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The myth of Muhammad may have been born in the Bible.

Some contemporary Islamic apologists eagerly agree; they like to point to various biblical passages and claim that properly understood, these refer to Muhammad. This is not entirely a flight of fancy or feat of wishful thinking, although that is not to say that these apologists are remotely correct. The passages in question are not prophecies or foreshadowing of a coming Arabian prophet. They certainly do not refer to and have never been understood in Jewish or Christian tradition as referring to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Nevertheless, they may have been the kernel of the idea that eventually developed into the full-blown myth of the prophet of Islam.

As explained in detail here, in Psalm 68:16 and Proverbs 12:12, there is found the Hebrew word hamad, which means “desired.” Song of Songs 5:16 says: “His speech is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable. This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.” In this passage, as the modern-day Qur’an scholar Dr. Robert Kerr has pointed out, “desirable” is mahamadim, making this a passage that is particularly favored among Islamic apologists. The claim that this verse actually refers to Muhammad the prophet of Islam is absurd and anachronistic, as it would require the verse to be saying that “he is altogether Muhammad.”

The Islamic apologist claim also runs into trouble in Hosea 9:16: “Ephraim is stricken, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit. Even though they bring forth, I will slay their beloved children.” The word used here for “beloved” is mahamadim; if Muhammad is meant, the passage would be saying, “I will slay their Muhammad,” which would take the wind out of the sails of those who would see Song of Songs 5:16 as a prophecy about the coming of Muhammad. If it were, Hosea 9:16 would necessarily also be a prophecy about Muhammad being killed.

The passage from the Song of Songs, however, does lend itself to a messianic interpretation, with the beloved who is awaited being not just an earthly lover, but the savior figure. Jews and then Christians began to use the same word that is used in Song of Songs, mhmd, the desirable one or the praiseworthy one, as a term for God or Christ. We see this in an inscription dating from 518 AD in the Yemeni city of Najran, from which, according to ninth-century Islamic tradition, a Christian delegation later journeyed to meet with the prophet of Islam. The Jewish king Yusuf Asar Yathar, also known as Dhu Nuwas, defeated Christian forces from Abyssinia in battle and celebrated his victory with a rock inscription that concludes with this: “O Lord of the Jews! By the praiseworthy one.” In the inscription itself, this is rbhd b-mhmd. Rb is Lord, as in the Arabic rab and related to the word rabbi, master or teacher. Mhmd, the praiseworthy one, is an early appearance of what would become the name of a prophet, but here refers to God himself.

Over a century later, this title would appear again, but whether or not it was the name of a particular person was by no means clear.

According to the available documents, the first time the world heard about a prophet arising in Arabia was in the 630s, from a Greek Christian whose work is known as the Doctrina Jacobi,or Teaching of Jacob. This document dates from shortly after the traditional date of Muhammad’s death in 632; for all the period of Muhammad’s life, and all of his dealings with the world outside of Arabia that are recorded in later Islamic traditions, there seems to have been no notice of Muhammad anywhere, either by Muslims or non-Muslims, that was committed to writing during his lifetime. Muslims insist that the Qur’an constitutes such notice, as it mentions Muhammad by name four times, but there is likewise no independent attestation of the existence of the Qur’an until nearly a century after Muhammad is supposed to have died.

In the passage that is often cited as being an early non-Muslim reference to Muhammad, a Jew recounts the coming of this Saracen prophet. “Saracen” was a term that was in common use at the time to refer to the people of Arabia. “The prophet who has appeared with the Saracens,” the document says, “is false, for the prophets do not come armed with a sword.” There is, we are told, “no truth to be found in the so-called prophet, only the shedding of men’s blood. He says also that he has the keys of paradise, which is incredible.”

This does indeed tell us about a prophet among the Saracens and immediately resembles Muhammad because of the telling detail that he was “armed with a sword” and was busy shedding men’s blood. Caesarea and Sykamina, however, were in Palestine, and while the Arabs did indeed conquer them just a few years after the traditional date of Muhammad’s death, the Doctrina Jacobihas him appearing there with the Saracens. This prophet is also proclaiming that the Messiah is to come and that he has the keys to Paradise, neither of which were part of Muhammad’s message as depicted in the accounts that Muslims accept as reliable. The reference to the “keys to paradise” could conceivably be a reference to the Qur’an’s guarantee of paradise to those who “kill and are killed” (9:111), and Islam does teach that Jesus the Muslim prophet will return at the end of the world and break all crosses, but neither of these are the central or most salient aspects of Islam’s message.

Nevertheless, the Islamic apologetic site Islamic Awareness liststhe Doctrina Jacobi first among “dated and datable Muslim and non-Muslim sources mentioning Prophet Muhammad.” Yet it simply cannot be asserted with any confidence that this violent Saracen prophet is certainly the same person as Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. While he is a sword-bearing, murderous Arab prophet, the Doctrina Jacobi doesn’t demonstrate any awareness that he has delivered a new holy book, and his message is sharply divergent from the message of Islam as we know it. Consequently, in our quest to find the historical Muhammad, we must journey on; this nameless prophet is clearly not Muhammad.

So where is this man who became so consequential many decades after his death? During his lifetime and immediately thereafter, there is hardly any trace of him at all.

The material in this article is adapted from the book Muhammad: A Critical Biography, in which you can find out a great deal more about the search for the real Muhammad.