It is fairly clear that their “prophet” (or at least the people who wrote it all down)...did have some contact with Christians and Jews, albeit they got a very distorted version of the Biblical faiths. We do know that there were types of Christian churches in the 200-600’s or so that either did not believe Jesus was a material (real) person, but rather just a spiritual entity that only appeared human..(so there there was nobody to die on any cross)...and there were a few more odd (to us, anyway) versions..... the Church Councils in the 300-600 years discussed all that stuff and, as we know, decided on the “fully Divine, fully human” formula (the latter part meaning that he really did die on the cross after all).
If we look at where these variant versions were most popular, it was mostly in Egypt and Syria (and trans-caucasia). These are the regions closest to Arabia, and also areas where there was frequent contact vis-a-vis the Arabian desert region.
So, (from my limited knowledge, anyway) it would both seem possible and indeed make sense, stand to reason....
as it would have placed a non-orthodox (what we now call a heretical) variant of Christianity in the region where the authors of their Koran resided.
“as it would have placed a non-orthodox (what we now call a heretical) variant of Christianity in the region where the authors of their Koran resided.”
This is my understanding as well after reading a couple of books calling into question the actual historicity of Mohammad himself.
Got thrown out of a facebook forum because I dared to suggest that Mo never existed!