Polemical ‘signs of prophecy’ tests were rigged against Muhammad
Evidence
This wider view of prophethood, within which it was not possible to exclude Muhammad by definition, indicated another and more effective direction of attack, which brought Peter the Venerable’s thought closer to that of his contemporaries and successors, and to an argument more securely set in Christian tradition. It proceeded, he himself said, from a ‘new starting-point’. This was to classify prophets as good and bad; the good as either universal or particular, the bad as either true or false. Universal prophets are those who foretold Christ; their supply was now naturally dried up. Particular or personal prophets foretell particular things, but the Qur’an contains no such prophecy. Bad prophets were those whose life was reprobate, their teaching false, like the prophets of Baal. It is obvious where Muhammad was to fit into this classification, although the author failed to develop this part of his argument. Peter’s attack on Muhammad as wicked and as false thus represents two elements in the systematic attack put forward by Pedro de Alfonso. A great deal of Peter’s argument consisted in setting the claims of Islam beside the story of the Hebrew prophets, to show the two to be inconsistent; this was also in line with the Risadlah, with Pedro de Alfonso and with the wide Christian tradition, and excluded Muhammad’s claims, not by definition, but by requiring particular qualities in the prophet and his prophecies. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 402 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
The three signs of prophecy, Petrus says, are “probity of lifestyle, performance of miracles, absolute truth in everything he says.” Muhammad, for Petrus, fails on all three accounts. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 804 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Muslims treated Muhammad’s illiteracy as proof of revelation, which Christians inverted; The fourfold prophecy tests were deliberately tailored to condemn Muhammad; Ancient criteria of prophecy were applied selectively to predetermine Muhammad’s failure (+18 more)
Broader Connections
- Medieval Christian polemic schematized prophecy tests to reject Muhammad empirically, not by definition
#corroborates(1.00) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 402 - Medieval polemicists tested Muhammad as a prophet against falsifiability-style criteria
#corroborates(0.95) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 804 - Christian polemicists measured Muhammad against Hebrew prophecy criteria he was not claiming to meet
#complicates(0.85) - Medieval polemic assumed learned Muslims secretly doubted Muhammad’s prophecy
#complicates(0.85) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1332 - Polemicists attacked unsupported miracle claims to deny Muhammad prophethood
#complicates(0.80) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1201 - Christian polemic demanded Muhammad’s character be shown incompatible with Revelation
#complicates(0.80) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1369 - Christian polemicists knowingly distorted Muhammad’s biography to fit Antichrist archetypes
#complicates(0.80) - Christian polemicists explained Muhammad’s prophethood as a fraudulent bid for kingship
#complicates(0.80) - Muhammad’s alleged false prophecy legitimized Christian political rule over Muslims
#complicates(0.75) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 996 - Medieval polemicists gleaned shocking hadiths to brand Muhammad a fraud
#complicates(0.75) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1199 - Christian polemicists privileged Muhammad’s self-denial of miracles as their key evidence
#complicates(0.75) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 425 - Medieval Christians read Muhammad’s human fallibility itself as disproof of prophecy
#complicates(0.75) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1528 - Medieval polemicists attacked the Qur’an with pedantic misreadings to prove Muhammad misunderstood truths
#complicates(0.75) — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 953 - Medieval polemicists cast Muhammad as a failed Antichrist to explain Islam’s spread
#complicates(0.75) - Medieval polemic framed Muhammad as Antichrist figure and Islam’s spread as fraud’s persistence
#complicates(0.75) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 810