What was the source of Mohammad's Revelations?

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Assuming that no believing Christian can accept Muhammad’s claimed “revelation” wherein virtually the entire Apostles creed is denied (The Trinity of persons in one God, The Divinity both of Christ and The Holy Spirit, The Incarnation of God in Christ, His Suffering, Crucifixion, Death and Resurrection) and considering also what the CCC says about Revelation, namely "Christian faith cannot accept “revelations” that claim to surpass or correct the Revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such "revelations", what do you think was the source of Mohammad’s spiritual/religious experiences?

I’ve seen and heard numerous theories/explanations about what Muhammad experienced that lead to these claims, ranging from views of him as a basically good person to others that see him as the Devil incarnate. I’ve come up with possible theories on the matter and would like others’ (name removed by moderator)ut.


  1. ]Muhammad was a good man, a spiritual/religious vigilante, who, having become convinced of monotheism, and being unhappy with the spiritual inferiority of his people, deliberated to perpetuate a “story” about revelation in order to teach them what he had discovered to be the truth and to “save” them from what he considered the worst evil. *He considered that the ends justified the means.
    ]Muhammad was the innocent receiver of a legitimate spiritual experience (such as the private revelations some Christians receive, and Muslims too who are lead to Christianity thereby), But this experience was hijacked and corrupted by a demon and/or Muhammad’s own limitations.
    ]Muhammad was simply a clear-cut fraud like other cult leaders and false prophets who mislead people into giving up their whole lives to/for him through a false religion, for nothing other than the most pervasive narcissism possible -(which makes him an exceptionally evil person).
    *]Muhammad received straight out demonic apparitions and/or was possessed and his entire revelation was the handicraft of the prince of darkness, to undermine Christ- This makes him innocent and deceived but makes Islam the very work of the Devil.
    *]Muhammad suffered from serious delusions, such as schizophrenia and saw and conversed with projections of his own psyche that he could not separate from reality. He subconsciously constructed a fantasy in which he was the greatest and last prophet, (the hero) beloved by God and all his Qur’anic verses were “dictated” to him by entities and underwent supernatural experiences that no one could see because they were all in his head.

    So…any thoughts?
 
Mohamed received some of his teachings from various Gnostic religions. For example, the idea that Jesus was not crucified on the cross but was replaced by someone else derives from Gnostics. This is a teaching that dates back prior to Mohamed. He was not the first to come up with the idea.
 
lyrikal said:
Mohamed received some of his teachings from various Gnostic religions. For example, the idea that Jesus was not crucified on the cross but was replaced by someone else derives from Gnostics. This is a teaching that dates back prior to Mohamed. He was not the first to come up with the idea.
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I’ve heard the same thing.

Would you mind sharing your own views on how exactly you think he incorporated those gnostic ideas into the Islamic revelation…conscious fraud, delusion, the devil?
 
What I understand is Mohammad had a revelation presented by the angel Gabriel. Mohammand would not accept it and thought it from the devil. Gabriel beat him. According to our teachings, angels are the servants of man and do not beat men so this is suspect. Mohammand goes to his wife and tells her he thinks he’s being visited by an evil force. She tells him to discuss this with her uncle who was a bishop of some church maybe a Gnostic. The uncle tells him to pay attention because the uncle believes this revelation presented by the supposed angel Gabriel is from God.
How different things would be if the uncle confirmed Mohammad’s suspicions. Also if Christ established the one true Church why would God start another 600 years later?
 
Hebrews 1
1God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,

2Hath** in these last days spoken unto us by his Son**, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;

3Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high:

2 Corinthians 11:14
And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.

Demons was the source of MO’s so-called revelations.
 
aicirt said:
What I understand is Mohammad had a revelation presented by the angel Gabriel. Mohammand would not accept it and thought it from the devil. Gabriel beat him. According to our teachings, angels are the servants of man and do not beat men so this is suspect. Mohammand goes to his wife and tells her he thinks he’s being visited by an evil force. She tells him to discuss this with her uncle who was a bishop of some church maybe a Gnostic. The uncle tells him to pay attention because the uncle believes this revelation presented by the supposed angel Gabriel is from God.
How different things would be if the uncle confirmed Mohammad’s suspicions. Also if Christ established the one true Church why would God start another 600 years later?
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I see. So you believe he was visited by a demon. That’s plausible according to the facts you’ve outlined. But isn’t it also plausible that he may have been schizophrenic and simply saw things that were not there? Afterall, demonic infestations tend to manifest themselves in ways that other people can see, eg moving things around etc.

