The historical fragility of religion: David Goldman on the historical Mohammed (UPDATED)

Why Invent Mohammed?

Why invent a new religion? Robert Spencer’s excellent new book Did Mohammed Exist? collates recent historical research questioning the existence of the historical Mohammed, much of it previously not accessible to a lay American audience. This is a dangerous thing to do, and a courageous one.

Some years ago I chided Spencer for giving the Koran too much credibility;  more important than the nasty things one finds in the Koran, I argued, are two questions: “1) Mohammed may never have existed, and 2) If he existed, he may have had nothing to do with the Koran, which well might be an 8th- or 9th-century compilation.” Spencer’s present book will be translated into major Muslim languages and published on the Internet, according to Daniel Pipes. That is an important and welcome development.

This point was made eloquently last year by the Georgetown University political philosopher Fr. James Schall, who argued, “The fragility of Islam, as I see it, lies in a sudden realization of the ambiguity of the text of the Koran. Is it what it claims to be? Islam is weak militarily. It is strong in social cohesion, often using severe moral and physical sanctions. But the grounding and unity of its basic document are highly suspect. Once this becomes clear, Islam may be as fragile as communism.” Koranic criticism, I have argued since 2003, is Islam’s Achilles’ Heel.
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Christianity proposes to extend the Jewish covenant to all of humankind. After countless academic lives have burned out in the “search for the historical Jesus,” no reputable scholar claims to be able to demonstrate that Jesus of Nazareth was a fiction. One can argue about the reliability of different accounts of Jesus, but not the existence of Jesus himself. The Christian doctrine of Jesus’ resurrection cannot be refuted. One believes it, or not.
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But Islam is an entirely different matter. We have extensive archaeological evidence in the form of coins and inscriptions from the 7th century, and there is no mention of a new religion in any of them until 70 years after Mohammed’s supposed death, as Nevo and Koren showed in their 2003 book Crossroads to Islam. ...

FP: Goldman is one of the most knowledgeable and smart writers I know, but he has two blind spots: Wall Street and religion—he practices Orthodox Judaism. Both affect his reasoning, but in the context of the above article I will refer only to the latter. Now, I am no historian or theologian, and I don’t know much about the origins of Islam, but I’ve educated myself 0n the origins of Christianity and, having a scientific training, I think I can assess the evidence correctly.

First, Goldman makes a common mistake that faith induces in many otherwise rational people. He claims that “no reputable scholar claims to be able to demonstrate that Jesus of Nazareth was a fiction … One can argue about the reliability of different accounts of Jesus, but not the existence of Jesus himself.”  Really?

I am sure that in any context other than religion Goldman would not demand those who question a claim to disprove it. It is Christianity that claims Jesus existed and the burden is on it to provide objective, acceptable evidence of that existence. Goldman’s definitive statement notwithstanding, as far as I know, it has not.

The problem is not that historians have not proven that Jesus was a fiction, it’s Christianity’s failure to demonstrate that he was not. I am not going to delve here into the details but will simply say that there is no tangible evidence contemporaneous with Jesus claimed period of existence that validates it, except one reference to him by one historian that is generally deemed to be a later insertion. All the earliest evidence for Jesus comes from the Christian scripture, the four gospels, written several decades after Jesus’ purported death—just like the Koran--and the purpose of which is missionary, not historical (gospel means ‘good news’). Moreover, as Bart Ehrman has shown, there is a plethora of inconsistencies between their accounts of Jesus, none of which says much of his life, only of his death and resurrection—the core of the foundation of the Christian dogma. Reason demands doubt in such circumstances, not the certainty declared by Goldman.

Second, Goldman argues that “If [Mohammed] existed, he may have had nothing to do with the Koran”. Now, Christianity does not make the same claim for its scripture—that it is the divine word dictated to Jesus by God. Nevertheless, it makes a claim that is not much different: Jesus was divine and that the Christian scripture--the four gospels--record his divine existence via his preachings, death and resurrection. There would be no grounds for Christian faith without that claim. 

The weakness here, therefore, is that the only source claiming the existence of Jesus are documents (written decades after his death) that are intended as articles of faith. Incidentally, as Ehrman has also demonstrated, the nature of the process that produced the copies of the gospels--lots of mistakes and alterations--throws their content into doubt. 

What is more, it is not disputable that Christianity has little to do with Jesus, who was preaching against Jewish cooperation with the Romans and for adherence to Judaism; it is mostly a Pauline invention, as Hyam Maccobby has so lucidly shown. And while Paul was a target of divine communication too, he also lived after Jesus died and did not know him. There isn’t much consistency between Jesus’ Judaism and Paul's invention.

Since all religions are human inventions, all of them incorporate social aspects and beliefs that preceded them or within which they were invented (why would one God permit so many of them?) My basic point here is that we can argue about the qualitative differences—philosophical, moral, social—between different religions, and how much they took from each other, but when it comes to their historical verity (and content ambiguity), they all have a fundamental fragility that is intrinsic to them.  That's why they must be taken on faith.

UPDATE: A reader commented on Goldman's article: 

Why does this article assume that a movement without a logical and properly documented basis is fragile? People fall for a lot of stuff all the time.

He is, of course, correct: there is nothing the human mind is incapable of believing if and when it suspends reason, which is what 'taking things on faith' means. Had religion been fragile in the sense meant by the commenter, it would have disappeared a long time ago. 

But note that in response to Goldman I am using the term historical fragility, namely: to what extent the events in which a religion originates have not been proven as facts. Goldman claims that while historical Jesus is beyond dispute, historical Mohammed probably is not. My point is that Jesus' existence is (or is not) as much a fact as Mohammed's: no satisfactory evidence for the existence of either has been provided.  Both Christianity and Islam--like many other religions--are historically fragile. Was there an historical Moses, or Isaac, or Jakob?

 Its strength lies precisely in human fragility, which it very effectively exploits.