Religion
In reply to the discussion: 10 Reasons to believe Jesus Preached Islam [View all]Igel
(35,173 posts)As well as Jewish communities in Arabia.
Some of the Xians on the outskirts might have still observed OT holidays and something like kashrut. Others, probably not so much. Arianism was around but mostly a European thing by Muhammed's day. Muhammed didn't get much to Europe.There were a lot of peripheral heresies and Constantinople's sway didn't extend into a lot of the Xian hinterland. Sourcing Muhammad's theology in that way is considered a really bad thing by Muslim scholars, and was considered a sort of bad thing by a lot of sympathetic scholars in decades past.
Look at the state of Qur'aanic criticism. Exegesis, sure. But to try to source it, pull it apart to find various authors and editors, find changes made over time and really bad transmission errors or misinterpretations is not a path to academic or personal longevity. Textual variants are few, homogeneity is enforced, and we have yet to see a critical edition of the Qur'aan.