Lee Strasberg Life-shaping revelation
What was the revelation that shaped his life?
What was the revelation that shaped Lee Strasberg's life?
Kazan biographer Richard Schickel described Strasberg's first experiences with the "art" of acting: He dropped out of high school, worked in a shop that made hairpieces, drifted into the theater via a settlement house company and ... had his life-shaping revelation when Stanislavski brought his Moscow Art Theatre to the United States in 1923. He had seen good acting before, of course, but never an ensemble like this with actors completely surrendering their egos to the work.... [H]e observed, first of all, that all the actors, whether they were playing leads or small parts, worked with the same commitment and intensity. No actors idled about posing and preening (or thinking about where they might dine after the performance). More important, every actor seemed to project some sort of unspoken, yet palpable, inner life for his or her character. This was acting of a sort that one rarely saw on the American stage ... [w]here there was little stress on the psychology of the characters or their interactions.... Strasberg was galvanized. He knew that his own future as an actor - he was a slight and unhandsome man - was limited. But he soon perceived that as a theoretician and teacher of this new 'system' it might become a major force in American theater. Strasberg eventually left the Clare Tree Major School to study with students of Stanislavski - Maria Ouspenskaya and Richard Boleslavsky - at the American Laboratory Theatre. In 1925, Strasberg had his first professional appearance in Processional, a play produced by the Theater Guild. According to Schickel: What Strasberg... took away from the Actor's Lab was a belief that just as an actor could be prepared physically for his work with dance, movement, and fencing classes, he could be mentally prepared by resort to analogous mental exercises. They worked on relaxation as well as concentration. They worked with nonexistent objects that helped prepare them for the exploration of equally ephemeral emotions. They learned to use "affective memory", as Strasberg called the most controversial aspect of his teaching - summoning emotions from their own lives to illuminate their stage roles.... Strasberg believed he could codify this system, a necessary precursor to teaching it to anyone who wanted to learn it... [H]e became a director more preoccupied with getting his actors to work in the "correct" way than he was in shaping the overall presentation. CANNOTANSWER
life-shaping revelation when Stanislavski brought his Moscow Art Theatre to the United States in 1923. He had seen good acting before, of course, but never an ensemble like this
Lee Strasberg (born Israel Lee Strassberg; November 17, 1901 – February 17, 1982) was a Polish-born American actor, director, and theatre practitioner. He co-founded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective". In 1951, he became director of the nonprofit Actors Studio in New York City, considered "the nation's most prestigious acting school," and, in 1966, was involved in the creation of Actors Studio West in Los Angeles.

Although other highly regarded teachers also developed versions of "The Method", Lee Strasberg is considered to be the "father of method acting in America", according to author Mel Gussow. From the 1920s until his death in 1982, "he revolutionized the art of acting by having a profound influence on performance in American theater and film." From his base in New York, Strasberg trained several generations of theatre and film notables, including Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda, Julie Harris, Paul Newman, Ellen Burstyn, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Geraldine Page, Eli Wallach, and directors Andreas Voutsinas, Frank Perry and Elia Kazan.

By 1970, Strasberg had become less involved with the Actors Studio and, with his third wife, Anna, opened the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute with branches in New York City and in Hollywood, to continue teaching the 'system' of Konstantin Stanislavski, which he had interpreted and developed, particularly in light of the ideas of Yevgeny Vakhtangov, for contemporary actors. The Institute's primary stated goal was "to reach a larger audience of eager and emerging talent" than was served by the Actors Studio's notoriously selective admission process, and as teachers of the method introduced their own personal interpretations of the discipline, "to dispel growing confusion and misrepresentation of the method, preserving what had by now become fundamental discoveries in actor training." The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute has its own rigorous sets of entrance criteria required for admission into their program.

Former student Elia Kazan directed James Dean in East of Eden (1955), for which Kazan and Dean were nominated for Academy Awards. As a student, Dean wrote that Actors Studio was "the greatest school of the theater [and] the best thing that can happen to an actor." Playwright Tennessee Williams, writer of A Streetcar Named Desire, said of Strasberg's actors, "They act from the inside out. They communicate emotions they really feel. They give you a sense of life." Directors such as Sidney Lumet, a former student, have intentionally used actors skilled in Strasberg's "method".

