OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

253

tached them to the relics of idolatry. The chat

* l

Jews and Christians were the people of the__

book; the bible was already translated into theArabic language; q and the volume of the oldtestament was accepted by the concord of theseimplacable enemies. In the story of the Hebrew patriarchs, the Arabs were pleased to discoverthe fathers of their nation. They applauded thebirth and promises of Ismael ; revered the faithand virtue of Abraham ; traced his pedigreeand their own to the creation of the first man,and imbibed, with equ, 1 credulity, the prodi-gies of the holy text, and the dreams and tradi-tions of the Jewish rabbis.

The base and plebeian origin of Mahomet is Birth andan unskilful calumny of the Christians / who ex- e u d (alt instead of degrading the merit of their ad- m<t ’ A - Dversary. His descent from Ismael was a na-tional privilege or table; but if the first stepsof the pedigree* are dark and doubtful, he could

^ Our versions now extant, whether Jewish or Christian, appear morerecent than the Koran j but the existence of a prior translation may befairly inferred,— 1. From the perpetual practice of the synagogue, ofexpounding the Hebrew lesson by a paraphrase in the vulgar tongue ofthe country. 2. From the analogy of the Armenian, Persian, Ethiopic versions, expressly quoted by the fathers of the fifth century, who as-sert that the Scriptures were translated into all the barbaric languages,

(Walton, Prolegomena ad Bibliu Polyglot, p. 34, 93 97. Simon, Hist.

Critique du V. et du N. Testament, tom. i, p. 180, 181, 282 286, 293,

305, 30G ; tom. iv, p. 200).

r In eo conveniunt omnes ut plcbeio viliquc genere ortum, &c. (Hot-tinger, Hist. Orient, p. 136). Yet Theophanes , the most ancient ofthe Greeks, and the father of many a lie, confesses that Mahomet waiof the race of Ismael, ex yevjx«T«rnf (Chronograph , p. 277).

• Abulfeda (in Vit. Mohammed, c. i, 2) and Gagnier (Vic de Maho-met, p. 25-97) describe the popular and approved genealogy of the pro-phet. At Mecca, I would not dispute its authenticity: at Lausanne ,

1 will venture to observe, I. That from Ismael to Mahomet, a period