Part 12 (1/2)

The Books of the Old Testament, including the Apocrypha, in the Revised Version.

The Histories of Israel; Ewald, Kuenen, Wellhausen, Stade.

Robertson Smith's _The Old Testament in the Jewish Church_, and articles in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.

Smend's _Alttestamentliche Religionsgeschichte_.

Stade, _Biblische Theologie des Alten Testaments_, 1905.

For a criticism of the critical historians the reader may consult _The Early Religion of Israel_, by Prof. James Robertson.

Prof. Valeton, _Die Israeliten_, in De la Saussaye.

Schurer, _History of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ_, 1885-90.

Kantzsch, ”Religion of Israel,” in _Dictionary of the Bible_, vol. v.

E. J. Foakes-Jackson, _The Biblical History of the Hebrews_, Second Edition.

CHAPTER XIII ISLAM

In chronological order Islam stands last of all the great religions; it appeared six centuries after Christianity, and Christian ideas enter into it. It is, however, so essentially Semitic that it can only be understood aright if studied in connection with the group now occupying our attention. In Islam Semitic religion opens its arms to embrace mankind, and accomplishes, in a fas.h.i.+on, the destiny to which Judaism was invited, but which Judaism failed to realise till it was transformed in Christianity. In Islam Semitic religion is not transformed, but enters in its own stern and uncompromising character into the position of a universal faith.

This religion sprang up and entered on its career of conquest with startling suddenness and even, some scholars hold, without any natural preparation for its coming in the country of its birth. The Arabs called the period before Islam the ”time of ignorance”; in that period they considered their race had no history; the new religion, when it arose, had made a clean sweep of all that had gone before, and had caused a new world to begin. The labours of Arabic scholars have, however, done something to dispel the mists which hung over early Arabia, and it is possible both to give a much more satisfactory sketch than formerly of the earlier religion of the Arabs, and to discern to some extent the processes which had unconsciously been preparing for the advent of a higher and stronger faith.

Arabia before Mahomet.--The Arabs of the central peninsula in the times before Mahomet were not a nation but a set of tribes--mostly nomadic, but some of them settled in cities, who, while united by language, custom, and traditions, had no central government or organisation. The desert which they inhabited, as it admitted no cultivation, kept human life uniform and unprogressive; external influences penetrated slowly into this corner of the world, and society was still arranged as it had been for thousands of years. The strongest tie was that of blood. A man's fellow-tribesmen were bound to avenge his murder; and so one slaughter led to another, and from generation to generation the land was filled with a perpetual series of blood-feuds. Twice a year, however, a cessation of these feuds took place; a month came round in which there was a universal truce.

Men who were enemies then made the same pilgrimage to a distant shrine; at such a time trade caravans could set out and travel in safety; and the great markets or festivals then took place, which, while based at first on religious ideas, had in most part ceased to have any religious character. Some of these markets were, at the time of Mahomet, national occasions: men of every tribe met and came to know each other there; the poetry which had been composed during the preceding months was publicly recited, so that the rise of a new poet was known to all Arabia; the news of all the tribes circulated, and foreign ideas and doctrines were also to be heard. In proportion as the face of nature was hard and forbidding, social life was bright and gay; wine, women, wit, and war provided the themes of poets and the ordinary aims of life.

The Old Religion.--It has generally been said that the Arabs before Islam were irreligious. They themselves contrasted the sternness of the new period with the gaiety of the old one. The truth is, as Wellhausen has admirably shown,[1] that the working religion of the country had become before the period of Islam entirely effete. Arab religion was based on the ideas and usages which have been described in chap. x. of this book; it is mainly from Arabia, indeed, that the original character of Semitic religion is known to us. Each tribe had its G.o.d, whom it regarded as a magnified master or ruler, and with whom it held communion by sacrifice, the blood being brought in contact with the G.o.d and the victim devoured by the tribesmen. The G.o.d is represented sometimes by a tree, generally by a stone; a piece of fertile land belongs to him, within which the plants and animals are sacred; the religious meeting can be held in no other spot. Hence the Arabs are said to be stone wors.h.i.+ppers; but the phrase is an awkward one: what they wors.h.i.+pped was not the stone but a G.o.d connected with it. And the early G.o.ds of Arabia are a motley company; it is only in their relations to their wors.h.i.+ppers and in the order of the wors.h.i.+p paid them that they have some uniformity. The greatest and oldest deity of the Arabs is Allat or Alilat, ”the Lady.” Like the female deity found in all primitive Semitic religions, she is a stately and commanding lady. She is not the wife of a G.o.d, nor are unseemly ideas connected with her. She belongs to the early world in which motherhood was synonymous with rule, since the family had no male head; she has a character but no history: mythology has not gathered round her. Arabia has also certain nature-G.o.ds. The stellar deities are mostly female; there is a male sun-G.o.d Dusares. Heaven is wors.h.i.+pped by some, not the blue but the rainy heaven, which is a source of blessings. There are no G.o.ds belonging to the region under the earth. The serpent is the only animal that receives wors.h.i.+p.

