BBC Radio 4 is currently broadcasting a four part series called In the Footsteps of Muhammed. The second episode about ‘Jerusalem’ considers, among other things, the intriguing theory that Islam in some way developed from the residue of Jewish Christianity in Arabia, describing it as ‘the breaking surface of Jewish Christianity but using the Arabic idiom’. There is no archaeological evidence that the descendants of the Jewish Christians who fled into the desert at the time of the Roman invasion of Judea survived down to the seventh century. But the theory, if it ever proved valid, would offer a way of linking the historical-theological narratives of Islam and Christianity that might prove of value in other areas of interfaith dialogue - more so than the traditional argument that Muhammed drew separately and arbitrarily on Judaism and Nestorian Christianity. Unfortunately, this part of the programme does not appear in the ‘working script’ that is also available.
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