Muhammad: His Callcommunications of that Church, such as this excerpt from a letter of a
monk, which was written in 535 AD:^185
"May he (the Archimandrite Yohannan)... on that Day,
a dreadful and great Day (cf. Qur'an 83:5), when the
callers shout (cf. Qur'an 54:6), the graves split open
(cf. Qur'an 82:4), the dead arise (cf. Qur'an 75:1-4)
and praise, when the throne is set up (cf. Qur'an 69:17),
the Judge sits down, the books are opened (cf. Qur'an
69:19f, 25f), and each receives what he has done
(cf. Qur'an 82:5; 74:41) from the just Judge (cf. Qur'an
95:8), in whose Judgment is no respect of persons
(cf. Qur'an 74:49; 26:88)... [then later] "... on that Day,
when the good are separated from the bad, the goats
from the sheep, the tares from the wheat..." (cf. Qur'an
90:18-20)^186
In addition to these similarities, early verses of the Qur'an also contain
foreign words from Syriac.^187 Although it is obvious that Muhammad must
have had some sort of contact with a Syrian Christian, it would be
inaccurate to suppose that Muhammad had any first-hand knowledge of
either the Bible, the works of Ephraem or institutional Christianity. In the
earliest passages of the Qur'an Muhammad seems to have been oblivious to
any differences between Judaism and Christianity; and even in the latest
Qur'anic passages he shows no intimate knowledge of either the Christian
sacraments or the Gospel. Muhammad may have heard some of the
messages of trained Syrian missionaries early on,^188 but those with whom
he is generally said to have had more than intermittent contact were
Christian slaves.^189
For the most part, the Sira traditions provide little or no information on
many of the suras of this period, and although the canonical hadith may at
times preserve earlier versions of some traditions,^190 it is obvious that a
great portion of Muhammad's early biography was irretrievably lost with
the deaths of the first generation of Muslims.^191 In addition to this, the texts
of many Sira traditions have been edited, censored and even corrupted over
the centuries.^192 Not infrequently, the extant biographical hadith contradict
Qur'anic evidences, as has been shown above in the section on