What a good question. I will follow to see what smart jellies say.

We don’t know much about the early life of Muhammed, but I think it is likely considering the culture of the region that it was some Semitic religion similar to Judaism. As a teenager, he met a Christian monk called Bahira, and since the two talked about religious matters we can only assume that they believed in the same (or at least a similar) god.

Jesus was Jewish until the day he died.

Hanif

I found this:

As a young man, Muhammad worked as a camel driver between Syria and Arabia. Soon he established a career managing caravans on behalf of merchants. Through his travel first with his uncle and later in his career, Muhammad came into contact with people of many nationalities and faiths, including Jews, Christians and pagans.

At age 25, Muhammad was employed by Khadija, a wealthy Meccan widow 15 years his senior. The two were married, and by all accounts enjoyed a loving and happy marriage. Early records report that “God comforted him through her, for she made his burden light.” Although polygamy was common practice at the time, Muhammad took no other wife than Khadija until her death 24 years later.

Divine Revelation

In his late 30s Muhammad took to regularly visiting a cave in Mount Hira, on the outskirts of Mecca, to seek solitude and contemplation. In 610, at the age of 40, Muhammad returned from one such visit telling his wife he had either gone mad or become a prophet, for he had been visited by an angel. The initially startled Khadija became his first convert.

Muhammad reported that while in a trance-like state, the Angel Gabriel appeared to him and said “Proclaim!” But like Moses, Muhammed was a reluctant prophet. He replied, “I am not a proclaimer.” The angel persisted, and the Prophet repeatedly resisted, until the angel finally overwhelmed Muhammad and commanded him:

Proclaim in the name of your Lord who created!
Created man from a clot of blood.
Proclaim: Your Lord is the Most Generous,
Who teaches by the pen;
Teaches man what he knew not. (Qur’an 96:1–3)
After receiving Khadija’s support, and additional angelic visits, Muhammad became confident he had indeed been chosen as the messenger of God and began to proclaim as he had been commanded.

Muhammad’s message to his countrymen was to convert from pagan polytheism, immorality and materialism, repent from evil and worship Allah, the only true God. He was always careful to clarify his role in God’s work – he was only a prophet. He was not an angel, he did not know the mind of God, he did not work miracles. He simply preached what he had received.

In the first three years of his ministry, Muhammad gained only 40 followers. And as his teachings threatened the Meccan way of life, both moral and economic, he and his followers experienced heavy persecution. It first took the form of mockery, but soon turned into open violence. Members of the small movement were stoned, covered in dirt as they prayed, beat with sticks, thrown into prison and refused service by merchants.  
source

Not quite a definite answer @Judi but very a interesting & informative read nonetheless. Thank you.
@mynewboobs, sorry but I get the impression Hanif is a derogatory word much like heathen and see no links or evidence relating to the subject in question.

@SeaTurtle My name has a t in it From Wikipedia’s page on Mohammed “Monotheistic communities existed in Arabia, including Christians and Jews.[35] Hanifs – native pre-Islamic Arab monotheists – are also sometimes listed alongside Jews and Christians in pre-Islamic Arabia, although their historicity is disputed amongst scholars.[36][37] According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad himself was a Hanif and one of the descendants of Ishmael, son of Abraham.[38]”

I didn’t read anything deragitory about Hanif in that wikipedia article. I found it quite interesting and gave it a great answer because seemed to answer your question perfectly.

@SeaTurtle
& @MyNewtBoobs , I did not mean that the answer was derogatory, I just meant that the word appeared to be used by the ‘enlightened’ to describe the people still living in the “Age of Ignorance” Much like Christians use the word Heathen(disambiguation) as derogatory .
I appreciated the input and a new word to my vocab but I did not see any direct answer to the question. Thats all.

@SeaTurtle But it’s not… Muslims don’t condemn those who came before Mohammad, since Allah hadn’t sent his latest message down yet, there was nothing they could do. It’s more like… how unfortunate.

