Page:Judaism and Islam, a prize essay - Geiger - 1898.pdf/30

 12 JUDAISM AND ISLAM.

truce between us, I would have broken your neck.' He then took him bound to Muhammad, and Phineas denied having made the speech. Then came this revelation." The same thing is found in another passage : " The Jews say the hand of God is tied up." The meaningless character of the sentence shews in itself that the Jews were not in earnest; and if we take into consideration the occasion of the remark, and the way in which it was made, we shall see clearly the teasing and scoffing tendency of the Jews in their dealings with Muhammad. It was an answer to an expression, which in its simple meaning " To lend to God" must have seemed to them ridiculous, and which might easily give rise to the retort, " if God now needs money, He must be poor." It was only by a certain amount of distortion and mutilation that Muhammad could twist this speech into an accusation against the Jews. A good story is preserved for us in Sunna 608 which runs as follows : " After the conquest of Khaibar the Jews set a poisoned lamb before Muhammad. When he discovered this, he had them called together, and putting them on oath to tell him the truth, he asked if they had poisoned the lamb. They confessed, and he then enquired, ' For what reason ?' 'To rid ourselves of you, if you are a deceiver,' was their reply ; 'for if you are a prophet, poison will do you no harm.' " Who can fail to see in this answer a desire to free themselves from the importunity of Muhammad by biting repartee ?

At other times they changed his words, or used words of double meaning. In the prescribed salutation they said indeed " Ra'ina," but not in the sense intended by Muhammad, viz., " look on us "; but either in the sense of " count us guilty, or with a play on the Hebrew " ra" in