• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 21185 0

above the powers of heaven and earth, but who has often revealed himself to mankind by the ministry of his angels and prophets, and whose grace or justice has interrupted, by seasonable miracles, the order of nature. The most rational of the Arabs acknowledged his power, though they neglected his worship; ^61 and it was habit rather than conviction that still attached them to the relics of idolatry. The Jews and Christians were the people of the Book; the Bible was already translated into the Arabic language, ^62 and the volume of the Old Testament was accepted by the concord of these implacable enemies. In the story of the Hebrew patriarchs, the Arabs were pleased to discover the fathers of their nation. They applauded the birth and promises of Ismael; revered the faith and virtue of Abraham; traced his pedigree and their own to the creation of the first man, and imbibed, with equal credulity, the prodigies of the holy text, and the dreams and traditions of the Jewish rabbis.

[Footnote 55: Diodorus Siculus (tom. i. l. ii. p. 142 - 145) has cast on their religion the curious but superficial glance of a Greek. Their astronomy would be far more valuable: they had looked through the telescope of reason, since they could doubt whether the sun were in the number of the planets or of the fixed stars.]

[Footnote 56: Simplicius, (who quotes Porphyry,) de Coelo, l. ii. com. xlvi p. 123, lin. 18, apud Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 474, who doubts the fact, because it is adverse to his systems. The earliest date of the Chaldaean observations is the year 2234 before Christ. After the conquest of Babylon by Alexander, they were communicated at the request of Aristotle, to the astronomer Hipparchus. What a moment in the annals of science!]

[Footnote 57: Pocock, (Specimen, p. 138 - 146,) Hottinger, (Hist. Orient. p. 162 - 203,) Hyde, (de Religione Vet. Persarum, p. 124, 128, &c.,) D'Herbelot, (Sabi, p. 725, 726,) and Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 14, 15,) rather excite than gratify our curiosity; and the last of these writers confounds Sabianism with the primitive religion of the Arabs.]

[Footnote 58: D'Anville (l'Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 130 - 137) will fix the position of these ambiguous Christians; Assemannus (Bibliot. Oriental. tom. iv. p. 607 - 614) may explain their tenets. But it is a slippery task to ascertain the creed of an ignorant people afraid and ashamed to disclose their secret traditions.

Note: The Codex Nasiraeus, their sacred book, has been published by Norberg whose researches contain almost all that is known of this singular people. But their origin is almost as obscure as ever: if ancient, their creed has been so corrupted with mysticism and Mahometanism, that its native lineaments are very indistinct. - M.]

[Footnote 59: The Magi were fixed in the province of B hrein, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 114,) and mingled with the old Arabians, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 146 - 150.)]

[Footnote 60: The state of the Jews and Christians in Arabia is described by Pocock from Sharestani, &c., (Specimen, p. 60, 134, &c.,) Hottinger, (Hist. Orient. p. 212 - 238,) D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 474 - 476,) Basnage, (Hist. des Juifs, tom. vii. p. 185, tom. viii. p. 280,) and Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 22, &c., 33, &c.)]

[Footnote 61: In their offerings, it was a maxim to defraud God for the profit of the idol, not a more potent, but a more irritable, patron, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 108, 109.)]

[Footnote 62: Our versions now extant, whether Jewish or Christian, appear more recent than the Koran; but the existence of a prior translation may be fairly inferred, - 1. From the perpetual practice of the synagogue of expounding the Hebrew lesson by a paraphrase in the vulgar tongue of the country; 2. From the analogy of the Armenian, Persian, Aethiopic versions, expressly quoted by the fathers of the fifth century, who assert that the Scriptures were translated into all the Barbaric languages, (Walton, Prolegomena ad Biblia Polyglot, p. 34, 93 - 97. Simon, Hist. Critique du V. et du N. Testament,