The Origins of Islam Are More Mysterious Than You Think | Dr. Gabriel Said Reynolds

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[00:00:00]Ladies and gentlemen, today I have a very special guest. We're going to be diving into his work pertaining to Islam. And many people who watched MythVision for a while have been curious to know what are the ideas surrounding scholarship on the rise of Islam, the origins, and where does this material come from? And there's an interesting debate. It's It's a discussion, really, that I hope people will enter into. And that is how we're approaching the historicity of these events. If we go to later biographies or the Hadith, you're going to find even Muslims disagree over particular details. And we're going to discuss some of this stuff today. But [music] using historical methodology, starting with the Quran, which is the specialty of our guest here today, he's trying to take a historical approach.

[00:00:46]Can we take a different understanding?

[00:00:48]Can we Can we walk away understanding the rise of Islam differently than the way it may be painted through throughout time? And so that's is our guest today is Gabriel Said Reynolds. Dr. Reynolds, welcome to MythVision. Thank you, Derek.

[00:01:02]Very happy to be with you. Yeah. Thanks for inviting me, and I look forward to our chat. Absolutely. Right now, you better go down in the description. Go subscribe to his YouTube channel. I'm telling you, I promise everybody watching right now, this is the place if you want scholarship pertaining to the rise of Islam, Islamic studies, the Quran, Quranic studies. I mean, everything from carbon dating, you know, the Quran to uh pre-inscription Arabia with with all sorts of stuff that kind of gives us the names of Jesus or different things that lead into Islam.

[00:01:37]This is the place to go for uh the scholarship you want. Please go subscribe, and let him know in the chat.

[00:01:43]Say, "Hey, I came over from MythVision."

[00:01:45]This is I'm from MythVision. I'm from MythVision. Go drop a comment. Go drop a like. Hit the subscribe button, and support him. His books are also on Amazon. Make sure you go. The link's in the description. The one we're talking about today is the emergence of Islam and the there's a new version that's here, classical tradition and contemporary perspective that will be out in March. And there's a 2012 edition that's already out. So, I hope people will get the books. There's a lot of them here and I hope we can cover more of this content as time goes by, Dr. Reynolds. But also he has an Academia page. Go follow him there. You can read his articles and follow the scholars that we have here at MythVision showing him that we care. Now, Dr. Reynolds, what's the difference between 2012 model and your new one cuz I saw there's like five to six more pages, it seemed, in the newest version.

[00:02:36]Yeah, well, first of all, thank you so much. I mean, you've just become my best friend.

[00:02:40]>> [laughter] >> I'm very grateful for that. Right, so The Emergence of Islam is was written as a textbook and I use it in my teaching here at the University of Notre Dame.

[00:02:51]And so it does have like a lot of graphics.

[00:02:55]It has charts, tables, like information that's easily digestible about Islam, its relationship to the Bible, the historical context of Islam. It has questions at the end. But I think it's really useful for anyone. I think of all my books, like if you want to start getting to know a little bit how I think Emergence of Islam is a is a good place to start. The updated version has two principal features which are new. One, I engage in a more robust manner with early Islamic and pre-Islamic inscriptions.

[00:03:26]And this is a field that's just like exploded in the past 10, 20 years where we have all sorts of new discoveries of inscriptions before Islam and in the early centuries of Islam which shaped the way we can make historical observations. In particular, it shows that monotheism had spread in the Arabian Peninsula before Islam. So, that's one. And then the other is I think it's chapter eight, the one where I engage with contemporary visions of Islam's origins. There's a a lot more engagement with South Asia generally.

[00:03:56]So, like India, Pakistan, but then especially what's happened in Afghanistan and the Taliban. And so, yeah, the book will help understand these recent trends and what's going on in Islam in the world. I read your 2012 model just so people understand your publication model. Um, and there's some really juicy things.

[00:04:14]So, without wasting your time any further, we're talking about the rise of Islam. And I did not put the page number here, but I took a screenshot and this you mentioned Maxime Rodinson, if I'm pronouncing that properly. There seems to be this guy, Watts and and Rodinson.

[00:04:30]They come up a lot in this book. Um, and you write, "In fact, there is no record at all of this Meccan trade in non-Islamic sources." And Mecca is hardly the easiest land route between Yemen and Syria. In order to get to Mecca from the coastline of the Red Sea, an arduous inland detour is necessary.

[00:04:47]Indeed, it seems that the idea of Mecca as a trading center and the Quraysh as a tribe of greedy merchants, which is way the story plays out throughout um for those who don't know, the way the story plays out is is later, this idea.

[00:05:02]Um, we're trying to figure out what happened, right? The rise. So, the myth developed that this is a myth by Islamic tradition to explain certain Quranic passages, notably Quran 106, a sura titled Quraysh. This myth was then used by Western scholars such as Watt, who were eager to find social cultural factors. Can you comment about that and and like what is the issue here?

[00:05:27]Yeah, what's going on there, right? So, this is super interesting.

[00:05:31]I'll try to be concise because there's a lot to say about this.

[00:05:34]Um, basically, with the rise of Western scholarship on Islam, you have all these scholars trying to understand how this movement emerges, right? Islam is a spectacular movement. Prophet preaches according to traditional dates between 610 and 632 and very quickly Islam spreads throughout the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East. You know, a good way of sort of marking the growth of Islam is that 732 is the date of the Battle of Tour or Poitier, so which is in Southern France. So in 100 years after the prophet's death Islam has spread in France. So you have all these Western scholars who are like, "What happened?"

[00:06:09]>> [laughter] >> Now of course from an Islamic point of view the answer is easy. God. I mean God was the one who inspired the prophet, who sent the Quran to the prophet, and who aided and supported the early Islamic armies as they went in their conflicts with unbelievers. But then you have these Western scholars coming around and they're like, "Okay, we need a secular explanation for this." Some of these scholars were themselves Christians. Watt himself he was I believe an Anglican priest himself.

[00:06:38]I think he was an Anglican priest. He was a student of someone named Richard Bell who I think was also he was Scottish. But anyway, so some of them have Christian perspectives and they're interested in friendship with Islam.

[00:06:49]That was certainly the case of Watt. And then you have other Western scholars who are either openly atheist or just completely secular. If they have religion they keep it, you know, basically hidden. And Rodinson, to use the fancy French French pronunciation, is one of those sorts of scholars. But Watt like Rodinson and there was a scholar named Grim before them, they used a social model to try to explain why Islam emerges. And a lot of this was based on the principle that the Quraysh, the principal tribe of Mecca, were these like wildly successful merchants.

