Relative Chronology of Violent and Nonviolent Themes in Early Christian and Islamic Historical Documents

Abstract

Early Islamic and Christian documents were divided into early and late periods chronologically and then compared to Morgan-Miller's 2002 themes of violence and nonviolence. No significant relationship between chronology and violence themes was found for the Christian documents but for the Islamic documents a significant relationship was detected, with later documents (those revealed at Madinah) reporting a higher percentage of violent and a lower percentage of nonviolent themes than those revealed earlier (at Mecca).