Graham, William Albert

History of Religions

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 Review of The Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction ofthe Earliest Biography of Muhammad  (Article begins on next page)The Harvard community has made this article openly available.Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters.Citation Graham, William A. 1992. Review of The Making of the LastProphet: A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography ofMuhammad, by Gordon Darnell Newby. History of Religions 32(1), 93-95.Published Version http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062729?origin=JSTOR-pdfAccessed February 19, 2015 4:05:52 PM ESTCitable Link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:12214915Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University's DASHrepository, and is made available under the terms and conditionsapplicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth athttp://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#LAAThe Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammadby Gordon Darnell NewbyReview by: William A. GrahamHistory of Religions, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Aug., 1992), pp. 93-95Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062729 .Accessed: 25/04/2014 13:47Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp .JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. .The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Historyof Religions.http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 25 Apr 2014 13:47:20 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsHistory  of Religions  History  of Religions These criticisms are serious ones, but they do not detract from my apprecia- tion for the real merits of this book. In The Pastoral Son and the Spirit of Pa- triarchy,  Michael  Meeker  has  gone  beyond  what  previous  research  had accomplished, showing how crucial aspects of  a cattle-herding economy and ecology  influence not only social organization and religious ideology but also familial dynamics, structures  of personhood, and common patterns of behavior and discourse. The book is  short, finely disciplined, clearly written, and ele- gantly argued. There is much to recommend it. BRUCE LINCOLN University  of Minnesota The Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammad.  Compiled  and  translated  by  GORDON  DARNELL  NEWBY.  Colum- bia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989. Gordon Newby has provided us with a rich compilation of early Islamic ma- terial that is of interest both to Islamicists and to students of religion interested in hagiography, prophetology, and the development of sacred tradition. From the standpoint of the study of early Islamic thought and history, this is a dou- bly laudable work: first, because of its reconstruction from later sources of an otherwise "lost" eighth-century C.E.  text, the first half of the Sirat Rassl Allah of Ibn Ishaq (d. 767); and, second, because of its rendering of the extant frag- ments as a continuous text presented in reliable, yet idiomatic and accessible, English translation. The work is also welcome  on other grounds. It is essen- tially a history of previous prophets, and when joined to its well-known and previously  translated "other half," the  "biography of  Muhammad" (already translated by A. Guillaume), it is our earliest major example of the important Islamic literary genre of "universal history," exemplified later by the famous Meadows of  Gold of  al-MasCfidi (d. 956),  and the History of Apostles  and Kings  of  at-Tabari (d.  923).  Second,  because  of  its  focus  on  figures well known in Jewish, Christian, and other pre-Islamic traditions, it is a useful ad- ditional source to place alongside other texts that testify to the shared religious heritage of  Islamic, Christian, Jewish, and other religious and cultural tradi- tions in the early period of Islamic history (e.g.,  the Kitdb at-Tijdn [Book of crowns] of Ibn Hisham and the Qisas al-Anbiydt [Tales of the prophets], the major collections of which are by ath-ThaClabi  [d. 1036] and al-KisaDi [d. after 1200?]). Newby offers us a careful, if necessarily still hypothetical, reconstruction of Ibn Ishaq's narrative of the period from the creation down to the time of Mu- hammad's immediate forebears, namely,  that portion of  as-Sirah  ([Muham- mad's] Life) known as al-Mubtada', "The Beginning," as opposed to the extant portions known as al-Maghazi ([Muhammad's]  Campaigns) and (its preamble) al-Mab'ath ([Muhammad's] Sending/Advent). He has painstakingly gathered the materials ascribed to Ibn Ishaq in