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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JUNE, 1903.
hearts." This simile might have inspired the Prophet with a similar one with which Súra 24, verso 35, begins :
God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth. His Light is like a niche in which is a lamp, the lamp is in a glass, the glass is like a glistening star. It is lighted (with the oil) of the blessed tree, the Olive not of the East nor of the West.29
Chapter 2 deals with the false prophets, whom God shall visit in justiće, as he once visited the sinning angels, men of Noah's time and Sodom and Gomorrha, whilst the righteous shall be saved. Amongst his enemies of Mocca, Muhammad had indeed no pseudoprophets. Instead, however, he had to contend with those unbelievers who, impelled by Satan, as he imagined, advanced heretic doctrines about God and the resurrection against his own preachings. (Cf., 6. 9., 22, 3, 8.) Against these, the Qorán, in the passages of the "Period of Grace," unceasingly reiterates the threats of a Judgment such as overtook the earlier nations. Precisely, like Peter, and in opposition to what he had depicted of the coming Judgment formerly in Mecca, the salvation of the believers is prominently brought forward here by the Prophet. To heighten the resemblance, the fall of the sinning angel Iblis, Satan, is cited as the first act of the Judgment. (15, 31.) Nor can we conceive of Satan without & numerous following. (16, 66.)
The imagery employed in verse 17 to illustrate the nulity of the false prophets has something peculiar to arrest the attention : "They are wells without water, cloads that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever."
Several metaphors from this are adopted in the Qorán with more or less change. The figare of the empty wells might easily be shifted to the contiguous one of an expanse of water in a waste, behind which water is vainly sought, so that the comparison assumes the following shape :
As to the infidels, their works are like an expanse of water in a plain i. o., & mirage), which the thirsty take for water, until when he cometh unto it he findeth naught; but findeth that God is there, Who fully payeth him his account." (24, 89.)
The waiting of the unfaithful in the "mist of darkness" is to be found in a concrete form in the immediately following verse :
(The condition of the unbeliever) is like darkness at the bottom of the deep sea. Wewe on wave covers it, and above these are still darker clouds one above another. When he stretches forth his haud he cannot see it. He to whom God provides no light, has no light.
Finally, it cannot be altogether an accident that as in the Epistle, so also in the Qorán, clouds are spoken of as driven along by God, Who piles them in masses, till charged with rain and hail they descend on those marked by divine decree.
More cogent proofs in support of the view I have advanced that Peter's Epistle, was used by Muhammad, are furnished by the similarity or rather identity of thoughts and expressions from Chapter III., in which the Apostle explains, in regard of scoffing apbelievers, the delay in the Lord's coming. The Prophet was to a remarkablo degree similarly circumstanced as the Apostle, when the Súra in question, the 24th, was written. His opponents were long pat off with evasive answers to their inquiry as to when the day of Judgment was to come. And now they went the length of deriding and branding him a liar. The Prophet appropriates to his own use Peter's reply. The latter declares it is not true that the Creation has continued without a change to the present day, since once already the world created out of water was annihilated by water and goes on to admonish: "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one
» Not of earthly origin, therefore, but of celestial. 4. Muller (Koran im Awango Ubersetet, note to 34, 35) is at a loss how to construe the PMBAO "It is difficult to Moertain what sort of an oil tree this would be."