[00:07:29]And that so in their merchant trade you alluded there to Yemen and Syria from that passage of the book. So that their trade would take them on different sort of caravan journeys either to the south from Mecca to Yemen or to the north to Syria, and they became fabulously wealthy trading Well, they have a different ideas what they traded, but either they were intermediaries for some trade that actually might have started in India, passed through South Arabia, and went up to Syria, or they they had their own spices and things which people sort of I don't know imagine is connected to Arabia.

[00:08:02]Uh and so but this was really convenient for them. It's worked as an explanation because in part I don't know this this as well, but in part I think it was linked to certain explanations for the origins of Christianity through social movements. So, they developed a similar idea for Islam, which was listen, uh the Quraysh had become fabulously wealthy, and inevitably that brings along with it moral decadence or decay, right? And so, they had this idea that um Muhammad must have observed a society in moral decay or ethical decay, and that this would have awakened his conscience, and uh led to either um some sort of sincere religious experience, or maybe from a more polemical perspective, a fabrication of a religious experience, so that he could combat this ethical decay.

[00:08:55]And in particular, they imagined him as sort of the champion of the underclasses, that he was there to support uh the poor and outcasts of Mecca against the rich and wealthy Quraysh.

[00:09:08]Okay, so that's kind of the the Now, just say a thing or two about um the problem of that.

[00:09:16]Um I mean, it's really fanciful, but the principal problem is is understanding whether there actually was this robust Meccan trade. And there are all sorts of questions about this. First of all, Mecca does not appear on any pre-Islamic map, period. There are reports among certain late antique and in classical authors of a place called Macoraba and some Western scholars have speculated that this may be Mecca. It's pretty clear that it's not.

[00:09:44]Uh even etymologically like trying to get to the root of the word that is not in Mecca's neither not only does it not appear in any map, it's not mentioned by any And isn't it in the north like way north of in in Arabia? Almost like between Egypt and and Southeast Asia.

[00:10:02]Yeah. Yeah, it's in the northern part and it is not actually on the coast. I mean that quote from the book sort of alludes to this. It's not actually on the coast. So it's not a convenient I mean it's a if you were going to go by land for some reason and not travel up the Red Sea to a place called Ayla which is basically Aqaba today, uh you wouldn't go through Mecca. I mean you have to go through a desert mountain range and it's isolated. Uh it but more importantly Mecca's just not there. I mean if it was this great trading center, someone would have mentioned Mecca. And another problem is after Islam, Mecca is not in fact like after the rise of Islam, Mecca is not in fact a trading center in the early Islamic period. Trade is centered between Iraq and Syria and eventually Egypt and some other places further east and further west. But Mecca so how why was it that Mecca before Islam was a great trading center and then in early Islamic So lots of problems with this idea.

[00:10:54]Um the most famous work that criticizes the idea was by woman named Patricia Crone who wrote a book called Mecca and Trade.

[00:11:02]And she had her sort of conversation partner was an old Belgian scholar by name of Henri Lammens and she really criticizes his work and says, "Listen, basically even if there are certain Islamic texts which speak about Muhammad for example going on a merchant journey with his uncle Abu Talib as a boy, uh we should not put much give much authority to these these traditions and sort of good historical work shows us that Mecca and trade if it it it was modest uh and therefore, the whole social explanation endorsed by scholars like Watt and Rodinson, that Muhammad's conscience was awakened because of the ethical decay, is probably false. So, okay, there's a lot here. And just to point out, I do there is that social explanation, the West typically, um when they're coming with a secular uh angle, they do with Christianity, too. You're right. I mean, Paul was a tentmaker, um these fishermen are from Galilee, and there were tax collectors in this region, so they're thinking they're little enclaves of groups that kind of like are you know, they're in their own little uh their own little pockets, and they're passing this information around, and maybe their success among the poor or among slaves in in the empire, like things like that. So, they're trying to find a model which explains the growth and development of Christianity. And some of it you would look at it and go, "That sounds a little bit there's some good explanations, some of it maybe not." But yeah, I I've never understood, now that I've learned what I've learned, like why people want to say that people completely fabricate religious experience. I'm not And I say complete, cuz we might exaggerate as humans, but like I don't think you need to like act like people are faking things in order to be convinced, is my point. After researching enough to know how humans are, like people really believe and experience things, and so Yeah, this is a really interesting question, and and I I'm not really uh I don't really have great expertise in thinking through this, but it does interest me, and I I would like to say something about it. Uh Watt, for example, Montgomery Watt, so one of the two scholars that we're speaking about that are brought up in the book Emergence of Islam, um he believed in Muhammad's sincerity, um and this is following earlier Orientalists, um most famously a 19th-century scholar named Sprenger, I think he was Austrian, probably doesn't matter, uh who um insist that Muhammad uh or at least proposed that Muhammad fabricated um his claims of religious experience for his personal ends, right? Because you could see the temptation of a scholar saying that first of all, maybe they have their own biases against Islam, maybe they don't like Islam or Muslims, so that could lead to it. But also the trajectory of Muhammad's life is from relative obscurity as an orphan to power and fame and money and wives and right? So by the time he's in Medina, he's the head of a state and he's quite successful, has quite a lot of power and has wives and so so you could see the temptation like oh this all worked out well for him, therefore he must have fabricated. But as just as you say, there are powerful counter arguments which suggest that you know, at least if you read carefully the biography of his life, that there are reasons to believe in his sincerity.

[00:14:18]Of course, this doesn't mean that an angel really visited him in a cave or that he received messages, right? But there there's some most people would say that it's possible for people to have a conviction of religious experience which is authentic, whether or not they actually historically had that religious experience. And I think I think most scholars, I mean those who attribute who believe in the biography of Muhammad and basically attribute the Quran to Muhammad at least as a proclamation, that would be the standard position today. There'd be very few people apart from some you know, polemicists who would take that old school approach of no, he fabricated it for his own personal advancement.

[00:15:02]>> Right. And and just so you know, like I take the the other view, right? Not the polemical view.

[00:15:08]I think Paul really was sincere, right?

[00:15:10]We look at the New Testament. I think this guy really had an experience and I really think this.

[00:15:16]That doesn't mean you have to draw ontologically the conclusions. That means let's take this guy like other humans who have human that have experiences and they attribute them to the divine.

[00:15:26]I just thought it was interesting to point that out. Now, there's a lot there's so much I brought to the table here to to bring up that I think it's important to just go through half the book in our heads and say, "Okay, so half of this book is a case to show pretty much that we shouldn't if we're doing historical methodology, we shouldn't just accept the tradition.