@MyNewtBoobs , I see :) so its kind of like Gentiles, not derogatory but possibly condescending?
:) Therefore, kind of in the same league as derogatory?

@SeaTurtle It’s more like calling your childhood your Age of Ignorance. You’re not blaming your 7 year old self for not having a nuanced understanding of medieval Russian politics; it’s just the way things were, and now you have progressed.

:) ha nice analogy. so it could be perceived by some as condescending?

@SeaTurtle I guess – there are tons of Muslims, and tons of Arabs, so at least one of them has to mean it condescendingly. But Age of Ignorance isn’t going to be an exact translation. Did you hear it in a condescending manner or something?

I already answered that and mean not to get into an argument my friend.
I just really thought that there may have been some ‘factual’ evidence or at least substantial history on Mohammed before his ‘enlightenment’.

Jesus was always Jewish. He was trying to reform Judaism, not create a new religion. He was crucified as “King of the Jews”. It was the apostles who started the new religion.

Great question and it gives me something to look into. Smile Christ was half Jewish and have Elohim but I’m not sure about Mohammed but it seems he was a very enlightened person to have so many followers.

I think calling Jesus “Jewish” is an oversimplification.

Jesus’ cult was based on a theological framework of Judaism. It also clearly incorporated elements from Greco-Roman mystery religions. It seems to have absorbed John the Baptist’s cult. (Baptism stems from mystery religions). It also may have had gnostic influences. Also, Jesus did not just preach to Jews, and many of his followers appeared to be non-Jews.

Jesus’ religion, like Muhammad’s Islam and many upstart cults, employed syncretism. It combined elements from a number of religions, and at the same time casted itself as an “updated version” of these older traditions rather than as an entirely new religion.

Muhammad did the same thing. He marketed his religion to Arabian polytheists as well as Jews and Christians. The Kaaba (the black stone housing a meteorite, central to the hajj) was a relic of Arabian polytheism. Other elements of Islam, especially the djinn, come from Arabian polytheism. At the same time, Muhammad incorporated elements from Judaism and Christianity, while casting them as “earlier versions” that point to his cult. For example, in the Quran, Jesus is quoted as saying he worships Allah and is not Allah’s son.

Muhammad’s cult, like Jesus’s cult, was marketed as an updated version of Judaism while also incorporating many popular elements from polytheist religious traditions of the area.

In exactly the same way, modern cults like Scientology, Baha’i, and Summum market themselves as updated versions of ancient religious traditions, casting Jesus and Buddha and other popular religious figures as ancient practitioners.

Could it be?! Maybe he was a heathen.

You’re all wrong, every one of you! Or…

The problem with questions about religion is that insiders have different answers than outsiders, and neither group often understands the Whys of their own answer. Actually, it’s even more complicated than that, because there’s always more than one kind of insider in any given religion. Ultimately, you could ask 6 different people (say, a militant atheist, an agnostic professor of Christian history, a Roman Catholic, a Russian Orthodox Christian, a Quaker, and an Anglican) the same question, and you’ll get 6 different answers. Which one’s right? All of them? Any of them? You just can’t think of questions of religion as having concrete answers, even one as apparently simple as yours.

Even if some genius could take all this into account and give you a complete, unbiased answer, that answer will be loooong, book-style. @Qingu is right to point out the simplification of others’ statements, but his/her statements are greatly simplified, too! Don’t fool yourself into thinking anyone here can answer your question fully. Keep your ignorance in mind, and you’ll be fine.

