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We have now to examine this early development of Islam in somewhat greater detail: indeed, to secure a more general appreciation of this point is the object of the present work. The relationship of the Qoran to Christianity has been already noted: it was a book which preached rather than taught and enounced isolated laws but no connected system.
Moreover, the many post-biblical features and stories which the Qoran contains concerning the past of mankind, indicate a vulgar origin, and especially as regards the Christian legends, communications from people who lived outside the communion of the great Christian churches; this is sufficiently proved by the docetical representation of the death of Jesus and the many stories about his life, taken from apocryphal sources or from popular oral legends.
In the canonical and half-canonical collections of tradition concerning what the Prophet has said, done, and omitted to do, in biographical works, an answer is given to every question which may arise in the mind of the reader of the Qoran; and there are many Qoran-commentaries, in which these answers are appended to the verses which they are supposed to elucidate.
Though Mohammed had repeatedly declared himself to be an ordinary man chosen by Allah as the organ of His revelation, and whose only miracle was the Qoran, posterity ascribed to him a whole series of wonders, evidently invented in emulation of the wonders of Christ.
Religion and morality will have to wage an ever more hopeless war against unbelief, against heresy and ungodly ways of living. While this is surely no reason for entering into any compromise with doctrines which depart but a hair's breadth from Qoran and Sunnah, it necessitates methods of defence against heresy as unknown in Mohammed's time as heresy itself.
In our sceptical times there is very little that is above criticism, and one day or other we may expect to hear that Mohammed never existed. The arguments for this can hardly be weaker than those of Casanova against the authenticity of the Qoran.
Even at that time Jewish ideas may have been in circulation, not only in the Qoran but also in oral tradition, which afterwards became stereotyped: at the same time Muhammed's utterances against the Jews eventually became so strong during the Medina period, for political reasons, that I can hardly imagine the traditions in their final form to have been adopted directly from the Jews.
In their eyes the Church of later days had degenerated; and they declined to consider the agreement of its doctors as justifying the penetration into Islam of ideas and usages of foreign origin. The cult of saints was rejected by them as altogether contradictory to the Qoran and the genuine tradition.
A relative sinlessness Mohammed shared with Jesus; the acceptance of this doctrine, contradictory to the original spirit of the Qoran, had moreover a dogmatic motive: it was considered indispensable to raise the text of the Qoran above all suspicion of corruption, which suspicion would not be excluded if the organ of the Revelation were fallible.
Even direct commands to the congregation are introduced by the stereotyped "speak"; it was of primary importance that the Qoran should be regarded as God's word and not as man's. This fact largely contributed to secure an uncontaminated transmission of the text, which seems also to have been left by Muhammed himself in definite form.
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