the often lengthy citations of several later writers-above  all at-Tabari in his History and his Qur'anic Commentary,  but also authors such as Abfil-Walid  al-Azraqi (d. ca. 865), Ibn Tahir al-Maqdisi These criticisms are serious ones, but they do not detract from my apprecia- tion for the real merits of this book. In The Pastoral Son and the Spirit of Pa- triarchy,  Michael  Meeker  has  gone  beyond  what  previous  research  had accomplished, showing how crucial aspects of  a cattle-herding economy and ecology  influence not only social organization and religious ideology but also familial dynamics, structures  of personhood, and common patterns of behavior and discourse. The book is  short, finely disciplined, clearly written, and ele- gantly argued. There is much to recommend it. BRUCE LINCOLN University  of Minnesota The Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammad.  Compiled  and  translated  by  GORDON  DARNELL  NEWBY.  Colum- bia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989. Gordon Newby has provided us with a rich compilation of early Islamic ma- terial that is of interest both to Islamicists and to students of religion interested in hagiography, prophetology, and the development of sacred tradition. From the standpoint of the study of early Islamic thought and history, this is a dou- bly laudable work: first, because of its reconstruction from later sources of an otherwise "lost" eighth-century C.E.  text, the first half of the Sirat Rassl Allah of Ibn Ishaq (d. 767); and, second, because of its rendering of the extant frag- ments as a continuous text presented in reliable, yet idiomatic and accessible, English translation. The work is also welcome  on other grounds. It is essen- tially a history of previous prophets, and when joined to its well-known and previously  translated "other half," the  "biography of  Muhammad" (already translated by A. Guillaume), it is our earliest major example of the important Islamic literary genre of "universal history," exemplified later by the famous Meadows of  Gold of  al-MasCfidi (d. 956),  and the History of Apostles  and Kings  of  at-Tabari (d.  923).  Second,  because  of  its  focus  on  figures well known in Jewish, Christian, and other pre-Islamic traditions, it is a useful ad- ditional source to place alongside other texts that testify to the shared religious heritage of  Islamic, Christian, Jewish, and other religious and cultural tradi- tions in the early period of Islamic history (e.g.,  the Kitdb at-Tijdn [Book of crowns] of Ibn Hisham and the Qisas al-Anbiydt [Tales of the prophets], the major collections of which are by ath-ThaClabi  [d. 1036] and al-KisaDi [d. after 1200?]). Newby offers us a careful, if necessarily still hypothetical, reconstruction of Ibn Ishaq's narrative of the period from the creation down to the time of Mu- hammad's immediate forebears, namely,  that portion of  as-Sirah  ([Muham- mad's] Life) known as al-Mubtada', "The Beginning," as opposed to the extant portions known as al-Maghazi ([Muhammad's]  Campaigns) and (its preamble) al-Mab'ath ([Muhammad's] Sending/Advent). He has painstakingly gathered the materials ascribed to Ibn Ishaq in the often lengthy citations of several later writers-above  all at-Tabari in his History and his Qur'anic Commentary,  but also authors such as Abfil-Walid  al-Azraqi (d. ca. 865), Ibn Tahir al-Maqdisi 93  93 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 25 Apr 2014 13:47:20 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsBook  Reviews (flourished ca. 966),  and the aforementioned Thaclabi. He has then organized the  material into  chapters according  to  story  cycles  (most  connected  with specific previous prophets) ranging from the creation story of Adam and Eve to the story of [Saint] George, the martyr, who is depicted as a messenger from God and a prophet of destruction to an unbelieving people. The order of the chapters is dictated by the ordering of prophet stories in Tabari's history and "the order of the narratives of the Quran"  (the meaning of which is not clear). The translator  has prefaced each chapter with very helpful introductions of one or two pages that give some background on each story cycle and its main (usually prophetic) figure(s). While a historian of religions might wish that in these Newby had given us more of his own considerable knowledge of extra- Islamic lore and relevant bibliography concerning each figure, what is  pre- sented is important for providing at least a basic context in which to read the ensuing story cycle. The whole volume is prefaced by a good introduction that gives the reader the background and historical setting