Pre-Islamic Arabia
Although this Gospel is thought to have originated from Syriac sources dating back to the fifth or sixth century, it has become known to European readers by way of an Arabic version published by Henry Sike in 1697 together with a Latin translation. The preface to the William Hone translation states that "It was received by the Gnostics, a sect of Christians in the second century..." The earliest known mention of the Gospel was by Isho'dad of Merv, a ninth-century Syrian church father, in his biblical commentary concerning the Gospel of Matthew. The narrative of the Arabic Infancy Gospel, particularly the second part concerning the miracles in Egypt, can also be found in the Quran. Some critical scholarship claim its presence in the Qu'ran may be due to the influence the Gospel had among the Arabs. It is not known for certain that the Gospel was present in the Hejaz, but it can be seen as likely. However, according to Islamic scholars the Gospel was translated into Arabic in the post-Islamic period due to the difficulty that 16th century Europeans would have in translating early Arabic's defective script into Latin as well as the extreme rarity of written texts in Pre-Islamic Arabia. Most recent research in the field of Islamic studies by Sydney Griffith et al. (2013), David D. Grafton (2014), Clair Wilde (2014) &amp; ML Hjälm et al. (2016 &amp; 2017) assert that "all one can say about the possibility of a pre-Islamic, Christian version of the Gospel in Arabic is that no sure sign of its actual existence has yet emerged." Additionally ML Hjälm in her most recent research (2017) inserts that "manuscripts containing translations of the gospels are encountered no earlier than the year 873".