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At the end of that period Moses departs with his wife. He sees the burning bush in the valley of Towa. There he is taught the two signs, and bidden go to Pharaoh. He replies that he is afraid, and that he is not eloquent, but is reminded of his wonderful preservation in infancy, and is given Aaron as spokesman. He appears before Pharaoh and performs the two signs. Then follow the plagues, the crossing of the Red Sea and the destruction of the Egyptians. In token of the ratification of the covenant at Sinai the mountain is lifted up. During the absence of Moses the people, at the instigation of As-Sámiri, and with the connivance of Aaron, worship a calf of gold. Moses in his anger breaks the tablets of laws which he had received, and, seizing Aaron by the beard, upbraids him fiercely. Next we have the miraculous feeding of the people with manna and quails and water from rocks, and the institution of the sacrifice of the red heifer. The people fear to invade Canaan, and are forbidden the country for forty years. Moses sets out to find a person generally called Al-Khidr, and identified with Elijah.

If we now proceed to disintegrate this compilation and to distribute its elements among the several components of which it is made up, we find that Haman (along with Karun or Korah) appears in two only of the original sources-in Chapters 28 and 40-the slaughter of the Israelite children in five. The scene of the burning bush is named the Valley of Towa in two (20 and 79). The central event in all the narratives is the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea for rejecting the preaching of Moses; but even this is not always explicitly mentioned. In Chapter 40 a Courtier of Pharaoh takes Moses' part. Chapter 7 speaks of six plagues, Chapter 17 of nine signs, whilst other chapters do not refer to

the plagues at all. In Chapter 2 the feeding with manna and quails is subsequent to the worship of the golden calf; in 20 the reverse is the case. The lifting up of Mount Sinai is mentioned in Chapters 2 and 4. As-Sámiri (the Samaritan) appears in Chapter 20 only. In some of the narratives Moses alone is the hero (e.g., 32); in others Moses and Aaron together (21). In one chapter the story of Moses will precede that of Abraham; in another the chronological order will be followed. The curious midrash of Moses and Al-Khidr occurs only once, in Chapter 18. Chapter 5 merely mentions the refusal of the people to enter Canaan, and their suggestion that Moses should go by himself, with its result.

A study, even the most cursory, of the Korán shows clearly that to the Semite there was nothing incongruous in repeating the same narrative or discourse over and over again in the same volume, any more than in repeating the same bars in the same piece of music. We are apt to forget that we have the musical element to reckon with both in the Koran and in the Old Testament (Cf. especially Korán 55; Is. ix. and x.; Ezek. xxxii., etc.). But, leaving the poetry out of account, and taking the Korán and the Old Testament as mere prose compositions, we can learn a good deal from a comparison of the two.

In the first place, not only does the author of the Korán repeat himself, but he does so without any glaring inconsistency. In all the narratives of Moses the phraseology may vary, but the matter or sense, when two or more narratives coincide, is the same. The Semite, therefore, is quite as incapable of logical inconsistency as the European. Neither an author nor an editor would have allowed two inconsistent accounts of the same event to be set down side by side. To account for the apparent

inconsistencies of the Old Testament, therefore, by a difference of authorship is no explanation at all, because we still require to know how these inconsistencies came to be passed by the editor, who combined the divergent accounts. This editor or redactor, moreover, is a personage absolutely unknown to Semitic literature. There we have authors and books, but the "editing" of an author in the way in which the Old Testament writers are said to have been edited is an entirely modern and European practice. The Korán was edited in the califate of Abu Bekr by collecting its verses from palm-leaves and from shoulder-blades and from the breasts of men, and setting them down exactly as the prophet had uttered them. Of one thing we may be absolutely certain: If Abu Bekr or Zaid ibu Thábit or Othmán had chosen to piece together the many duplicate passages in the Korán, as is supposed to have been done with the Old Testament books, there is not a critic in Europe who would have been able to disintegrate them again.

The most serious flaw in the equipment of the Arab as a writer of history -as indeed of European writers, including Chaucer-is his lack of the sense of historical perspective. He throws all his figures upon a screen and they are all equally distant from him. In the Korán Nimrod is contemporary with Abraham; Haman (of the Book of Esther) is the vezír of the Pharaoh of the Exodus; and Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the daughter of Imran, and therefore identical with Miriam the sister of Moses. When a series of prophets is mentioned the chronological sequence is not observed, and in duplicate versions of the same story the order of events is not always the same. So, too, in the historical books of the Old Testament there is no reason to suppose, for example, that the events recorded in 2 Sam, ix.-xxiv.

are set down precisely in the order in which they occurred. In these books the one really inexplicable difficulty, which, like the two divine names in the Pentateuch, is the agate knifeedge upon which the whole critical analysis is suspended, is the fact that in 1 Sam. xvi. 14-23, David is Saul's favorite armor-bearer, whereas in Chapter xvii. he is (it is supposed) too young to bear arms, and is quite unknown to Saul and Abner (xvii. 5558). The Greek text, it is true, omits the verses last cited, but still presents the (supposed) difficulty as to David's age. If we could believe xvi. 14-23 to be subsequent in time to xvii., we should get rid of both difficulties.

