THE dependence of the Koran upon the Bible whether the dependence be mediate or immediate we do not now inquire is evident at a glance. There is not a page whose language does not remind us of the Old Testament or of the New. This is partly accounted for by the similarity of the Arabic lan guage to the Hebrew, and also by the resemblance of the civilizations represented in the two books. As was noticed in the last lecture, not every verbal parallel can be taken as an evidence of dependence. To the examples there given we might add the fol lowing : We read in one instance a threat against evil-doers, which will be accomplished " though their cunning were such that mountains would be moved by it." * We need not suppose a reminiscence of a New Testament phrase. The figure is natural to one who lives in a mountainous country. Again, the evil doers are said to devour the heritage of the orphan.-^ The phrase is strikingly like some of those with which we are familiar in the New Testament, but it does not follow that it is borrowed from that source. So those ivlio expend their money in the sight of men

• Koran 14 41 .

t Ibid. 4 11 , I cite the Koran always from Fliigel s edition. GO

THE KOEAN NARRATIVES 61

are strikingly like those who do alms that they may be seen of men* but the phenomenon of ostentatious almsgiving is probably witnessed in all religions, and the identity of phenomena has produced the resem blance of language.

These reservations are not numerous or important. For considerable portions of the Koran we cannot be in doubt. Nearly all its narratives are Biblical stories. But in no case are they exact translations of the Biblical text. Quotations even of a single verse are not easy to find. The most diligent search does not discover more than two or three. The reasons for this are obvious. For one thing, there existed no Arabic translation of the Scriptures in the time of Mohammed. The Jews or Christians from whom he got his information were obliged to give the stories in their own words. But besides this, the Prophet evidently worked over the material he received, to fit it to his own purpose. He was not a historian, but a preacher. He used the history to convey a lesson. He may have had the idea that he could entertain his hearers and attract them by relat ing these histories. If so, he was disappointed. The Meccans openly preferred a reciter of fairy-stories who set up as his rival perhaps a lesson to those who think the pulpit succeeds if it entertains its hearers. How far Mohammed indulged the hope of making his message attractive by putting it in the form of stories, it is not easy to say. For the most part the narratives were made strictly subordinate to his main purpose, and we can understand the nar-

• Koran 4 42 , cf. Matt. 6 1 .

62 THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

ratives only as we keep the purpose in mind. To warn Ms hearers of the wrath to come this is his main aim, and this explains his choice of material, as well as the form in which the material is presented. As has already been remarked, this purpose is seen in his use of material from other than Biblical sources. The two histories which he takes from Arab antiquity are cast by him in Biblical form. As he tells them, both relate that a prophet was sent to his tribe. The tribe rejects the prophet and is pun ished. These brief sentences give the key to a large part of what we find in the Koran. His own experi ence is the light in which the author sees all history. The only proof necessary to adduce for this propo sition is the choice of material.

The Old Testament stories used by Mohammed are those of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Joseph, and Moses. These are all from the Pentateuch, and some of them are repeated a number of times. The de struction of Sodom is given eight times, as is the ac count of the flood. The creation and fall of Adam are recounted five times, while there are no less than thirteen somewhat extended references to Abraham. It must be evident from this that the Pentateuch furnishes the largest part of the material borrowed for narrative purposes. From the rest of the Old Testament he takes Saul, David, and Solomon, and he has allusions to Elijah, Job, Jonah, and Gog and Magog. But none of these receives anything like the space given to the characters taken from the Pentateuch.

To illustrate what I have said of Mohammed s

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 63

motive and his method of treatment I will quote one of the accounts concerning Noah. It reads as follows : *

" We sent Noah to his people [to say] : I ain a plain- speaking warner, to tell you that you must not serve any but Allah. I fear for you the punishment of a distressing day. The chiefs of his people who disbelieved, said : We see that thou art nothing but a man like us, and we see that thy followers are only the basest of us, men of rash resolution. We do not discover that you are better than we in fact we think you to be liars. He replied : O my people, if I have received a commission from my Lord, and He has given me a special grace which is unknown to you, do you think that I shall force it upon you when you are unwilling ? O, my people, I do not ask riches my reward depends on God alone, and I will not drive away those who have believed ; they shall meet their Lord. But I see you to be a people in ignorance. Moreover, O my people, who will be my helper against God if I drive these away ? Will you not consider ? I do not say that I have the treasures of God [at my command], and I do not know the secret things ; nor do I say that I am an angel, nor do I say [as you would have me] that God will not bring good to those whom your eyes despise God knoweth what is in their hearts. In case I should do this thing I should be a wrong doer. The chiefs replied : O, Noah, thou hast disputed persistently with us bring now upon us what thou hast threatened, if thou art truthful ! He said : God alone can bring it upon you when He will, and you cannot thwart it. My advice will not profit you, if I wish to advise you, when God wills to lead you astray. He is your Lord and unto Him you shall be brought [at the last Day]. Do they say : He hath invented it [i. e., his message] ? If I have invented it, then the guilt of it rests upon me but I am innocent of what you do. Then it was revealed to Noah : No more of

• Koran II"- 50 .

04 THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

thy people will believe than have believed already, but do not be distressed at what they do. Make an ark in Our sight and according to Our revelation and do not speak to Me concerning those who sin they shall certainly be drowned. Then he made the ark, and whenever the chiefs of his people passed by, they scoffed at him. He said : If you scoff at us, we shall scoff at you as you are scofling then shall you know upon whom shall come a punishment that shall disgrace him, and upon whom an abiding punish ment shall fall. [So they scoffed] until Our command came and the fountain broke forth.* We said : Place in it two of every kind, and thy family (except the one on whom the decree has passed) and those who have believed but the believers were few. Noah said : Embark ! In the name of God shall be its sailing and its mooring ; my Lord is the Forgiving, the Compassionate. And it sailed with them on the mountain-like waves, and Noah called his son who stood aloof : My son ! come with us and be not of the un believers. He replied : I will betake myself to a mountain which will save me from the water. Noah said : Nothing to-day will save from the decree of God unless He take pity. Then the waves came between them and he was drowned. Then came the command : O, Earth, swallow up the water, and, O Heaven, cease [from rain] : and the water was di minished and the decree was carried out, and [the ark] rested on al-Judee,t and it was said : Away with the wrong-doers! " Then Noah called to his Lord and said : My Lord, my son belonged to my family ; and Thy promise is true and Thou art the most just of judges. \ God replied : O Noah, he was not of thy family. It were an unrighteous deed [to

• Literally, until the oven boiled. As the word which ordinarily

means oven also means a. fountain on occasion, there is no need to suppose Rabbinic or Persian influence.

f A mountain in Mesopotamia.

