Re: The Scripture has foretold the coming of Muhammad?

Salaam!

Zev wrote:

Hajj abujamal wrote:
There's no argument: I've listened to the Cantor sing the Song of
Solomon, and he clearly says "MuHammadim," four syllables.

In your post you said: "no suggestion that the name "Muhammadim" in
Song of Solomon has some meaning in Hebrew other than a name ..."

The usual retort is denial that the Hebrew word "MuHammadim" is a
name, with no discussion of the grammatical structure of the word or
the appearance of its root H-m-d elsewhere in Scripture.

You replied with some discussion.

Now you seem to agree that it *is* Hebrew, with a cognate in Arabic!

It's the name of the Messenger in spoken Hebrew, and virtually
identical grammatically and phonetically with the Arabic cognate.
I've never said anything different.

This destroys your argument ...

No, actually you made my argument regarding that word.

At any rate, from now on, all you can even claim here is that Song
of Solomon 5:16 **may contain a hint** to Muhammad.

No, it speaks his name, such that anyone hearing it can recognize
it from the Song of Solomon.

It is unequivocal, the word has no meaning in Hebrew other than a
name. In the context in 5:16 it is singular, "He is Muhammad."
Perhaps a Hebrew grammarian could find another significance dependent
on the plural suffix "-im," but there is no way to combine a singular
masculine passive verb with a direct object plural noun when speaking
of a person ~ it's a name.

Also, since mamtakkim is an obvious parallel, with the exact same
grammatical structure, you would strengthen your case if you could
interpret this word as a name also. A failure to do so makes your
reading awkward at best.

Actually it's not the same grammatical structure ~ the final
consonant of the root m-t-k is doubled, while in MuHammadim the second
consonant of the root H-m-d is doubled. And I've been unable to find
an Arabic cognate, so give me the citation again and I'll dig deeper.

Another problem is the plural. In Hebrew, names are *never*
pluralized. If you know of a single exception, for *any* reason ...

Elohim is plural.

I appreciate your exposition of contemporary spoken Hebrew
grammar, but ...

I can only urge you again to listen to the recording. If you say it
sounds like MuHammadim, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

We'll just have to agree to disagree.

This is an Affidavit of Dr. M. T. Mehdi. What's the point?

Not one that it could make, apparently.

A Midrash says Pharaoh survived and returned home alone.
I thought the Quran said the same thing.

I'll have to look again, more closely. I know it says his body
was preserved, and as I recall it says "And We drowned Fir'aun and his
hosts."

I doubt that people who lived nearby would refer to such a large
area with one name. It would also mean that if something is said to
have happened in "Paran", you don't really know where it happened.

According to the Biblical maps, the entire north quarter of Arabia
was "Kedar." "The wilderness of Paran" could easily refer to a large
area within which are some settled places. At any rate, whether we
can agree on a map or not, Scripture says Hagar and Ishmael went to
the wilderness of Paran, and the prophecy speaks of ten thousand
coming from Paran. It happened, it's historical, the prophecy has
been fulfilled.

They ... recognized the Prophet from their Scripture, explicitly
from that passage in Deuteronomy and from others throughout the
Law and the prophets. Some testified to this.

Some did, some didn't.

That's correct. Some denied that Muhammad was the Messenger of
the Covenant "like unto Moses" mentioned in Scripture. They were not
required to testify to that, no one was and no one is.

The Torah does not disagree with the Qur'an ...
I understand this dichotomy and it is exactly what I meant.
Your retort proves my point.

I believe you'll find that learned rabbis find Ezra's recension of
the OT Scriptures to be flawed, as well. Jeremiah certainly indicted
the scribes.

"There are many more Palestinians of Jewish lineage than there
are Sephardic Jews who went to Palestine from muslim Spain to
escape the Inquisition. It's one of the bitter ironies of the
zionist occupation of Palestine: the zionists and the settlers
are **murdering people** who have an actual "divine right" to
live in Israel."

Why do you hint here that only non-Sephardi Jews are real Jews, but
when I complained about this attitude on the part of many Muslims,
your response was much more complaisant?