Now, I notice that the answers here are different from what I learned in my first-year World Religions course. I don’t know who’s right, but I’ll tell you what my prof. told me:

The primary native culture of pre-Islamic Saudi Arabia was tribal, nomadic, and pagan. The worldview was fate-based (meaning, your lot in life is due to blind senseless destiny, not your personal merits or free will) and existential (not in the capital-E sense, but in the sense that the afterlife is insignificant: what you see is what you get). Tribal ties, ancestry, and the virtue of manliness (i.e. strength, courage, self-sufficiency, honesty, helpfulness to the weak, and fame or renown amongst the people) were huge forces in determining how to act and how to judge others. Mecca and Medina were the two major cities. Mecca was a shrine city inhabited by a major tribe, Quraysh, who were caretakers for the shrine. Mohammad was born into one of the less-prestigious families of this tribe and was orphaned. At age 25, he was employed as caretaker to a rich widow; eventually they were married, had children, and were happy. The easy life led Mohammad to contemplation, and at age 40 he had his first vision. His vision was of a new reality: a Master God, Father God, omnipotent and omniscent. He preaches to his inner circle for the next 13 years, but in 613 CE he has a revelation telling him to proclaim his mission to everyone. So, he does, insisting he’s a prophet, but his tribe dismisses him, calls him crazy and possessed: after all, he’s badmouthing everything dear to them (their ancestors, manliness, tribal solidarity) and talking nonsense (a master God, the afterlife, day of resurrection). In 619, he’s banished from Mecca. Medina, however, is having a serious problem with two warring tribes. They’ve tried everything and nothing works, so in desperation they try something new: they ask Mohammad for help. Mohammad uses this opportunity to gain power and accomplish his goals of ending paganism and centralising and unifying Arabian governance. He conquers Mecca and dies Lord of Arabia. The end.

Like I said, I’m no Islamic expert. My degree, however, was in the study of Christianity, and I can say that what you wrote about Jesus isn’t right. I’ll talk about that in another post.

LOL I love when people say other things are cults. LOL

@nicobanks, while I agree that “stuff is complicated,” I don’t think this means we can’t draw any useful conclusions or that there are no facts to weigh.

About Muhammad’s culture: there were also Jews and Christians living in Arabia. Some non-traditional Christian sects may have rubbed off on Muhammad, too. The story of Jesus’ crucifixion in the Quran is very similar to the Docetic idea that it was an illusion. Muhammad also had some problems with Arabian Jews who he expected to win over to his new cult.

@Summum, I use the word “cult” in an academic sense, i.e. a system of ritual practices. Basically all religions are cults. Certainly, even in the pejorative sense of the word “cult,” Jesus’ and Muhammad’s followings would have been called cults in their day.

I agree with @Qingu that we can draw conclusions from the facts we have. I just think it’s useful to keep in mind what we’re doing. Reconstructing the historical Jesus really is a process of taking a handful of evidence and looking at it through a theoretical framework – making sense of it, tying it together – and different theoretical frameworks show different pictures of Jesus. You can keep your mind open to possibilities at the same time as drawing conclusions. So…

Jesus was Jewish his whole life. The concept of “Christianity” didn’t exist until after Jesus had died. Jesus never rejected Judaism, never stopped being a Jew, never met a non-Jewish God.

The simplification comes in with how we understand that he was Jewish. Generally, people don’t question the meaning of phrases when they know the words, but “Jewish,” as people mean it today, is not the same as “Jewish” of 2,000 years ago. Also, people tend to think of religions as homogeneous monoliths with clear boundaries that separate them from other cultures/traditions/religions. That’s a mistake – @Qingu rightly points out that Christianitiy was syncretistic in its development, but what religion wasn’t? Jesus preached a religion that incorporated non-Jewish elements – does that mean he wasn’t Jewish? Not necessarily; it could just mean that him being Jewish doesn’t mean what you think it does.