Kazan, in his autobiography, wrote, "He carried with him the aura of a prophet, a magician, a witch doctor, a psychoanalyst, and a feared father of a Jewish home... [He] was the force that held the 30-odd members of the theatre together, and made them 'permanent'."  Today, Ellen Burstyn, Al Pacino, and Harvey Keitel lead this non-profit studio dedicated to the development of actors, playwrights, and directors.

As an actor, Strasberg is probably best known for his supporting role as gangster Hyman Roth alongside his former student Al Pacino in The Godfather Part II (1974), a role he took at Pacino's suggestion after Kazan turned down the role, and which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He also appeared in Going in Style (1979) and ... And Justice for All (1979).

Strasberg's personal papers, including photos, are archived at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Early years 
Lee Strasberg was born Israel Strassberg in Budzanów in Austrian Poland (part of Austria-Hungary, now in Ukraine), to Jewish parents, Baruch Meyer Strassberg and his wife, Ida (born Chaia), née Diner, and was the youngest of three sons. His father emigrated to New York while his family remained in their home village with an uncle, a rabbinical teacher. His father, who worked as a presser in the garment industry, sent first for his eldest son and his daughter. Finally, enough money was saved to bring over his wife and his two remaining sons. In 1909 the family was reunited on Manhattan's Lower East Side, where they lived until the early 1920s. Young Strasberg took refuge in voracious reading and the companionship of his older brother, Zalmon, whose death in the 1918 influenza pandemic was so traumatic for the young Strasberg that, despite being a straight-A student, he dropped out of high school.

A relative introduced him to the theatre by giving him a small part in a Yiddish-language production being performed by the Progressive Drama Club. He later joined the Chrystie Street Settlement House's drama club. Philip Loeb, casting director of the Theater Guild, sensed that Strasberg could act, although he was not yet thinking of a full-time acting career, and was still working as a shipping clerk and bookkeeper for a wig company. When he was 23 years old, he enrolled in the Clare Tree Major School of the Theater. He became a naturalized United States citizen on January 16, 1939, in New York City at the New York Southern District Court.

Encounter with Stanislavski 
Kazan biographer Richard Schickel described Strasberg's first experiences with the art of acting:

Strasberg eventually left the Clare Tree Major School to study with students of Stanislavski—Maria Ouspenskaya and Richard Boleslawski—at the American Laboratory Theatre. In 1925 Strasberg had his first professional appearance in Processional, a play produced by the Theater Guild.

According to Schickel:

Acting director and teacher

Group Theater 
He gained a reputation with the Theater Guild of New York and helped form the Group Theater in New York in 1931. There, he created a technique that became known as "the method" or "method acting". His teaching style owed much to the Russian practitioner, Konstantin Stanislavski, whose book, An Actor Prepares (published in English in 1936), dealt with the psychology of acting. He began by directing, but his time was gradually taken up by the training of actors. Called "America's first true theatrical collective," the Group Theater immediately offered a few tuition-free scholarships for its three-year program to "promising students."

Publishers Weekly wrote, "The Group Theatre ... with its self-defined mission to reconnect theater to the world of ideas and actions, staged plays that confronted social and moral issues ... with members Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, Stella, and Luther Adler, Clifford Odets, Elia Kazan, and an ill-assorted band of idealistic actors living hand to mouth are seen welded in a collective of creativity that was also a tangle of jealousies, love affairs, and explosive feuds." Playwright Arthur Miller said "the Group Theatre was unique and probably will never be repeated. For a while it was literally the voice of Depression America." Co-founder Harold Clurman, in describing what Strasberg brought to the Group Theater, wrote:

Strasberg, Kazan, Clurman, and others with the Group Theater spent the summer of 1936 at Pine Brook Country Club, located in the countryside of Nichols, Connecticut. They spent previous summers at various places in upstate New York and near Danbury, Connecticut.

Amid internecine tensions, Strasberg resigned as director of the Group Theatre in March 1937.