I don't see any "hint" like that here, and certainly consider
Sephardic Jews to be "real Jews." In fact, I just read an article
somewhere that Spanish Catholics are discovering their Jewish heritage
and "converting" (I've never been able to understand how one
"converts" to being something he already is ...). Neither am I
persuaded that the Ashkenazi are *not* of the Children of Israel. At
least one writer places refugees from the destruction of the Second
Temple in the region from which the Ashkenazim are said to have come,
see http://www.muslimamerica.net/cz/index.htm for a decent history of
Talmudic zionism. I do not see that I have anything to say about
whether someone who *says* he is of the faithful of Moses is among the
Children of Israel or not, unless he is a muslim, and then I would say
"alhamdulillah!"

Those who today call themselves "Palestinians" have always thought
of themselves as Arabs. In modern times claims have come up that
they descended from Canaanites, to establish prior claims to the
land, from Philistines, to establish themselves as the *real*
Palestinians, from Jews, to arrogate to themselves blessings which
are said to be bestowed upon Jews. Your response here proves again
the point I made before. Hajj, this is politics, not genealogy.

No Arab could ever accept the claim that Israelis are the only
heirs of Abraham. I'm neither of Arab or Hebrew lineage, and I do not
accept that the Children of Israel were meant to disinherit the
descendants of Ishmael, the descendants of Keturah, Abraham's third
wife, and all humanity as heirs of Promise. *One* Promise was made to
Abraham resulting in the creation of Israel. There were more Promises
to which Israel is *not* the "sole heir," and "dominion" is not
conferred by any of those Promises, but is conferred directly, during
the lifetimes of those He chooses to empower.

Every descendant of Abraham has an equal claim to the Promised
Land, and the Children of Israel are distinguished by having an
explicit claim between the River Jordan and the Great Sea. That claim
does not extinguish the rights of other descendants of Abraham to live
in the same area, between the River Jordan and the Great Sea, it
merely means that the Arabs cannot banish the Children of Israel from
there except for individual criminal conduct. God, of course, has
banished the Children of Israel from there twice.

Hajj, you can define a set and then insert its members according to
your rules, but if you have an existing set of many members, all
slightly different, you may have difficulty creating a discrete set
of rules which will define every member as 'in' and every non-member
as 'out'. At the margins, there's always trouble.

The Children of Israel and those who have joined themselves to
them are "in"; the descendants of Abraham are "in"; those who followed
Jesus are "in" even though Paul cut the heart out of the Temple Israel
to which they joined themselves; and at least one other discrete set
of people, all reliant on one or more of the Promises that God made to
Abraham and Noah. I have no difficulty with varying sets of "rules,"
and am acutely aware that those with the means must resolve what
troubles people at the margins of society.

But on the whole, Jews know who they are, and so do non-Jews.
Reading the OT, NT, or the Quran, or secular history books,
do you get the feeling that their authors thought of the Jews
as an amorphous, indefinable group of people?

Not at all. You are one explicit people, one and all, a finite
population well-defined and identifiable, some in the Garden and some
in the Fire.

Some Palestinians may have "Jewish" genes, but Palestinians are not
Jewish in any sense of the word which either group finds meaningful.

None do at present, no. But a muslim with Israeli lineage shares
in the distinction given in Jacob in response to Abraham's prayer for
Isaac, which is an everlasting distinction and will be honored
forever. It may be a while before we see that.

Perhaps we're talking past each other, so let me give you (and
muslim readers) this:

Every prophet and messenger sent among mankind spoke of the final
messenger who would bring a Covenant for all humanity. This means
that any record left behind by those prophets or messengers will
contain *recognizable* mention of Muhammad, with some particular that
we can see today in the life of Muhammad or the life of the muslim
ummah that formed at his hand, which lasted thirty years after his
death. This is how I know what is NOT of prophetic origin ~ it does
not contain any such mention.

I have not found such a mention in Esther, but I'll continue to
assume that it's my failure to recognize one rather than a real
absence. I've found such mentions in every other OT Book I've
studied, and in the words attributed to Jesus in the NT.

I can point to them, but some people simply can't see them.
That's not a problem for me.

was-salaam,
abujamal
--
astaghfirullahal-ladhee laa ilaha illa
howal-hayyul-qayyoom wa 'atoobu 'ilaihi

Rejoice, muslims, in martyrdom without fighting,
a Mercy for us. Be like the better son of Adam.

.

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