J Noah is pleading for his son, though he does not express his petition in so many words. God replies to the unspoken prayer, intimating that the son has cut himself off by his unbelief.

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 65

spare him], so do not ask of me that of which thou hast no knowledge ; I warn thee lest thou be of the ignorant. Noah said : My Lord, I take refuge in Thee from asking that of which I have no knowledge ; unless Thou forgive me and take pity on me I shall be lost. Then the com mand was given : O Noah, descend in peace from Us, and blessings upon thee and upon peoples yet to come from those with thee but there are peoples whom We shall cre ate, upon whom a grievous punishment shall come."

You will agree witli me that the Bible story is used in this passage only to furnish a framework for a sermon to Mohammed s contemporaries. The details of the story, those which in the Old Testament make it so realistic, are absent. We hear nothing of the wickedness of the sons of God in marrying daughters of men which in Genesis gives a reason for the cor ruption of the earth. The violence, Avhich is the specific sin mentioned there, does not appear in the Koran. We hear nothing of the size of the ark, or its material. The duration of the rain, the time of the subsidence of the waters, the sending out of the birds, the sacrifice at the end of the voyage, and the gift of the rainbow are all passed over in silence. On the other hand we hear an extended dialogue between Noah and his people, of which the Bible gives us no hint. One hint indeed we find which might give rise to this conception. It is contained in the New Tes tament where we find Noah described as a herald of righteousness* It is this hint, as I suppose, which was worth more to Mohammed than all the Old Tes-

• II. Pet. 2 5 . The Christian tradition in the Apocalypse of Paul

(Walker, Apocryphal Gospels, 1873, p. 491; Antenicene Fathers, 1886, Vol. VIII., p. 581), where Noah says : ll I ceased not to 5

66 THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

tament details. With this hint he reconstructed the history along the lines of his own experience. The smf ulness of the antediluvians now becomes idolatry. Noah is the Warner sent to turn them to the one God. In the dialogue we hear the voices of Mohammed and the Meccan aristocracy. As in the case of Mo hammed, it is the aristocracy who oppose the preached word. Noah is told that only the lowest men hear him just as at Mecca it was mostly slaves and freed- men who made up the infant church. Noah must hear that he is a man and not an angel the implica tion being that he is not fit to be a divinely sent mes senger. Such was one of the objections made to Mohammed. He is obliged to declare that he is not seeking earthly reward an avowal elsewhere made by Mohammed for himself. He is urged to dismiss his followers ; he refuses, and then is challenged to bring the threatened punishment. It is scarcely necessary to read between the lines to discover that Mohammed had just this experience. So far does this go that Mohammed really falls out of the role in one verse, where he replies to the accusation that he had invented his message. At least it sounds as if he had forgotten for the moment that he was person ating Noah. In one of the parallel passages he shows a similar lack of historic imagination where the aristocracy of Noah s time are made to say to the people : " Do not abandon your Gods, do not aban don Wadd and Suwfi , and Yaghuth and Ya uk and

proclaim to men : Repent, for, behold, a deluge is coming ; and no one paid heed, but all derided me." For Jewish tradition, Wiinsche, Midrnsch Kokeleth* p. 130.

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 67

Nasr." But these false Gods are Gods of the Arab tribes who lived in the time of Mohammed. The commentators, who could not suppose their Prophet guilty of an anachronism, have had great difficulty in explaining how the Gods of Noah s time survived the Flood and continued to be worshipped in Arabia.t The problem causes us no perplexity. We see how Mohammed identifies himself with his predecessor Noah so fully that he hardly distinguishes what is proper to each personage. It is an artistic fault. But it testifies to the religious earnestness of the man, that he cannot get out of his mind the idolatry which is the crying sin of his people.

In another verse Mohammed reveals to us some thing of his experience I mean the one where God commands Noah not to be distressed at the small number of those who believed. He himself was no doubt often perplexed and grieved at the smallness of his following. In his perplexity he could only say that it was the will of God and therefore must be right.

So far, the story has been freely remodelled on the Biblical basis. But now we come to a feature which really contradicts the Biblical data. Noah is represent ed as having an unbelieving son. To this we may add that in another passage his wife is also represented as unbelieving and as perishing : " God sets forth as an example to those who disbelieve the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot ; they were married to two of Our righteous servants, and were unfaithful to them their husbands did not avail for them with God, and the

• Koran 71- 2f - t Cf. Wellhauscn, Skizzen, III., p. 11 ff.

/

68 THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

command went forth : Enter the Fire with those who are entering therein." * These divergences show how freely Mohammed treats his sources. For the preaching of Noah and the scoffing of his contempo raries he had authority in Jewish or Christian tradi tion. But no one has yet pointed out a precedent for the particulars we are now considering. "We are authorized in supposing that the preacher drew on his own experience for these as for other matters of detail. And we do not have far to seek for the ex perience. Doubtless there were families in Mecca which were divided father against son. In fact, we hear of such in the traditions, and we know that Mo hammed s own nearest relatives did not believe on him. It is not unlikely that he found here the only precedent he needed in order to suppose members of Noah s family unsaved in the great catastrophe.

The Biblical character which next claims our atten tion is Abraham, whose importance to Mohammed is greater than that of any other Biblical character. Whether he were already adopted in the legends of fche heathen Arabs, as has been supposed, is very doubtful. Mohammed makes him the builder of the Kaaba, and therefore the founder of Mecca ; but this may be a construction of his own. The other inci dents of Abraham s history given in the Koran are the following : He disputed with someone about the true God, and was the victor ; he prayed for evidence of the resurrection, and was commanded to cut four birds in pieces, to lay the pieces on separate hill-tops, and then to call the birds. On following out the cli-

• Koran 6G .

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 69

rections, the pieces flew together and the birds were restored to life. He entertained the angels who were sent to destroy Sodorn, received from them the prom ise of a son, and interceded for the preservation of Sodom, though without success. He refused to adore the idols of his father ; for this he was thrown into the fire, but came out unharmed. He was driven from home by his father. He was commanded in a dream to sacrifice his son (whose name is not given), and was about to consummate the sacrifice when he was allowed to substitute an animal.* A point em phasized is that he was neither Jew nor Christian, but (if I may so say) a simple believer without the sectarian marks which distinguish, and therefore di vide, these : " O People of Scripture ! Why do you dispute concerning Abraham? The Tora and the Gospel were not revealed until after his time do you not comprehend? Abraham was neither Jew nor Christian, but he was a hanif, he was resigned, and he was not one of the idolaters." t The word hanif has given rise to much speculation. For our present purpose it is enough to note that in the Koran it means turning aside from idols. It is the appropriate word to describe a man like Abraham who abandoned the false Gods and became a monotheist. It is this characteristic which makes Abraham of so much im portance to Mohammed. He sees in him his prede cessor and model. The Jews and the Christians had received revelations in written form this is what he

• Koran 2 "o ff , 11^ ff, is-.i ", SI* -"", 21s f , 37- s , 19", 37> ".