Actors Studio 
In 1947 Elia Kazan, Robert Lewis, and Cheryl Crawford, also members of the Group Theatre, started the Actors Studio as a nonprofit workshop for professional and aspiring actors to concentrate on their craft away from the pressures of the commercial theatre. Strasberg assumed leadership of the studio in 1951 as its artistic director. "As a teacher and acting theorist, he revolutionized American actor training and engaged such remarkable performers as Kim Hunter, Marilyn Monroe, Julie Harris, Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Ellen Burstyn, and Al Pacino." Since its inception, the studio has been a nonprofit educational corporation chartered by the state of New York, and has been supported entirely by contributions and benefits. ... We have here the possibility of creating a kind of theatre that would be a shining medal for our country," Strasberg said in 1959. UCLA acting teacher Robert Hethmon writes, "The Actors Studio is a refuge. Its privacy is guarded ferociously against the casual intruder, the seeker of curiousities, and the exploiter. ... The Studio helps actors to meet the enemy within ... and contributes greatly to Strasberg's utterly pragmatic views on training the actor and solving his problems. ... [and] is kept deliberately modest in its circumstances, its essence being the private room where Lee Strasberg and some talented actors can work."

Strasberg wrote: "At the studio, we do not sit around and feed each other's egos. People are shocked how severe we are on each other." Admission to the Actors Studio was usually by audition with more than a thousand actors auditioning each year and the directors usually conferring membership on only five or six each year. "The Studio was, and is sui generis," said Elia Kazan, proudly. Beginning in a small, private way, with a strictly off-limits-to-outsiders policy, the Studio quickly earned a high reputation in theatre circles. "It became the place to be, the forum where all the most promising and unconventional young actors were being cultivated by sharp young directors." Actors who have worked at the studio include Julie Harris, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton, Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Patricia Neal, Rod Steiger, Mildred Dunnock, Eva Marie Saint, Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Ben Gazzara, Sidney Poitier, Karl Malden, Gene Wilder, Shelley Winters, Dennis Hopper, and Sally Field.

The Emmy Award-winning author of Inside Inside, James Lipton, writes that the Actors Studio became "one of the most prestigious institutions in the world" as a result of its desire to set a higher "standard" in acting. The founders, including Strasberg, demanded total commitment and extreme talent from aspiring students. Jack Nicholson auditioned five times before he was accepted; Dustin Hoffman, six times; and Harvey Keitel, 11 times. After each rejection, a candidate had to wait as long as a year to try again. Martin Landau and Steve McQueen were the only two students admitted one year, out of 2000 candidates who auditioned.
 Al Pacino: "The Actors Studio meant so much to me in my life. Lee Strasberg hasn't been given the credit he deserves. Brando doesn't give Lee any credit ... Next to Charlie Laughton (an acting teacher at HB Studio, and not to be confused with English actor Charles Laughton), it sort of launched me. It really did. That was a remarkable turning point in my life. It was directly responsible for getting me to quit all those jobs and just stay acting."
 Marlon Brando: Movie stars spawned by Strasberg's Actors Studio were of a new type that is often labeled the "rebel hero," wrote Pamela Wojcik. Historian Sam Staggs writes that "Marlon Brando was the hot, sleek engine on the Actors Studio express," and called him "[the] embodiment of method acting," but Brando was trained primarily by Stella Adler, a former member of the Group Theatre, who had a falling out with Strasberg over his interpretations of Stanislavsky's ideas." He based his acting technique on the method, once stating, "It made me a real actor. The idea is you learn to use everything that happened in your life and you learn to use it in creating the character you're working on. You learn how to dig into your unconscious and make use of every experience you've ever had."

