A Dictionary of Islam Being a cyclopedia of the...

Muḥammadanism owes more to Judaism (see a book by M. Geiger, entitled, Was hat Muhammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen, in which that learned Jew has traced all the leading features of Islām to Talmudic sources; also Literary Remains of Emanuel Deutsch, Essay on Islām; also article on JUDAISM in the present work) than it does to either Christianity or Sabeanism, for it is simply Talmudic Judaism adapted to Arabia, plus the Apostleship of Jesus and Muḥammad; and wherever Muḥammad departs from the monotheistic principles of Judaism, as in the idolatrous practices of the Pilgrimage to the Kaʿbah, it is evident that it is done as a necessary concession to the national feelings and sympathies of the people of Arabia, and it is absolutely impossible for Muḥammadan divines to reconcile the idolatrous rites of the Kaʿbah with that simple monotheism which it was evidently Muḥammad’s intention to establish in Arabia.

“The sources (says Mr. Rodwell) whence Muhammad derived the materials of his Korân, are, over and above the more poetical parts which are his own creation, the legends of his time and country, Jewish traditions based upon the Talmud, and the Christian traditions of Arabia and of S. Syria. At a later period of his career, no one would venture to doubt the divine origin of his whole book. But at its commencement the case was different. The people of Mecca spoke openly and tauntingly of it as the work of a poet, as a collection of antiquated or fabulous legends, or as palpable sorcery. They accused him of having confederates, and even specified foreigners who had been his coadjutors. Such were Salman the Persian (Salmān al-Fārisī), to whom he may have owed the descriptions of heaven and hell, which are analogous to those of the Zendavesta; and the Christian monk Sergius, or, as the Muhammadans term him, Boheira (Buḥairah). From the latter, and perhaps from other Christians, especially slaves naturalized at Mecca, Muhammad obtained access to the teaching of the Apocryphal Gospels, and to many popular traditions of which those gospels are the concrete expression. His wife Chadijah (K͟hadījah), as well as her cousin Waraka (Waraqah), a reputed convert to Christianity, and Muhammad’s intimate friend, are said to have been well acquainted with the doctrines and sacred books, both of Jews and Christians.

And not only were several Arab tribes in the neighbourhood of Mecca converts to the Christian faith, but on two occasions Muhammad had travelled with his uncle Abu Talib, as far as Bostra, where he must have had opportunities of learning the general outlines of Oriental Christian doctrine, and perhaps of witnessing the ceremonial of their worship.

“It has been supposed that Muhammad derived many of his notions concerning Christianity from Gnosticism and that it is to the numerous Gnostic sects the Korân alludes when it reproaches the Christians with having ‘split up their religion into parties.’ But for Muhammad thus to have confounded Gnosticism with Christianity itself, its prevalence in Arabia must have been far more universal than we have reason to believe that it really was. In fact, we have no historical authority for supposing that the doctrines of these heretics were taught or professed in Arabia at all. It is certain, on the other hand, that the Basilidans, Valentinians, and other Gnostic sects had either died out, or been reabsorbed into the Orthodox Church, towards the middle of the fifth century, and had disappeared from Egypt before the sixth. It remains possible, however, that the Gnostic doctrine concerning the Crucifixion may have been adopted by Muhammad as likely to reconcile the Jews to Islam, as a religion embracing both Judaism and Christianity, if they might believe that Jesus had not been put to death, and thus find the stumbling-block of the Atonement removed out of their path. The Jews would, in this case, have simply been called upon to believe in Jesus as a divinely born and inspired teacher, who, like the patriarch Enoch, or the prophet Elijah, had been miraculously taken from the earth.

But, in all other respects, the sober and matter-of-fact statements of the Korân, relative to the family and history of Jesus, are opposed to the wild and fantastic doctrines of Gnostic emanations, and especially to the manner in which they supposed Jesus, at his baptism, to have been brought into union with a higher nature. It is more clear that Muhammad borrowed in several points from the doctrines of the Ebionites, Essenes, and Sabeites. Epiphanius describes the notions of the Ebionites of Nabathæa, Moabites, and Basanites, with regard to Adam Jesus, almost in the very words of Sura iii. 52. He tells us that they observed circumcision, were opposed to celibacy, forbade turning to the sunrise, but enjoined Jerusalem as their Kebla (Qiblah), (as did Muhammad during twelve years), that they prescribed (as did the Sabeites) washings, very similar to those enjoined in the Korân, and allowed oaths (by certain natural objects, as clouds, signs of the Zodiac, oil, the winds, etc.), which also we find adopted therein. These points of contact with Islam, knowing as we do Muhammad’s eclecticism, can hardly be accidental.

