Muhammad: Meccan OppositionMost of the strange foreign vocabulary of this period also appears to have
come from Christian sources, and, in general, Muhammad seems t^305 o have
understood Ethiopic better than Syriac. As many scholars h^306 ave pointed
out, Muhammad must not have availed himself of written sources, but
rather, he must have had informants who transmitted narratives to him
verbally. Thus, Mary the mother of Jesus is thought to have bee^307 n the
sister of Moses and Aaron; Isaac and Jacob (but not Ishmael) are claimed to
be Abraham's sons; Satan is said to have led Adam to the Tree of Life
("eternity and kingdom"); a Samaritan is said to have countered Moses, etc.
On the other hand, Muhammad appears to have corrected some earlier
ambiguities as he became aware of them, e.g. the "old woman" of Qur'an
37:135 later becomes Lot's wife in 15:60.^308
Many of the Biblical narratives of this period appear to have come from
Jewish traditions and legends ultimately; some of them, however, were
known to Christians and no doubt quite a few sects as well. Thus certain
elements of the various Qur'anic narratives, e.g. Iblis' refusal to bow down
to Adam, or David's prostration in repentance, are thought^309310 to have been
Christian modifications of the Jewish stories. Whereas much of the material
for the suras 38 and 27 seems to have come directly from Jewish sources,
the suras 19, 36 and 18 reveal the heavy influence of sects which had
separated from Christianity and (to a lesser degree) a dependence on
Nestorian lore. It is possible that the Qur'anic rejection^311 of the Sonship and
deity of Christ, played a major role in affecting the change from primarily
Christian sources to Jewish ones.
The frequent allusion to "pairs" in Creation (cf. 51:49; 43:11; etc.) together
with Muhammad's apparent affinity for pairs of rhyming names (which may
have begun with Gog and Magog: "Yajuj wa Majuj"), are somewh^312 at
reminiscent of the "doctrine of pairs" explained in the (Ebionite) Pseudo-
Clementine literature.^313