It wasn't Mohammed who founded Islam.

[pocaracas]

Can I start with 2, first?
Liars claim things about other people. Typically, liars refrain from attributing anything to themselves... it's one of the rules.

But liars typically do not make supernatural claims about dead people, especially since it's obvious that they (just like everyone else) have no way of even knowing such things ... unless they received them via divine revelations.

If they claim to know such (unknowable) things, then they've automatically ascribed supernatural abilities to their own selves.

Lots of people have claimed to know unknowable things throughout history...
Some believed in them, some didn't.
Cue to every religion that has ever existed on this planet.

1. If Mo was the legendary leader people hailed him to be (in those two notes about him predating Sebeos), then such tales of divine inspiration could easily surface. Like I said before, these tales may have been just people jesting, or suggesting... but others may have picked it up as truth and passed it on... that's why I called it a rumor.

They do surface - all found in the oral traditions recorded in the hadiths.

And your answer still evades the question, which is:
How can a person (i.e. the rumor starter) make a supernatural claim about some dead guy without first convincing people that he has divine and/or psychic abilities? How else can he claim to know such things that no one else knows?

Didn't I say it could have started as an obvious jest? and I can complete it with a: with each retelling the ironic bits fell off and people started giving credence to the tale., hence a rumor started that the legendary leader of the arab conquering tribe was also divinely inspired.
It's a possible scenario.
One that plays with elements from humanity with which we deal almost daily.

Or maybe the tale came to him with the requirement of a few grains of salt... maybe the tale came to him from some hearsay merchant, some hearsay fugitive.

Or maybe it didn't. (I can start using "maybe" to suit my arguments just like you do ... it's just so convenient).

Like we've said all along... we have nothing concrete, many options are valid...
Even the fabrication of the whole (or part of) Sebeos account, like Min has hinted.

Fugitive? from where? these fugitives would be fleeing Mehmet's arabs? Then they were the enemy... odd.

Enemy or not, it still doesn't negate the interpretation that the words "command from on high" in Sebeos's quote seems to refer to God's command, which you admitted previously.

It does render the story similar to what cartographers and sailors of old would label as "here be monsters".
How would enemies know about the beliefs of their conquerors?
How would they know about the origin of their beliefs?
And fugitives are seldom high ranking (in the know) personnel... they're the dung heap no one cares about and are allowed to escape.

Anyway... Hearsay, rumor... human nature.
Why do you keep dismissing these as unlikely players in the tale?

Because I believe in the sacred texts.

You, of course, prefer to believe in hearsay and rumor theories which you have no evidence for, either.

Why do you believe in those texts?
What renders their content so "sacred"?
Why the ones you believe in and not others? Many alleged sacred texts exist, from several places and time periods on Earth. Why those in particular?
Why believe in any of them?
What part of human nature renders sacred texts more believable than their fabrication?

No, it doesn't imply that.
But that is one option of how things came to be.

So that also means that nothing about that quote implies what you've been arguing for (i.e. the "option of how things came to be"). There's no actual implication of a rumor ... it's just an "option" ...

Then what about the option that the rumor was true from the very beginning? Does that have less of an implication? If so, then why?

The option that the rumor was true would imply that Mo was a great leader, a great preacher and also had a direct channel with a god.
And this god, instead of giving Mo the most wonderful treasure of information.. information about the past, about the future, about the world, about human peaceful co-existence, about how to bring his neighbors in league with him... gave him commands to take over his neighbors by force and rule them, with such ludicrous rules as cover the women so other men will not covet them.
Way to go, oh god-seemingly-made-in-man's-image.
What a waste of a prophet.

But if it was just a claim and no actual channel to any god existed for real.
Well then, I'll have to throw this one back at you: how could he have convinced his people that he did have a channel to a god?
Oh, never mind, con artists do it all the time. Human nature works, too. Although, it would have been more difficult than if that notion surfaced as a rumor that later took hold.
But if he did manage to convince people of his prophethood and they did win so many battles and he became a legendary prophet, then why has nothing contemporary mentioning such an astonishing person ever been found?
We have lots of contemporary stuff for other people... older people... even for Herod (nothing mentioning a Jesus, nor a zombie apocalypse, curiously)... but for a desert dwelling, highly influential leader of a tribe in the early 600's there is a remarkable absence.
Why is everything written about the man from after his death?

Oh... and if Min's hint that Sebeos is a fabrication... oh well... back to nothing-land for old Mehmet.