“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!
wow! you can get thrown off a site for THAT!???
(there sre some scholars who agree with that, too ... but even if it is wrong and he was 100 percent there, what came out of it has sure caused the world a tremendous amount of grief...)
well, anyway, congratulations!
(there is a pretty nice local fellow here who, some years ago, went to the city dump to scrounge around for some small household items he could repair... they let people in to scrounge and then they get a few dollars from them when the people find anything they want to take home... consider it like a flea market where you bring a shovel is all........so anyway, he found some little kitchen appliance thing and went to check out and the proprietor demanded $10 and this fellow offered $5 and they got into a fight and the customer got evicted. SO for years now, he has claimed to be the only guy any of us know of, who ever got thrown out of the city dump, he takes it as a point of pride.... ha!)
happy new year,
fhc