of Ibn Ishaq's Strah, as well as a discussion of the reconstruction and general shape and content of the text. While I differ with Newby regarding the degree to which "the nature of the Quranic canon" was a major issue of dispute in the first Islamic centuries and consequently the degree to which Ibn Ishaq needed to try to establish "the primacy of the Quranic text as scripture,"  the introduction does provide a fine overview of the setting for the Sirah and its relationship to the early develop- ment of an Islamic society and worldview out of the many existing Near East- ern traditions and the prophetic mission of Muhammad  the Prophet. For all the excellence of the conception and general execution of this worthy project, several small matters do somewhat unnecessarily mar the larger ed- ifice. Here one must point especially  to the poor quality of proofreading that the text evidences. Relatively minor but annoying is the excessive  incidence of misprints. Inconsistent transliteration  of Arabic names and words is also an an- noyance-even  the rendering of the definite article "al-" varies in capitaliza- tion and in denotation of the "sun letters" (e.g.,  one finds "Al-Sijistani" but "az-Zamakshari").  Also, if of little importance to the specialist, still a notential pitfall for less  advanced students (who presumably will  be a major audience for this work) is the sloppiness of the fundamentally useful bibliography: origi- nal dates of publication are not given  for translated or reissued works; mis- prints  and  misspellings,  especially  in  foreign-language  titles,  are  not infrequent; titles are sometimes given in full, sometimes in brief, after no ap- parent pattern;  occasional errors in, or omission of, page numbers for articles, total numbers of  volumes,  and inclusive  publication dates for  multivolume works can be noted; and Arabic diacriticals, notably macrons, are sporadically and inconsistently applied. Further,  with regard to the content of the bibliogra- phy: despite its overall breadth, one wonders why some seemingly basic works relevant to the introductory  chapter or to the text itself are not included: for ex- ample, Tilman Nagel, "Die Qisas al-Anbiyda:  Ein Beitrag zur arabischen Liter- aturgeschichte" (Ph.D.  diss.,  Friedrich-Wilhelms University,  Bonn,  1967); Gustav  Weil,  Biblische  Legenden  der  Muselmdnner (Frankfurt am  Main, 1845); Joseph Schacht, "On Mfsa  b. CUqba's  Kitdb al-Maghadz,"  Acta Orien- talia 21 (1953): 288-300;  Maxime Rodinson, "Bilan des 6tudes mohammedi- 94 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 25 Apr 2014 13:47:20 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsHistory  of Religions  History  of Religions ennes,"  Revue  Historique  229  (1963):  169-220;  Abraham  Meyer,  ed., Legendes juives  apocryphes  sur  la  vie  de  Moise  (Paris,  1925);  Heinrich Schiitzinger,  Ursprung und  Entwicklung der  arabischen  Abraham-Nimrod- Legende (Bonn, 1961); B. Chapira, "Legendes bibliques attributes a Kacb al- Ahbar,"  Revue des etudes juives 69 (1919): 86-107,  and 70 (1920): 37-44. Such concerns as these last ones are not purely pedantic, but they are not of such importance as to reduce essentially the great service done to students of Islam and the history of religion by the publication of Gordon Newby's The Making of the Last Prophet. WILLIAM  A.  GRAHAM Harvard  University Homer or Moses? Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture. By ARTHUR  J. DROGE.  Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1989. Pp. xiv+200,  bibliogra- phy, indexes. Arthur  Droge's interesting book is a study of how the Christian  apologists de- fended their nascent movement against the charge of novelty. Since to late an- tiquity, novelty  in  religion  was  synonymous  with  suspicion  and fraud, the apologists had to explain how Christianity related to ancient Judaism. At the same time, they had to provide  justifications for the divergences between the two groups. Although the apologists did not all reflect a single mind or tradition, their strategy seemed unified enough. They appealed to the antiquity of the He- brew tradition and claimed to be heirs of it; they also claimed that Christianity was the truest contemporary  manifestation of it. The history of Moses was the strongest evidence for the truth  of Christianity  because it squared with the gen- eral belief in the wisdom of the past. The Greeks themselves acknowledged that the great civilizations of the East preceded them. Many Greek philosophers, in- cluding Plato, were supposed to have visited the East for their philosophical sup- positions.  