counterfeited to them. Those who differ in regard to him are in doubt for that reason. They have no knowledge thereof beyond following their own opinion. They did not kill him certainly. Nay, God exalted him to himself. God was mighty and wise. There shall not be any of the people of the Book but shall believe in him before his death" (iv. v. 154 ff.).

This idea of a substitute for Jesus having been crucified in place of Him is not unknown in Christian speculation. We find it both in Ebionitic and Gnostic sects. Rösch 1 finds here the mythic precipitation of the Cerinthian heresy and the Nestorian separation of the two natures in Christ: the higher Christ being exalted to heaven and the man Jesus being crucified. That may be so. But Muhammad's own originality may have worked upon very slender information. According to his theory, so often expressed in the stories of the prophets, they were always delivered from the Catastrophe. Jesus, had He actually been crucified by His enemies, would have been the only exception. Add to this that he had learned that Christians believed in a living Christ exalted at the right hand of God, and that before the end all God's people would be brought to know Him. In that, I think, we have sufficient to generate in Muhammad's mind the account which he gives, without attributing to him any intimate knowledge of Christian speculation or supposing him to have been influenced by obscure sects which he otherwise shows no knowledge of. Whether "those who differ in regard to him"

denotes the various parties to the Christological disputes within Christendom, is doubtful. It may simply refer to the great difference which had impressed Muhammad, viz. that between Jews and Christians.

Muhammad does indeed seem to know of hostile sects of Christians. In v. v. 17 we find the following reference to the Christians: "Of those who call themselves Nasara We took a covenant. But they forgot a part of what they were taught, wherefore We have stirred up enmity and hatred amongst them till the Day of Resurrection." That looks like a reference to the mutual hatred of Christian sects. But in the same Surah, v. 69, almost the same words are used of the Jews "That which has been sent down to thee from thy Lord will surely increase the rebellion and unbelief of many of them, and We have put enmity and hatred amongst them until the Day of Resurrection". A little further on, v. 93, his own followers are thus warned: "Satan wishes to cast enmity and hatred amongst you in the matter of wine and games of chance, and to turn you aside from the remembrance of God and from prayer". The enmity spoken of in all these verses is not that between different sects of Christians, Jews, or Muhammadans, but moral perversity and enmity towards God (cf. v. 72). That enmity he recognises will be permanent; in other words, the Christians with whom his power in Arabia was now coming into collision would not accept Islam, or recognise him as the prophet of the Arabs. An injunction which had been issued probably shortly after the battle of Uhud, forbidding believers to