Judaism, in Jesus’ time, was going through a major transition period. You could loosely say that the Judaism of today is Rabbinic Judaism, while the Judaism of Jesus was Temple Judaism. When Jesus was alive, the Jews had basically been fighting with the Greeks first, then the Romans, for centuries. Several Jewish groups had emerged with different answers to the problem, different explanations for life in general: the Pharisees, Essenes, Sadducees, Zealots, and plenty of small groups and itinerant prophets. And then, of course, most Jews were peasants just trying to scape a living together. Life was uncertain, rocky; revolution was in the air. All this culminated in the destruction of the second Temple, which happened, say, 35 years after Jesus’ death. At that point, Judaism had to reformulate itself. And that’s when Christianity really got its formulation underway, too. The Gospels, for instance, were all written after the temple fell. Early Christianity is a proliferation of different groups with their own theories, practices, and stories, many of them eventually suppressed. But anyway, Jesus, in his lifetime, was Jewish. Most of his followers in his life were Jews, and Christian Jewish groups continued to follow him long after his death. Of course, it was Paul’s flavour of Christianity that really took off – and maybe Jesus did preach to gentiles, maybe he did preach openness, but he didn’t preach No Judaism, if you know what I mean.

@Qingu I appreciate the information about the cults.

I agree with everything @nicobanks said.

I will only add: many Jews at this time were “Hellenized” (or the equivalent, Romanized), much like modern secular American Jews who are reform (or just outright atheist), and even dabble in esoteric beliefs like Buddhism. It’s not really clear what flavor of Jew Jesus was. I’ve heard a hypothesis that the area where Jesus grew up was heavy with Hellenized ideas. His cult clearly had some nontrivial connection to John the Baptist’s. John is also a mysterious figure from a historical perspective, but from what we can reconstruct, he certainly wasn’t a traditional Jew.

So I guess my point above was that, it’s not really clear to what extent Jesus (or John the Baptist) saw their cults as outgrowths—or departures—from established Judaism.

I am sure that as time goes by there will be many people that join the rank of Jesus and Mohammad. People like Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard and others will join the ranks of sanctified individuals that started an off-shoot religion.

The followers form the religion regardless of the religious origins of their founders. I suspect that deep down they are all atheists and egotistical enough to tell people that theirs’ is the ultimate religion.

@Ron_C Very interesting thought but I will tell you that these individuals all found something that is available to us all. They are called the Mysteries of God though I wouldn’t call them that I would call them the Mysteries of the Universe. There are beings that have helped mankind throughout our history and the spectacular things that man has done have been through this help. Life is an amazing thing and we share it with everything there is in the Universe and it all is about progressing and finding a higher order of life. We are in the kindergarten of life experiences and there is so much to see and experience. I’m very excited to have this chance and experience with all that life brings. The laws of this Universe are just that Universal and there is no one that is not bound by these laws including God.

@Qingu Fair enough, I agree with all that, too! :)

@Summum exactly what is revealed of the “Mysteries of God” in the bible, Qumran, Book of Mormon, or whatever book the Scientologists use for their bible? I think that there is more truth and mystery revealed in War and Peace, Animal Farm, or even the Brave New World than in all the religious literature, combined.

There are hidden messages all through writings but finding this kind of information comes from within each of us and is not in writings. It is our connection to life and the Universe and the spiritual side of our lifes. Most of the Mysteries are found outside of writings though many have written information about finding some of it.

@Summum I am sorry, no disrespect meant but I did not understand your last comment. “hidden messages”?

@Roc_C Let’s say figurtive and that it does not mean literal. For instance the 6 day creation spoken of in the beginning. It was organized in 6000 years and the next thousands years was a rest time which is when Adam was in the garden. Also Adam was told he would die in the day that he partook of the fruit which he did. A day of God’s time is 1000 years of our time and Adam was 900 and something before he passed on which meant he died in God’s day of taking the fruit.

That’s like saying the Legend of Zelda has a hidden message because Zelda’s dream prophecy comes true in the game.

I think many programs and movies have hidden messages that you understand once you see the movie again. If you take a movie and watch it several times you get out of it much more than when you first viewed it. Repitition is a great tool to discover more and more by going over it several times. Reading is the same way if you read something several times you see things you didn’t see the first time through. Line upon line, precept upon precept.