But if he had entertained a grandiose fantasy of greatness and become schizophrenic, it may have manifested itself in the form of an “angel” calling Mohammed to be the last and greatest of prophets. That movie “A Beautiful Mind” (Russel Crow), a true story, convinced me of the power of schizophrenia. Seeing how a genius of that caliber could have lived in the delusions of being a secret decipherer of codes for the US Govt against the Soviet union, for years and convinced his own wife and MIT collegues of his stories and adventures and of all the “people” he had made up and conversed with for years, before any one thought he was ill, is shocking. Now imagine the same thing happen in superstitious environs in the 7th Century…It could be the case.🤷
 
My answer is “none of the above”.

I think he made up the whole thing as a means of amassing political and then eventually military power. It was very successful.
 
Marybeloved said:
I see. So you believe he was visited by a demon. That’s plausible according to the facts you’ve outlined. But isn’t it also plausible that he may have been schizophrenic and simply saw things that were not there? Afterall, demonic infestations tend to manifest themselves in ways that other people can see, eg moving things around etc.

But if he had entertained a grandiose fantasy of greatness and become schizophrenic, it may have manifested itself in the form of an “angel” calling Mohammed to be the last and greatest of prophets. That movie “A Beautiful Mind” (Russel Crow), a true story, convinced me of the power of schizophrenia. Seeing how a genius of that caliber could have lived in the delusions of being a secret decipherer of codes for the US Govt against the Soviet union, for years and convinced his own wife and MIT collegues of his stories and adventures and of all the “people” he had made up and conversed with for years, before any one thought he was ill, is shocking. Now imagine the same thing happen in superstitious environs in the 7th Century…It could be the case.🤷
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Let’s suppose he was schizophrenic. He thought the “angel” was a demon. It was his wife’s uncle, a bishop of a heretic church, that convinced him otherwise. He did not want to do what the “angel” told him to do. Consequently, the angel would beat him. Either the uncle fed into Mohammed’a schizophrenia or convinced him that the appariations were from God which Mohammed did not initially believe was true.
 
Marybeloved said:
Assuming that no believing Christian can accept Muhammad’s claimed “revelation” wherein virtually the entire Apostles creed is denied (The Trinity of persons in one God, The Divinity both of Christ and The Holy Spirit, The Incarnation of God in Christ, His Suffering, Crucifixion, Death and Resurrection) and considering also what the CCC says about Revelation, namely "Christian faith cannot accept “revelations” that claim to surpass or correct the Revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves on such "revelations", what do you think was the source of Mohammad’s spiritual/religious experiences?

I’ve seen and heard numerous theories/explanations about what Muhammad experienced that lead to these claims, ranging from views of him as a basically good person to others that see him as the Devil incarnate. I’ve come up with possible theories on the matter and would like others’ (name removed by moderator)ut.


  1. ]Muhammad was a good man, a spiritual/religious vigilante, who, having become convinced of monotheism, and being unhappy with the spiritual inferiority of his people, deliberated to perpetuate a “story” about revelation in order to teach them what he had discovered to be the truth and to “save” them from what he considered the worst evil. *He considered that the ends justified the means.
    ]Muhammad was the innocent receiver of a legitimate spiritual experience (such as the private revelations some Christians receive, and Muslims too who are lead to Christianity thereby), But this experience was hijacked and corrupted by a demon and/or Muhammad’s own limitations.
    ]Muhammad was simply a clear-cut fraud like other cult leaders and false prophets who mislead people into giving up their whole lives to/for him through a false religion, for nothing other than the most pervasive narcissism possible -(which makes him an exceptionally evil person).
    *]Muhammad received straight out demonic apparitions and/or was possessed and his entire revelation was the handicraft of the prince of darkness, to undermine Christ- This makes him innocent and deceived but makes Islam the very work of the Devil.
    *]Muhammad suffered from serious delusions, such as schizophrenia and saw and conversed with projections of his own psyche that he could not separate from reality. He subconsciously constructed a fantasy in which he was the greatest and last prophet, (the hero) beloved by God and all his Qur’anic verses were “dictated” to him by entities and underwent supernatural experiences that no one could see because they were all in his head.

