by David P. Goldman ….If the Mohammed story was invented, then
by whom was it invented, and to what end? The answer, Kalisch
explains, is that the new Arab empire wanted to conflate the
figures of Moses and Jesus into an Arab prophet. Neither the
Jews nor the Christians as people of God, but the Arabs,
instead, would become the Chosen People under Islam. “No prophet
is mentioned in the Koran as often as Moses, and Muslim
tradition always emphasized the great similarly between Moses
and Mohammed,” Kalisch writes. “The central event in the life of
Moses, though, is the Exodus of the oppressed Children of Israel
out of Egypt, and the central event in the life of Mohammed is
the Exodus of his oppressed congregation out of Mecca to Medina
. . . The suspicion is great that the Hegira appears only for
this reason in the story of the Prophet, because his image
should emulate the image of Moses.” Furthermore, “…the image of
Jesus is also seen as a new Moses. The connection of Mohammed to
the figure of Jesus is present