Epilogue Connecting to Muhammad?

This epilogue examines various strands of social history, religious affiliation and language in the Roman Near East in relation to the beginning of Muhammad's preaching in about 610. Muhammad was born, probably in about 570, in Mecca, where he began to receive divinely inspired messages in Arabic. After he died, Muhammad's followers invaded the nearest Roman provinces and conquered all of the Roman Near East, the Sasanid empire, Egypt and Roman North Africa. These are known as ‘the great Arab conquests’. This chapter considers whether the Arabian Peninsula can be properly treated under the title of ‘Arabia and the Arabs’. It also analyses evidence from the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian Near East, as well as the kingdom of Himyar. Finally, it looks at brief allusions to the life-history of Muhammad in a number of Christian sources to shed light on his preaching.

A Greek Christian World?

The great temple of Artemis at Gerasa (Jerash) in Jordan is one of the finest expressions of Greco-Roman culture in the Near East. Built in the second century, it includes a church that was erected on top of another building. This chapter explores the combination of Greek and Hebrew or Aramaic that characterised the mosaic floors of synagogues of the period from Palestine, across the Jordan to the west, where the roles of the two languages tend to be reversed: Hebrew or Aramaic was used for the strictly religious components while Greek was used for the names of benefactors. More specifically, it considers the combination — or alternation — of co-existence and hostility between Christians and Jews. After providing a background on the Roman Near East, the chapter analyses the language that Jews possibly used in daily life, and whether pagans of the Roman Near East spoke Aramaic. It then examines documentary evidence that offers insights into Greek culture in the Near East in its local context before concluding with a discussion of Greek literary culture in the region.

Excavating the Bible

This chapter examines the pronounced variations in the expression of biblical monotheism found in commentaries written in the Roman Near East during the fourth and fifth centuries. In particular, it looks at a number of biblical commentaries composed in four different languages and four different scripts; all offer interpretations of the account of the Creation in the first chapter of Genesis, accompanied by a remarkably free Jewish translation (Targum) into Aramaic of part of the same chapter. Five texts are analysed: the Jewish commentary, Midrash; its translation into Jewish Aramaic, Targum Neofiti; Ephrem's Commentary on Genesis; and the commentaries by Eusebius of Emesa and Jerome. These examples show the overwhelming importance of the Bible as a source of meaning, its currency in several different languages within the Near East, and the different traditions and methods of interpretation applied to it.

Syrians and Saracens: Suryoye and Tayyoye

This chapter examines some of the evidence on the preaching of Christianity, as well as Judaism, to the ‘Arabs’ — also labelled ‘Saracens’ — and its relevance to the rise of Islam as a religion expressed in Arabic. It begins by considering two biographies written by John of Ephesus, one devoted to Zooras and the other to Simeon, ‘the Persian Debater’ who engaged in numerous confrontations with Christians called ‘Nestorians’ because of their belief in a ‘two-nature’ conception of Christ. Simeon also went to the camp of the Tayyoye of the house of Numan, where he made many converts, and persuaded their leaders to build a Christian church. After discussing the conversion of Tayyoye (‘Arabs’), this chapter explores how knowledge of the Bible was transmitted to the Saracens or Tayyoye. Finally, it describes the nature of Syriac identity, culture, and history as well as the flowering of Syriac from 485.

Jews and Samaritans in a Greek Christian World

This chapter focuses on the presence of large settled populations of Jews and Samaritans, both urban and rural, in Palestine in the first to fourth centuries, and how Jewish identity and belief was expressed in the form of major literary works, in both Hebrew and Aramaic. It first considers two studies attributed to the Talmudic scholar, Saul Lieberman: one on the Greek context of Jewish life in Judaea/Palaestina in the first to fourth centuries; and one on the extensive presence of transliterated Greek words, and of Greek concepts, in rabbinic literature. It then looks at the co-existence and conflict between religious and ethnic communities in Palestine, citing evidence provided each by Sozomenus and Epiphanius. More specifically, it discusses some reports of overt inter-communal conflicts, which often involve Samaritans rather than Jews. It also describes Samaritan religion and culture, Jews and Judaism in Palestine, and the Jewish diaspora in the Roman Near East.