[Footnote 1: _Reste Arabischen Heidenthums_, p. 188.]

But the G.o.ds of Arabia belong mostly to another cla.s.s than that of nature-G.o.ds; or at least if they ever were connected with nature, they have parted with such a.s.sociations. They are uncouth figures, with vague legends and miscellaneous attributes. One set of them is said to have been wors.h.i.+pped by the contemporaries of Noah; they are big men, and it is their property to drink milk. Hubal was the chief G.o.d of Mecca. It was his property to bring rain. Vadd was a great man, with two garments, and a sword and spear, bow and quiver.

Jaghuth, ”the Helper,” was a portable G.o.d, not a stone probably, since he was carried into battle by his tribe, as the ark was by the Israelites. Another G.o.d is called ”the Burner,” no doubt from the sacrifices offered to him. Each tribe has its G.o.d or set of G.o.ds, and certain sacred objects connected with its G.o.ds. One G.o.d is found by those who kiss or rub a certain black stone, another in connection with a white stone, another with a tree. And of many of them there are images; the stone has some work done on it, or there is a wooden block roughly hewn. The ”Caaba” is originally a black stone which is kissed or rubbed at Mecca. The name was given, however, to the cube-shaped building, in one of the walls of which the black stone had been fixed. In this building there stood in old days images of Abraham and Ishmael, each with divining arrows in his hand. Of such idols a large number existed in Mahomet's time, and were destroyed by him. In some cases the image had a house, and a person was needed to guard it; this functionary also kept some simple apparatus for casting lots or otherwise obtaining counsel from the deity, and oaths and vows were made before him, to which the deity became a witness.

To these beliefs of early Arabia must be added a lively belief in jinns, spirits who are not G.o.ds, since the G.o.ds are above the earth, but the jinn is compelled to haunt some part of the earth's surface.

The jinns can a.s.sume any form they choose, and are often met with in the shape of serpents. Wellhausen surmises that the seraphs of the Jews are to be traced to some such origin. They infest desert places, and are nocturnal in their habits. What they do is often not observed till afterwards. They spy upon the G.o.ds, and may bring information from above to men whom they haunt or with whom they are in league. Of the magic of Arabia, the signs and omens drawn from birds, from dreams, and other occurrences, it is not necessary to speak; and we need only say, in concluding this rough sketch of the ideas of the early Arabs, that the belief in a life beyond was very faint; they set out food for the dead, whom they professed to think of as still existing, but the belief, if they entertained it, was perfunctory and had no influence.

Confusion of Wors.h.i.+p.--At the period of Islam the wors.h.i.+p of Arabia had fallen into great confusion. The G.o.ds were stationary, but the tribes wandered; and the consequence was that the wandering tribe left its shrine behind it to be cared for by its successors in that piece of country, and itself also, when it gained a new seat, succeeded to the guardians.h.i.+p of a new G.o.d. Thus, on the one hand, the wors.h.i.+p of each shrine was constantly gathering new a.s.sociations, as each tribe which had been there left behind it some new legend or practice; and on the other hand, pilgrimage became universal, since each tribe had to pay periodical visits to its G.o.ds whom it had left behind. At Mecca we read of hundreds of idols; a hundred tribes have left there something of their own. Thus Mecca became a sacred place for tribes far and near, and rose into national importance; and the same was the case to a less degree in other places also. But as this process went on, it inevitably led to the weakening of religion. The tie of blood, which was felt always, was a far stronger thing than the tie of a common wors.h.i.+p for which the tribe had to go to another part of the country, and to come in contact with a mult.i.tude of other cults. Wors.h.i.+p therefore became more and more a superst.i.tion: a thing, that is to say, whose real sacredness was in the past, and which was only kept up from pious habit; it did not supply the inspiration of ordinary life nor guide the more active minds among the people.

We have not yet spoken of Allah, who is understood to be the G.o.d _par excellence_ of Arabia. But for this there is a good reason. Allah is not, like the other beings we have spoken of, a historical G.o.d, with a legend, a shrine, a tribe all to himself. He is not a historical personage, but an idea consolidated, no doubt at an early period, into a G.o.d. Wellhausen traces the rise of Allah for us in a most interesting way. The name, he shows, is not a proper name that belonged to one particular figure in the pantheon of Arabia; it is the t.i.tle which the Arab conferred on his G.o.d, whatever the proper name of that being might be. Whatever G.o.d he wors.h.i.+pped, he called him Allah, Lord; and thus every Arabic G.o.d was Allah, as every head of a household has the name of ”father” and every monarch that of ”king.” And as every tribal G.o.d was Allah, the thought arose, no doubt in very early times, of one G.o.d who was common to the tribes.

