2 45. THE MOHAMMEDAN KELIGION. 185
i. e., the true, the only God), and Mohammed is his prophet (or apostle)." Gibbon culls this a " compound of an eternal truth and a necessary fiction." The first clause certainly is a great and mighty truth borrowed from the Old Testament (Dent. 0:4); and is the religious strength of the system. But the Moham medan (like the later Jewish, the Socinian, and the Unitarian) monotheism is abstract, monotonous, divested of inner life and fulness, anti-trinitarian, and so far anti-Christian. One of the last things which a Mohammedan will admit, is the divinity of Christ. Many of the divine attributes arc vividly apprehended, emphasized and repeated in prayer. But Allah is a God of infi nite power and wisdom, not a God of redeeming love to all mankind ; a despotic sovereign of trembling subjects and slaves, not a loving Father of trustful children. Pie is an object of reverence and fear rather than of love and gratitude. lie is the God of fate who has unalterably foreordained all things evil as well as good ; hence unconditional resignation to him (this is the meaning of Islam) is true wisdom and piety. He is not a hid den, unknowable being, but a God who has revealed himself through chosen messengers, angelic and human. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus are his chief prophets.2 But Mo hammed is the last and the greatest.
CHRIST.
The Christology of the Koran is a curious mixture of facts and apocryphal fictions, of reverence for the man Jesus and denial of his divine character. He is called " the Messiah Jesus Son of Mary," or " the blessed Son of Mary." 3 He was a ser vant and apostle of the one true God, and strengthened by
1 La ilaha ill' Allah, wa Muhammeda rramla 'lldh. Allah is composed of the article «/, " the," and ildh, " a god," and is equivalent to the Hebrew El and Elohim. He was known to the Arabs before Mohammed, and regarded as the chief god in their pantheon.
* A similar idea is presented in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies. 8 Mesich Isa ben Mariam.
186 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
the Holy Spirit, i. e., the angel Gabriel (Dshebril), who after wards conveyed the divine revelations to Mohammed. But he is not the Son of God ; for as God has no wife, he can have no son.1 He is ever alone, and it is monstrous and blasphemous to associate another being with Allah.
Some of the Mohammedan divines exempt Jesus and even his mother from sin, and first proclaimed the dogma of the immacu late conception of Mary, for which the apocryphal Gospels pre pared the way.2 By a singular anachronism, the Koran confounds the Virgin Mary with Miriam, " the sister of Aaron " (Harun), and Moses (Ex. xv. 20 ; Num. xxi. 1). Possibly Mohammed may have meant another Aaron (since he calls Mary " the sister of Aaron," but not " of Moses ") ; some of his commentators, however, assume that the sister of Moses was miraculously pre served to give birth to Jesus.3
According to the Koran Jesus was conceived by the Virgin Mary at the appearance of Gabriel and born under a palm tree beneath which a fountain opened. This story is of Ebionite origin.4 Jesus preached in the cradle and performed miracles
1 In rude misconception or wilful perversion, Mohammed seems to h'ave understood the Christian doctrine of the trinity to be a trinity of Father, Mary, and Jesus. The Holy Spirit is identified with Gabriel. '' God is only one God ! Far be it from his glory that he should have a son !" Sura 4, ver. 169 ; comp. 5, ver. 77. The designation and worship of Mary as "(the mother of God " may have occasioned this strange mistake. There was in Arabia in the fourth century a sect of fanatical women called Collyridians (Ko/Ufpidef), who rendered divine worship to Mary. Epiphanius, Haer. 79.
2 As the Protevangelium Jacobi, the Evang. de Nativitate Marice, the Evang. Infantis Servatoris, etc. Gibbon (ch. 50) and Stanley (p. 367) trace the doctrine of the immaculate conception directly to the Koran. It is said of Mary : " Re member when the angel said : ' O Mary ! verily hath God chosen thee, and purified thee, and chosen thee above the women of the worlds.' " But this does not necessarily mean more than Luke i. 28. The Koran knows nothing of original sin in the Christian sense.
8 Gerok, I. c. pp. 22-28. This would be a modification of the rabbinical fable that ordinary death and corruption had as little power over Miriam as over Moses, and that both died by the breath of Jehovah.
4 Bosch (1. c., p. 439) : ll Die Geburtsgeschichte Jesu im Koran ist nichti anderes