Abraham is mentioned in twenty-six different suras f Ibid. 3 5 s-i.

70 THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

recognizes in calling them people of the Book. But the result had been to produce division and mutual recrimination. "The Jews (he says) say: The Christians have no firm foundation ; and the Chris tians say : The Jews have no firm foundation. Yet they read the Scripture." The only way to put an end to the disputes of these sects is to go back to the simple monotheism of Abraham. In this theory Mo hammed was the pioneer of church union, and his is not the only attempt to unite two bodies of believers which has resulted in forming a third.

But this is aside from our main purpose. Moham med regards Abraham as his model, and describes himself in the terms which he applies to Abraham : " Who has a more excellent religion than one who re signs himself to God while doing good works, and who follows the faith of Abraham as one who turns aside from idols [literally, as a hanif]ior God took Abraham as His friend ; " " The nearest of men to Abraham are those who follow him, and this prophet [Mohammed] also is one of them." f In taking this position, Mohammed was only following the precedent set by the Apostle Paul. In justifying himself for giving up the Jewish Law, while still claiming to be long to the true seed of Abraham, Paul argued by the example of Abraham. It was conceded that Abra ham was a true believer, the Father of the Faithful. But if this be so, religion cannot consist in the ob servance of the Law, for the Law came into force long after Abraham s death. For the true believer it must be enough to go back to the simplicity of Abra-

• Koran 2 <". f Ibid. 4>, 3 >.

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 71

ham s religion. The argument of Mohammed is just the same, only he does not set it forth with the same array of logic. To the Jews who insisted that he must become a Jew in order to be saved, and to the Christians who insisted that he must become a Chris tian in order to be saved, Mohammed made the per tinent reply that Abraham lived the life of faith before the coming of either of their codes. The essentials of religion must consist in such faith as Abraham had, and this (according to his light) Mohammed adopted and preached. To him, just as truly as to Paul, Abraham was the Father of the Faithful.

How much direct New Testament influence led to this view of Abraham ? In the meagreness of the sources we are not able to answer this question with positiveness. In general, Mohammed does not shoAv much familiarity with the thought of the Apostle Paul. But I am inclined to think that some New Testament hint concerning the position of Abraham as the Father of Believers had come to him. It needs only a hint of that with which we are in sym pathy to give us a flood of light. As showing that there was New Testament influence we may note that we find Mohammed calling Abraham the Friend of God a point mentioned both in the Old Testament and in the New, but more distinctly brought out in the New.*

For other features of the Koran picture we must consult both Bible and tradition. Even then we dis cover that Mohammed dealt freely with his sources. The incident of the birds and the night covenant was

• Is. 41 8 ; James 2 ?3 .

72 THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

unintelligible to him, as it doubtless is to many a Chris tian reader as well. But he could use it as a proof of the resurrection something of which he felt the need in his preaching. He therefore transformed it into something quite different from the Biblical story. In regard to the dispute concerning the power of God, the Koran tells us only of an anonymous opponent who claimed to be the giver of life and of death and therefore to be God. Abraham replied : My Lord makes the sun to rise in the East, do thou make it rise in the West ? whereat the infidel was put to confusion. In this story we have the tradition of Abraham s dispute with Nimrod, which was current among Jews and Christians before Mohammed s time. It was especially pat to Mohammed s purpose because it confounded the idolater.

Another legend current among both Jews and Christians was useful in the same line. It makes Terali, Abraham s father, to be a dealer in idols. One day Abraham was left in charge of the shop, and a woman came with an offering of food. Abraham set it before the largest idol, broke all the other idols and put a club in the hands of the large one. When his father asked about it he said : the idols quarrelled over the food ; then the largest one became angry, took the club and broke the rest in pieces. Terali declared this to be impossible because the images could not move, whereupon Abraham convicted him out of his own mouth, which confessed him to be a worshipper of that which had no power. Neverthe less Abraham was brought before Nimrod and thrown into a fiery furnace, from which he was saved by a

TUK KORAN NARRATIVES 73

miracle. Mohammed had no objection to taking a story from tradition rather than from the Biblical text if indeed he knew the difference. That he took this one from a Christian source is indicated by the fact that he calls Abraham s father by the name Azar, which is quite similar to what we find in a Christian writer, though quite unlike the Hebrew Terah.* The Book of Jubilees, which circulated largely among both Jews and Christians, knows the story of Abraham s controversy with his father about the idols, so that there is no difficulty in attributing Mohammed s knowledge to Christian tradition, t

But it is clear that we cannot trace all the feat ures of Mohammed s Abraham to preceding authori ties, either Jewish or Christian. The main incidents came originally from the Bible so much is evident. Some of the variations or additions can be account ed for on the theory that they are borrowed from Jewish or Christian sources outside the Bible. But others cannot be so accounted for, and can, in the

• Athar is the name of Abraham s father in Eusebius according to

Sale, note on 6 74 . He probably got his knowledge from Maracci, Prodromus ad Refutationem Alcorani (1698), Pars IV., p. 90, which is also cited by Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthum Aufgenommen (1833), p 128. Maracci only says: apud Eusebium in Historia Ecclesiastica, The story of Abraham and the idols ia found in Midrasch Bereschith Rabba, Uebersetzt von Wiinsche, Par. 38 (p. 173). It is quoted also by Geiger, /. c., p. 124. Among Christian authorities Jerome, Questiones Ifebraicce in Genesim (on Gen. II 28 ), Op. ed. Vallarsius (1767), III., c. 323, cf. IV., c. 779, speaks of Abraham s being thrown into the fire.

t Ewald, Jahrbucher, III., p. 3. Griinbaum, Neue Beitrage zur Semitischen Sagenkunde (1893), p. 96, says that the story is also given by Ephraem Syrus.

74 THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

present state of our knowledge, be attributed only to Mohammed himself, working under the belief that Abraham was for him a predecessor and a model.

As we have seen, Mohammed s scheme of history is writ large in these stories of former prophets. Ac cording to him, the past ages are a series of prophetic crises. In each one, a prophet has been sent to his people to warn them against sin. His usual experi ence is that his hearers refuse the message and mock or persecute him. Not long after, the calamity over takes them and they perish. The prophet, with a few followers, is spared. In each of these cycles, the account is colored by Mohammed s own experience. Even the tribes of Arabia which have perished, have perished for the same reasons, and their prophets speak the language of rebuke and warning just like their brethren of the Biblical history. This con stant iteration is one reason for the tediousness of the Koran. But a little reflection will show us that something of the same monotony is found in all preaching. The truths of religion are comparatively few and simple. The prophet is not infrequently accused of repeating himself. Even an Isaiah was mocked for bringing line upon line and precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, as though he were teaching children just weaned from the milk. We shall not be surprised to find in the Koran the same lesson repeatedly enforced when we remember how long the prophet of Mecca addressed deaf ears and unbelieving hearts. The sameness of the lesson, whatever the particular incident which illustrates it, makes it unnecessary for us to go at length into all

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 75

the material. There is one character, however, to which we must devote a little time, and that is Moses.