[00:15:49]What I mean is the biographies later.

[00:15:52]We should question them. In In fact, you point out in the book Muslims themselves actually did this. They were like, "Well, and they didn't agree with each other. There's contradictory voices and stuff on trying to explain things. And so we're like, "Okay, we we also have good reasons to think there's theological mythological significance in creating some of these narratives which bolsters your claims about your prophet and and tell fanciful narratives about them. The same is true of Christianity and any other, you know, religion that I'm aware of.

[00:16:22]So, I kind of want to get through the half of the book to say what you ultimately do is you go, "Okay, now instead of looking through the early commentators, exegesis, scholars of Islam, Ibn Ishaq, other people that you talk about in the book, like we aren't throw them out, but like let's not use them to then look back into the Quran to try and understand what happened. And then I did a recent wonderful interview with Jawad Hashmi where he was like it was the I was shocked. I'm not going to lie because in my mind it actually helped like in a lot of ways some of the things you hear polemicists say about Islam, it helped to reduce that that polemic, if you know what I mean, in saying that Muhammad was like getting progressively more aggressive as his power gained. He just wanted to go and destroy and kill and, you know, all these things that polemicists want to say. Whereas he's like, "If you look and you read it without just cherry-picking one surah and you go, "Okay, stop reading it through these exegeses to a power who want to conquer, let's read it through the Quran alone."

[00:17:27]And when you do that, you realize, "Hold on, he sounds like he is defensive here.

[00:17:31]He sounds like he is balanced in some way." Am I saying he, you know, is perfect? I'm a Westerner, right? I'm a secularist. But, at the end of the day, he looked a lot better than what we've been hearing. So, can you tell us um going into this, like just tease us into why this approach, and then I don't want to spend too much time on it cuz we have very little time together. Okay, so this is really the heart of the matter, right? This is where the rubber meets the road uh in thinking about Islam and Islam's emergence or origins.

[00:18:02]Uh and I mean, probably the best way to start is with the classical approach.

[00:18:06]And by classical, I don't mean only the historical Muslim scholarly tradition, but also earlier Western scholars. So, the classical approach is, listen, we have two bodies of literature. We have the Quran, which is distinct as a scripture, um uh which, you know, is presented as the word of God. And then we have another body of literature, which are all these traditions, which could be generally referred to, if we use the word uh in a sort of broad way, as hadith, although all of them are not strictly prophetic hadith or sayings of Muhammad. They're traditions about Muhammad. So, um but these are built, these are put together to form the biography, right? So, basically, we have the Quran and the biography of the prophet. Um Arabic word for biography is sirah. So, we have Quran and sirah. Now, the traditional way or classical way of approaching this is um you know, these two can both be useful in understanding early Islam.

[00:19:01]And um so, for example, when you read a verse of the Quran, I mean, the easiest way to give an example would be what is by tradition the first revelation given to Muhammad, which is in the Quran 96.

[00:19:15]Read in the name of your Lord who created.

[00:19:20]And you're like, okay, this is interesting, but it has no context. It's just literally seems like a command to someone, second person singular, to the reading name of God. There's no context.

[00:19:32]We don't know where, when, how this was proclaimed. And then you go to the seerah, or the biography, and you read the story that Muhammad had this this practice for every year to go up for a period of time on some sort of spiritual retreat called the Hinnoth.

[00:19:47]And during one of these occasions, the angel Gabriel came from heaven, and he brought down, at least to the lowest heaven, the full Quran, and then he visited the prophet and gave him the first five verses of Surat al-Alaq, or Quran 96, right? So, the seerah like provides a context. And this is a really like tempting, almost seductive way of trying to understand the Quran, cuz you get so much information in the seerah.

[00:20:11]Now, the problem is, as you probably know, that the seerah and all of these reports, not only the ones that are strictly in the biography, but the other hadiths as well that are found in different connection collections, rather, they come from a later period. At least their first literary traces are quite late, late 8th, early 9th century is when we actually see them in manuscripts and written down.

[00:20:36]And so, and what makes it even more curious is that very often the traditions that we find in the seerah seem to have been written, perhaps, expressly to explain something in the Quran. So, like the story of Muhammad being in a mount in a mountain, and at sometimes some of these traditions say Gabriel showed him something written, and told him, "Read." Iqra. Those first words of Quran 96.

[00:21:08]And being in a mountain in a cave, all sorts of biblical sort of examples of where this happens with with Elijah and others. So, if that's the case, that is if at least some of the traditions were initially written to explain the Quran, we can't then turn around and understand the Quran through them because they're produced by the Quran. So, we can't use them to explain the Quran. They come after the Quran not before. Which gives basically reason to those who would argue that in understanding the Quran, we need as much as possible historical evidence from the time and place the Quran was proclaimed or written.

[00:21:47]And understanding the Quran in light of earlier literature, which is principally Jewish and Christian in late antiquity.

[00:21:53]Some would say pre-Islamic poetry, that's that's another question, that's a little bit tough. So, I mean, I think that's sort of like sets the scene for this problem, this dynamic. I go in much more detail, but maybe I should give you a chance to respond and we can go back and forth.

[00:22:07]>> Absolutely. There's so many things I'd love to just ask and some of these questions may not take you long to respond to.

[00:22:13]I don't expect us to go exhaustive.

[00:22:15]Really, I I hope people will read the book. And I felt when I read the book that there were books in this book that you could have easily have gotten just, you know, like a specific subject and could have gotten lost in. Many articles are out there on these. So, I'll uh throw something interesting that you actually say early on in the book as the first half of the book pertaining to various approaches. And you mentioned in the opening that some scholars actually believe Muhammad is a title for Jesus and that he didn't exist. And to me, I've heard this before in the past, but it sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.

[00:22:49]Um because it would require like a conspiracy theory or something that just doesn't make sense cuz if this is this if this is the case, how did Muslims insert Muhammad as a a over Jesus? It's strange to me. Like, when did the shift happen where this is a title for Jesus, then all of a sudden like they start thinking he's a different guy? That doesn't that require a conspiracy theory? I don't want to get lost into this, but wouldn't you say that Yeah, basically I would agree. It requires a conspiracy theory. So, this is certainly not my my point of view.

[00:23:22]And it's I mean, to be fair, I mention it there uh in part because people with I mean, these sort of fringe theories are really interesting and the reader would be like, "Wow, right?" Um but it's it's a it's a mine it's an extreme minority position. Um there are very few people who would doubt the historical existence of Muhammad.