In Brando's autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me, the actor claimed he learned nothing from Strasberg: "After I had some success, Lee Strasberg tried to take credit for teaching me how to act. He never taught me anything. He would have claimed credit for the sun and the moon if he believed he could get away with it. He tried to project himself as an acting oracle and guru. Some people worshiped him, and I never knew why. I sometimes went to the Actors Studio on Saturday mornings because Elia Kazan was teaching, and there were usually a lot of good-looking girls there, but Strasberg never taught me acting. Stella did—and later Kazan."
 James Dean: According to James Dean biographer W. Bast, "Proud of this accomplishment, Dean referred to the studio in a 1952 letter, when he was 21 years old, to his family as 'The greatest school of the theater. It houses great people like Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, Arthur Kennedy, Mildred Dunnock. ... Very few get into it. ... It's the best thing that can happen to an actor. I'm one of the youngest to belong.'"
 Marilyn Monroe: Film author Maurice Zolotow wrote: "Between The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot only four years elapsed, but her world had changed. She had become one of the most celebrated personalities in the world. She had divorced Joe DiMaggio. She had married Arthur Miller. She had become a disciple of Lee Strasberg. She was seriously studying acting. She was reading good books."
 Tennessee Williams: Tennessee Williams' plays have been populated by graduates of the studio, where he felt, "studio actors had a more intense and honest style of acting." He wrote, "They act from the inside out. They communicate emotions they really feel. They give you a sense of life." Williams was a co-founder of the group and a key member of its playwright's wing; he later wrote A Streetcar Named Desire, Brando's greatest early role.
 Jane Fonda: Jane Fonda recalled that at the age of 5, her brother, actor Peter Fonda, and she acted out Western stories similar to those her father, Henry Fonda, played in the movies. She attended Vassar College and went to Paris for two years to study art. Upon returning, she met Lee Strasberg and the meeting changed the course of her life, Fonda saying, "I went to the Actors Studio and Lee Strasberg told me I had talent. Real talent. It was the first time that anyone, except my father—who had to say so—told me I was good. At anything. It was a turning point in my life. I went to bed thinking about acting. I woke up thinking about acting. It was like the roof had come off my life!"

Teaching methods and philosophy 
In describing his teaching philosophy, Strasberg wrote, "The two areas of discovery that were of primary importance in my work at the Actors Studio and in my private classes were improvisation and affective memory. It is finally by using these techniques that the actor can express the appropriate emotions demanded of the character." Strasberg demanded great discipline of his actors, as well as great depths of psychological truthfulness. He once explained his approach in this way:

According to film critic/author Mel Gussow, Strasberg required that an actor, when preparing for a role, delve not only into the character's life in the play but also, "Far more importantly, into the character's life before the curtain rises. In rehearsal, the character's prehistory, perhaps going back to childhood, is discussed and even acted out. The play became the climax of the character's existence."

Elia Kazan as student 
In Elia Kazan's autobiography, the Academy Award–winning director wrote about his earliest memories of Strasberg as teacher:

Classroom settings 
Kazan described the classes taught by Strasberg:

James Dean 

In 1955 Strasberg student James Dean died in a car accident, at age 24. Strasberg, during a regular lecture shortly after this accident, discussed Dean. The following are excerpts from a transcription of his recorded lecture:

On Marilyn Monroe 
In 1962 Marilyn Monroe died at age 36. At the time of her death, she was at the height of her career. In 1999 she was ranked the sixth-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute. Strasberg gave the eulogy at her funeral.

Personal life 
His first marriage was to Nora Krecaum on October 29, 1926, until her death three years later in 1929. In 1934 he married actress and drama coach Paula Miller (1909–1966) until her death from cancer in 1966. They were the parents of actress Susan Strasberg (1938–1999) and acting teacher John Strasberg (born 1941). His third wife was the former Anna Mizrahi (b. April 16, 1939) and the mother of his two youngest children, Adam Lee Strasberg (b. July 29, 1969) and David Lee Israel Strasberg (b. January 30, 1971).

Death and commemoration 

On February 17, 1982, Lee Strasberg suffered a fatal heart attack in New York City, aged 80. With him at the time of his death at the hospital were his third wife, Anna, and their two sons. He was interred at Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. A day before his unexpected death, he was officially notified that he had been elected to the American Theater Hall of Fame. His last public appearance was on February 14, 1982, at Night of 100 Stars in the Radio City Music Hall, a benefit for the Actors Fund of America. Along with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, he danced in the chorus line with The Rockettes.

Actress Ellen Burstyn recalled that evening:

In an 80th birthday interview, he said that he was looking forward to his next 20 years in the theater. According to friends, he was healthy until the day he died. "It was so unexpected," Al Pacino said. "What stood out was how youthful he was. He never seemed as old as his years. He was an inspiration." Actress Jane Fonda said after hearing of his death, "I'm not sure I even would have become an actress were it not for him. He will be missed, but he leaves behind a great legacy."