From what has been said about Abraham, it is evident that Mohammed would have formulated his scheme of the world s history about as follows : There has always been in the world one true religion. This has been revealed without substantial variation to different prophets from Adam down : " [God] has established for you the religion which He command ed Noah, and that which We revealed to thee, and that which We commanded Abraham and Moses and Jesus, saying : Observe the true religion and do not be divided among yourselves." * When the Jews and Christians insisted on the confession of their faith as necessary for salvation, Mohammed instructed his followers to say : " We believe in God and in what has been revealed to us, and in what was revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the twelve tribes, and in what was given to Moses and to Jesus, and what was given to the prophets by their Lord. We make no difference between them and we are resigned to Him." The position could scarcely be stated more clearly, and the choice of Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus is a particularly happy one, and shows that Mohammed had really grasped the Bibli cal scheme for these men stand at the opening of the great epochs of sacred history.

The name of Moses, the one to whom we now come, occurs in thirty-four suras of the Koran, and his history is given at length in a number of these.t

• 42 n , cf. 2 I3 .

| 2 3-io3 ? 7101-154^ 20 s - 97 , 2G 9 66 are the most extended. Somewhat briefer are 27 ", 28 -- 38 , lO 16 95 .

76 THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

The fact that it is given so many times should caution us against seeking the origin of the variations from the Biblical text in Rabbinical or Patristic sources. It is not likely that Mohammed received the account from an informant more than once. Having it once in his possession, he felt at liberty to treat it accord ing to the varying exigencies of different times. The account which is earliest in point of time (to all ap pearance) is comparatively brief, and it shows that the Prophet was moved, as in all his earlier preaching, by the thought of God s judgment : "Has the story of Moses come to thee ? When his Lord called him in the sacred valley of Tuwa [He said] : Go to Pharaoh the arrogant and say to him : Wilt thou be come pure ? I will guide thee to thy Lord, and thou shalt fear Him. Then he showed him a great mir acle. But Pharaoh accused him of deceit and was rebellious. He turned his back, exciting disorder. Then he collected the people and said : I am your Lord most high ! But God destroyed him with the punishments of this world and of the world to come. Verily this is a warning to him that fears God." * For the purpose of the speaker this is an admirable epit ome of the story of Moses. It shows just the points which Mohammed wished to emphasize, that is : those parallel with his own case. Even here he does not adhere strictly to the Biblical account, for we nowhere read that Pharaoh claimed to be God. This is borrowed evidently from Mohammed s informant, and the same feature is found in fact in Jewish authorities.

• 79 !5 - 26 .

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 77

ID the more extended accounts which Mohammed elsewhere gives, we find details taken from Christian as well as Jewish sources, besides some which are due to the narrator s own imagination. From Jewish tradition he asserts : that Moses refused all Egyptian nurses; that the people at Mount Sinai demanded to see God, and on seeing Him fell dead, but were revived by divine power ; and that they refused to accept the covenant until the mountain was lifted up bodily and held over them.* The information that the golden calf, through the magic of its maker, belloived, is found in Rabbinical sources, and a similar affirmation is made of another golden calf in a Chris tian writer of the tenth century. t Mohammed makes the magicians of Pharaoh repent and confess the true God. This is perhaps a legitimate deduction from the Old Testament account, in which they are said to recognize the finger of God.| No Jewish document has been found which makes the deduction, but we know of a Christian apocryphon, now lost, which was entitled : Liber Pcenitentice Jamncc et Mamlrce. Jamnes and Mambres, I hardly need say, are the traditional names of the magicians. We are justified, there fore, in supposing this item borrowed from a Chris tian source.

There remain a number of data which are due to

• 28", 2 53 , 60 , 7 110 .

t 7 146 , 20 90 . On the Kabbinical authorities cf. Geiger, Was hat Mohammed, etc., pp. 155-172. The lowing of the golden calf at Gilgal on the day of Elisha s birth is spoken of in the Book of the Bee, Budge s translation, p. 70.

t Ex. 8 16 , English version 8 9 ; Koran 20 7S ".

II. Tim. 3 5 , cf. Dillraann in P. R. E. 2 , XII., p. 365.

78 THIS BIBLE AND ISLAM

Mohammed s own imagination, or which simply wit ness to his ignorance of the Bible account. Thus : he gives the plagues at one time as five and again as uino in number ; * he makes Hauian one of the coun sellors of Pharaoh ; f he supposes the buildings of Pharaoh to have been destroyed, and that the mur- murers against Moses returned to Egypt ; J yet, in another passage, he seems to affirm that Israel pos sessed the country of Pharaoh after him. That Moses repented of having killed the Egyptian is a minor addition which we can easily account for, and it is not a serious error that Pharaoh s wife is made to care for Moses, instead of his daughter, il Confusion of Moses with Jacob is the evident cause of the assertion that Moses served eight years for a wife, and a similar confusion of Egypt with Babylon shows itself when Pharaoh orders the people to make brick : " that I may make a lofty building, so as to become acquainted with the God of Moses though, indeed, I think him to be a liar."

Almost all these departures from the Biblical nar rative occur in late chapters, and they show what has already been remarked, that as time went on, the preacher became less careful (if, indeed, he ever was careful) of historical accuracy, and adapted his material more freely to the purpose in hand. In the use of this material we can see the influence of his own changed circumstances. Few characters in his tory have experienced a greater change of fortune than fell to the lot of Mohammed in going from

• 7 130 , 17 103 . t28 38 . J 7 I3:i , 2 58 .

L>iJ"-. ||28" 14f . 28- 1 -*.

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 79

Mecca to Medina. At Mecca he was the proscribed preacher of a new religion. His followers were few in number, and the majority of these had fled to Abyssinia. His persecution by the leading men of the city took away from him every occupation of a secular nature. Even the public proclamation of his message was forbidden after a time. All that was open to him was meditation, prayer, and the encour agement of a very narrow circle of friends. With the removal to Medina all this was changed. The cares of administration were thrust upon him. His life became a life of activity instead of contemplation, and his sermons necessarily dealt with the concrete issues of the hour.

