a few vowel points, which, of course, were not written in those days, to make the passage mean exactly the opposite, and it is possible that it may have been intended by the different pronunciation of one or two words to make the declaration suit whichever way the event fell out. But there is no other example of such an ambiguous oracle in the Qur'an, and there is no need to suspect that Muhammad intended such a thing here. As it stands the passage shows clearly that his sympathies were with Rome in the struggle with Persia. Again in xxii. v. 41, we find: "Had not God repelled men some by means of others, verily cloisters and churches and oratories and places of worship in which the name of God is remembered, would have been destroyed, many of them". The date of this is shortly after the Hijra, when the Prophet is working his people up to war against the Meccans and combating the pacifist tendencies, which he had at one time encouraged. It is impossible that the places of worship referred to should be Moslem. The words used for cloisters and churches designate specially Christian buildings. The argument is really drawn from the Persian invasion of the Roman Empire which by this time had been repelled. If he says in effect the Christians had not fought for their religious buildings the worship of God would have suffered damage. Evidently he still regarded Syria and Palestine as lands in which God was truly worshipped.

It was only about this time, or but very little earlier, that as we have seen Muhammad realised the distinction between Jews and Christians.

He probably assumed that the Jews with whom he had come in contact belonged to the one great revealed religion. He certainly assumed for a time that Moses was the prophet through whom had come the revelation upon which that religion was founded. There is no indication that he knew of Jesus as a prophet in the same sense. It was Moses to whom had been given the Book, and so far he speaks only of the Book, drawing no distinction as he afterwards did between the Taurat and the Injil. The story of the Virgin Mary and that of the Birth of Jesus had indeed been narrated quite early, but simply as amongst the number of the "signs" which at one stage Muhammad collected so diligently.

If we could accept the traditional date of it, Surah xix. would contain the earliest mention of Jesus as one who had received the Book. The first part of that Surah is said by tradition to have been read in presence of the Negus of Abyssinia, when the Meccans sent ambassadors to claim the return of the emigrants who had gone thither to escape from the persecution to which Muhammad's followers were subjected in Mecca. If that be true this part of the Surah is early. But all these traditional dates are suspect. In any case, the Surah has been added to at a later date, and while the stories of Zacharias, John, and the Virgin Mary, with which it begins might possibly belong to that early time, some additions have been made to what is there said about Jesus. That tradition being discarded, it is only when we come to sections that belong to the time shortly before or shortly