Legacy 
"Whether directly influenced by Strasberg or not," wrote acting author Pamela Wojcik, "the new male stars all to some degree or other adapted method techniques to support their identification as rebels. ... He recreates romance as a drama of male neuroticism and also invests his characterization 'with an unprecedented aura of verisimilitude.'" Acting teacher and author Alison Hodge explains: "Seemingly spontaneous, intuitive, brooding, 'private,' lit with potent vibrations from an inner life of conflict and contradiction, their work exemplified the style of heightened naturalism which (whether Brando agrees or not) Lee Strasberg devoted his life to exploring and promoting." Pamela Wojcik adds:

In 2012 Strasberg's family donated his library of personal papers to the Library of Congress. The papers include 240 boxes containing correspondence, rehearsal notes, photographs, theatrical drawings and posters, sketches of stage designs, and more.

Strasberg, his wife Paula, his daughter Susan, and his son John, all appear as characters in Robert Brustein's 1998 play Nobody Dies on Friday, which one critic called a "scathing portrait of Strasberg," but one that "can by no means be dismissed as a simple act of character assassination." Brustein, a critic, director, and producer, had previously made public his dislike of the method as a philosophy of acting. The play was produced by Brustein's American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was later presented in Singapore.

In 2020 Google Arts & Culture, together with Giovanni Morassutti, an Italian actor who has deepened the study of The Method and long-time collaborator of John Strasberg, have created an online exhibition named Strasberg Legacy tracing the history of the realistic school of acting.

Broadway credits 
Note: All works are plays and the original productions, unless otherwise noted.
 Four Walls (1927) – actor
 The Vegetable (1929) – director
 Red Rust (1929) – actor
 Green Grow the Lilacs (1931) – actor
 The House of Connelly (1931) – codirector
 1931 (1931) – director
 Success Story (1932) – director
 Men in White (1933) – director
 Gentlewoman (1934) – director
 Gold Eagle Guy (1934) – director
 Paradise Lost (1935) – produced by Group Theatre
 Case of Clyde Griffiths (1936) – director, produced by Group Theatre
 Johnny Johnson (1936) – director, produced by Group Theatre
 Many Mansions (1937) – director
 Golden Boy (1937) – produced by Group Theatre
 Roosty (1938) – Director* Casey Jones (1938), produced by Group Theatre
 All the Living (1938) – director
 Dance Night (1938) – director
 Rocket exhibitionn (1938) – produced by Group Theatre
 The Gentle People (1939) – produced by Group Theatre
 Awake and Sing! (1939), revival – produced by Group Theatre
 Summer Night (1939) – director
 Night Music (1940) – produced by Group Theatre
 The Fifth Column (1940) – director
 Clash by Night (1941) – director
 A Kiss for Cinderella (1942), revival – director
 R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) (1942), revival – director
 Apology (1943) – producer and director
 South Pacific (1943, apparently no relation to the Broadway musical South Pacific) – director
 Skipper Next to God (1948) – director
 The Big Knife (1949) – director
 The Closing Door (1949) – director
 The Country Girl (1950) – co-producer
 Peer Gynt (1951), (revival) – director
 Strange Interlude (1963), (revival) – produced by The Actors Studio – Tony Award co-nomination for Best Producer of a Play
 Marathon '33 (1963) – production supervisor
 Three Sisters (1964), (revival) – director, produced by the Actors Studio

Film credits 
 Parnell (1937) as Pat (uncredited)
 China Venture (1953) as Patterson
 The Godfather Part II (1974; nominated, Academy Award Best Actor in a Supporting Role) as Hyman Roth
 The Cassandra Crossing (1976) as Herman Kaplan
 ...And Justice for All. (1979) as Sam Kirkland
 Boardwalk (1979) as David Rosen
 Going in Style (1979) as Willie

See also 
 Ion Cojar
 Stanislavski's system
 Method acting
 Constantin Stanislavski
 Ivana Chubbuck
 Marilyn Monroe
 Michael Chekhov
 Notable alumni of the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute
 Sanford Meisner
 Stella Adler

References

External links 

 The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute
 Strasberg video lectures
 
 
 
 John Strasberg Studios
 
 Audio Interview with Lee Strasberg on WGBH

1901 births
1982 deaths
Austro-Hungarian Jews
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
People from Terebovlia Raion
People from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
Naturalized citizens of the United States
Jews from Galicia (Eastern Europe)
Austro-Hungarian emigrants to the United States
Acting theorists
American male film actors
Method actors
American male stage actors
Drama teachers
Jewish theatre directors
Jewish American male actors
20th-century American male actors
Burials at Westchester Hills Cemetery
20th-century American Jews
Progressive revelation is the doctrine in Christianity that the sections of the Bible that were written later contain a fuller revelation of God than the earlier sections. Proponents believe that God didn't tell people his entire plan all at once, as they wouldn't be able to handle it. "Progressive revelation does not mean to say that the Old Testament is somehow less true than the New Testament. The progress was not from untruth to truth - it was from less information to more full information."

