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10 CHAPTER 3 Pre-Islamic Origins Judaism and Christianity in Pre-Islamic Arabia By the generation of Muhammad’s birth in about 570 CE, most of the Middle East had abandoned its local polytheistic religious systems and had taken on Judaism, Christianity, or Zoroastrianism, the state religion of the Persian Empire. Despite the penetration of these three religions into Arabia, the peninsula was never controlled by any foreign power. Arabia lay in a strategic location between Mesopotamia and Egypt, and between India and Africa. It produced valuable incense and was known for its gold; yet, the harsh climate, the lack of a significant water supply, and the fierce independence of its inhabitants made it impossible to conquer. As a region that lay outside the political control of contemporary empires , Arabia was a natural refuge for dissidents. Since the Roman Empire had become Orthodox Christian by the 4th century and the state religion of the Persian Empire was Zoroastrianism, religious as well as political dissidents sought refuge outside their reach. We know, for example, that dissident (or sectarian) Christians were persecuted by the Orthodox religious establishment of the Byzantine Empire and fled to Persia and Arabia. As Rabbinic Judaism became the established form of Judaism in the Land of Israel and Babylonia, sectarian Jews may have fled their own religious establishments as well, and Arabia was a logical refuge, since it lay beyond the reach of any powerful players in other parts of the Middle East. There are many signs of Jews living in Arabia before the advent of Islam. 11 C H A P T E R T H R E E References to Jews are found in inscriptions and graffiti and texts written many years later that tell the history of the period. One particularly interesting find is an inscription showing the Jewish expression of conclusion, “peace.” Although Jews populated Arabia for centuries before the emergence of Islam, we do not know precisely what kinds of Jews they were and what kinds of Judaism they practiced. The Qur’an, which is the earliest Islamic text, seems to describe some Jewish ideas or practices that are quite strange to any kind of known Judaism. In a curious verse criticizing Judaism and Christianity for not upholding pure monotheism, for example, the Qur’an says, “The Jews say that `Uzayr is the son of God, and the Christians say that the messiah is the son of God” (Q.9:30). Most Western scholars have understood from this that the Qur’an was simply wrong in its assessment of Judaism. More recently, however, some scholars have noted that the originally Jewish books known as 4 Ezra (4:9, 50, also known as 2 Esdras) and 2 Enoch (22:) associate a near-divine or angelic status to the biblical personages of Ezra and Enoch. It is possible that Jews who held such views had to settle far away from mainstream Jewish communities that would have found such thinking unacceptable . Their very special regard for Ezra could easily have been misconstrued by early Muslims (as it apparently was by the established Jewish communities in the Land of Israel and Babylonia) as compromising true monotheism. In south Arabian inscriptions, references to pagan deities of the ancient tradition virtually disappear in the 4th century and are replaced with references to the one God referred to as “the Merciful” (RHMNN), or simply, “God,” and usually qualified as “Lord of heaven” or “Lord of heaven and earth.” These are not only Jewish epithets. In later centuries they become names for God in Islam, who is referred to in the Qur’an on occasion as al-Rah . mān. According to legend, an Arab tribal leader named Abū Karib As`ad (c. 383–433 CE) of the tribe of Himyar in South Arabia, went to the town of Yathrib with the intention of conquering it. A large Jewish community was living in Yathrib at the time, and two Jewish leaders convinced Abū Karib not only to refrain from the conquest but to convert to Judaism. The two are referred to in the story as ah . bār, the Arabic form of the Hebrew h . averim, which the Babylonian Talmud refers to as religious leaders of slightly lower status than rabbis. According to this story, when Abū Karib returned to Yemen with the two rabbis, . . . the Himyarites blocked his path, saying: “You will not enter Yemen because you left our religion.” Then he invited them to his religion . . . so they said...

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