500 MOHAMMEDISM 



at once answer in the affirmative. Not that we have learned a great 

 deal as regards the language and the exegesis of this sacred book 

 of Islam, though there are peculiarities (for instance the knowledge 

 of borrowed words) 1 by which our understanding has increased in 

 this too. Yet in general the philological problems of the Koran are 

 not so complicated as those of the Vedas and the Avesta. But the 

 indefatigable zeal and masterly penetration of scholars like Theodor 

 Noldeke, W. Robertson Smith, and Julius Wellhausen 2 have, out 

 of most minute researches into and criticism of the literary remains 

 and by simultaneous comparison with other Semitic faiths, diffused 

 surprising light upon pre-Islamic religion and the sentiments and 

 institutions of the old Arabians: a significant progress compared to 

 the last preceding valuable analysis of the pre-Islamic religion by 

 Osiander (1853) and Ludolf Krehl (1862). By the deepening of our 

 knowledge about the pre-Islamic state of Arabian religion, about 

 the civilization and ethical positions, the customs and laws of the 

 tribes, our points of view for judging Muhammad's reform are essen- 

 tially enriched and its starting-points and antecedences are now 

 clearer to our eye. In one word: the environment, in which the 

 Prophet grew, the community to which he applied himself with his 

 enthusiastic speech, have approached us scientifically and therefore 

 we understand them better. 



The impulse also inducing Muhammad to destroy the pagan 

 traditions of his native country, the Jewish and Christian elements, 

 namely, in his teaching, have been examined closer and closer. 

 Though the theological interest has from the beginning of these 

 studies ever favored the inquiry into the dependence of Islam on 

 Judaism and Christianity, even this old tendency has again taken 

 a new quickening, and I take pleasure in referring at this place to 

 the valuable Eli Lectures of the American scholar Henry Preserved 

 Smith on the relationship of the Koran to the Old and the New 

 Testament. 3 



Among the sources from which Muhammad derived the construct- 

 ive thoughts of his doctrine, Parseeism enters more and more into 

 the foreground of consideration. One could rather presume that the 



1 S. Fraenkel, De vocabulis in antiqui* Arabum carminibus et in Corano peregri- 

 nis (Lugd. Batav. 1880). Dvorak, iiber die Fremdworter in Koran (Wien, 1885, 

 Sitzungsber. der Akad. der Wiss. zu Wien, Phil. hist. Cl. vol. 109). 



2 W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (Cambridge, 

 1885; new edition. London, 1903); J. Wellhausen, Reste ardbischen Heidenthums 

 gesammeltund erleutert (Berlin, 1887, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, part 3; new edi- 

 tion, Berlin, 1897), and the important criticisms of these works by Th. Noldeke, in 

 Z D M G. yols. 40 and 41. W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the 

 Semites, First Series (London, 1889; new edition, 1899); Wellhausen, Die She 

 bei den Arabern (Gottingen, 1893, in Nachrichten von der Kgl. Gesettsch der Wiss. 

 no. xi). 



3 H. P. Smith, The Bible and Islam, or the Influence of the Old and New Testa- 

 ments on the Religion of Mohammed, being the Eli Lectures for 1897. 



