths. See my book "Comets and the Horns of Moses" for some details and arguments.

The clue that this comes from ideas that were fermenting around Enochian apocalypticism, which heavily influenced the apostle Paul, is in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. I've bolded the important bit in the passage below:

2 I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the traditions just as I passed them on to you. 3 But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. 5 But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved. 6 For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head.

7 A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; 9 neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10 It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels. 11 Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. 12 For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.

13 Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14 Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, 15 but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering. 16 If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God.

This passage is probably NOT originally Pauline but deutero-Pauline, i.e. interpolated by followers of Paul who had particular theological axes to grind, mainly diminishing the importance of women. Paul, himself wrote:

Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

People can argue all they want about context, but Paul was pretty clear here and the above passage about veils and that nonsense does not even "feel" like Paul.

So, even though Paul, himself, was much influenced by the Enochian traditions and ideas, his focus was elsewhere and whoever wrote the 1 Corinthian passage was really stretching in a way Paul never would have, though he was using the same materials to build his theological point: Book of the Watchers. If women stay covered up, the "angels" won't get attracted to them and corrupt the purity of the group/race and bring on horrible disasters.

Obviously, immodesty has its own issues, but this head covering business, and covering women up completely in big, ugly sacks, is ridiculous. Women can, and should be attractive though certainly, the extent to which sexiness has been emphasized has taken all the mystery out of it and had placed the emphasis on raw, animal sex, and not where it belongs, on psychological and spiritual compatibility.

I noted in another thread the fact that whoever wrote the Koran was reading and utilizing Paul's letters (and pseudepigraphic apocalypses), and obviously after redaction because proto-koranic texts came much later, and this is just another bit of evidence that this was the case. Here is the post:

In an article that I personally found rather weak on the inclusion of Enochic material in the Quran through the messianic/sectarian environment in 7th century Arabia, I found this remark to be interesting:

Finally, in q. 33:33, the following words are addressed to the wives of the Prophet: ‘Stay in your houses and do not make a display, like that of the first Jahiliyya [al-jāhiliyya al-ūlā].’ The reference here would seem to be to the women who had been taught to beautify themselves by the angels (1Enoch 8:1), an innovation which was singled out for particular reprehension by Tertullian in a number of writings. The angels were responsible for the means of ‘womanly ostentation’ such as jewellery and eye makeup; it was on account of the angels that women had to be veiled, he claimed.(90) The Book of Watchers, like the Jubilees and Christian works, sees the flood as the first global disaster to overtake mankind, prefiguring the last judgement.(91) In the Epistle of Enoch, another part of 1Enoch, the flood is explicitly called ‘the first end.’(92) That the first end should have been preceded by the first period of ignorance/barbarism is a natural inference, and the Christians seem to have made it too, though the one example I have come across lacks the eschatological perspective.(93) Some exegetes duly assign the first Jahiliyya mentioned in the Qurʾān to the period before the flood, either between Adam and Noah or between Idrīs and Noah...

Notes said:
90 VanderKam, ‘1Enoch, Enochic Motifs’ (above, note 10), pp. 51, 68; cf. also p. 66, on Clement of Alexandria.
91 J.C. VanderKam, ‘The Righteousness of Noah,’ in G.W.E. Nickelsburg (ed.), Ideal Figures in Ancient Judaism, Chicago 1980, pp. 25f.
92 1Enoch 93:4.
93 Epiphanius identifies the ‘first sect’ as Barbarism (barbarismos), which lasted from Adam to Noah, marked by Adam’s fall, Cain’s fratricide and the introduction of sorcery, witchcraft, licentiousness, adultery and iniquity in the time of Jared, Enoch’s father; see Epiphanius, Panarion, Book i, ed. H. Kroll, Leipzig 1915 (English transl. by F. Williams, Leiden 1987), Proem i, 3, 1f.; Anacephalaeosis 1, 1, section 1.

And especially:

For those interested in deep/secret history, scholar Carlos A. Segovia has established (IMO after reading his arguments) that Paul's Abrahamic argument in Romans 4 and Galatians 3 - which he originally put forward to substantiate his core claim to the inclusion of the gentiles in God's people - was polemically reworked and reframed in a number of texts. First, by Christians who used it to EXCLUDE Jews entirely, and then, by someone working up the proto-Islamic Koran who combined those ideas with the pseudepigraphic text "The Apocalypse of Abraham" to create the core/founding myth of Islam.

He notes that it is clear that the editors of the Qur'an knew of Galatians 3 and were familiar with its Christian interpretation. He writes:

The Qur'an is surely more than an apocalypse, but if it may also be defined as an apocalypse - and I think it should be, due to the revelatory and eschatological concerns that lie at its very center - then I see it as an apocalypse entirely based upon the Apocalypse of Abraham. For all that we can find in the Qur'an (its non-negotiable monotheistic claims and polemics, which are, in fact, traced back to Abraham; its many allusions to a revelation received from above whose first witness was Abraham; the announcement of God's judgment as inevitable; and the distinction between Abraham's followers and everyone else in both the present and the future life; and so on) is already present in the Apocalypse [of Abraham]. ... The Jews are no longer God's chosen ones (as was claimed in Apoc. Ab. 22:5); they have been replaced by the "foremost" in faith and monotheism (Q 56:10). Actually, this is the only verse in the Qur'an where such a replacement explicitly takes place. Some may object that there ultimately is no supersessionism in the Qur'an; that the Qur'an accepts all prior revelations while simultaneously denouncing their intrinsic limitations and their eventual corruption by their own followers. The Quranic reuse of the Apocalypse of Abraham proves that this is not so: the new Umma is expressly said to substitute Israel. But then, it could be legitimately argued that the "sectarian milieu" out of which Islam emerged was, in fact, a Christian one.

The Apocalypse of Abraham provided the editors of the quranic text ... with the very core of the myth itself. It also provided them with its precise apocalyptical form. Once readapted, it offered them a place to inscribe their ideological construction. ...

It is fascinating to see that withing a single text of as yet unclear provenance, such as is the Qur'an, Paul's Abrahamic argument as re-framed by the church is subliminally (re)used against the Jews in a passage that puts forth a new founding myth that literally draws upon the post-Pauline Jewish discussion of that very argument in the Apocalypse of Abraham, to which the quranic myth is therefore fully indebted. The quite vexing fact that the apparent distinctiveness of such a new myth conceals a Christian reinterpretation of an intra-Jewish argument - as well as the textual corruptions of the latter - prevents us from assigning too much distinctiveness tho this myth itself. Hence, my hesitation to label it Islamic, for there is nothing specifically Islamic in such a myth. Perhaps this could help us understand though, as an aside, the reason why the quranic prophet is mentioned in the Qur'an (7:157-58; 62:2) as the "apostle/prophet to the gentiles."

Segovia has an entire book available on academia.edu
The Quranic Noah and the Making of the Islamic Prophet: A Study of Intertextuality and Religious Identity Formation in Late Antiquity [2015] / Book
 
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