The reason for calling attention to this fact at just this point is that one of the longer histories of Moses in the Koran can be understood only from this situa tion of the Prophet. It is really a polemic against the Jews. We have reason to believe that Moham med came to Medina with great expectations, based on the fact that a considerable part of the population was Jewish. He sincerely believed his religion to be the same as theirs. He was sure that he was the legitimate successor of their prophets. What would be more natural than that they should join his com munity, or at least that his followers and they should unite on a common basis of recognition ? With this idea he made Jerusalem his Kibla, and assimilated his doctrine to theirs. But he was speedily unde ceived. The Jews were wholly guided by their Rabbis, who had no mind to a prophet born out of Palestine. They refused to see the marks of their

80 THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

expected Messiah in the Meccan adventurer. They were, moreover, conscious of their intellectual supe riority. They had studied the sacred Books which were in their hands. Mohammed conceded the authority of these Books, but he was only slightly acquainted with their contents. In arguing from them the Jews had an evident advantage, and often put the Moslems to silence. At last Mohammed was obliged to forbid his followers to argue with the Jews, and he accused these of concealing portions of their revelation.

This certainly could not conduce to harmony, and Mohammed early realized that he had to deal with men less open to conviction than the heathen. The Jews, on their part, did not see the danger of trifling with a man who was in dead earnest, and who now had the sword in his hand. Their more instructed men would lay traps for Mohammed in their talks with him, and when he betrayed his ignorance, as he would naturally betray it in such circumstances, they would go away and in their own circle make merry over his laughable blunders. Arab satire travels fast, it travels far, and it bites hard. We can easily con ceive the situation of a prophet in a mixed community, ridiculed in couplets that were in the mouths of all who were hostile or who were lukewarm. The insults were the harder to bear in that they were directed against beliefs which had become sacred to him. They seemed to him blasphemies against the Holy Ghost and he never forgave them. The expatriation of one Jewish tribe, and the extermination of another, were only part of his answer.

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 81

It was before the open breach came that the follow ing review of the history of Israel was delivered :

" O Children of Israel ! Remember My grace which I con ferred upon you [when I said] : Keep the covenant with Me and I will keep the covenant with you ; and fear Me and believe in what I have revealed in confirmation of what you already possess, * and be not the first to disbelieve. And do not sell My wonders for a small price, f but fear Me. Do not cover up the truth with falsehood, nor conceal the truth which you know. \ But observe prayer and give alms and bow with those who bow down. Will you command men good actions but forget them yourselves ? Yet you read the Scriptures ; do you not comprehend ? Practise therefore patience and prayer this is difficult except for the humble, who are mindful that one day they must meet their Lord and that they are to return to Him.

O, Children of Israel ! Remember My grace which I have conferred upon you, in that I have distinguished you above the worlds ; and fear the day when one soul shall not pay the debt of another, nor shall its intercession be received nor a ransom be accepted nor aid be given. And [remem ber] when We saved you from the tribe of Pharaoh who in flicted upon you a grievous calamity in that they slew your sons while they preserved alive your daughters (this was a severe trial from your Lord ); and when We divided the sea for you and delivered you, but drowned the host of Pha raoh while you looked on. But when We gave the promises

• That is, the Scriptures.

f An accusation elsewhere made against the Jews, reminding us of Paul s charge that the idolaters exchange the truth of God for a lie. Possibly Mohammed thought the Jewish scribes forged verses which they sold as Biblical.

J This means : the Jews deny that their Scriptures contain what Mohammed says they contain.

Paul also accuses the Jews of teaching the Law to others, at the same time violating it themselves, Rom. 2. 6

82 THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

to Moses forty nights, then you took the calf in his absence and transgressed. Yet We forgave you, thinking perhaps yon would be grateful. We gave Moses the Book and the Distinction,* that you might be rightly led; and Moses said to his people : O, iny people ! you have wronged your own souls in taking the calf ; repent in presence of your Cre ator or else kill each other f this were better for you with Him He will forgive you, He is the Forgiving, the Com passionate. And when you said : O, Moses, we will not believe in thee unless we see God clearly, the thunderbolt struck you while you gazed, but We brought you to life after you had died, thinking perhaps you would be grate ful. And We shaded you with the cloud \ and sent you the manna and the quails, saying : Eat of the good things with which We nourish you (they did not harm Us but it Avas their own souls that they harmed). And when We said : Enter this city and eat of it abundantly whenever you choose, but enter the gate bowing down and asking forgive ness We will forgive your sins and will certainly prosper those who do well then the evil-doers substituted a word different from the one which was commanded them, and we sent upon the evil-doers a pestilence for their iniquity. And when Moses asked water for his people, We said : Strike the rock with thy staff ; and there broke from it twelve fountains, every one knew his drinking place [and We said] : Eat and drink of the sustenance given by God, and do not deal unjustly in the earth, creating disorder. And when you said : O, Moses, we cannot bear this one kind of food, ask of thy Lord that He bring forth for us of the

• The book which distinguishes between right and wrong. Pos

sibly Mohammed thinks of the Mosaic tradition (the Mishna) which expounds the regulations of the Law more exactly.

t 0-r, Kill yourselves. The sense is obscure. The Arab com mentator makes it mean mortify your lusts, but that is hardly Mo hammed s intention. I suspect a reminiscence of the fact that the Levites fell upon the idolatrous people and slew them.

J Evidently the pillar of cloud.

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 83

fruits of the earth, vegetables and cucumbers, and garlic and lentils, and onions, he said : Will you prefer the worse to the better ? Return to Egypt and you shall have what you ask. And they were smitten with abasement and pov erty and returned with the anger of God upon them. This was because they disbelieved in the signs of God and killed the prophets wrongfully; this it was in which they rebelled and transgressed. Those who believe, though they be Jews or Christians or Sabeans whoever believes in God and the Last Day, and does good, receives a reward from his Lord. Fear shall not coi-ue upon them nor shall they be grieved.

And when We made a covenant with you and lifted the mountain above you, saying : Receive with steadfast ness what We have brought you and remember what it contains perchance you will be God-fearing then you turned back ; and had not the grace of God been upon you and Hib mercy, you would have been lost. You know who of you transgressed the Sabbath, and We said to them : Become abhorred apes ! Thus We made them an exam ple to their fellows, and to those who should come after them and a warning to those who feared God. And when Moses said to his people : God commands you to sacrifice a heifer ; they replied : Art thou making a mock of us ? He said : I take refuge in God from being one of the ignorant ! Then they said : Pray thy Lord for us that He would ex plain to us what sort of a heifer it should be. Moses re plied : She is to be neither old nor young, but of a medium age, therefore do what you are commanded ! They said : Pray thy Lord to tell us plainly of what color she should be. He replied : It is commanded that she should be of a bright red, a color which pleases the beholder. Then they said : Pray thy Lord to describe her plainly to us we have cattle that look alike, and we would be guided if God please. Moses replied : It is commanded that she be not broken to till the ground or to water the fields, sound,* and without spot. They said : Now thou bringest a true

• Not approached by the male.

