I 44. THE KORAN AND THE BIBLE. 179
The few allusions to Scripture phraseology — as "giving alms to be seen of men," " none forgivetli sins but God only " — may be derived from personal intercourse and popular traditions. Jesus (laa) is spoken of as " the Son of Mary, strengthened by the Holy Spirit." Noah (Nuh), Abraham (Ibrahym), Moses (Musa), Aaron (Haruri), are often honorably mentioned, but apparently always from imperfect traditional or apocryphal sources of information.1
The Koran is unquestionably one of the great books of the world. It is not only a book, but an institution, a code of civil and religious laws, claiming divine origin and authority. It has left its impress upon ages. It feeds to this day the devo tions, and regulates the private and public life, of more than a hundred millions of human beings. It has many passages of poetic beauty, religious fervor, and wise counsel, but mixed with absurdities, bombast, unmeaning images, low sensuality. It abounds in repetitions and contradictions, which are not removed by the convenient theory of abrogation. It alternately attracts and repels, and is a most wearisome book to read. Gibbon calls the Koran "a glorious testimony to the unity of God," but also, very properly, an "endless, incoherent rhapsody of fable and precept and declamation, which seldom excites a sentiment or idea, which sometimes crawls in the dust, and is sometimes lost
1 Muir (Life, IT. 313, 278) and Stanley (p. 366) adduce, as traces of a faint knowledge of the Canonical Gospels, the account of the birth of John the Bap tist in the Koran, and the assumption by Mohammed of the name of Paracletus under the distorted form of Peridytus, the Illustrious. But the former does not strike me as being taken from St. Luke, else lie could not have made such a glaring chronological mistake as to identify Mary with Miriam, the sister of Moses. And as to the promise of the Paraclete, which only occurs in St. John, it certainly must have passed into popular tradition, for the word occurs also in the Talmud. If Mohammed had read St. John, he must have seen that the Paraclete is the Holy Spirit, and would have identified him with Gabriel, rather than with himself. Palmer's opinion is that Mohammed could neither read nor write, but acquired his knowledge from the traditions which were then current in Arabia among Jewish and Christian tribes. The Qu^dn, I., p. xlvii.
180 FOUKTH PEKIOD. A.D. 590-1049.
in the clouds." l Eeiske 2 denounces it as the most absurd book and a scourge to a reader of sound common sense. Goethe, one of the best judges of literary and poetic merit, characterizes the style as severe, great, terrible, and at times truly sublime. " Detailed injunctions/7 he says, " of things allowed and forbid den, legendary stories of Jewish and Christian religion, amplifi cations of all kinds, boundless tautologies and repetitions, form the body of this sacred volume, which to us, as often as we approach it, is repellent anew, next attracts us ever anew, and fills us with admiration, and finally forces us into veneration." He finds the kernel of Islam in the second Sura, where belief and unbelief with heaven and hell, as their sure reward, are contrasted. Carlyle calls the Koran "the confused ferment of a great rude human soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read, but fervent, earnest, struggling vehemently to utter itself in words ;" and says of Mohammedanism : " Call it not false, look not at the falsehood of it; look at the truth of it. For these twelve centuries it has been the religion and life-guidance of the fifth part of the whole kindred of mankind. Above all, it has been a religion heartily believed." But with all his admiration, Carlyle confesses that the reading of .the Koran in English is "as toilsome a task" as he ever undertook. "A wearisome, confused jumble, crude, incondite; endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement ; insupportable stupidity, in short, nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Koran. We read it, as we might in the State-Paper Office, unreadable masses of lumber, that we may get some glimpses of a remarkable man." And yet there are Mohamme dan doctors who are reported to have read the Koran seventy thousand times! What a difference of national and religious taste ! Emanuel Deutsch finds the grandeur of the Koran chiefly in its Arabic diction, " the peculiarly dignified, impressive, sono rous nature of Semitic sound and parlance; its sesquipedalia
1 Decline and Foil of the E. E., Ch. 50. 8 As quoted by Tholuck.