In addition to the two narratives of which the Books of Samuel are composed it is believed that there can be detected traces of a third hand-that of the "Deuteronomic redactor." This editor who is imbued with the spirit of Deuteronomy gives an occasional religious turn to the narrative where that was lacking in the original. The warnings given to Eli by the man of God in Chapter ii., and through Samuel in Chapter iii., as well as much of Samuel's farewell address on his demission of office in Chapter xii., are couched in the language of the Book of Deuteronomy. It is admitted, however, that the Deuteronomist is far more in evidence in the Book of Judges than in Samuel. There he gives his hand free play and is, in fact, responsible for the form and setting of the whole book. In it each one of the greater judges is introduced and dismissed with similar phrases and in the same set terms. "The Israelites do evil in the sight of Jehovah. He sells them into the hand of some tyrant; they serve him so many years; then they cry to Jehovah; he raises up a deliverer; the tyrant is subdued; and the land has rest so many years." It is agreed that these introductory and

final formulæ are from the hand of the Deuteronomic editor, and that the stories to which they form the setting are by much older writers-it is generally supposed by the two authors mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Now let us turn to the Korán. In the Korán we find certain chapters made up in whole or in part of stories about the prophets; for example, in Chapter 7, about Noah, Húd (the prophet of the tribe of Ad), Sálih (the prophet of the tribe of Thamúd), Lot, Shoaib (the prophet of Midian), Moses. Similarly, in Chapter 21-which is called the Chapter of the Prophetsmention is made of Moses, Abraham, Lot, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, David, Solomon, Job, Ishmael, Idrís (Enoch), Dhu'l Kifl, "He of the fish" (Jonah), Zacharias, the Virgin Mary. So in Chapter 18 we have the stories of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, of Moses in search of Al-Khidr, and of "the man of the two horns" (Alexander the Great). In Chapter 19 we have the stories of Zacharias, John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary, of Jesus, Abraham, Ishmael"who was true to his promise"-and others.

These stories are repeated over and over again, and the motive is always the same. A tribe-Ad or Thamúd or Midian-rebel against God; God sends an apostle to bring them back to their faith; they declare the apostle to be a liar; God destroys them; and the prophet possesses his soul in patience. Between the longer stories there intervene some sentences of a hortatory or parenetic nature, dwelling on the moral to be drawn from the tale. Chapter 7 the story of Húd concludes (v. 70), “And We delivered him and those who were with him, with mercy from Us, and We cut off the last of those who said that Our signs were lies, and who did not believe." Similarly, after the stories of Noah (v. 62), Salih (vv. 76, 77), Lot (vv. 81, 82),

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Shoaib (vv. 88-91). Again, in Chapter 21, after the mention of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we read (v. 72): "Each of them We made pious and We made them guides to lead at Our command, and We showed them how to do good, and to pray, and to give alms, and they served Us"; again, after naming Ishmael, Idrís and Dhu'l Kif (v. 85): "Each one was of the number of the patient, and We caused them to enter into Our mercy; every one of them was of the pious"; and, again, after referring to Jonah (v. 87): "We delivered him out of his affliction, and in like wise will We deliver those who believe." Similarly, in Chapter 18, between the story of the Sleepers of Ephesus and that of Moses there is inserted a parenetic discourse too long to quote.

In the Korán, therefore, we meet with the same phenomena as are found in the Book of Judges, and, to a less extent, in the Books of Samuel-series of stories of heroes set in a religious or "Deuteronomic" framework. The prevailing view at the present time in regard to the Old Testament books is that the stories come from the pen of the author, or authors, of the books, and that the framework in which they are embedded is from the hand of an editor who wished to turn these narratives to a religious purpose. The analogy of the Korán shows that the supposed redactor is, in fact, the author of the book, of the narrative as well as of the hortatory parts. The narrative portions had no previous literary existence as far as he was concerned. They were the folk-lore of his day, popular tales with which every one was familiar, but which no one had committed to writing, or, indeed, would have thought of committing to writing for their own sake, and which would perhaps never have been written at all, had it not been for the religious use to which they could be put. Even so

Muhammad would never have dreamed of retailing these old world sagas and legends of rejected and persecuted apostles and prophets, but for their religious value in mitigatng his own sufferings at the hands of his persecutors, and in turning them from the worship of Al-Lát and Al-Ozza and Manát to the service of that One Eternal who begetteth not nor is begotten, like whom there is none.