[00:23:44]Um although there are some books out there doing that just that, but I mean, there's there's really a fringe position. Um I mean, the where the logic of this I I can't really do that much justice to it because it's just difficult to fully uh if you don't if you don't believe in its coherence, it's it's hard to give it a coherent explanation. But, I mean, the idea is uh isn't it interesting that the Quran uh pays so much interest and in a way gives so much honor to the person of Jesus and to Mary, by the way.

[00:24:17]Um and even if it denies explicitly that he's the son of God, um it doesn't really seem to do away with all of the Christian language. So, it does call him a word of God. It seems to call him spirit of God. So, that's like point one that this group this group is uh this idea has been supported by a number of scholars connected to an organization called INNARA based in Germany. Right, so that's point one.

[00:24:48]Quran really has a high place for Jesus, even higher I would say than later Islamic tradition allows for. Something we could speak about.

[00:24:55]>> Yes. Uh and then point number two is um Muhammad is sort of everywhere and nowhere in the Quran. So, the mention of a prophet um Nabi or messenger Rasul is frequent. Um and there's all these second person singular addresses in the Quran like we we spoke about one Quran 96 before, but there are many many others where God speaks to one person.

[00:25:19]So, those are assumed to be addresses to Muhammad. Um but the name Muhammad only appears four times in the Quran and then in one other occasion the prophet seems to be referred to by another name Ahmad.

[00:25:31]Uh, that's in Quran 61:6.

[00:25:33]>> Right. So, um so he's also kind of nowhere. Um whereas I mean Jesus his name is 20-something times, Abraham is I think 60-something times, and Moses is over 100 in the Quran. So, why is the Quran not actually speaking about this figure? And the name Muhammad seems to have a meaning in Arabic which is the one who is to be praised. So, they could kind of put all of that together, but I mean let's be let's be serious here. I mean um not only does the Quran testify to a figure who's a messenger and it's pop-possible that Muhammad is a an epithet like a sort of an a name that was taken up to reflect his um religious uh role and vocation. So, the praised one.

[00:26:19]There's not a lot of uh there are some but very few witnesses at least in the inscriptions to the name Muhammad before Islam. Ahmad al-Jallad would be the person person to speak about Ahmad al-Jallad would be the person to speak about that. So, it's possible that this was a sort of epithet like a nickname and it wasn't his historical birth name or something. In Arabic you could say laqab. Uh but I mean there's no reason to think Muhammad didn't exist.

[00:26:44]>> Yeah, and that's I I kind of figured that in the in in the book. You just kind of go right past but you mention it. Um in light So, these are some hip fires and I don't expect you to go in exhaustive on this, but I've talked to Shawn Anthony, I've talked to other scholars and asked them different things. And since we're starting with the Quran as our source to try and really understand the Quran cuz later stuff is later stuff. I mean, well after the Quran, well over over 100 years or more, easily. [gasps] Do you think the Satanic Verses maybe are historical or again, like what we talked about? I mean, it's a personal question cuz each scholar might say, "I think there's something to it. Maybe not as it's elaborated later, but there seems to be something to it because you mentioned also in your book, don't you find it quite ironic? And it wasn't you, but you quoted a scholar and I can't remember the scholar's name where you're like, "Don't you find it ironic how little pagan theology and beliefs are mentioned in here?" It's like you said, Jesus and Mary and the Bible characters and stuff. So, Yeah.

[00:27:48]Yeah.

[00:27:49]Yeah, I mean, the big exception to that are the Satanic the so-called the Satanic Verses or at least the material left in the Quran that's connected to the Satanic Verses because there you have the mention of the three pagan Arabian goddesses, uh, Allat, Manat, and Al-Uzza. So, um, yeah. Uh, in my opinion, uh, the Satanic Verses story is not historical, is not authentic. Um, uh, now, um, there this is a little bit complicated to sort of, I don't know, go through the landscape of scholarly, uh, assessments of the story.

[00:28:23]Um, because you have the Islamic tradition in the early Islamic tradition, basically, everyone accepts the story.

[00:28:31]And the reason why they accept the story is, okay, let me take a step back.

[00:28:35]>> [laughter] >> In the Quran, in Sura 53, which I believe is Sura An-Najm, >> [clears throat] >> you have, um, mention of these three goddesses, Allat, Manat, and And um then then in there's a sort of long verse, strangely long verse there. And then what follows, God says something like, "Oh, um are you going to have sons?" And I understood only get daughters. So there's implication that the uh opponents of the messenger are saying that these three pagan goddesses are the daughters of God. And there are other places in the Quran, I believe, where there's a reference to daughters of God.

[00:29:16]So [snorts] um so there's that. And then there's a verse, I believe in Sura 22, in which says that or which says rather that um the devil basically always inserts into the mind of messengers um something that is false, but God abrogates, that's the key word, nasakha is the Arabic word, what um Satan, I believe the actual word is cast or throws into the mind of the messengers.

[00:29:42]And so it's that second verse actually Sura in Sura 22 is actually the key one because it suggests that oh this is the normal thing that happens to messengers. Satan tries to insert something in the brain and God fights back. Right? And so the early Islamic tradition says um in my opinion uh creates the story about Satan inserting certain verses that would have been in Sura 53, which gives praise to these three goddesses. Um it calls them the high-flying cranes, the birds, high-flying birds. Um and then Gabriel came down quickly and said, "No, no, no, um this should not uh this should not be understood." Okay. Now, the appeal um so the early Islamic accepts it. Early Western scholars almost all accept it for two reasons. One, they have this idea that Muhammad was like yearning for the Meccan pagans to accept Islam. And it even was like it was paining it was painful to him that they weren't accepting Islam. And so they imagined that he would have been susceptible to satanic interference for a compromise, which would say, "Okay, um hey Muhammad, you can accept these goddesses of the pagans as daughters of God, but not as real goddesses. But you call them daughters of God and look for their intercession."

[00:31:02]And that's a compromise. And so Western scholars were like, "Oh, he must have been like open to proposing something that's whether or not he was deceived or actually just fabricated the whole thing, but he must have been open to that idea of compromise." So that's one reason. And the other reason is West early Western scholars would say that the story is so injurious, that is so harmful to the reputation of Muhammad's um reliability that it must be true. Like no one would have passed this story on. No Muslim would have passed this story on if it weren't true. That's basically the criterion of embarrassment >> Exactly. being applied. Yeah. So, um yeah, I think uh neither of those apply.

