25. Were there Jews and Christians
living in Arabia before Islam?
Though most of the tribes in the Arabia of
Muhammad’s time were pagan and polytheistic, there were
large communities of Christians in both Arabia and Yemen.
Few of these Christian communities, however, were
orthodox; most advocated one or more of the heresies of the
time, including Arianism, Monophysitism, and
Nestorianism. All of these heresies held false or incomplete
views of the nature of Christ. Muhammad’s exposure to
Christianity, therefore, seems to have been limited to contact
with heretical Christian groups. As a result, he seems never
to have gained a clear, orthodox understanding of the
Gospel. Moreover, Christianity’s penetration into the
Arabian peninsula at this point was slight and haphazard,
and there were few that called themselves Christians who
could clearly and accurately explain what they believed.
As noted above (and as the Koran affirms), these
heretical groups hotly disputed the nature of Christ. The
Arians taught that Jesus was a created being; the
Monophysites claimed that His humanity was subsumed into
His divinity; and the Nestorians upheld both His humanity
and His divinity, but with a sharp distinction between the
two. (In fact, Khadija’s cousin, Waraqa, is sometimes
identified as a Nestorian.) The Nestorians alsodenied the title
of ‘‘Mother of God’’ to Mary, as she was, they insisted, the
mother of Jesus’ human nature only. These ideas could very