Medina’s Jews may have been Qumran remnant sectaries expecting a Messiah

Evidence

A modern Jewish scholar of great distinction, Mr Chaim Rabin, has suggested that the Qumran community survived in an attenuated form in Arabia and that those Medinan Jews who accepted Muhammad were the remnant (or a remnant) of the Qumran sectaries who were in fact expecting a Messiah, as Latin authors say they were. He does not, of course, suggest that the bulk of the Jews, with whom the Prophet quarrelled in Medina, were anything but orthodox. If this view came to be accepted, the learned world would in this respect be returning to something very like the opinion of the Latin Middle Ages. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2277

Categorization

• QUESTION: Chaim Rabin’s Qumran-remnant thesis for Medina’s Jews is worth chasing — has it gained traction since the author wrote?
• XREF: Connects to medieval Christian claims that Medina’s Jews awaited a Messiah, and to studies of how the Qumran sect dispersed after 70 CE. — connects to: Medinan Jews who accepted Muhammad may descend from Qumran sectaries expecting a Messiah — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2049