[00:31:43]They're both wrong. Uh the story is in early Islam obviously was not seen as a problem because uh I think it was created to explain the verse in Surah 22. It was transmitted without a problem. Uh and um and this early stage of Islam, story making, story telling, story making, story telling was a really productive sort of phenomenon. All sorts of stories about lots of prophets. I could tell you other stories about other chronic prophets that puts them in a bad light. There's lots of these stories.

[00:32:14]The idea of prophetic uh perfection or um impeccability had not been really established. So I think this is actually a perfect case of the Quran producing a story, which later scholars then took and put back into the Quran to read the Quran via the story, which in fact was produced by the Quran. A perfect circle.

[00:32:36]Wow.

[00:32:37]So, >> [clears throat] >> moving on to another question and that is the Virgin Mary. You you talk about the Virgin Mary in your first half of the book, but then and it's not extensive, but then we get into characters like Jonah, we get into how they're looking at this and I found it kind of interesting because I recently have done a little research on Gospels pertaining In fact, Bart Ehrman did a course called Other Virgin Births. In it, he draws this conclusion that there aren't any.

[00:33:06]He thinks that in the Greco-Roman world, the gods pretty much had sex with the women, the mortal women, and then you had demigods, but they were still sons of God.

[00:33:15]So, um I talked to M. David Litwa, which was one of his students, and he walks away and says, "Well, actually the Numa in Greek, you find in Plutarch about Plato." Like, there's all sorts of interesting things. So, he's like, "I wish my professor would have read this."

[00:33:27]Well, I say all that to kind of like draw a context.

[00:33:29]I'm well-versed in biblical stuff, and so I'm like the history surrounding it, why these ideas are floating around in the Greco-Roman world, and how philosophies impacting early Christians and probably the authors of the Gospels, all that fun stuff.

[00:33:42]And then I hear that the Quran adopts the idea, or maybe maybe they already believed it in Arabia, that she was a virgin. But, they have to add in this kind of caveat of like, "Quit calling him a son.

[00:33:57]God has no sons." And in this adoption, I found it ironic. My question is, if God did not birth Mary in Islamic tradition, how do Muslim exegetes, historians, and stuff, who do they say his father really is? Because if the Numa, and it says that the spirit birthed her, just looking at the context, me being someone who's in the first century, knows what this means. I mean, sons of God is a common thing. It is well-known. Caesars were sons of God.

[00:34:27]Demigods were birthed by high gods and stuff. I mean, it's it's it's well-known within the cosmology of the world, but in Arabia, I'm curious how they What do they do to answer this question?

[00:34:39]Well, I think the question actually was a major issue even at the time of Muhammad.

[00:34:46]And it's all reflected in a passage in chapter or sort of three of the Quran.

[00:34:52]Because the question you asked, I think I mean a little bit of speculation, but I'm right.

[00:35:00]Is was asked of Muhammad.

[00:35:05]And you have to work through this carefully because there's some things you can conflate and you have to avoid doing that, okay? So, you're you're right. It begs the question if Jesus is neither the son of Joseph nor the son or some Roman some Roman guy soldier passing through or of God, then who is the son of and if if Mary, I mean the Quran seems to speak very clearly both in Quran three and in Quran 19.

[00:35:36]Especially in Quran three, the scene is close to Luke's gospel where Mary asked the question, basically no man has touched me. How can this be? And the Quran says God says be and it is. So, it seems exactly as you say the Quran seems to defend the virginity of Mary. I think there's some reasons to to understand the Quran is implying also the perpetual virginity of Mary. You get into that, yeah.

[00:36:02]Yeah. So, but the thing is that we have another passage or another verse in Quran three where the Quran says the example of Jesus is Adam.

[00:36:15]God created him from dirt and said be and he was.

[00:36:20]Now, I think that that verse is in anticipation of precisely the question that you asked.

[00:36:27]So, either partici- anticipation or response.

[00:36:31]Uh the Quran, I think, was proclaimed in environment that was heavily Christian.

[00:36:35]It's a whole another topic that again diverges from standard Islamic beliefs about Islam's historical context. I think it was heavily Christian.

[00:36:42]Christians were were engaging with Muhammad. There was evangelism and dawah going on already in the 7th century.

[00:36:49]Uh and that that question is a response to Christians saying, "Okay, then how could he not be a son of God if he had um no human father?"

[00:36:57]Um so, now Islamic tradition sets that The reason I say be careful not to conflate is because Islamic tradition sets that verse which compares Jesus to Adam um in the context of a story about Christians who came to Medina and they spoke to Jesus and they asked They spoke to Muhammad. I'm getting all my prophets mixed up. Uh they spoke to Muhammad and they asked him, "Who is um Jesus is uh who would be Jesus' father?"

[00:37:26]So, they asked that very question.

[00:37:28]Muhammad said, "Let me wait for revelation." And then God reveals this verse to him. And they were amazed at the answer. Then he challenges them to a sort of um duel or mutual cursing and they refused the challenge and they go back to South Arabia.

[00:37:42]Uh so, I I think that story is a fabrication. It's another example of a story created on the basis of the Quran.

[00:37:49]Um and so, but it because it's reading it's created from the Quran, it might actually, in fact, be kind of close to what historically happened. Not because that story was remembered from Islam's origins, but because the verse itself does suggest that there were Christians asking just that question. Interesting funny anecdote just to finish on this point. Uh so, Muslims would later, you know, pick up this uh point in Quran 3 and they would say things like, "Well, um actually Adam should be more of a god than Jesus because he had neither a father nor a mother. So, he should be twice the god than Jesus was. So, they use that argument and and then there there was a Christian medieval apologist who would respond and he would say, "Yeah, Adam's actually not that special cuz the first of every species had no father nor mother. The first donkey had no father nor mother. So, there's nothing special with Adam. You know, what's special is that someone in the history of a species who should be produced by father and mother is not."

[00:38:48]So, anyway. That's actually quite an [clears throat] interesting debate cuz I could I could sympathize with the first response and then I can immediately sympathize with oh, good gotcha. And this is what happens [laughter] throughout centuries.

[00:39:00]Uh you know, it it sounds like there's a different metaphysics in the mind of those in Arabia or at least in Muhammad's mind. Like he has a different metaphysics in understanding this.

[00:39:08]Whereas for me, I'm carrying the baggage of original context, right? I'm reading this and I'm aware that the pneuma of God overshadows Mary and it literally in that in that in their metaphysics they're trying to get away from God's I'm I mean, I know that it's unique here with with Mary. But like if you look at the Mediterranean, the gods were having sex with mortals.

