Page:Judaism and Islam, a prize essay - Geiger - 1898.pdf/82

 64 JUDAISM AND ISLAM.

passage from the Berachoth shows this: " The press in the school is caused by them, the demons." l With this we may compare the Quran : " When the servant of God stood up to invoke Him, it wanted little but that the genii had pressed on him in crowds. " 2 It cannot be maintained that the greater part of the teaching about genii was adopted from Judaism, it must rather be said to have come from the same dark source whence the Jews of those times drew these conceptions, viz., Parseeism.

Still here, as in the case of any point which is of inaccessible origin, a reference to a mere similarity is not without use.

Under these four heads then, viz., (1) Creation, (2) Retribution including the Last Judgment and the Resurrection, (3) Mode of Revelation, and (4) Doctrine of Spirits, details are found, the adoption of which from Judaism we may regard as sufficiently proved. The precaution against representing, out of love for our theme, that which is common either to the general religious feelings of mankind, or to all revealed religions, or at least that which belonged to other known religious parties in Muhammad's time as peculiar only to Judaism, compels us to fix these limits. We have found much of interest especially under the second head, so that the demands of our theme might seem to be fairly well satisfied.

 B. Moral and Legal Rules.

It is obvious that in a revealed religion all individual commands form part of the religion, and therefore one cannot draw any sharp line of distinction between the "religious" and the "moral." We have accordingly

l tfin sin^a nb^ rKjft w^rn &

2 Sura LXXII. 19,