84 TUE BIBLE AXD ISLAM

message. So they sacrificed her, but they were near not doing it. And when you killed a man, and quarrelled con cerning the deed (but God brought to light what you were concealing), then We said : Touch the dead man with a part of the heifer ; thus God brings to life the dead, and shows you His signs perchance you will comprehend.* But even after this your hearts were hard, even like rock or harder, for there are rocks from which streams spring, and there are those which open and let the water flow ; and there are [hearts] which bow in fear of God, and God is not unmindful of what you do. \

When we read this tremendous indictment we see that the Biblical facts are used for a purpose. And they are used with skill. The Jews could not deny the most of the facts here recited. They were guilty, or at least their fathers were guilty as charged. The position of Mohammed is precisely the position of the New Testament, as shown in the speech of Stephen. Mohammed had no such orderly knowl edge of the history as Stephen had, biit he uses what knowledge he had in just the way in which Stephen used his. The climax of Stephen s discourse is the real burden of Mohammed s: "Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears ! Ye do always re sist the Holy Ghost ; as your fathers did so do ye. Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute . . . ye who received the Law as it was ordained by angels and kept it not!" Whether there was some knowledge of the New Testament position on Mohammed s part we cannot certainly say. As a case

• The implication is that the murdered man was raised to life long

enough to testify against his murderer.

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 85

of history repeating itself, the parallel is certainly interesting and instructive. The similarity extends further than the two discourses. In each case the discourse showed that the breach was at hand. The Jews could not deny the guilt charged by Mohammed or by Stephen. It did not follow that they would be converted. The divergence was already hopeless.*

Turning now to the New Testament, we discover that only two of its histories are known to Moham-

• For the sake of completeness, we may notice that Mohammed

has some other incidents not yet traced to their original. He knows of a time when the Children of Israel were commanded to enter a city in a certain way, but they changed the word which was com manded. The Mohammedan commentators say that out of wanton ness they went in in an indecent posture and instead of saying hitta (forgiveness) they said hubba, a grain of corn. For this they were punished, apparently with a pestilence. This is simply a conjecture on the basis of the Koran text. I am inclined to see in the passage the incident of the spies. The people Avere commanded to enter the land (the distinction between land and city is easily lost) and to act righteously there. The spies substituted their evil report for the command of God. The people then, having first refused to go, in sisted upon going wilfully and were smitten. The resemblances are not very marked, but the Biblical story might give rise to what we find in the Koran. (This identification is not original with me.)

Again we have the story of the violators of the Sabbath who were changed into apes. The only Rabbinical parallel yet pointed out is the Midrash that a part of the people of the Tower of Babel were changed into apes, demons, and evil spirits. Cf . Hirschfeld, Judische Elemente im Koran (1878), p. 65, who cites Talmud, Sanhedrin 109 a. Possibly the Arabs in Medina had turned this story against the Jews before the coming of Mohammed. It is scarcely necessary to point out that the narrative of the red heifer has mixed two Mosaic ordinances the sacrifice of the red heifer in the Book of Numbers (chap. 19) and the Deuteronomic enactment (chap. 21) that a heifer should be slain to atone for a murder the author of which i.9 r.nknown.

86 THE BIBLK AND ISLAM

med. These are the history of John the Baptist, and the life of Jesus. John is a prophet, and, like the other prophets, receives a book, that is, a revelation.* Zachariah, his father, is also once mentioned in the list of prophets. Elsewhere he comes in incidentally, in connection with the birth of his son. Zachariah s prayer and its answer are recounted somewhat at length, following in the main the narrative of Luke. John is a prophet entirely after the pattern of those already known to us from the Old Testament. t

Concerning Jesus, the first facb that we meet is that he is not mentioned in the earliest group of suras. But as very few Biblical characters are men tioned in this period, the fact may have no special significance. Mohammed s thought at this time was much upon the approaching judgment. The few his tories to which he alludes are those which enforce the lesson of God s chastisement, the destruction of Sodom, the overthrow of Pharaoh, the judgments on Ad and Thamud, the catastrophe of the Lord of the Elephant. These are almost the only events to which he alludes. The life of Jesus presents no feature which would bring it into relation with these events, so that although there are distinctively Christian

• 19 13 , 3 a4 .

t It may be, as supposed by Sprenger (Leben Muhammed s, II., 184), that Mohammed thought John the founder of the sect of the Sabaeans (or Mandseans). But this is not proved by the fact that he describes John as receiving a book. He conceives that all the prophets receive sacred books : " If they accuse thee of falsehood [remember that] the apostles before thee were accused of false hood, they who brought signs und Psalms and an enlightening Book," 3 181 .

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 87

features in these early revelations, they present no natural opening for a life of Jesus.

Again : it is noticeable that Jesus is nearly always mentioned in connection with Mary. It almost seems as if Mohammed were more impressed with Mary than with Jesus : " [Remember] her who kept her virginity, and We made her and her son a sign for the worlds" is said in one of the earliest passages in which either one is mentioned.* In another, of the same period, Mohammed gives an account of the Annunciation and of the birth of Jesus without mentioning him otherwise than as the infant,\ until at the close, apparently as an afterthought, he adds : " This [that is, the infant] is Jesus, son of Mary, the Word of Truth, concerning whom they are in doubt." \ Still another reference of this period is the following : " And We made the son of Mary and his mother a sign, and We gave them an asylum in a lofty place, still and well- watered." We can hardly be mistaken in finding here a reference to the Revelation of John, where the woman who gives birth to the man child, flees into the wilderness where " she has a place pre pared of God that they may nourish her." Perhaps this passage of the Revelation was already brought into connection with the Flight into Egypt. In any case, up to this point there is no indication of the pre-eminence of Jesus, but rather a tendency to hold up Mary as the chief character. A further evidence

• 21 91 .

4. 191 6-34 _

I This translation makes a slight change in the pointing. I sup pose the sense to be the same as in -i ^. 23 5J , cf. Rev. 12 .

88 THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

of this is the space given to the life of Mary. In re lating this, Mohammed draws from sources outside the Canon. His own property we can see only in his calling her the daughter of Imran and the sister of Aaron * doubtless a confusion of Mary with Miriam, the names being identical in Arabic.