[00:39:30]And you even get a a sense of this in Genesis 6 where there's like, "What the heck is going on with these women?" But they're they're getting away from that.

[00:39:37]And and [clears throat] of course, um God is like not this physical substance.

[00:39:42]There's the the the pneuma of God that impregnates. So, I'm carrying that over and I'm curious like how was their metaphysics here, but I can't read his mind. But it seems like he created him.

[00:39:51]He doesn't have to uh in a sense, there's like a like a creation miracle of making Jesus rather than um it being through some strange metaphysics that I might find from the first century if that makes sense. And it's interesting that that verse and it's not the only place uh uses has God speak, right? So, the Quran literally says when God wants something, he says kun. The Arabic word is kun, which means be.

[00:40:17]Uh and so, um you know, people wonder, is this connected somehow to Genesis 1, maybe even to John 1, which speaks of uh the Son of God as the Logos or the divine word. So, um there could be something there, especially because as we mentioned earlier, uh the Quran refers to Jesus on two occasions as a word of God. You know what I'm starting to realize during our interview?

[00:40:41]How screwed I am, cuz I got so many questions for you that are just like, "Oh, I love the book." And I I want to get your thoughts so much more on these topics. So, okay, I'm going to try my best to chip away at the iceberg, and I'm I'm worried we're at the at the top.

[00:40:57]Um So, th- this is an interesting point you bring up in the book, and I'm curious to know using historical methodology, how scholars come down on this, and maybe even your your opinion. Um it seems like originally Islam was an Arab religion.

[00:41:13]Specifically targeted for Arabs. Um it was it using historical methodology, is it fair to say this was an Arab religion?

[00:41:24]Meaning it's exclusively for them. Kind of like Jews. Judaism or their religion, I'll just say Jewish religion cuz there's variations within their own category.

[00:41:35]Uh someone said that when you start saying religion, you already are creating categories that kind of don't exist, cuz it's very there's always a spectrum. But either way, um the idea that like Jews, to become a child of Abraham, like there's a conversion process the child of the person has to go through, and all these things. But over time, um Katell Berthelot wrote a book Jews and the Roman Rivals during Pagan Rome, you notice people are converting, even Paul redefines terms like where he's like, "Actually, God adopts you with his pneuma. His pneuma enters you, and you are now a child of Abraham just as much as a Jew." And so, there's a different idea going on in Jewish thinking. I'm curious to know if historically the Quran specifies this this is an Arab religion. Later Muslims as they conquer and expand, they're having to deal with territories and people groups and things like that that they didn't before. So they in they start to absorb new theology to include people that were not initially welcome. Right. Right. Okay, terrific question and it's a difficult one to answer. [laughter] It's also sort of Yes or no? No, I'm just kidding.

[00:42:41]>> [gasps] >> It's yes and no.

[00:42:44]>> [laughter] >> Uh and I'll try to try to explain that a little bit by sketching out some ideas which hopefully would be I don't know useful at least interesting.

[00:42:53]Um I mean the first point which may be a surprise here I think is that um to the best of our knowledge there was no trans translation of the Bible in Arabic before Islam. You might be like who ca Why does that matter? Well, because the work Christians and Jews who were Arabic speakers before Islam. So we know that from now more and more um so-called paleo-Arabic inscriptions that is inscriptions before Islam in what we basically recognize as the Arabic script. Um there's not a lot of these but there are a few and um basically the they're all well, no, not basically. They are all monotheistic and they uh mo all of those that can be identified further are Christian. So So there were Christians in Arabia speaking Arabic writing Arabic but they had no scripture in Arabic. So when they heard the scripture uh or for those who could read and write when they when they when they read the scripture, uh they were doing so in another language probably Syriac but there could be cases where they um could potentially read Ethiopic or Greek maybe but Syriac is the most likely.

[00:44:07]>> And just >> for people to know, Syriac is a form of Aramaic for people who are curious to know, like Anyway, there's probably differences, too, though. Syrio Exactly.

[00:44:15]No, no, it is it is Aramaic. It has its own script, um and which is why people use a different term, but it's exactly as you say, yeah, it's form of Aramaic.

[00:44:23]So, um anyway, that matters because um the Quran seems to present itself uh with great enthusiasm as finally a scripture in Arabic for the Arabs. So, the number of verses to bring up here, I think it's 42:7. I might be getting it wrong, so someone can mention that the comments the right verse. Uh for this reason we have revealed to you an Arabic Quran that you can warn people.

[00:44:51]Um Quran 16:103, I'm pretty sure about this one.

[00:44:54]It has uh something like we know that they say, "Only a human is teaching him." But that human to whom they refer has a foreign or better barbarous tongue, and this is an Arabic This is in an Arabic tongue or a clear Arabic language.

[00:45:11]So, there many other verses like this that could be uh referred to which um basically say, "Listen, uh this is scripture. It's consistent with earlier scripture, but it's an Arabic." There's a verse, I don't know what sort it is, which simply says, "Um this is a book that confirms in the Arabic tongue."

[00:45:29]So, uh you put all this together and it seems pretty clear that at least in one stratum of the Quran as another problem, do we have strata from different time periods and things or potentially from different sources, but at least in one stratum of the Quran there's this great enthusiasm and excitement that finally the Arabs are getting a scripture in their own language. Um okay, there's a lot to be said here. I don't want to go too long because I think I've thrown you off by my super long answers, but um this is actually super interesting. Um potentially it reflects the missionary impulse of Christians. Remember, and as I'm sure you know, Derek, that the um, in this period in late antiquity in the Near East, but also in Europe, um, people Christians are translating the Bible furiously into all sorts of languages. As you probably know, the Cyrillic script and other scripts are developed specifically to translate the Bible and evangelize new peoples.

[00:46:26]And there's reason to think that the Arabic script, not the language, but the script, was developed by Christians, maybe missionaries. Um, Christian Robin uh, has argued this. I think Robert Hoyland uh, has argued something very similar. Um, and so it there was probably this great missionary pressure and um, Christians are beginning to express themselves in Arabic Arabic, but they know they not yet did they have an Arabic Bible. So, the Quran sort of like res- res- is this a uh, enthusiastic response to this saying, "No, no, here's your Arabic scripture. A new prophet with a new message, finally in Arabic. God spoke before to the people of the book. Now he's speaking to us Arabs. This is This is the message to follow." Um, not that Christian religion, which is being communicated in foreign barbarous tongues. That's sort of the way I would understand it. I I actually think that that is um, one of the real keys and the book makes the argument to understanding the rise of Islam is uh, this enthusiasm for the Arabic language. The Quran uses the word ummiyun, which we could speak about further. It basically seems to mean Gentiles, the people who who had not yet received divine revelation and are now receiving it.