    So…any thoughts?
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  1. I think that 1 is unlikely. This kind of “pious fraud” features largely in atheists’ ideas about religion, but not as far as I can see in real religion.

    More generally, I think that the question of “origin” is a lot more complicated than many folks make it. I like your formulations because you recognize this, but I still think your options are too clear-cut. For one thing, I don’t think that anything good is the work of the Devil, period. So whatever is good in Islam comes from God. This could be in part due to a genuine special revelation that Muhammad interpreted imperfectly, but it could quite easily be explained by Muhammad’s access to Judaeo-Christian tradition (in garbled form); by natural revelation; and/or by the truth handed down within pagan Arab culture.

    Whatever is not good in Islam does not come from God. How much of that is due to honest human error; how much to human sinfulness of one kind or another; and how much to demonic intervention is probably impossible to determine, and probably not very important.

    I don’t think we should proceed by first establishing origin and then evaluating; we first evaluate whether the content is good, and that tells us all we really need to know about origin. God is not the author of evil; and God is the author of all good.

    I do have a thoroughly wacky and probably unorthodox and impossible speculation that I have toyed with occasionally, though more as a sci-fi/fantasy idea than a genuinely theological one. And that is that maybe the angel Gabriel really did appear to Muhammad, but maybe angels’ understanding of God is itself subject to error. One point in favor of this no doubt crazy idea is that Muslims have a curious commitment to the doctrine of the virginal conception (which is one part of Jesus’ life we know Gabriel was involved in!) and a devotion to the Blessed Virgin, while being very confused about the crucifixion (and again, there are those hints in the NT that the angels have some trouble understanding that).

    It would not, of course, be necessary to suppose that everything in Islam or even necessarily in the Qur’an came from Gabriel in order to accept that Muhammad initially heard from Gabriel.

    Edwin
 
Contarini said:
More generally, I think that the question of “origin” is a lot more complicated than many folks make it. I like your formulations because you recognize this, but I still think your options are too clear-cut. For one thing, I don’t think that anything good is the work of the Devil, period. So whatever is good in Islam comes from God. This could be in part due to a genuine special revelation that Muhammad interpreted imperfectly, but it could quite easily be explained by Muhammad’s access to Judaeo-Christian tradition (in garbled form); by natural revelation; and/or by the truth handed down within pagan Arab culture.

Whatever is not good in Islam does not come from God. How much of that is due to honest human error; how much to human sinfulness of one kind or another; and how much to demonic intervention is probably impossible to determine, and probably not very important.
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I wonder if you have heard of the idea that the Devil never teaches naked error or suggest plain evil because he knows that the human would recognize it immediately and take flight. So he tends to “give a little”, dress the evil in attractive garb and hide the error in some truth in order to ensnare the human. What do you suppose of the supposition that the Devil couched his intended lie/evil (Denial of Christ) in the monotheism that he taught Mohammed, that is if we were to go by the “It was all the Devil” option?
I don’t think we should proceed by first establishing origin and then evaluating; we first evaluate whether the content is good, and that tells us all we really need to know about origin. God is not the author of evil; and God is the author of all good.
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Agreed
I do have a thoroughly wacky and probably unorthodox and impossible speculation that I have toyed with occasionally, though more as a sci-fi/fantasy idea than a genuinely theological one. And that is that maybe the angel Gabriel really did appear to Muhammad, but maybe angels’ understanding of God is itself subject to error. One point in favor of this no doubt crazy idea is that Muslims have a curious commitment to the doctrine of the virginal conception (which is one part of Jesus’ life we know Gabriel was involved in!) and a devotion to the Blessed Virgin, while being very confused about the crucifixion (and again, there are those hints in the NT that the angels have some trouble understanding that).
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Certainly interesting. But my understanding of the angels is that they are these super-beings with vastly superior intellects to our own and great power, beauty as well as absolute submission to God (the good ones, of course) so the idea of the errors originating from the angel would strike me as unorthodox. What do you think?
It would not, of course, be necessary to suppose that everything in Islam or even necessarily in the Qur’an came from Gabriel in order to accept that Muhammad initially heard from Gabriel.
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I see. So you’re going with the 2nd option. I think that for a message from an angel to be botched so deeply, some other entity might be involved…so perhaps a combined no. 2 and 3 hypothesis? Any way, it’s like you said these things can never be clear cut.
 
