phraseology—as "giving alms to be seen of men," "none forgiveth sins but God only"—may be
derived from personal intercourse and popular traditions. Jesus (Isa) is spoken of as "the Son of
Mary, strengthened by the Holy Spirit." Noah (Nûh), Abraham (Ibrahym), Moses (Mûsa), Aaron
(Harun), are often honorably mentioned, but apparently always from imperfect traditional or
apocryphal sources of information.^174
The Koran is unquestionably one of the great books of the world. It is not only a book, but
an institution, a code of civil and religious laws, claiming divine origin and authority. It has left its
impress upon ages. It feeds to this day the devotions, and regulates the private and public life, of
more than a hundred millions of human beings. It has many passages of poetic beauty, religious
fervor, and wise counsel, but mixed with absurdities, bombast, unmeaning images, low sensuality.
It abounds in repetitions and contradictions, which are not removed by the convenient theory of
abrogation. It alternately attracts and repels, and is a most wearisome book to read. Gibbon calls
the Koran "a glorious testimony to the unity of God," but also, very properly, an "endless, incoherent
rhapsody of fable and precept and declamation, which seldom excites a sentiment or idea, which
sometimes crawls in the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds."^175 Reiske^176 denounces it as the
most absurd book and a scourge to a reader of sound common sense. Goethe, one of the best judges
of literary and poetic merit, characterizes the style as severe, great, terrible, and at times truly
sublime. "Detailed injunctions," he says, "of things allowed and forbidden, legendary stories of
Jewish and Christian religion, amplifications of all kinds, boundless tautologies and repetitions,
form the body of this sacred volume, which to us, as often as we approach it, is repellent anew,
next attracts us ever anew, and fills us with admiration, and finally forces us into veneration." He
finds the kernel of Islâm in the second Sura, where belief and unbelief with heaven and hell, as
their sure reward, are contrasted. Carlyle calls the Koran "the confused ferment of a great rude
human soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read, but fervent, earnest, struggling vehemently to
utter itself In words;" and says of Mohammedanism: "Call it not false, look not at the falsehood of
it; look at the truth of it. For these twelve centuries it has been the religion and life-guidance of the
fifth part of the whole kindred of mankind. Above all, it has been a religion heartily believed." But
with all his admiration, Carlyle confesses that the reading of the Koran in English is "as toilsome
a task" as he ever undertook. "A wearisome, confused jumble, crude, incondite; endless iterations,
long-windedness, entanglement; insupportable stupidity, in short, nothing but a sense of duty could
carry any European through the Koran. We read it, as we might in the State-Paper Office, unreadable
masses of lumber, that we may get some glimpses of a remarkable man." And yet there are
Mohammedan doctors who are reported to have read the Koran seventy thousand times! What a
difference of national and religious taste! Emanuel Deutsch finds the grandeur of the Koran chiefly
in its Arabic diction, "the peculiarly dignified, impressive, sonorous nature of Semitic sound and
(^174) Muir (Life, II. 313, 278) and Stanley (p. 366) adduce, as traces of a faint knowledge of the Canonical Gospels, the
account of the birth of John the Baptist in the Koran, and the assumption by Mohammed of the name of Paracletus under the
distorted form of Periclytus, the Illustrious. But the former does not strike me as being taken from St. Luke, else he could not
have made such a glaring chronological mistake as to identify Mary with Miriam, the sister of Moses. And as to the promise
of the Paraclete, which only occurs in St. John, it certainly must have passed into popular tradition, for the word occurs also in
the Talmud. If Mohammed had read St. John, he must have seen that the Paraclete is the Holy Spirit, and would have identified
him with Gabriel, rather than with himself. Palmer’s opinion is that Mohammed could neither read nor write, but acquired his
knowledge from the traditions which were then current in Arabia among Jewish and Christian tribes. The Qur’ân, I., p. xlvii.
(^175) Decline and Fall of the R. E., Ch. 50.
(^176) As quoted in Tholuck.