The Prophet Mohammed.

Noble Knight

I am curious to know if anyone can see influences in the Prohet's life that may have had a profound effect on his theology.

What I mean by this is not events such as the night of power and the apperance of a vision in the cave but what religious groups have influenced his teaching?

I can see in the Qu' ran the influence of the Docetist sect which states that it only looked like Christ died on the cross (S. 4:157-158: ).

Would like to know what Muslims think?

philologos

I would argue that there is a Gnostic influence between the Infancy Gospel of Thomas written circa 3rd century and the incident concerning clay birds outside the synagogue on Shabbat, and the Qur'an in Surah 5:110. However, there could well be an alternative explanation for this and I'm pretty sure Qur'anic scholars have come across both of these points before.

hivizman

The interpretation of the two verses of Sura An-Nisa 4:157-158 that touch on the crucifixion is the subject matter of a book published recently by Todd Lawson The Crucifixion and the Qur'an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009). Lawson considers a range of exegetical sources (tafsir) from different traditions within Islam to suggest that, over the centuries, Muslim scholars of the Qur'an have differed greatly over what the two verses mean. Some scholars have indeed adopted views similar to Docetism, although Lawson distinguishes between views that he labels "literal Docetism" and those he labels "figurative Docetism". In the case of "literal Docetism", some exegetes claim either that no-one was crucified, but the Jews in their confusion believed that this was the case, or that someone upon whom the image and appearance of Jesus had been imposed was crucified, while Jesus was in some way "raised up". Within this latter strand, some exegetes tell a story that one of the disciples volunteered to take upon himself the appearance of Jesus, while others state that someone (possibly a disciple, possibly not) had the appearance imposed upon him.

"Figurative Docetism", to Lawson, refers to the many commentators on the Qur'an who distinguish between the "humanity" of Jesus (nasut) and the divine and eternal nature of Jesus (lahut) [by the way, I don't know whether this distinction, which originated in Isma'ili interpretations, should be taken as mapping onto the two natures of Jesus recognised in trinitarian Christianity]. In this interpretation, the nasut of Jesus was crucified, while the lahut was raised up. So it appeared that Jesus had been crucified, but this was only the "temporal" body rather than the spiritual body.

In his note to Sura An-Nisa 4:157 in The Meaning of the Holy Qur'an, Abdullah Yusuf Ali states: "The Qur'anic teaching is that Christ was not crucified nor killed by the Jews, notwithstanding certain apparent circumstances which produced that illusion in the minds of some of his enemies." Muhammad Asad, in The Message of the Qur'an, is even more definite: "The Qur'an categorically denies the story of the crucifixion of Jesus." Asad rejects the various subsequent interpretations involving someone being substituted for Jesus as "fanciful legends".

hivizman

Having slept on it, I'm not really sure that Todd Lawson is being helpful in using the term "Docetism" to label Muslim exegetes' attitude to the verses on the crucifixion. My understanding is that Docetism refers to the view that the human nature of Jesus, particularly his body and his sufferings (including Jesus's sufferings on the cross) were not real but only apparent. Such a view would be inconsistent with the Qur'anic portrayal of Jesus as a prophet and thus a human being. Islam denies that Jesus is God in the person of the Son, and hence denies Jesus's divine nature. On the other hand, Islam takes for granted that Jesus was a real human being.

However, elements of ideas that have been labelled (usually by critics) as "Docetic" seem to have influenced Qur'anic exegesis. The "substitution" theory is, I believe, an echo of some apocryphal writings. For example, modern exegetes such as Rashid Rida and Sayyid Qutb refer to the apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas as support for the story that Judas was substituted for Jesus.

Docetism has echoes of neo-Platonism and Manichaeism, tending to see the body as inherently corrupt and the spirit as superior to the body. As Stuart G. Hall puts it in his article on Docetism in The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought (ed. Adrian Hastings, OUP, 2000):

[Critics of Docetism], such as Irenaeus and Tertullian, held that the one true God made this world good, and humanity with it, and that the purpose of Christ's coming was precisely to save the physical world, and human beings in their psychosomatic totality, from the corrupting effects of sin. It was of central importance that Christ lived a fully human life and that his death and resurrection were physical, like those of other human beings.

Islam rejects the core Christian belief that Christ's death was either necessary or effective for the forgiveness of sins, and hence it makes no sense to talk of the "sacrifice" of Jesus on the cross. Some of the interpreters of the Qur'an read the key verses as implying that there was actually no crucifixion, others that Jesus was crucified but did not die on the cross, others that Jesus was crucified and did die on the cross (but only in a physical sense, his spirit or lahut being raised up), and yet others that someone else died on the cross in the place of Jesus. It's not just Qur'anic exegetes who hold these different views - I've read various Da Vinci Code-type novels that cover this range of interpretations of what did, or didn't happen, on that green hill far away, without a city wall.