For instance, the theologian Charles Hodge wrote:

The ultimate revelation of God is understood to be found in Jesus Christ as revealed in the Gospels. So there is a more complete disclosure of who God is in the person of Jesus. For example, the New Testament is to be used to understand and interpret the Old Testament better. Likewise, all sections of the Bible are believed accurate in Evangelicalism.

One example would be the doctrine of the Trinity. The belief in Jesus of Nazareth and his person and resurrection from the dead pressed the Jewish Christians to reassess the nature of God in a fundamental way and to understand that God is tri-personal not unitarian. There is not just a single person that is God; there are three – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Another example would be in particular ethical standards like the distinction between clean and unclean foods, which was done away with. It was valid prior to Christ, but following the arrival of Christ there is no longer any obligation to maintain this distinction between clean and unclean foods.

See also
 Biblical inspiration
 Christian views on the old covenant
 Continuous revelation
 Deposit of faith
 Direct revelation
 Dispensationalism
 General revelation
 Progressive revelation (Bahá'í)
 Special revelation
 Supersessionism

References

External links 
 .
 .
What is Progressive Revelation

Christian theology of the Bible
Christian terminology
Revelation Muhammad's first revelation was an event described in Islamic tradition as taking place in AD 610, during which the Islamic prophet, Muhammad was visited by the angel Jibrīl, known as Gabriel in English, who revealed to him the beginnings of what would later become the Qur’an. The event took place in a cave called Hira, located on the mountain Jabal an-Nour, near Mecca. According to Mubarakpuri, the exact date of this event was Monday, the 21st of Ramadan just before sunrise, i.e. August 10, 610 C.E. – when Muhammad was 40 lunar years, 6 months and 12 days of age, i.e. 39 solar years, 3 months and 22 days.

Date of the revelation

The state of the calendar at the time of the first revelation

Muhammad was born 55 days after the incident of the elephant, which occurred in the middle of Muharram 570 - i.e. his birth date was Monday, 12 Rabi'I in that year. Many military campaigns occurred around the turn of the year, when conditions were propitious for fighting. Additionally, trade, and gatherings associated therewith, was largely seasonally based. To stop the calendar months (which are a little shorter than Julian calendar months) from rotating through the seasons, intercalation was employed. This involved the occasional insertion of an extra month (announced at the pilgrimage), ideally seven times in nineteen years. Intercalation was said to have been introduced in AD 412, and it was borrowed from the Jews. The Jewish official controlling the practice was known as Nasīʾ.

When the Arabs adopted the procedure they used this word nasīʾ to denote the whole system. It was operated similarly to the way the Jews operated it - the beginning of the year (Muharram) was tied to the spring season.

Identifying the date of the first revelation

One can establish the day of the Islamic month (but not the month itself) corresponding to a given Julian date by projecting the fixed (i.e. non-intercalated) calendar backwards.   When they do, they will find that 6 August 610 corresponds to 11 Ramadan and 10 August to 15 Ramadan. The first revelation is not looked for earlier than the last ten nights of the month. The equivalence of 40 lunar years, 6 months and 12 days to 39 Gregorian calendar years, 3 months and 22 days is also incorrect. 39 Julian calendar years, 3 months and 22 days takes us back from 10 August 610 to 19 April 571, a Sunday night in Rabi'I according to the fixed calendar proposed as Muhammad's date of birth by scholar Muhammad Sulaiman Al-Mansurpuri and astronomer Mahmud Pasha. This is 14,358 days. Taking the average length of an Islamic month as 29.53059 days, this equates to 486.21 months, which in the fixed calendar is 40 years, 6 months and 6 days. The 6 months and 12 days interval referred to above, on the other hand, is authentic and independent of this calculation. It is unaffected by whether or not the year is intercalated. It is the interval between the date of Muhammad's birth (after sunset on 11 Rabi'I) and the Shia date of first revelation (23 Ramadan). As further proof of its correctness, Muhammad died four days after his birthday, on 14 Rabi'I AH 11 (Monday, 8 June 632).

