The Secrets of Enoch and the Testament of Abraham
We must further compare The Secrets of Enoch, a second-century AD Egyptian work in Arabic, 1:4-10 and 2:1, and the Qur'anic record of Muhammad’s Mi’faj, which is recognized as the night in which he went to heaven by way of Jerusalem. A’isha, surprisingly enough, declared emphatically, "the body of the prophet of Allah did not disappear but Allah took away his spirit by night." 19 Here is the passage in Surat Bani Isra’il (The Children of Israel) 17:1:
In the name of Allah, the Beneficient, the Merciful. Glorified be He Who carried His servant by night from the Inviolable Place of Worship to the Far Distant Place of Worship the neighbourhood whereof We have blessed, that We might show him of Our tokens! Lo! He, only He, is the Hearer, the Seer.
The elaborate story of this vision is expounded in Mishkat al Masabih, composed in AD 620. Muhammad told how the angel Gabriel took him on the winged animal, Al-Buraq, and showed him all the seven levels of heaven in one night. Muhammad announced that he had seen Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and others.
However, the night journey was not really so marvelous. The tale and its details appear originally in The Secrets of Enoch, which predates Muhammad by four centuries. Here is an excerptfrom Enoch 1:4-10 and 2:1:
On the first day of the month I was in my house and was resting on my couch and slept and when I was asleep great distress came up into my heart and there appeared two men. They were standing at my couch and called me by name and I arose from my sleep. Have courage, Enoch, do not fear; The Eternal God sent us to thee. Thou shalt today ascend with us into heaven. The Angels took him on their wings and bore him up to the first heaven.
As to the de******ion of what Muhammad saw in the various levels of heaven, one can find an earlier record of the very same details in The Testament of Abraham.
Although Muhammad claimed he went to Jerusalem and worshipped at the temple in his spirit, the temple had been destroyed by Titus 570 years before the vision! The "far distant place of worship" mentioned in Surat Bani Isra’il (The Children of Israel) 17:1 refers to the Aqsa Mosque, which was built as a church in Jerusalem by the Crusaders during the twelfth century. In 1187 Saladin made it a mosque after he conquered the Holy Land. In other words, no such place existed at the time of the so-called heavenly journey. Even the Dome of the Rock mosque was not built until AD 691.
In the Hindu version of the story, the Prophet is Arta, the angel is Azar, and Adam is Ormazd. The original Hindu source is arta Viraf Namak.
Sabeanism
Ancient historians like Abi Isa the Moroccan tell that Sabeans were the first religious people whose language was Syriac. Even Adam spoke that language. Seba was said to be the same Seba, son of Cush, son of Ham, son of Noah, mentioned in Genesis 10:6,7. Their worship was monotheistic; they offered sacrifices and prayed seven times a day. Muhammad apparently borrowed their idea but reduced the number of prayer times to five a day. The Sabeans fasted thirty days a year, breaking the fast at sunset—two more practices Muhammad "Islamized" during Ramadan. Dr. Ahmad Shah (Theology—Muslim and Christian), and elderly scholar and dear friend, told me when I visited him in India in 1978 that some writers mistook the Sabeans for followers of John the Baptist because they baptized new members into their group. He adds that along with God, they also worshipped stars and hierarchy of angels.