@Summum No disrespect, but I think humans are skilled in reading messages when none was intended. For example the stars have no plan in their layout, but yet ancient humans saw the constellations when they looked up. The Bible is a primitive book, and the people who wrote it most likely meant it literally. Many of the literary concepts applied to the Bible did not exist at the time it was composed, and so cannot have been written in to it.

I have come across a few websites that take letters here and there from the Bible according to some mathematical process, and spell meaningful sentences. If you look hard enough, you will always find an unintentional message. You may even be able to assemble some hidden meaning from this post, but I assure you that I have not intended one.

The Bible is in NO WAY literal and was not written that way. If you honestly think that then you really need to examine yourself. That is obsurd and cound never hold water.

@Summum There are parts of the Bible that were not intended to be taken literally, and these can be easily determined simply by seeing which ones really could have happened. Of course I don’t think Daniel actually saw a beast with seven heads and ten horns, or that John saw the multicoloured horses he talks about.

However, the Genesis creation myth has striking similarities to other cultures from the region, and it is likely that the account was intended to be taken literally. Many of the earliest Greek philosophers believed that the sky was a solid dome, and the Sun and stars were vents in the dome that allowed the exterior light through. They learnt this largely from the Persians and Lydians, who likely shared this belief with the Semitic peoples. Likewise, the creation and flood myths were most likely learnt from other cultures in the time before the enslavement in Egypt. Remember that Abraham was originally a part of another culture before his migration. Do you think the Babylonians, Sumerians, Persians and Hittites also intended their creation myths to be taken symbolically?

@FireMadeFlesh I read, somewhere, I think that it was a Douglas Adams book, that things like astrology, and biblical readings aren’t meant to actually teach or predict things. The more complicated the process, like astrology is, the more he helps you subconscious work out problems and relationships. The same with the bible, quran and other “sacred texts”. They basically keeping you mind busy so your subconscious can work out things for itself.

I use this technique when I have a particularly bothersome trouble-shooting problem. I go on to other things and a test or answer presents itself. It is amazing thinking about a problem while not “thinking about it”! Taken in that context, the bible or astrology can be useful, as history or predicting the future, no so much.

@Ron_C That is very interesting. I have regularly solved problems by working on unrelated problems. I’m sure religious texts would be quite good for that. However I doubt any of the Biblical authors thought “lets write a book complex enough that people will get lost in it, and subconsciously be able to solve their problems.” The intention was, in the case of books like Genesis, for it to be a written form of the oral traditions which were taken literally and seriously by the populace.

@FireMadeFlesh the bible and the quran are books written by committee in the same way an elephant is a mouse designed by a committee. I am sure that there was no conscience decision by any of the writers to make the books so complicated that they trigger unconscious thought, they just have that affect. To that end they are good and useful. The real harm and danger is when the books are taken as literal truth and history.

I just have to say it, because every time this question pops up it makes me crazy. Jesus was, is and forever will be Jewish. His God was the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob.

@Ron_C I am well aware that the authors of the Bible did not communicate or coordinate with each other, seeing as they wrote over a span of at least 1500 years. I think the real harm and danger is when the Bible is twisted to be something beyond its intention. Genesis was written as a literal history, but I wouldn’t suggest for a moment that it should be read as such. It should be read as what they perceived to be their literal history, in a similar way that you would read the story of Romulus and Remus – of course it didn’t really happen, but the Romans accepted the story as true. The Earth obviously wasn’t created in six literal days, but the Israelites believed that it was.

@FireMadeFlesh I agree with everything you said in your last post. So, getting back to the question, since Jesus was Jewish, why aren’t all Christians just another sect of “reformed Jew”?

@Ron_C A lot of Christians believe that Jesus’ teachings rendered the Old Testament laws obsolete – even though Jesus himself said “I have not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil them.” Since they don’t follow the OT laws, they aren’t exactly Jewish. Also in the early days of Christianity, a person had to be Jewish by birth to be considered Jewish, whereas Christianity accepted all converts – even the Roman Emperor.