Converting the Islamic date to Julian

Given the day of the week, the date and the year any Muslim date in the intercalated calendar may be converted to Julian by utilising the known relationship between the intercalated calendar and the seasons. Under intercalation 12 Rabi'I (Muhammad's birth date) might fall in May or June. The exact date is Monday, 2 June 570. Under intercalation 23 Ramadan (the date of first revelation) might fall in November or December. The exact date is the night of Sunday to Monday, 13 to 14 December 610.

Summary

According to biographies of Muhammad, while on retreat in a mountain cave near Mecca (the cave of Hira), Gabriel appears before him and commands him to “Read!”. He responded, “But I cannot read!”. Then the angel Gabriel embraced him tightly and then revealed to him the first lines of chapter 96 of the Qur’an, “Read: In the name of Allah Who created, (1) Created man from a clot. (2) Read: And Allah is the Most Generous, (3) Who taught by the pen, (4) Taught man that which he knew not.(5)” (Bukhari 4953).

Before the revelation

Muhammad was born and raised in Mecca. When he was nearly 40, he used to spend many hours alone in prayer and speculating over the aspects of creation. He was concerned with the ignorance of divine guidance (Jahiliyyah), social unrest, injustice, widespread discrimination (particularly against women), fighting among tribes and abuse of tribal authorities prevalent in pre-Islamic Arabia. The moral degeneration of his fellow people, and his own quest for a true religion further lent fuel to this, with the result that he now began to withdraw periodically to a cave named Mount Hira, three miles north of Mecca, for contemplation and reflection. Islamic tradition holds that Muhammad during this period began to have dreams replete with spiritual significance which were fulfilled according to their true import; and this was the commencement of his divine revelation.

The first revelation

According to Muslim tradition, during one such occasion while he was in contemplation, the angel Gabriel appeared before him in the year AD 610 and said, "Read", upon which he replied, "I am unable to read". Thereupon the angel caught hold of him and embraced him heavily. This happened two more times after which the angel commanded Muhammad to recite the following verses:

After the revelation
Perplexed by this new experience, Muhammad made his way to home where he was consoled by his wife Khadijah, who also took him to her Nestorian cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal. Waraqah was a Christian. Islamic tradition holds that Waraqah, upon hearing the description, testified to Muhammad's prophethood, and convinced Muhammad that the revelation was from God. Waraqah said: "O my nephew! What did you see?"  When Muhammad told him what had happened to him, Waraqah replied: "This is Namus (meaning Gabriel) that Allah sent to Moses. I wish I were younger. I wish I could live up to the time when your people would turn you out." Muhammad asked: "Will they drive me out?" Waraqah answered in the affirmative and said: "Anyone who came with something similar to what you have brought was treated with hostility; and if I should be alive until that day, then I would support you strongly." A few days later Waraqah died.

The initial revelation was followed by a pause and a second encounter with Gabriel when Muhammad heard a voice from the sky and saw the same angel "sitting between the sky and the earth" and the revelations resumed with the first verses of chapter 74.

At-Tabari and Ibn Hisham reported that Muhammad left the cave of Hira after being surprised by the revelation, but later on, returned to the cave and continued his solitude, though subsequently he returned to Mecca. Tabari and Ibn Ishaq write that Muhammad told Zubayr:

"when I was midway on the mountain, I heard a voice from heaven saying "O Muhammad! you are the apostle of Allah and I am Gabriel." I raised my head towards heaven to see who was speaking, and Gabriel in the form of a man with feet astride the horizon, saying, "O Muhammad! you are the apostle of Allah and I am Gabriel." I stood gazing at him moving neither forward nor backward, then I began to turn my face away from him, but towards whatever region of the sky I looked, I saw him as before."

Biographers disagree about the period of time between Muhammad's first and second experiences of revelation. Ibn Ishaq writes that three years elapsed from the time that Muhammad received the first revelation until he started to preach publicly. Bukhari takes chapter 74 as the second revelation however chapter 68 has strong claims to be the second revelation.

References

Life of Muhammad
Gabriel
Angelic apparitions
Revelation