What we mainly learn from these later sources is how Jesus was viewed by non-Christians who lived centuries later.   There is no reason to take them any more seriously than later Christian legends about Jesus, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find them interesting, perhaps illuminating.  There is one I’ve always treasured since I first heard it.  

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Truthfully, however different Jewish, Christian and Muslim views of Jesus were by the point in time we can find Jewish and Muslim sources about him, what they all have in common with each other is that they no longer care much about the historical Jesus.  I think some of the early Christian writers still did, but the process of mythologizing him was already well under way.  

Since I do not believe myths are without merit, I don’t reject them.  I also don’t call them history.   History would be more about how we sift fact and myth–throwing neither away, but putting them in separate categories, as best we can.

Perhaps you know the story of how when the Prophet Muhammad came to Medina, he saw men climbing up the female date palms to hand-pollinate them, having gathered the pollen from the male trees.  Perhaps he saw this as unnatural, men helping plants have sex, but for whatever reason he indicated his dislike of the process, and said it would be fine if they stopped.  At this time his word had become law there, so they ceased performing the hand pollination.  And the date harvest was consequently much reduced.  When they told him this (the Prophet being notably fond of dates), he relented, saying they knew better than him about that kind of thing.

For generations, Muslims have argued about what this story means.  The usual interpretation is that Muhammad was just a man, and didn’t know everything.  Some would say (as many Catholics do about the Pope) that he was infallible on matters of religion only, but of course that begs the question–where do earthly matters end and spiritual ones begin, since after all most religions concern themselves greatly with matters of reproduction (which is probably what Muhammad was doing in that story).  They come up with interpretations that say this has no bearing on their teachings at all, even though their teachings supposedly come from Muhammad, who the story clearly tells us was fallible.  

My question would be–do we know this story happened?  The Doctrine of Dissimilarity tells us that Muslims wouldn’t have told this story if it wasn’t known to be true–they would find it embarrassing.  And that is a strong argument.  But another argument could be that some later Muslims might have been weary of meddlesome imams constantly putting in their oars, poking into secular matters, often in ignorance equal to that of Muhammad’s in the story, and this was a myth created to address that point, restore some balance.  The story serves a purpose for Muslims who want to assert that earthly knowledge has value as well.  So perhaps the story didn’t happen, or what actually happened was more complex.  We’ll never know for sure.  Even though Muhammad’s life is in some ways far better documented than that of Jesus, the process of mythologizing him also got under way even while he was still alive, because he, unlike Jesus, gained great temporal power in his own lifetime.  

So what we really learn is that even then, Muslims had differences amongst themselves–as did Jews and Christians.  

PS: My forum name is taken from the musical Godspell, the title of which is a pun, based on how ‘gospel’ (good news) sounds like the English/Germanic words ‘god’ and ‘spell’.  Just FYI.  😉

It’s still a pun, but thanks, whoever you are.  Bright fame?  😉