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RITUAL
that where the fact was committed. The friends of the
slain man accosed some other persons of the murder before Moses, but they denying the fact. and there being no evidence to convict them, God commanded & cow, of such and such particular marks, to be killed, but there be. ing no other which answered the description except the orphan's heifer, they were obliged to buy her for as much gold as her hide would hold; according to some, for her full weight in gold, and, as others say, for ten times as much. This heifer they sacrificed and the dead body being, by divine direction, struck with a part of it, revived, and standing up, named the pereon who had killed him, after which it immediately fell down dead again.”
This is the legend, which, according to Sale, "seems to be borrowed from the ied heifer, which was ordered by Jewish law to be burnt, and the ashes kept for purifying those who happened to touch a read corpse ; and from the leiser directed to be slain for the expiation of an uncertain murder" (Ibid. p. 9, footnote). The general opinion about the differences between the Bible and the Qur'an, of course, is that Mahomed knew little or pothing of the Jewish history and tradition and that the Qur'an contains only half distorted half-understood tenets of Judaism. It is true, no doubt, that the Qur'an is not an original work and much of what it contains was taken from the the earlier creeds as Tisdall bas fully shown ; but that Book itself never made any secret of it and openly said :
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