I am providing a real life example to illustrate a point; There is no more reason to believe in the authority of the Bible than there is to believe in the authority of the Qur’an. The only reason you do so is because you have been culturally conditioned to do so. If you had been raised in a Muslim culture, then you more than likely believe in quranic view of Jesus, not the biblical view of Jesus.
As to the view of cultural conditioning, you’re right. However, it’s important to actually evaluate the available information in an objective manner, which I believe can be done. (As a Catholic, I believe in objective reality and objective truth).
I’ve already talked about how scholars like Juynboll and Schacht have pretty convincingly shown that the hadith cannot be traced to earlier to about 100 years post-Hijra (AH, the Muslim calender based on Muhammad and his followers’ flight to Medina).
A majority of the stories from the Quran itself have historical antecedents in Christian and Jewish cultures of the lands surrounding the Hijaz (where Muhammad grew up, and which the first generations of Caliphs after Muhammad conquered quickly).
The Quran has a story of Jesus as a child making some clay birds, and then blowing into them. They come to life and fly away. That story originated in the
Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a 2nd-century apocryphal gospel (in keeping with the trends in infancy gospels during that phase of Christianity). The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was later incorporated in the
Syriac Infancy Gospel, which was written in the language widely used in the lands conquered by the first generations of Muslim armies. The story was widely-popular in the region. Nearly all objective Bible scholars date the original story to the late 2nd century.
What’s more likely? OPTION 1: That the Infancy Gospel of James, which nearly all scholars attribute to at least 150 years after the death of Jesus and was widely-circulated in the lands conquered by Muslims, would be adopted by the author/s of the Quran. OPTION 2: That Muslims are right that the Infancy Gospel of James actually reflects a true story about the early Jesus, which the Quran miraculously retold correctly, but that most Christians outside the Syriac-speaking world of the 6th century had never heard of?
For another example, the Quran’s story of
“the Companions in the Cave” (Sura 18:7-26) is a retelling of a Christian folk legend, the “Seven Sleepers of Ephesus,” which first originated in Syriac sources after 250 AD. The original story tells of Christians who were persecuted under the well-known oppression of the Roman emperor Decius (the same persecution is well-known in Christian history for giving rise to the Novatianist schism). The story was featured in a poem by the poet, Jacob of Saruq, who lived in
Edessa, a major center of Christian learning until it was conquered by Muslims in the first century AH. The story reappears in the Quran, edited to reflect a Muslim worldview.
Again, what’s more likely? That the Quran miraculously retold a Christian folk legend that was originally Muslim, or that author/s of the Quran had heard or read the story, and edited it to reflect a later Muslim worldview?
The Quran is chock-full of stories like this, taken from the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, plus Talmudic and other Rabbinical writings that were widely circulated in the Hijaz. The Christian branches of Azd tribe traded from Syriac-speaking Christian lands in the Levant down into the Hijaz, at least as far south as Medinah. Jewish Arabs were highly prevalent in Medinah.
The Quran never condemns the doctrine of the Trinity, at least in the word for “trinity” that was widely-circulated in Arabian. The Quran does include the phrase “say not three” (Sura 4:171), which could just as easily fit into the mouth the miaphysite Patriarch
Jacob Baradaeus, who condemned the tritheism spread by Conon and Eugenius – two bishops of Selucia and Tarsus, respectively – that was prevalent in the Arabian peninsula.
To me, the most likely explanation for the history of Islam is that Muhammad was a dyophysite (Nestorian) Christian or possibly (as argued by Fred Donner) a pan-monotheist ecumenical reformer whose later followers misunderstood him after his death or reinterpreted him to fit their agenda.