[00:47:41]Muhammad, for that reason in Quran 7, is called an-nabi al-ummi. Uh, the ummi prophet. Uh, so yeah, I think it's super important. Now, there could also be other strata or segments of the Quran which have a more universalizing uh message. Um there is uh there does seem to be an awareness that Muhammad should preach to Christians and Jews. There are different verses like in Quran uh Quran 4 famously 157 and others where the Quran specifically addresses the people of the book and seeks basically to reprimand them and apparently to convert them, which would suggest that there is a universalizing tendency also present present in the Quran. So, I would say yes and no. This is really interesting because your book mentions the Medinan Meccan uh I I guess a temptation for scholars to want to see those exegesis and how they are dividing and they're trying to say, "Oh, he was in Mecca and he was in this war. They were going to battle here and this and that." And there's there's this uh it's like an [clears throat] overwhelming thing. It's almost like when I read a gospel, I'm sucking myself into Matthew to understand Mark. And it's like, "Hold hold on. Hold on.

[00:48:49]Different authors. Don't do that. Try to but you know, there's there's a lot of that temptation." Um our time is running out. So, I want to make sure we cover something else that I thought was interesting. You have a conversion like you said they're they're motivated to to convert. They're setting the record on what the correct scriptures are. You point out in your book how later tradition says Jews and Christians got it they screwed up their book. They messed stuff up but you actually go to show that the Quran isn't quite condemning actually. In fact, there isn't this condemnation. This is something Muslims do and I imagine when you have something that breaks away from the rest of the world and now you're entering that world, you're there's going to be polemics I imagine against the Christian and the Jew. Um so, like in the Quran they're kind of giving a nod to the earlier scriptures and not really polemicizing.

[00:49:38]That that leads me to also ask about apocalypticism. I'm a big fan of trying to like find out the end is near.

[00:49:45]The end is nigh. We see this all throughout New Testament, um late Second Temple Judaism.

[00:49:51]You might find some of this within the prophets. There seems to be an anticipation of something that's going to change.

[00:49:57]Do you think the Quran, not necessarily later because you can find different voices?

[00:50:02]Um some might be apocalyptic, some might not. Do you think the Quran has a soon near end apocalypse message in some of the strata, if we can use the term, that this guy, like the Apostle Paul, seems to be anticipating something very soon is going to end, the world's going to end. I think it's a difficult question to answer. And some people have embraced that idea really enthusiastically. I mean, Stephen Shoemaker wrote a really interesting book about I think the death of the prophet.

[00:50:30]Uh and I think it comes up in his new book um Creating the Quran.

[00:50:36]Um so those are two resources people interested in this idea that might look at Stephen Shoemaker's work to get an advocate for that point of view. Um I think Fred Donner also in his book Muhammad and the Believers um basically endorses that view. Uh the most famous uh um endorsement of this view was at least among sort of nerdy academics was >> [laughter] >> a French book called Muhammad and the end of the world by a guy named Casanova written in the 1920s or something. So people always refer back to that. Like here's a guy who was early like prophetically um pointing out the apocalyptic or eschatological dimension of the Quran. So um yeah, I I'm sort of ambiguous about that. I mean, famously Quran 54:1, I think is a chapter of the moon, uh starts with the words uh "Iqtarabat al-sa'ah wa inshaq al-qamar" which means the hour has drawn near and the moon has split, split in two.

[00:51:34]Uh and so people point that in their various hadith and traditions which speak where in which Muhammad is made to say that the hour um I'm the prophet of the hour.

[00:51:45]Uh he think he's sometimes called Al-Hashir, which is the one who gathers in, also a divine name. Um, but a name given to Muhammad as the one who's, uh, who's who's coming is is just anticipates the the final hour.

[00:52:01]Um, the the problem with this idea is that, um, especially in in passages connected with Medina, we don't see the same enthusiasm. So, it could potentially be in the earlier so-called period of of Muhammad's life, excuse me, that he had that kind of enthusiasm. 54 is a Meccan passage. But, when we look at the Medinan stuff, so when we look at suras like 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, and 9, um, this is a statesman who's setting things up, setting up a society in a city, and, uh, figuring out, you know, uh, taxes, and inheritances, and marriage, and, um, the distribution of booty and plunder, and, uh, plan for war, and conditions for peace, and things like that. So, we don't get the sense of someone who is sort of wildly predicting the end of the world, you know, on the corner of Times Square somewhere in Manhattan. Uh, we more have the sense of someone who's anticipating building, um, a religious state, uh, and is sort of a practical, uh, a sort of statesman in that regard. So, it it would be fair to say that if there is that, you would have to take an I mean, not you would have to, but it seems likely that there's like a change in mind and heart, and maybe what an environment that causes that kind of, uh, Yeah.

[00:53:22]>> Right. And so, and that that's connected to a common approach to the Quran, um, which is to say that early on when Muhammad didn't have power, he, uh, put his hope in divine vengeance on the unbelievers. So, he had this apocalyptic eschatological hope. I mean, sometimes I think, you probably know this better than I do, uh, uh, apocalypticism is explained as some sort of cognitive dissonance between the way that things are and the way that they should be. And so, that's that gap is made up by imagining some divine punishment that's going to come upon one's opponents. And so, people say, "Oh, that could have happened to Muhammad in Mecca because he was weak and persecuted and under the the heel of the the mighty Quraysh tribe." But then in Medina, things worked out well for him in secular terms um or in worldly terms, I should say, maybe to be more contemporary. And so, he sort of left that behind and he said, "No, no, I can be the rod of God's wrath through jihad and I can set up a state.

[00:54:22]I can apply God apply God's law and implement God's rules here and now. We don't So, uh yeah, I'm sort of skeptical of that, too.

[00:54:32]Uh because um I think it's very difficult, this alludes to a point you made earlier, it's it's very difficult to um in fact divide between Meccan and Medina strata in the Quran uh and even I'm not even ready to assume single authorship for the text or at least the absence of any process of redaction and layers of redaction within the text. So, I think we probably need a more complicated model.