“We have no evidence that Muhammad had access to the Christian scriptures, though it is just possible that fragments of the Old or New Testament may have reached him through Chadijah or Waraka, or other Meccan Christians, possessing MSS. of our sacred volume. There is but one direct quotation (Sura xxi. 105) in the whole Korân from the Scriptures; and though there are a few passages, as where alms, are said to be given to be seen of men, and as, none forgiveth sins but God only, which might seem to be identical with texts of the New Testament, yet this similarity is probably merely accidental. It is, however, curious to compare such passages as Deut. xxvi. 14, 17, and 1 Peter v. 2, with Sura xxiv. 50, and Sura x. 73—John vii. 15, with the ‘illiterate’ prophet—Matt. xxiv. 36, and John xii. 27, with the use of the word hour, as meaning any judgment or crisis, and the last Judgment—the voice of the Son of God which the dead are to hear, with the exterminating or awakening cry of Gabriel, etc. The passages of this kind, with which the Korân abounds, result from Muhammad’s general acquaintance with scriptural phraseology, partly through the popular legends, partly from personal intercourse with Jews and Christians. And we may be quite certain that, whatever materials Muhammad may have derived from our Scriptures, directly or indirectly, were carefully recast.

“It should also be borne in mind that we have no clear traces of the existence of Arabic versions of the Old or New Testament previous to the time of Muhammad. The passage of St. Jerome—‘Hæc autem translatio nullum de veteribus sequitur interpretem; sed ex ipso Hebraico, Arabicoque sermone, et interdum Syro, nunc verba, nunc sensum, nunc simul utrumque resonabit’ (Prol. Gal.), obviously does not refer to versions, but to idiom. The earliest Ar. version of the Old Testament of which we have any knowledge is that of R. Saadias Gaon, A.D. 900: and the oldest Ar. version of the New Testament is that published by Erpenius in 1616, and transcribed in the Thebais, in the year 1271, by a Coptic bishop, from a copy made by a person whose name is known, but whose date is uncertain. Michaelis thinks that the Arabic versions of the New Testament were made between the Saracen conquests in the seventh century and the Crusades in the eleventh century—an opinion in which he follows, or coincides with, Walton (Prol. in Polygl. § xiv.), who remarks—‘Plane constat versionem Arabicam apud eas (ecclesias orientales) factam esse postquam lingua Arabica per victorias et religionem Muhammedanicam per Orientem propagata fuerat, et in multis locis facta esset vernacula.’

If, indeed, in these comparatively late versions, the general phraseology, especially in the histories common to the Scriptures and to the Korân, bore any similarity to each other, and if the orthography of the proper names had been the same in each, it might have been fair to suppose that such versions had been made, more or less, upon the basis of others, which, though now lost, existed in the ages prior to Muhammad, and influenced, if they did not directly form, his sources of information. But this does not appear to be the case. The phraseology of our existing versions is not that of the Korân, and the versions as a whole appear to have been made from the Septuagint, the Vulgate, Syriac, Coptic, and Greek; Tischendorf, indeed, says that the four Gospels originem mixtam habere videntur; but the internal evidence is clearly in favour of the Greek origin of the Arabic Gospels. This can be seen in part even from the order of the words, which was retained, like that of the Greek, so far as possible, even in such constructions and transpositions of words as violate the rules of Arabic Syntax.

“From the Arab Jews, Muhammad would be enabled to derive an abundant though distorted knowledge of the Scripture histories. The secrecy in which he received his instructions from them and from his Christian informants, enabled him boldly to declare to the ignorant pagan Meccans that God had revealed those Biblical histories to him. But there can be no doubt, from the constant identity between the Talmudic perversions of Scripture histories and the statements of the Korân, that the Rabbis of Hejaz communicated their legends to Muhammad. And it should be remembered that the Talmud was completed a century previous to the era of Muhammad, and cannot fail to have extensively influenced the religious creed of all the Jews of the Arabian peninsula. In one passage, Muhammad speaks of an individual Jew—perhaps some one of note among his professed followers, as a witness to his mission; and there can be no doubt that his relations with the Jews were, at one time, those of friendship and intimacy, when we find him speaking of their recognizing him as they do their own children, and blaming their most colloquial expressions. It is impossible, however, for us at this distance of time to penetrate the mystery in which this subject is involved. Yet certain it is, that, although their testimony against Muhammad was speedily silenced, the Koreish knew enough of his private history to disbelieve and to disprove his pretensions of being the recipient of a divine revelation, and to accuse him of writing from the dictation of teachers morning and evening.

And it is equally certain that all the information received by Muhammad was embellished and recast in his own mind and with his own words. There is a unity of thought, a directness and simplicity of purpose, a peculiar and laboured style, a uniformity of diction, coupled with a certain deficiency of imaginative power, which indicate that the ayats (signs or verses) of the Korân are the product of a single mind. The longer narratives were, probably, elaborated in his leisure hours, while the shorter verses, each proclaiming to be a sign or miracle, were promulgated as occasion required them. And, whatever Muhammad may himself profess in the Korân as to his ignorance even of reading and writing, and however strongly modern Muhammadans may insist upon the same point—an assertion, by the way, contradicted by many good authors—there can be no doubt that to assimilate and work up his materials, to fashion them into elaborate Suras, and to fit them for public recital, must have been a work requiring much time, study, and meditation, and presumes a far greater degree of general culture than any orthodox Muslim will be disposed to admit.” (The Preface to Rodwell’s El-Korân, p. xvi. et seq.)