previous revelation. But he is not copying directly from the Old Testament. While most of the stories are easily recognisable, the correspondence is never close enough for direct dependence of that kind. The simplest explanation would be that Muhammad has now got in touch with Jews and is repeating stories which he has learned orally from them. The fact that a great deal of Jewish legendary material, such as is found in Talmudic literature, is associated with the Old Testament stories goes to confirm that. On the other hand, we have to remember that a great deal of that legendary material was also current among Christians. Some of the names of the prophets also show that they have come not direct from the Old Testament, but have passed through Greek or Syriac before reaching Muhammad, such as Ilyas for Elijah, Yunus for Jonah, even Fir'aun for Pharaoh. In course of time, too, he includes among his narratives of the signs of God stories which are not connected with the Old Testament, or with the Jews, but with Christianity. The stories of the Virgin Mary and the Birth of Jesus appear among them quite on the same footing as the others. These are related, however, not as in the New Testament, but more in the form in which they appear in Apocryphal Gospels. (They have most similarity with the Protevangelium Jacobi, a book which we know to have been widely diffused in the East.) When these stories first occur in the Qur'an there is no indication that they come from a source antagonistic to or even different from the others. They are simply like the

others recounted as signs of God's miraculous intervention.

It is beside the mark to inquire at this stage whether Muhammad is more in contact with Jews or with Christians. He did not at all distinguish between them, and is perhaps not directly in contact with either. What we have to do with is the brooding religious genius and man of great native mental power, but very limited knowledge, striving to find out what others more enlightened than his own Arab people knew, which might be of use to him in his own enterprise; perhaps, too, restricted in his inquiries by the necessity of avoiding too open association with, or borrowing from, those who professed an alien faith. Muhammad is not identifying himself either with Jews or Christians, but is collecting information from any source open to him, and getting it often at third or fourth hand rather than at first. That this was so is confirmed by the gibes of his opponents, reported in the Qur'an. "This is nothing but falsehood which he has devised, and other people have helped him to it." "Tales of the Ancients, which he has transcribed for himself. They are recited to him morning and evening." That charge he simply meets by the counter-assertion that "God had revealed it" (xxv. V. 5 ff.) — which might be ambiguous, but was true, if we assume that Muhammad himself accepted it as derived from previous revelation. In another passage he meets the similar charge, that it was a man who taught him what he delivered, by pointing out that the person they hinted at spoke a foreign language while his