Page:Judaism and Islam, a prize essay - Geiger - 1898.pdf/48

 30 JUDAISM AND ISL^M.

and, on the other, they would require a much more exact treatment than could be given while handling our main subject. Then, too, they are made unnecessary by the means which we use in each individual case, and which will be shown in the different divisions of the work ; so that on most points we can without them attain to a high degree of probability, practically sufficient for all scientific purposes. For the sake of clearness, it may be well to divide the material borrowed from Judaism into thoughts belonging to it, and narratives taken from' it, and later we shall have to subdivide again.

SECOND SECTION. Chapter L

Thoughts belonging to Judaism which have passed over into the Quran ?

The new thoughts borrowed by one religion from another are of a twofold nature. Either they are radically new, there being hitherto in the borrowing religion not even a foreshadowing of them, so that the very conceptions are new, and require accordingly new words for their expression ; or else the component parts of these thoughts have long been in existence but not in this combination, the form in which these conceptions are blended being a novel one, and the view, therefore, which arises from this unusual presentation being new. We must therefore divide this chapter according to these distinctions.

PIEST CHAPTER.

First Part.

Conceptions borrowed from Judaism ? As the ushering in of hitherto unknown religious con- ceptions is always marked by the introduction of new words for their expression, and as the Jews in Arabia,