Concerning her, we hear that she was dedicated by her parents to the service of Clod, and thus came into the care of Zacharias, to whom she was assigned by the sacred lot.f She resides in the Temple, where she is fed by the angels. She is visited by the angel, who announces that she is to become the mother of Jesus. A spring of water breaks forth at her feet and a palm-tree supplies her with dates. The infant Jesus speaks to vindicate his mother.^ The most of these details can be identified in the Apocryphal Gospels which have come down to us. According to these, Mary was dedicated to God by her parents when three years old and taken to live in the Temple. There she was fed by the angels. When fourteen years old she was assigned to Joseph, from whose rod there came forth a dove. In her need, a palm bends down to supply her with dates and a spring flows at her feet. We do not find in any of these sources

• 19".

t " Thou wast not among them when they threw their reeds to see which of them should care for Mary, nor wert thou with them when they disputed," 3 39 .

I The main references are 3 30 ", 19 10 34 .

These incidents are narrated in the various Apocryphal Gospels, cf. the volume in the Antenicene Christian Library containing translations of these by Walker, American edition of the Antenicene Fathers, Vol. VIII. Some of them are also found in the Boole of the Bee, translated by Budge.

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 89

that Jesus speaks immediately after his birth, but a similar incident is narrated in a Syriac Christian source,* by which (indirectly) Mohammed was pos sibly influenced.

The prominence of extra canonical sources seen in the life of Mary is less marked in the life of Jesus. When we are told, however, that he made birds of clay and that when he blew upon them they became alive, we remember the similar account in the Apoc ryphal Gospels. Mohammed has also an extended account of Jesus bringing a table with food from heaven for his disciples. On the face of it, this seems to be derived from the institution of the Supper, with reminiscences of Peter s vision at Joppa. We hear in general of Jesus s miracles, that he healed a man blind from his birth, and a leper, and that he raised a dead man to life. Beyond this, Jesus is affirmed to be a prophet, the Word of God and His Spirit, and one who received a Book of revelations.

Mohammed was compelled to define his position in regard to Jesus, first by the assertions of the Meccans and then by the claims of the Jews. We know of the dilemma proposed by the Meccans from the following passage : f

And when the son of Mary is proposed as a likeness, then thy people turn their backs to him and say : Are our gods better, or is he ? They say this only out of contention, and verily they are a contentious people. In truth he was only a servant on whom We bestowed Our grace, and We made him an example to the Children of Israel. (If We had

• The Life of Ephraem contained in Uhlemann s Syrische Chres-

tomathie gives a similar incident.

90 THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

willed, We would have produced from you angels to succeed you in the earth.) And he is a sign of the [approach of the] Hour.* Therefore do not dispute concerning this but fol lowthis is the straight path and let not Satan turn you away ; he is your declared enemy. When Jesus brought signs and wonders he said : I bring you true wisdom, and I will make plain to you a part of that concerning Avhich you dispute ; fear God and obey. God is my Lord and your Lord, therefore serve Him this is the straight path. But the sects disputed among themselves. Woe to those who do evil ; for them is the punishment of a day of torture."

The most natural interpretation of this passage is the one suggested by the commentators. Mohammed had threatened that the idolaters should be cast into hell and with them their false gods. The Meccans knew enough of Christianity to say that Jesus also was an object of worship. They therefore held up the dilemma either all objects of worship besides Allah were not cast into hell, or else Jesus, whom Mohammed held up as an example, must go with them. In either case Mohammed had spoken falsely. This is the meaning of their question whether Jesus was better than their gods.

The reply is, in effect, that Jesus was only a man like the other prophets, and that he himself called men to the w r orship of the one God. As to his alleged divinity, not all even of the Christians are agreed about it, and in the difference of opinion it is best to adhere to that of which we are fully con vinced, namely : that there is but one God, and that Jesus was an Apostle like Abraham and Moses, but not worthy of higher honor than they.

• Jcsus s second coming will precede the judgment.

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 91

The temptation at Medina was of another sort. There Mohammed was trying to win the Jews, to whom Jesus was an abomination. It would have been one obstacle removed if he could have taken Je sus out of the company of Abraham and Moses. But Mohammed was firm in the position once taken. While still denying the divinity of Jesus, he reaffirmed his Apostleship. The following are all from Medinan suras :

And Jesus the son of Mary, said to his people : O, Children of Israel ! I am the Apostle of God to you, testi fying to the truth of what you have already received in the Tora, and bringing you tidings of an Apostle to come after me whose name is Ahmed. But when he showed them, miracles they said : This is evident magic. *

Then [after Noah and Abraham] We sent Jesus the son of Mary, and We gave him the Gospel, and We placed in the hearts of those who followed him, tenderness and com passion. f

[The Day when God assembles the Apostles] He will say: O, Jesus, Son of Mary! Remember My grace bestowed upon thee and thy Mother, when I strengthened thee with the Spirit of Holiness, that thou shouldst speak to men when in the cradle and when full grown. And I taught thee the Book and the Wisdom and the Tora and the Gos pel. "J

This passage is followed by an account of the mir acles ; other passages of this period also affirm that Jesus performed miracles, that he received the Holy Spirit, and that he was an Apostle sent with a Book.

Mohammed adhered therefore to the position once taken. But with the same persistency he refused to

• 61 8 . t57- 7 . 15 09 .

92 THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

go further and acknowledge that Jesus was more than a prophet. The knowledge that the Christians af firmed a Trinity in the Godhead found no response in his heart except one of denial. Yv r e can scarcely wonder at this. The knowledge seems not to have come to him until his system was settled in his own mind. His mind was unschooled in theological defi nition and could apprehend the doctrine only as Tritheism, and therefore as a modification of the polytheism which he was opposing. Some have in deed found a Trinitarian tendency in his adoption of the name Rahman for God. But this is unlikely, for the vigor with which he rejected the Christian doc trine is evident. The following passages cannot leave any doubt in our minds :

" The Jews say : Ezra is the son of God ; and the Chris tians say: The Messiah, Son of Mary, is the son of God. This word of theirs in their mouths is like the word of those who were unbelieving in old time. God has declared war against them. Why should they lie ? " *

"They are unbelievers who say that the Messiah, the son of Mary, is God. The Messiah said [on the contrary] : O, Children of Israel, serve God, my Lord and your Lord ; whoever associates anything with God [as an object of worship], God has shut Paradise against him, and his abode is the Fire, and the evildoers have no helper. They are unbelievers who say : God is one of three. There is no God but One, and if they do not cease saying this a pain ful punishment shall overtake the unbelievers. . . . The Messiah, Son of Mary, was only an Apostle who was preceded by other Apostles. His mother also was truthful [and would not permit such an assertion]. They were both accustomed to eat [mortal] food. " f

• 9 :0 . to- . 8 .