Of all portions of the Books of Samuel it is agreed that the poetical pieces -the Song of Hannah (1 Sam. ii. 1-10), the version of the eighteenth Psalm (2 Sam. xxii.), and the last words of David (xxiii. 1-7) are the latest. The elegies which David pronounced over Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam. i. 19-27), and over Abner (iii. 33, 34), are on all hands allowed to be authentic, and there is a lingering belief in the authenticity of parts at least of the Psalm; but the Song of Hannah and the last words of David have gone by the board.

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This is a point upon which the Korán cannot give us any assistance, for although it ranges from the most intense inspiration of poetry to the dullest prose, it contains no formal verses nor any poems corresponding in subject to those found in the Books of Samuel. In the old Arabian poetry, on the other hand, we find parallels in plenty. the Arab elegies the two themes upon which the poets love to dwell are the warlike courage and the generosity of the fallen hero. It is the same with David's elegy for Saul and Jonathan, except that whereas for the Arab generosity takes the form of hospitality, with the Hebrew it shows itself in the generous distribution of the spoil. both the specially religious element, even in the early fanatical days of Islám, is kept well in the background. At all the most strenuous turning points of life the Semite falls back upon Fate. The following lines are

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taken from an elegy composed by a contemporary of Muhammad upon his brother:

We were enriched by his goodness for a space,

Then she who strikes all men assailed

us.

I know that the longest lived of men Is for an appointed time, of which the furthest term is near.

Death hath wrought ruin of life, and there has come to his day

One who was close to my side and dear.

If the world were for sale, I would buy him back with it,

Seeing that in him men's hearts rejoiced.

By Allah, I will not forget him as long as the sun shines,

And I can brandish a lance made from a branch of arak.

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The authenticity of Hannah's Song is denied on the somewhat contradictory grounds that there is nothing in it answering to Hannah's circumstances, and that an editor inserted it because v. 5 is really to the point. This takes for granted that we know what kind of song Hannah would have sung. We can know this only by comparing analogous cases, but the Old Testament offers no parallel. Hannah is in the precise position of a poet who has received largess from some exalted personage, and who out of gratitude composes a poem in his honor. Arab poet in these circumstances does not recite a panegyric upon his patron. He composes a poem on any subject he pleases, generally upon a horse, or a she-camel, or a lion, putting his best workmanship into it, and presents it as a beautiful work of art for the acceptance of his patron. The ode which Kaab ibu Zuhair recited before Muhammad, when seeking his protection, contains a minute, almost anatomical, description of his own she-camel, and another of a lion. We cannot therefore tell what the subject matter of

Hannah's song would have been, but its "execution" would have been the best she was capable of. In that respect the simple verses tradition has handed down are beyond criticism.

Considerations, such as the foregoing, appear to point to the conclusion that the theory of dual or triple authorship does not afford us an adequate explanation of the difficulties with which we meet in the historical parts of the Old Testament. That it is to European scholars a satisfactory and convincing solution is due to the scientific and philosophical discipline in which they are trained. If we turn to such a purely Semitic literary product as the Korán, we find the same phenomena as beset us in the Hebrew, and, to a less degree, in the Christian Scriptures. Yet the Korán is the rock upon which higher criticism goes to pieces. To apply to it the theory of double sources is out of the question. It is hard to get behind a text, the words of which are extant, engraved The Contemporary Review.

upon nearly contemporary coins. With all its self-contradictions and inconsistencies, its flights from the loftiest poetry to the tamest prose, it had but one author-Muhammad. Of the early Hebrews, it is true, no coins exist, and, but for one or two inscriptions, we have nothing to go upon beyond the national tradition. The inscriptions and the tradition, however, are in agreement, and tradition with the Hebrew and the Arab is a more reliable source of knowledge than are written documents with us. As Professor Strack observes in the new edition of Genesis: Nations, like individuals, remember their earliest years best.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that a study of the Korán would suggest that instead of splitting up the books of the Bible into innumerable sources, we would be nearer the mark if we supposed, for example, that the first three books of the New Testament were from a single hand.

T. H. Weir.

I

THE BACKGROUND OF DRAMA.

In his Shakespeare and the Modern Stage Mr. Sidney Lee has dealt in a trenchant style with the elaborate scenic production of Shakespeare's plays which is the fashion of the day. He gives many reasons why scenic display should not be too elaborate, among them the practical one that the cost of such productions is so excessive that two or three pieces could be mounted for the same cost as one. That is a matter which need hardly be discussed, for presumably managers know their own business and do not spend money on their productions unless they have good reason to expect it will be returned to them with profit. The chief practical objection, apart

from artistic grounds, against the elaborate productions of to-day, is that the initial expense demands a long run before the manager can be recouped, and long runs do not make for the best achievement of the actor's art. Unfortunately, Shakespeare is not the only sufferer from this state of things, and long runs are not always the result of an expensive production. While the theatre is a commercial speculation, the manager will naturally attempt to squeeze every penny piece he can out of his commodities. The plays themselves suffer. Mr. J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan is an instance. It is now in its third year, and, we may assume, will gradually take its place as a dramatic perennial. It has not

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