After Waraqa’s conversion to Christianity during the pre‑Islamic era, it is likely that he had access to the Gospels. Scholars and Islamic sources even claim that he recognized the Prophet Muhammad through the Gospels in his possession. However, a dilemma arises because the canonized Gospels only began to circulate in Arabia during the Abbasid Caliphate, which scholars place between the late 8th and early 9th centuries. The question that arises from this dilemma is which gospels were circulating in Mecca during Waraqa’s time prior to the rise of Islam?

In Waraqa ibn Nawfal’s time (late 6th–early 7th century CE), the Jewish-Christian communities most relevant were groups in Arabia and the Levant who blended Jewish traditions with belief in Jesus. These included Ebionites, Nazarenes, and related sects, alongside Syriac-speaking Christians (Nestorians and Jacobites).

The Greek Gospels were translated into Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic) by early Jewish-Christian and Syriac-speaking Christian communities in Syria and Mesopotamia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE. These translations were not the work of a single person but of church communities connected to the Syriac Orthodox (Jacobite/Monophysite) and Church of the East (Nestorian) traditions.

These communities in Syria and Palestine were also among the first to render Gospel traditions into Aramaic/Syriac, since Aramaic was the everyday language of many early Christians.

Syriac-speaking churches (Nestorian and Jacobite) institutionalized these translations, producing standardized versions like the Peshitta. These Jewish-Christian communities carried Gospel traditions into Arabia.

The identity and beliefs of these communities are expounded in the next section