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 03

O, ye who possess the Scriptures ! Be not extravagant in your religion, and do not say concerning God anything but the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, was the Apostle of God and His Word which He communicated to Mary, and a spirit from Him. Believe therefore in God and His Apostles and do not say : Three ! Cease doing it, that will be better for you. One God alone is God. Far be it from Him that He should have a son ! To Him be longs what is in heaven and what is on earth and God suffices us as an administrator. The Messiah, Son of Mary, did not disdain to be a servant to God, nor do the angels who draw near to him. *

These passages, with others, show the sharp recoil in the Prophet s mind from the doctrine of the Trin ity. But we should remember that the Trinity, as he supposed the Christians to teach it, was made up of Father, Son, and Mary. Thus only can we interpret his constant association of Mary and Jesus, and his very sparing mention of the Holy Spirit. Among the Christian sects of the East, Mary was early lifted to the throne of heaven. " Her cultus is [still] equally in vogue among orthodox and heretics." f It was in Arabia that the Collyridians invested her with the name and honors of a goddess4 This reflection throws light upon a passage of the Koran where God is represented as saying to Jesus at the Last Day : " O, Jesus, Son of Mary ! didst thou say to men : take me and my mother as gods besides Allah ? He will reply : Far be it ! It does not belong to me to say

• 4.169

t Kattenbusch, Lehrbuch der Vergleichende Confessions- Kunde (1892), I., p. 464.

t Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Chapter L. Cf. Sale, Preliminary Discourse, II.

9i THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

what is not true. Thou knowest whether I have said it. Thou knowest what is in my soul." * This pas sage seems to show conclusively that Mohammed con ceived of the Christian Trinity as made up of Allah, Mary, and Jesus.

Now such a Trinity would seeni the more distinctly heathen to him, because the heathen also related their gods in families. The Meccans had a considerable pantheon. The question of the relationship existing between its members had probably already occurred to them. If not, it was forced upon them by Moham med s claim that two Gods could not coexist without war. The natural theory, as we see in other polythe istic religions, is that the gods make a family. Not only was this the theory of the Meccans, it was a point at which Mohammed at one time made concessions to them, though he afterward retracted. This experi ence made him more than ever determined to main tain the absolute unity of God. A number of passages which deny that God has children are directed prima rily against the Meccan doctrine. It is probably so with the early profession of faith : " God is One ; the self-existent God ; He begets not and is not begotten ; and nothing is to be likened to Him." And again : " He it is to whom belongs the kingdom of heaven and of earth, and He has not taken any as son, nor has He an associate in the kingdom. He created all things, and determined them by His decree ; yet they take as gods besides Him things which do not create, but are themselves created." f And once more : " They say : The Compassionate has a sou. Far be it from

• 5"". tSura 112, and 25- v <.

TUK KORAN NARRATIVES 95

Him. Nay, these are honored servants. They do not anticipate Him in speaking, and they perform His commands. He knows what is before and what is behind them, and they can intercede only so far as He gives permission, and they tremble with fear of Him. Should one of them say : I am a God besides Him such an one We will reward with Gehenna. Thus we reward the evildoers." * It is abundantly evident that this is directed against the gods of the Meccans. But having taken this position in regard to the daughters of God, as they called their goddesses, no way was open to him to acknowledge the sonship of Christ. In truth, he shows no desire to recognize it, and in one place goes so far as to say that, at the affirmation that God has a son, the heavens are ready to be rent in twain, the earth to cleave asunder, and the mountains to fall into ruin.f

One thing more must be noticed in this connection. In regard to the death of Jesus, Mohammed took what is known as the Doketic position. His lan guage is this : " They [that is, the Jews] say : We slew the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the Apos tle of God4 But they did not slay him, and they did not crucify him, but a likeness was presented to them, and they who disputed concerning him were in doubt they had no certain knowledge, but followed an opinion. They did not kill him in reality ; God raised him to Himself. God is almighty and wise.

• 21 26 - 30 . f 19J f

t Of course the Jews would not call him either the Messiah or

the Apostle of God. Mohammed gives the sense of their claim as

it lay in his mind.

96 THE BIBLE AND ISLAM

There are none of the people of the Scriptures who will not believe on him before their death, and in the clay of resurrection he will be a witness against them." * It is clear from this language that the doc trine adopted by Mohammed came from those Gnostic sects which denied that Jesus Avas really crucified, holding that Judas was substituted for him, and nailed to the cross, while Jesus ascended directly to heaven.f The variations of this view held by the different sects do not here concern us. ^ hat interests us is the motive of Mohammed in adopting it, as he did, at a comparatively late date. In earlier chapters he al ludes to the death of Jesus in the same terms which he employs in speaking of the other prophets. %

It is perhaps significant that Mohammed so often reproaches the people of the Scriptures with their differences and disputes. He had primarily in mind, we may suppose, the disputes between Jews and Christians. But it is not unlikely that he also knew of the differences between the Christian sects. If so we may conclude that he had become aware of the different views of the death of Jesus, and that he was compelled to choose between them. The motive in adopting the one on which he finally settled was fur nished by the Jews at Medina. The passage before us shows that the Jews taunted him with the claim that they had put to death one of the Apostles whom he claimed as a predecessor. Now, in his general

• 4 156 f . fCf. Herzog, P.R.E. , IX., p. 247. J 19".

An interesting parallel is found in the language used by the Jewish King Dhu Nowas to the Christian inhabitants of Nagran : " The Greeks know that our fathers, who were priests and Pharisees

THE KORAN NARRATIVES 97

scheme, Mohammed found no room for the early death of a prophet. In the cases already discussed, the prophet was uniformly delivered, while the unbelievers were destroyed. The life of Jesus as it is given in the Gospels does not conform to this scheme. The theory that Jesus offered himself for His people did not commend itself to him if he ever heard of it, nor would it really answer the argument of the Jews. The relief sought was found in the Doketic doctrine, which was therefore adopted. In this way the life of Jesus was brought into harmony with Mohammed s general scheme of history as already exemplified in the account of the earlier prophets.

Our study of this evening has shown us the method and the aim of one religious leader. It shows him willing to take historical material wherever he could find it, to serve the great end he had at heart. It shows him moulding the material according to his own experiences, and making it serve the edification of his own followers. In all this I conceive that we are discovering something like a law of spiritual progress.

In the next lecture we shall approach the more distinctly theological part of our subject, in looking at Mohammed s doctrine of God.

and lawyers in Jerusalem, crucified a man in Jerusalem ; and they smote and mocked and killed him because they saw and were con vinced that he was not God. Why will you cherish your delusion concerning this man ? " The siege of Nagran was in the century before Mohammed s call, and while the (Ethiopic) account from which this language is quoted is comparatively late, we have no reason to suspect Moslem influence. Cf. Fell, Die Christenver- folgunyen in Sudaralien, Z.D.M.G., XXXV., p. 56.