Page:Judaism and Islam, a prize essay - Geiger - 1898.pdf/160

 142 - JUDAISM AND ISLAM.

to it is to be found in the Quran,) has in it no trace of hostility ; and so the conjecture is not too daring that, as a matter of fact, all these three, 1 viz., the Midianites, the people of the wood, and the people of the well, are the same, "but that Muhammad regarded the first two only as identical and looked on the last as different. Still this tradition seems to have been received even among the Arabs, for we find in Elpherar 2 among other explanations the following : " Wahb says that the people of the well 'sat beside it (the well), and the shepherds served idols. Then G-od sent Shu'aib, who was to exhort them to Isldm, but they remained in their error, and continued their efforts to harm Shu'aib. While they sat round the well in their dwellings the spring bubbled up and gushed over them and their houses, so that they were all ruined." In like manner Jalalu'd-din says : 3 " Their prophet is called by some Shu'aib, by others differently." This admission of the Arabic commentators strengthens our opinion con- siderably. Another person of some importance in the Mosaic age is said by some Arabic commentators to be alluded to in the Quran, 4 but many others dispute the allusion. Elpherar quotes four different opinions on this passage. The first opinion is that it refers to Balaam, for which he quotes many authorities, and relates the history of Balaam in almost complete accord with the

2 Oa Sura XXV. 40. s>W*^ l^lc y*/> Jfet tytf v-ofej JU

3 On Sura XXV. 40 (vid. Maracc.) 6^c J-J^ *-+**& J.J

4 Sura VII. 1745.