[00:54:59]>> Wow, that's an amazing point cuz I've been reading on this for a minute and in not only in your book, but other books, you point out in your book, as we're wrapping up here, that you know, there's uh even in the tradition, then the voices aren't in complete agreement on how we get to Uthman and like who who who the companions are between the time the the Quran comes on. And then, there's this really interesting part where they're finding leafs and rocks and and like they're they're discovering writings and like it sounds a bit it almost sounds convincing, you know, like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah." But but it also sounds a bit legendary or like uh they're they're [clears throat] finding these warriors that are dying off. They need to get the ones that are still alive to come and and then you mentioned the different science. They had a science that they developed and I think it's called isnad? Isnad is the the chains of traditions which are meant to validate reports.

[00:55:53]>> That's Hadith of course that you go into. So I'm like literally throwing a whole bunch on us as we're getting to the end here. But the point is is I've thought the same thing too. I'm not saying there isn't stuff that actually goes all the way back but is it fair to say to be able to divide between both Meccan and Medinan stuff? You can do it and you can come up with tools and methodology and all that but like there's no way to actually know with any confidence of certainty that this is the case. So the there different approaches to the the problem. Nicolai Sinai is a great person to read by the way on this.

[00:56:25]He is much more optimistic about our ability to identify Meccan and Medinan passages in the Quran than I am. He has a really great book on the Quran a historical introduction. So we've crossed swords a lot on this particular topic. [laughter] So but even someone like Nicolai would say there's a lot of interference. So there's a lot of Medina material that's in the process of compilation. I'm not sure if he would say redaction was inserted into Meccan material. So for example I believe sort of six and sort of 16 which are both by tradition Meccan suras speak about Jihad. Well there should be no Jihad in Mecca.

[00:57:04]Muhammad was not leading armies against unbelievers and so sometimes the tradition sometimes Western scholars would say oh any mention of Jihad there is an insertion of something that was originally proclaimed in Medina and has been later inserted into for whatever reason has been inserted into a Meccan passage. It's a really convenient argument to just explain anything away.

[00:57:25]Maybe that that turn of phrase doesn't do justice to someone like Nicolai who's a great scholar but to explain things away by saying whenever something doesn't fit my model, I'm just going to call it an insertion.

[00:57:36]There are other problems, too, because certain elements that are associated in literary terms with Mecca and with Medina, I think are simplistic. So, the general idea is short verses were proclaimed in Mecca and long verses are proclaimed in Medina. And that's sort of trumpeted as, "Okay, here is something that is not like dependent on traditional stories to locate a passage in Mecca or Medina. This is a literary criterion, a literary standard. Short verses in Mecca, long verses in Medina."

[00:58:09]Really, I mean, is it impossible that someone could have written short verses in Mecca and again, for whatever reason, in Medina?

[00:58:17]Is it possible that a short verse was expanded into a longer verse and that actually you have sort of a proda a proto version, rather, of a certain verse and then a later developed version?

[00:58:28]How do we How do we eliminate the possibility that material was not simply inserted but actually reworked and developed as time went on?

[00:58:38]Are passages really sort of frozen in time from the way they were proclaimed in, say, I don't know, 615 and never changed again? It seems to be more likely that there's a story to be told about the redaction of the Quran that has not been told yet and that needs to be developed. Having said that, I would just say that none of this, of course, precludes for a Muslim believer that their their faith. I mean, you can still hold to more complicated versions of the formation of the text and be a believer as, you know, from the examples of believing Jews and Christians who do historical critical work.

[00:59:14]I am I am so disappointed in not being able to continue going on with you.

[00:59:19]>> [laughter] >> I really I really recommend people to read this book. I mean, you cover things from the the that are that are introduct They're at the top before the surahs come in and how there's this mystery on what what this means. What is this?

[00:59:33]You cover so many things and you really got my attention on this developing idea of you know, is it set in stone? And for me, if I was looking at the modus operandi of any and all traditions of literary traditions, there is never a just this, that's it. There seems to be some process, whatever that process may be, I'd love to see someone write and and give a good hypothesis on how they think this happened.

[00:59:59]But, um Dr. Reynolds, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time. I have more questions, but we may be able to jump on this again at some point. You have other works. So, I want everybody to please take the time, go get the book. In fact, get his books, but this one is the one that we read and we were discussing and in fact, I can tell you for sure that that iceberg barely got touched. There's a lot more material in here. He breaks down good arguments, too. You don't take a long time to even break down some of this stuff. You get right to the jugular, as I like to call it, and in letting people see why there's a problem with just accepting, if you're using historical methodology, just accepting what later traditions say. And by the way, Muslims also recognize these issues, too. So, it's not like um only people who use a secular or historical methodology figure this out.

[01:00:48]That's why I have such appreciation for Jawad Hashmi and his approach and what he's trying to do.

[01:00:53]Go subscribe to his YouTube channel, please. I'm apocalyptic. So, if you don't, you're going to be left behind.

[01:01:00]You need to go right now. Subscribe.

[01:01:03]Let's get him up there. Let's get him 5,000 subs. I I don't know why, for the life of me, this channel has not blown up because it has the best when it comes to Islamic material, Quran, pre-Islam, the whole nine. Like, there's not another channel that I am aware of out there on YouTube that does what Dr. Reynolds is doing, you can get lost in here endlessly and I'll play his stuff in the background while I'm sitting there working, whatever.

[01:01:31]Excellent scholars.

[01:01:33]And I just it's really a privilege to have the opportunity to interview you, Dr. Reynolds. Do you have anything you would like to say about anything pertaining to your books, YouTube, or your academia as we're on our way out?

[01:01:45]>> Thanks. Well, I'm really grateful, Derek, for your your graciousness in you know, in promoting the YouTube channel and books and all of that. My most recent book is called Allah, God, and Quran. Maybe that's can be a subject for another conversation cuz that's about the theology of the Quran.

[01:01:59]I have friends at Notre Dame who have started YouTube called Reasons for Our Hope that has things on Islamic Christianity that might also be of interest [music] to your viewers. So, maybe that's the only other thing I'd mention. Wow. We have to get into this because you bring up in the book the name Allah. Where does this come from?

[01:02:16]Does it just mean God? Was there a well-known deity in pre-Islamic time that had this name? And there's so many questions I have about the theology as well. I really appreciate you. I hope everybody goes in the description, check out his YouTube channel, please subscribe, and let him know that you came from MythVision. That way he knows, "Okay, I might waste more time coming and talking to that guy named Derek."

[01:02:39]>> [laughter] >> Thank you so much, sir.

[01:02:42]Thank you, Derek.

[01:02:44]>> [music]