Language paved the way for thought; while the tribal G.o.ds were still believed in and adored, this figure rose above them--a being who has no special wors.h.i.+p of his own, who does not ask for it nor need it, but who yet fills, as none of the lesser beings does, the character of deity. Allah was the G.o.d of all the tribes; and as his figure grew in the mind of the country, it was inevitable that the wors.h.i.+p of the historical G.o.ds should still further lose its importance, till only the women and children really cared for it. A monotheism of a grave and earnest kind thus made its way beside the old belief in many G.o.ds. Mahomet found that his fellow-countrymen did not really believe in the minor G.o.ds; when they were in danger or in urgent need of any blessing, it was to Allah that they called. The fall of the idols, when it came about, took place very easily; they were no longer needed. The Arabs had come to believe in a G.o.d who dwelt in heaven and was the creator of the world, who ordained man's life with an irreversible decree, by whom the bitter and the sweet, both the hitting of the mark and the missing it, were alike fixed. The moral character of Allah was not markedly in advance of that of his people.

What a man gains by robbery he calls the gift of Allah, while what is gained by industry is called by another name. Yet Allah is also felt by some to keep them back from robbery; he powerfully upholds the moral standards which have been reached. He is the defender of strangers, the avenger of treason. His moral influence is negative, however, rather than positive. He does not inspire with ideals of goodness; but he holds back from evil. He is not a being who is ever likely to enter, like the G.o.d of the Jews, into intimate and affectionate relations with men; he is too abstract and has too little history to be capable of such unbending; his religion, when it comes to be fully formed, will be one of puritans and fanatics rather than of the meek and lowly. He is the one great instance of a G.o.d without any natural basis who has come to exercise rule. He is a G.o.d of whom reason can thoroughly approve--no absurd legends cling to him; he is from the first great, mighty, and moral; and he rules the world in righteousness by inflexible standards. This religion is coming to the surface even in the ”time of ignorance.”

Judaism and Christianity in Arabia.--The question has been much discussed whether the new religion of Arabia was due to contact with Judaism or with Christianity. Both of these faiths were known in Arabia before the time of the Prophet. There was a large Jewish population at Medina, and synagogues existed in many other places; and there were Christians in Arabia, though their Christianity was that only of small sects and of lonely ascetics, and had failed to convert the country as a whole. To the Arabs the Jews were ”the people of the Book,” the book in the traditions of which they also had some share. Ignorant themselves for the most part of the arts of reading and writing, and divided among a mult.i.tude of petty wors.h.i.+ps which they were ceasing to respect, they looked up with envy to those whose faith had been fixed for so many ages in a literary standard.

But while the Jews were respected in Arabia, they were far from popular. The qualities which have drawn down on them the bitter hatred of modern peoples among whom they dwell, acted there in the same way; their pride and exclusiveness, their keenness in business, their profession as money-lenders, made them detested in Arabia as in modern Germany. On the other hand, the ascetic view of life which the Christians represented had attractions even for some of the higher minds among the Arabs. A set of men called ”Hanyfs” were well known in Mahomet's time, who were seeking for a better religion than the Arab wors.h.i.+ps afforded, and a better life than that of eternal feud.

The meaning of the name is controverted; those to whom it was applied had not attached themselves to Judaism nor to Christianity; they were people in earnest about religion who had not reached any definite position. Even where, as with Mahomet himself, the facts of Judaism and of Christianity were most inaccurately known, the view of G.o.d held in these religions and the moral standard they set up could not fail to exercise much influence. If in Arab thought itself a G.o.d like Allah was rising to definite personal character and to a position of great superiority over the old G.o.ds, then the inner movement was in the same direction as the influence of older religions from without, and the time was ripe for a new faith. It was not to be expected that a people like the Arabs should accept a religion which had its origin in another country, or which threatened like Christianity to bring to an end the old tribal system; a new growth from within was needed, and this was ready to appear.

The beginnings of most religions are wrapt in obscurity; but the rise of Islam is known to us with perfect certainty and in considerable detail. The only difficulties in the way of understanding it are of a psychological nature; we have to account for the foundation of a religion which spread with lightning speed over many lands, and which still continues to spread, by one whose character was in some respects far from n.o.ble, and who was capable of stooping to compromise and to the darkest treachery in order to gain his ends.

How a religion fitted for many races and many generations of men could be founded by a barbarian and by the aid of barbarous means--that is the problem of this religion. The materials for solving it lie open before us. The Koran is undoubtedly the authentic work of Mahomet himself: the suras or chapters are arranged in a wrong order, and if they are read as they stand do not tell any intelligible story; but when placed, as has now been done by scholars,[2] in the true historical order, they show the history of Mahomet's mind with great clearness. After the Koran came the traditions. From the immense volume of these the industry of the scholars of Islam as well as others has succeeded in sifting out what is most to be relied on. In no other case is the separation of the mythical from the historical element in the early traditions so easily made, and the religion comes into view in the full light of day.