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CHAPTER IV.
THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY AND CHRISTIAN APOCRYPHAL
BOOKS.
WHEN Muhammad arose, Christianity had not obtained
any very considerable hold upon the Arabs. "After
five centuries of Christian evangelization, we can point
to but a sprinkling here and there of Christian converts:
the Banu Harith of Najran, the Banu Hanifah of Yamamah,
some of the Banu Tai at Taimah, and hardly any more
." In
his youth, we are told, Muhammad heard the preaching
of Quss, the Bishop of Najran, and he met many monks
and saw much of professing Christians when he visited
Syria as a trader before his assumption of the prophetic
office. But what he saw and heard of the Church had
little effect upon him for good. Nor need we wonder
at this. "What Muhammad and his Khalifahs found
in all directions whither their scimitars cut a path
for them," says Isaac Taylor ,
speaking of a somewhat later period in words which nevertheless
describe Muhammad's early experience also, "was
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APOCRYPHAL BOOKS. |
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a superstition so abject, an idolatry so gross and
shameless, church doctrines so arrogant, church practices
so dissolute and so puerile, that the strong minded
Arabians felt themselves inspired anew as God's messengers
to reprove the errors of the world, and authorized as
God's avengers to punish apostate Christendom."
The Greek monk who wrote the History of the Martyrdom
of Athanasius the Persian, speaking of the sufferings
inflicted on the people of Palestine when it was for
a brief space in the hands of the Persians in Muhammad's
time, draws a fearful picture
of the wickedness of the professing Christians there,
and does not hesitate to say that it was for this reason
that God gave them over to the cruelty of their Zoroastrian
persecutors. In the Book of Revelation (ix. 20, 21)
the prevalence of idol-worship and other sins such as
those described by this monk is given as the reason
why the Muhammadan power was to be permitted to oppress
the Eastern Church. Speaking of the same time Mosheim
says, "During
this century true religion lay buried under a senseless
mass of superstitions, and was unable to raise her head.
The earlier Christians had worshipped only God and His
Son; but those called Christians in this century worshipped
the wood of a cross, the images |
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