Again, wouldn’t the simplest explanation be that he just made it up for personal gain? I guess (3), but I wouldn’t say it was for narcissistic reasons.
 
SanAgustin said:
Again, wouldn’t the simplest explanation be that he just made it up for personal gain? I guess (3), but I wouldn’t say it was for narcissistic reasons.
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True, but wouldn’t it take a thoroughly narcissistic person to go to such lengths just for personal gain? He caused a lot of people a lot of problems.
 
Marybeloved said:
True, but wouldn’t it take a thoroughly narcissistic person to go to such lengths just for personal gain? He caused a lot of people a lot of problems.
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More than narcissism, I see it as a way to gain power, control … influence. There was gain for him, but you can perhaps see it as way to unite Arab people. Perhaps he felt that he needed a religion to unite the Arab tribes, instead of Christianity which he couldn’t mold to his needs (or perhaps didn’t fully understand).
 
SanAgustin said:
More than narcissism, I see it as a way to gain power, control … influence. There was gain for him, but you can perhaps see it as way to unite Arab people. Perhaps he felt that he needed a religion to unite the Arab tribes, instead of Christianity which he couldn’t mold to his needs (or perhaps didn’t fully understand).
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You just described a sociopath!!! :eek:Should have included that. Simple cold selfish calculation. Perhaps…Though he’s often described as extremely touchy to any kind of criticism or rejection which is more the description of a narcissist, or Bi-Polar or other such unstable disorders. Sociopaths are indifferent to love and rejection, they just see what they want and calculate the shortest route to get it, sacrificing anything and anyone they need to, to get it.

I’m sure nationalism played a part…but in combination with other factors…that is if we exclude the cold-selfish-gain option you proposed.
 
SanAgustin said:
More than narcissism, I see it as a way to gain power, control … influence. There was gain for him, but you can perhaps see it as way to unite Arab people. Perhaps he felt that he needed a religion to unite the Arab tribes, instead of Christianity which he couldn’t mold to his needs (or perhaps didn’t fully understand).
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His sister(Or was it the Sister-in-law?) was a Nestorian Christian. (A heresy of the Orthodoxy and Catholic faiths). I’m pretty sure he had access to Christian information, according to Nestorianism at least.

-MontChevalier
 
Mahummad got it from the devil, pure and simple, in the gospels, you know God has said the the devil can appear as an angel of light, who appeared to Mahummad, an angel, God NEVER spoke to him like all the other prophets, he never did any miracles or anything that any of the other prophets did. Who else can concoct a ‘story’ like the devil which is the quran, i personally think its beyond old Mo to bring it together by himself, he needed help, and ‘angels’ are apparently more smarter than humans, hence the devil used to be an angel, therefore, here comes the quran.
 
Muhammad was possessed by Satan or the best he was satanically influenced, and being influenced by evil does not mean there was absolute evil in what the man was or said, as my time as a Communist I read many first hand accounts by people who met Joseph Stalin like Enver Hoxha and others they observed his humbleness, he made no more than 300 rubles a month which is what a factory worker made, and the fact that he was very intelligent, and a kind and jovial person to his guests, which surprised westerners who met him, but it does not take away that the man was influenced by evil. An angel does not beat up a human, simple as that, even in Islam, angels are servants of men. Only demons can hurt people physically. The Anti-Christ’s are described as denying the divinity of Christ. If one is not sure one can look at Islamic eschatology, and the events leading up to it, the military conquests of Rome and Constintinople are pre-cursors for Muslim Judgement Day, these two cities were seen as the Capitols of the Christian World. If one is not convinced read about Islamic heaven in the Koran, which is little more than a Greco-Roman orgy, young boys, men and women are offered in Islamic celestial brothels for Islamic men to pleasure themselves with. The Koran is Muhammad’s “miracle” because he was illiterate, but Satan is purely capable of taking control of a human hand to write messages, or even speak blasphemies in another tongue.
 
I still think the most likely interpretation is that he made it up. If he was truly illiterate, it wouldn’t take much for him to hire somebody to help him write the whole thing.

Why would a demonic apparition be more believable? We can see there were some secular interests/motivation at play as highlighted before.
 
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