Page:Judaism and Islam, a prize essay - Geiger - 1898.pdf/78

 60 JUDAISM AND ISllM.

does not reappear, but a new man, another personality, another consciousness comes into being. This question dimly anticipated obtrudes itself, and can only be set at rest by proving that the very same personality can appear again. Instead of showing this Muhammad contents himself with the parable, used also occasionally in the Talmud, of the renewal of the dried up earth by fertilising rain. He found however that he could not silence the common convictions of men thereby, * and so he was compelled to come back to it again and again. The Jews also sought to give prominence to this resemblance, and they put the eulo- gium 2 "Who sendeth down the rain" into the second benediction which treats of the resurrection. 3 The fact that the righteous rise actually in their clothes 4 (which after all is not more wonderful than in their bodies) is explained by the parable of the grain of wheat, which is laid in the earth without covering, but springs up again with many coverings. The passage in Quran YI. 96 contains a similar statement. This view is not strange to Islam, for a saying which is attributed to Muhammad runs thus : 5 " The dead man shall be raised in the clothes in which he died. "

. That from the standpoint of revealed religion the belief in the possibility of revelation is fundamental needs of course no proof, and in this the views of all revealed religions are alike ; yet differences can be found in the manner of conceiving of the revelation, and here we recognise again that Muhammad derived his view of it from Judaism, of course with-some modification.

Suras VI. 95, XXX, 49, XXXVI. 33, XLI. 39, XLIII. 10, etc.

8 Taanith at the beginning.

4 Sanhedrin 90. 2, and Kethubhoth III, 2,

5

(Poo. notes misc, cap. 7, p. 271.)