Abstract This essay revisits the hypothesis that Bede modelled his story of Cædmon on that of Muḥammad in CE 610. It is argued that the pilgrim Arculf, who visited Jerusalem in around 680, transmitted the Prophet’s story to Abbot Adomnán in Iona in 683–6, and that Adomnán passed it to Bede with his De locis sanctis in Jarrow in 688. It is shown that Bede’s knowledge of the religion that became Islam was limited and that his attitude towards ‘Saracens’ remained neutral until around 715, when the news about the Arabs’ occupation of Seville, city of Isidore, would have reached him in Northumbria. Despite evidence for Bede’s later hostility to the Arabs, my essay claims that he continued to regard Muḥammad’s story as suitable because his reading of Acts and the Pauline epistles primed him to accept all vernacular languages, including Arabic, as a medium for the word of God.
Richard North (Thu,) studied this question.