In his groundbreaking book, Le messie et son prophète: Aux origines de l’Islam, Edouard-Marie Gallez lifts the veil and lets us see the historical roots of Islam. He shows it originating in a vast movement of messianic Jews called “Ebionites” or “Nazareens.” These non-rabbinical Jews accepted Jesus as the messiah, but not as the divine Logos.  Gallez shows how the scrolls and fragments found in the Qumram caves by the Dead Sea and in the vicinity of Massada illuminate the ideology behind this movement of Jews, who were eager and willing to follow the messiah into holy war, believing they would thereby save the world. Unlike rabbinical Jews, who looked to the past, these men looked forward to an earthly utopia that would come only after mass exterminations. Like the later Muslims, they believed that the messiah had not died on the Cross but had been taken up alive into heaven and was ready, whenever the conditions were right (i.e., when Palestine was no longer in the hands of the impious and the Temple had been rebuilt), to return to the Mount of Olives and lead them to the subjugation of the entire world. The Nazareens, like the Muslims, forbade pork and wine