Indeed, Numenius  of  Apamea,  a  contemporary of  Justin, asked, "What is Plato but Moses  speaking Greek?" (Fragment 8 des Places = Clem. Strom. 1.150.4 [see Droge, p. 2]). The apologists merely took these truisms to their logical extreme-arguing  that the Greeks had borrowed their philosophy from the philosophical legislation of Moses-hence,  the title of the book: Homer or Moses? The question stated more fully is: Who came first, Homer or Moses? This was a major point of dispute between Christian and pagan intellectuals of the early centuries of the present era. Of course, Christian writers were not the first to engage in this kind of pro- paganda. Manetho's Egyptian History, for instance, claimed that the culture of the Greeks and Babylonians was derivative of Egyptian culture, even while he himself borrowed a Greek interpretation  of the mysteries to explain his native Egyptian religion. As early as the second century B.C.E.  Jewish apologists like Aristobulus, Artapanus, and Eupolemus had made the same claim for Judaism. In the first century, Philo, Justus of Tiberius, and Josephus had demonstrated that Judaism was superior to Greek religion and culture, based on the same ennes,"  Revue  Historique  229  (1963):  169-220;  Abraham  Meyer,  ed., Legendes juives  apocryphes  sur  la  vie  de  Moise  (Paris,  1925);  Heinrich Schiitzinger,  Ursprung und  Entwicklung der  arabischen  Abraham-Nimrod- Legende (Bonn, 1961); B. Chapira, "Legendes bibliques attributes a Kacb al- Ahbar,"  Revue des etudes juives 69 (1919): 86-107,  and 70 (1920): 37-44. Such concerns as these last ones are not purely pedantic, but they are not of such importance as to reduce essentially the great service done to students of Islam and the history of religion by the publication of Gordon Newby's The Making of the Last Prophet. WILLIAM  A.  GRAHAM Harvard  University Homer or Moses? Early Christian Interpretations of the History of Culture. By ARTHUR  J. DROGE.  Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1989. Pp. xiv+200,  bibliogra- phy, indexes. Arthur  Droge's interesting book is a study of how the Christian  apologists de- fended their nascent movement against the charge of novelty. Since to late an- tiquity, novelty  in  religion  was  synonymous  with  suspicion  and fraud, the apologists had to explain how Christianity related to ancient Judaism. At the same time, they had to provide  justifications for the divergences between the two groups. Although the apologists did not all reflect a single mind or tradition, their strategy seemed unified enough. They appealed to the antiquity of the He- brew tradition and claimed to be heirs of it; they also claimed that Christianity was the truest contemporary  manifestation of it. The history of Moses was the strongest evidence for the truth  of Christianity  because it squared with the gen- eral belief in the wisdom of the past. The Greeks themselves acknowledged that the great civilizations of the East preceded them. Many Greek philosophers, in- cluding Plato, were supposed to have visited the East for their philosophical sup- positions.  Indeed, Numenius  of  Apamea,  a  contemporary of  Justin, asked, "What is Plato but Moses  speaking Greek?" (Fragment 8 des Places = Clem. Strom. 1.150.4 [see Droge, p. 2]). The apologists merely took these truisms to their logical extreme-arguing  that the Greeks had borrowed their philosophy from the philosophical legislation of Moses-hence,  the title of the book: Homer or Moses? The question stated more fully is: Who came first, Homer or Moses? This was a major point of dispute between Christian and pagan intellectuals of the early centuries of the present era. Of course, Christian writers were not the first to engage in this kind of pro- paganda. Manetho's Egyptian History, for instance, claimed that the culture of the Greeks and Babylonians was derivative of Egyptian culture, even while he himself borrowed a Greek interpretation  of the mysteries to explain his native Egyptian religion. As early as the second century B.C.E.  Jewish apologists like Aristobulus, Artapanus, and Eupolemus had made the same claim for Judaism. In the first century, Philo, Justus of Tiberius, and Josephus had demonstrated that Judaism was superior to Greek religion and culture, based on the same 95  95 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Fri, 25 Apr 2014 13:47:20 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Review of The Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammad

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Review of The Making of the Last Prophet: A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammad

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