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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JUNE, 1903.
The groundwork of Islam was, and ever remained, that system at which Jewish theology, with its trivial formalities of the tweedledom and tweedledee of the text of the Bible, had arrived, and of which the Talmud may be recited as the prime authority. What Muhammad proclaimed in Mecon resembles it chiefly in the dogmatic views, but also in his general moral canons.
On the other hand, the primitive Islam was unshackled by the mass of intricacies, ordinances on doctrine and conduct of life, into which the Talmud Jews had fallen as in a labyrinth, which rendered froo movement well-nigh impossible. This divergence is characteristic. It shows that the Talmud, Babylonian or Palestinian, must not be looked upon as the direct model of early Islam. The latter contains isolated ideas which are conspicuous by their absence in the Talmud, bat are common in the earlier document of Judaism, the Tarjum. Muhammad never studied the ordinance of later Judaism, but learnt their contents from oral tradition. We must presume his instructor to be a Jew, but not one of the Rabbis whose whole life was devoted to bypercriticism of Law and strict observance of its minor particulars. Such Rabbis were very sparsely, if at all, to be found in Arabia, Muhammad's instructor was in all probability a man of spiritually intermediate acquirements; he was more in touch with the Baggada, the Hebrew world of anecdotes and thoughts, than with the Halacha, the repository of each and every law ; - an Amm Hares in short. Such a man endeavoured zatarally to make Mubammad what he himself was, and Muhammad loved with a certain pride to bear the title of Ummi, that is to be Amm Hares, in compliment to the Jews of Medina, and put it beside his most exalted insignia Nabi or Prophet, styling himself Nabi Ummi,
But Muhammad shrank from one consequence of his instruction, from being reckoned a Jew by his heathen countrymen or from comporting himself as such. His highly developed sense of patriotism was the hindering block. The hopes of resurrection and the kingdom of David were inseparably connected with the Jewish doctrine. Every proselyte, therefore, who would truly call himself a Jew, must abjure the convictions of his national religion. But nothing could induce Muhammad to make that sacrifice. He did not return the obligations he owed to the Jews in Mecca by hostile opposition against their leaders. Not & word was uttered offensive to them as a race; rather Muhammad was prompted by a spirit of courtesy when be christened an Arab prophet of his own creation Had, which is Arabic for Jew. At the same time he was kept from going over to Judaism from the consciousness of a momentous mission of his own. He felt the impulse to communicate to his heathen compeers the Light that was vouchsafed to him - an impulse which soon assumed the shape of a positive duty to be fulfilled at whatever cost. Cogitating over the strange phenomenon he interpreted it to himself as a divine commission to turn Jewish verities into Arabic speech and sermons.
In the course of the Meccan period, with the Jewish radiments of Islam are mingled, as sopplements and modifications, new thoughts which have a near affinity to Christianity, and which would seem to have been borrowed from it. Thus the insipid rigidity of the conception of God till now entertained was relieved by emphatic declaration of divine love and mercy, belief in certain dogmas was inculcated as daty, and many a figure of the new theology was put on a par with the saints and prophets of the Old Testament. But if Mohammad at this epoch betraya comparatively inconsiderable acquaintance with the doctrine and discipline of Christianity, still most of that knowledge which he displays in the Medina period must have been previously acquired. He wanted but opponents and opportunity to open a polemic on the teachings of Christ, which were thrown away upon him.
If we take a review of whatever in the Qorán accords with Christianity, the outcomo of our inquiry is more negative than positive information on the sources from which Muhammad drew. In the first place, it seems certain that Muhammad had read as little of the Gospels as of
