Everyone can think whatever he likes about Spencer and his activities but his book 'Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins—Revised and Expanded Edition' ($ 9 in amazon kindle...) is a must read.
Spencer is the only graduate (MA, Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
well .. what is the point of having a Ph. D. and writing rubbish publications or silly books...??
I know, who dares posing questions about this precise topic and noting the problem of the responses traditionally taught by academics and the traditional narrative. For me, it is precisely because the 'prophet' has never existed that one can bring light to the Quran enigma. Without ruling out him from the responsibility (supernatural or not) of the production of the Quranic texts , it will never be possible to explain their public emergence at the end of the 7th c.
I fully agree with you on that
This question is a definitive taboo now. All academics claim that the issue is settled (Doctrina Jacobi, etc.) and that we have to move on. (For the most courageous... ) the 'move on' is first 'no more history' but the Quran and the Wansbrough/Dye/Shoemaker (2022) layers theory of the Quran using biblical criticism (Hajjaj b. Yusuf (and not Uthman) being the 'true' editor of the Quranic texts, arranging and more or less rewriting it).
I wonder whether you can throw few references/Names of academics THAT ARE STILL ACTIVE in the field .. who says/said this
" that the issue is settled (Doctrina Jacobi, etc.) and that we have to move on"But all of this is accessory: where come from those rewritten texts by Hajjaj? Both still believe to the foundation of the 'Nöldekian paradigm' even if they claim abandoning it: they keep the Mecca/Kaba frame. They just leave the topic of the edition/composition of those texts to Hajjaj and not Uthman. So what? What does it change? For me... nothing. Dye still write about the Mecca/Kaba foundation and of the 'Prophet'. As I have not finished yet the last Shoemaker (2022) , I do not know what he says about that....
sorry did not get that., do you mean to say that these Ph. D.s and University faculties of Islamic history
"ABONDONED EXISTANCE OF MUHAMMAD BUT STILL KEEP MECCA MEDINA in the frame of early Islamic history?? How does that work? what is there explanation?
But I have a brain.
OFF COURSE YOU HAVE BRAIN...
I don't think any one who has head on his shoulders says that " you do not have brain" dear Altara
The sole academic who was commencing to see that there was something to dig towards a direction is Segovia. Segovia, I think, was afraid and abandoned totally the topic to come back to its academic training: philosophy.
It was the only one who actively was searching responses and his lasts papers more or less in some ideas - and even if he missed crucial things, and some things that he did not still fully comprehend- joins what I think.
who?? this one dr. Carlos Segovia, ..
https://slu.academia.edu/CarlosSegovia or that 15th century Spanish theologian Juan de. Segovia ??
P.S. The 'things' and 'crucial things' are public sources consisting of sources telling history/events that were never corelated to the emergence of the Q uranic texts.
I fully agree with that and thank you for the wonderful responses