Muhammed's knowledge of Christianity 4.

The course of this development was greatly influenced by Christianity, but Christian ideas had been operative upon Muhammed's eager intellectual life at an even earlier date.

Here we are upon firmer ground than when we attempt to describe Muhammed's outward life, the first half of which is wrapped in obscurity no less profound than that which veils the youth of the Founder of Christianity.

Muhammed's contemporaries lived amid religious indifference.

These various elements aroused in Muhammed's mind a vague idea of religion.

Judaism and Christianity were the only religions which forced themselves upon Muhammed's consciousness and with the general characteristics of which he was acquainted.

He never read any part of the Old or New Testament: his references to Christianity show that his knowledge of the Bible was derived from hearsay and that his informants were not representative of the great religious sects: Muhammed's account of Jesus and His work, as given in the Qoran, is based upon the apocryphal accretions which grew round the Christian doctrine.

The idea of the day of judgment, when an account of earthly deeds and misdeeds will be required, when the joys of Paradise will be opened to the good and the bad will be cast into the fiery abyss, such was the great idea, which suddenly filled Muhammed's mind and dispelled the indifference begotten of routine and stirred his mental powers.

Thus monotheism was indissolubly connected with Muhammed's first religious impulses, though the dogma had not assumed the polemical form in which it afterwards confronted the old Arabian and Christian beliefs.

The verse has been variously interpreted and even rejected as an interpolation: but its authenticity is attested by its perfect correspondence with what we know of Muhammed's pretensions.

Each was respectively confirmed or abolished by the revelation which followed it, nor is this theory of Muhammed's shaken by the fact that each revelation was given to a different nation.

These temporary punishments are confused with the final Judgment; in fact Muhammed's system was not clearly thought out.

In order to understand Muhammed's attitude towards Christianity, we will examine in greater detail his view of this religion, the portions of it which he accepted or which he rejected as unauthentic.

Hence it has been inferred that Muhammed's knowledge of Christianity was derived from some particular Christian sect, such as the Tritheists or the Arab female sect of the Collyridians who worshipped the Virgin Mary with exaggerated reverence and assigned divine honours to her.

Muhammed's knowledge of Christianity thus consists of certain isolated details, partly apocryphal, partly canonical, together with a hazy idea of the fundamental dogmas.

Muhammed's original view that earlier religions had been founded by God's will and through divine revelation, led both him and his successors to make an important concession: adherents of other religions were not compelled to adopt Islam.

Islam was a clear and simple war-cry betokening merely a recognition of Arab supremacy, of the unity of God and of Muhammed's prophetic mission.

Even at that time Jewish ideas may have been in circulation, not only in the Qoran but also in oral tradition, which afterwards became stereotyped: at the same time Muhammed's utterances against the Jews eventually became so strong during the Medina period, for political reasons, that I can hardly imagine the traditions in their final form to have been adopted directly from the Jews.

The necessities of increasing civilisation had introduced many Aramaic words to the Arabic vocabulary before Muhammed's day: these importations increased considerably when the Arabs entered a wider and more complex civilisation and were especially considerable where intellectual culture was concerned.

We find that the details of jurisprudence, dogma, and mysticism can only be explained by reference to Christian stimulus, nor is it any exaggeration to ascribe the further development of Muhammed's views to the influence of thinkers who regarded the religious polity of Islam as the realisation of an ideal which Christianity had hitherto vainly striven to attain.

Such was the environment in which Islam was planted: its deepest roots had been fertilised with Christian theory, and in spite of Muhammed's call to repentance, its most characteristic manifestations were somewhat worldly and non-ascetic.

But Muhammed's preaching had obviously striven to honour the future life by painting the actual world in the gloomiest colours, and the material optimism of the secular-minded was unable to check the advance of Christian asceticism among the classes which felt a real interest in religion.

Similar objections may be found in Muhammedan tradition; we may regard these as further developments of commands given in the Qoran, but it is also likely that Muhammed's apocryphal statements upon the point were dictated by Christian religious theory.

Islam was able to borrow from Christianity for the reason that Muhammed's ideas were derived from that source: similarly Christianity was able to turn Arab thought to its own purposes because that thought was founded upon Christian principles.

Muhammed's Liv.