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Extract
Of the three monotheistic religions of the Semites, Islam was the last to make its appearance upon the stage of history in the third decade of the seventh century. Unlike its two predecessors, Judaism and Christianity, its appearance was attended by a series of epochmaking events which mark the eclipse of the two great empires of the time, Byzantium and Persia. And, whereas the beggign nings and developpm ent of the two latter religions are surrounded by comparative obscurity, historians know almost all the significant stages in the rise and development of Islam, which forces itself, like a cataclysm, upon the attention of the civilized world by dint of military prowess.
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- Copyright © 1954 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Later Muslim theologians find a basis for this alleged prophecy in the Johannine reference to the coining of the Paraclete (John 14, 16; 16,7-8).
2 It is Noteworthy here that Muhammad, who is declared throughout the Koran as a mere human, is not credited there with any miracles what soever besides the transmission of the Koran which is considered to be the miracle par excellence (17, 88).
3 A record of this miracle is found in the apocryphal ‘Gospel of the Infancy’ (C. 36).
4 A reference, probably, to the Eucharist.
5 At least with certain sections of theological opinion.
6 However, a sect, the Collyridians, long extinct before Muhammad's time, are said by St Epiphanius to have adhered to this heresy which was ‘diffused in Arabia, Thrace, and Upper Scythia'. (Haeres 3, 75 and 79.)
7 Basilides and other, reported by St Epiphanius, op. cit. 24, 3, and Irenaeus, Contra Haeres, I, 24.