Muhammad's ideas and the influences which affected him we meet with two great difficulties. The first is that the traditions as to his early life are so unreliable as to be practically of no use for the purpose. It is unsafe to found anything upon them unless it is confirmed by the Qur'an itself. The second is that the Qur'an is in confusion. In spite of the fact that it was collected so soon after Muhammad's death, it is almost impossible to arrange it in chronological order. Nöldeke in his Geschichte des Qorans grouped the surahs of which it consists according to periods, and his arrangement of them has been generally accepted as the best that can be reached. He however did not profess to arrange the surahs within each group, especially those which form the earliest group, in order of time. Further, I think Nöldeke did not allow sufficiently for the fact that even quite short surahs are sometimes composite. It can, I think, be shown that Muhammad himself revised and added to his early deliverances at some later stage. The fact that a passage contains a late phrase or two need not always imply that the whole passage is late. This is not, however, the place to discuss the chronological arrangement of the surahs of the Qur'an. What I have to say will not I hope depend upon any arbitrary arrangement, though now and then I have ventured to form opinions of my own in that matter, as the absence of any assured order of the early passages seemed to allow.

To any student of the Qur'an the presence in it of Jewish and Christian elements is evident

almost at the first glance. But it is by no means easy to determine what elements came through Jewish channels and what through Christian. Scholars are apt to stress the influence of each according to their own predilections. Some (as for instance Hirschfeld) seem to regard Muhammad as having been from the start directly under the influence of Judaism or of the Old Testament. Sprenger made much of his reported meetings with Christian monks. But the traditions with regard to these are very untrustworthy. More modern Christian scholars have been inclined to see in some contact with Christianity the impulse which first led him to become a prophet.

It is, however, an error to attribute to Muhammad a too direct acquaintance with Christianity or Judaism or with the Bible at the outset of his career. We do find all sorts of reminiscences of Biblical phrases even in the earliest portions of the Qur'an, but of any intimate knowledge of either of these two religions or of the Bible itself, there is no convincing evidence. Passages and phrases which have been adduced as implying knowledge of Christianity do not stand examination. The short early Surah cxii.: "Say, God is one God, the Eternal God ; He begetteth not neither is He begotten; and there is not any one like unto Him", is sometimes quoted as if it were an early rejection of one of the cardinal doctrines of Christianity. But apart from the question as to whether the passage really belongs to the very earliest period, the original reference in it is not to the Christian doctrine of the Divine Sonship, but to the pagan Arab idea of the special deities