196 THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY AND

regarding Muhammad, and apply this title to their Prophet in consequence!

In connexion with the creation of Adam, the Qur'an repeatedly asserts that God commanded the angels to worship him. Among other verses to this effect we may adduce the following:—

Surah II., Al Baqarah, 32, "And when We said to the angels, ‘Worship Adam,’ then they worshipped him, except Iblis."

Surahs XVII., Al Asra', 63; XVIII., Al Kahf, 48; and XX., Ta Ha, 115, contain the same statement in almost the same words.

This idea can hardly be derived from the Talmud, in which, though we are told that the angels showed Adam undue respect, yet it is distinctly stated that they did wrong. It is doubtless borrowed from a misapprehension of Heb. i. 6: "And again, when He bringeth in the first-begotten into the world, He saith, ‘And let all the angels of God worship Him.’" Muhammad seems to have been greatly struck with this verse, and, since he (as usual) misunderstood it by fancying that ‘the first-begotten 1" meant not Christ but Adam, he repeatedly introduced its equivalent into the Qur'an. This may have been done as an argument against worship being offered to Christ, for in a verse already quoted (Surah III., 52) he tells us
1 Probably Muhammad confounded the "first-begotten" of this passage with the term "first-created" repeatedly applied to Adam in the "Testament of Abraham": vide below, p. 208.
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that in God's sight Jesus was just as Adam, doubtless in having no human father (as 'Abbasi and Jalalain explain it), but that He was not to be accounted Divine on that account.

9. All men must go down into Hell.

This strange idea is thus expressed in Surah XIX, Maryam, 69-73:—

"Therefore, by thy Lord! We shall surely assemble them and the devils, then We shall surely make them present, kneeling, around Hell. There shall We take out from each sect whoso of them is most violent in rebellion against the Merciful One. Then indeed We are best aware concerning those who shall be first in it in burning: and there is none of you but goeth down into it. It has become concerning thy Lord a fixed decision."

This passage has caused much unhappiness to pious Muslims, even though they hope that the fire of hell will not injure them. Commentators have striven manfully to explain away the obvious meaning of the words by saying (though they are by no means agreed in this opinion) that what is meant is merely that all men, even true Muslims must come near to hell fire, and that they do this when they pass over the Bridge 1 As Sirat on the Judgment Day. If this explanation be accepted the passage should be dealt with in Chapter v,
1 pp. 251, sqq.