Page:The Moslem World - Volume 02.djvu/119



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ON MOSLEM TRADITION


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The Jewish and the Mohammedan religions agree in possessing each an Oral as well as a Written Law, and the development of the systems has not been in this matter quite independent. The existence of a Jewish Oral Law is, indeed, traceable to the time of Jerome, who mistranslates the Hebrew name Mishnah by deuterosis, and to that of Josephus and the New Testament; whence, though the Arabic-writing rabbis use for their Tradition a name derived from Moslem traditionalists, athar, it is clear that the Jews possessed the thing before Moslem times; but the codification of this Oral Tradition, and its ceasing to be oral, may well be due to Moslem influence, since a rabbi, who died in 1105, speaks of this reduction of the oral Law to writing as having taken place in his own generation, and it is possible that the earliest reference to the Talmud as a written book is in the Fihrist near the close of the tenth century.

To the name Mishnah, the Moslem name Sunnah bears a superficial resemblance, but it is not probable that there is any connexion. The word sunnah in its earliest legal usage, means "a practice," and is often accompanied by the epithet muttaba'ah; i.e., "to be followed," or "such as unites rather than separates," i.e., wherein people are agreed. It is even in late writers applied to practices taken over by Islam from Pagan times; e.g., the sacrifice called &#39;akikah, circumcision, the sacrifice called badanah, and marriage. And sunnah is sometimes used for the practice of others besides the Prophet.