166 THE RELIGION OF THE CRESCENT.

might be known whom GOD had appointed to have charge of her as she grew up to womanhood.

Again we are told how when on one occasion she was hungry, a date-palm 1 of itself offered its fruit for her acceptance. All these and many similar apocryphal legends are to be found in the "Protevangelium of James," the "Pseudo-Matthew," the "Gospel of the Nativity of Mary" and similar works, some of which are of very early 2 date, all of

Christ.

those we have mentioned having been composed long before Muhammad's time. So also with reference to Christ Himself, the accounts which Muhammad gives of His birth and miracles are based upon those contained in the "Gospel of the Pseudo-Thomas," a very early3 work, and also upon certain particulars now found recorded in the "Arabic Gospel of the Infancy,"

1 Surah xix. 23, 25; and cf. Hist. Nativ. Mariae, cap. xx. (connected, however, with the flight into Egypt,—another of Muhammad's blunders!).
2 Tischendorf thinks (op. cit.) that the Protev. Jac. belongs to the middle of the second century. Cowper is uncertain whether it existed before the fourth century (Introd., p. lii.). The Pseudo-Matthew (otherwise called Hist. Nativ. Mariae) "may belong to the fifth century." (Cowper, p. 27; cf. Introd., p. liv.) The Gospel of the Nativity of Mary belongs to the fifth or sixth century (Cowper, Introd., p. lxii).
3 Cowper (Introd., p. lxix.) says: "This book vies in antiquity with the Protevangelium, and claims to have originally appeared about the middle of the second century, if not before." It exists in varied forms, and much of it was incorporated in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy.
THE ORIGIN OF ISLAM. 167

though 1 in its present form the latter book is apparently more recent than the Qur'an. In these apocryphal works as in the Qur'an we are told that Jesus spoke when an infant in the cradle, 2 and that one of his miracles wrought when a child consisted in giving life to a bird3 made of clay. The other miracles ascribed in the Qur'an to our Lord, viz. the healing of blindness and leprosy and raising the dead to life,4 may be those mentioned in these apocryphal books quite as easily as the authentic works of mercy recorded in the Gospels. But Muhammad found in the Christian fables which were related to him many things which seemed contrary to what he believed to be the truth. Almost idolatrous reverence is shown to Mary5 in

1 The style of the Arabic is decidedly late, and not very good: the plural is used for the dual, &c. &c. It seems to me that Cowper is probably right in attributing it to a Coptic origin, though the present Arabic text is probably a translation from the Syriac, for Syriac words occur in it. Vide the Arabic text in Giles's "Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti," vol. i., pp. 12, sqq.
2 Ar. Evang. Infant, cap. i.:
اًنَّ يَسُوعَ تَكَلَّمَ وَهْوَ حِينَ كَانَ فِى الْمَهْدِ وَقَال لِمَرْيَمَ اُمِّهِ إِنّىِ أَنَا هُوَ يَسُوعُ ابْنُ الله‫.
, &c.: cf. Surah xix. 30, 31[29,30], sqq., also Surah v. 109[110]; Surah iii. 40, 41[46]; &c.
3 Pseudo-Thomas, cap. ii. (Giles, Cod. Apoc. N. T., vol. i., pp. 48, 49); Ev. Infant, cap. xxxvi. (Cod. Apoc. N.T., vol. i., pp. 25, 26). Surah iii. 43[49]; Surah v. 110.
4 Surah iii. 43[43]; Surah v. 110; &c.
5 E.g., in the Evang. Infant; Hist. of Joseph the Carpenter; Gosp. of Nativ. of Mary; &c.