the limited knowledge which Mohammed possessed of the Jewish scriptures—being unable to read or write. He relied, in his XIIth Surah of the Koran, upon memory, and the discrepancies are due to his faulty memory. Added to this inaccuracy there must be taken into consideration his continuous interpolation of the basic Islamic statement: "There is but One God—and He knows!" And it is by comparison of the stories in the Koran, with the same stories as reported in the older scriptures, that we can best obtain a clear understanding of the construction of the Mohammedan "Book"—the Koran. It is a well-established fact that a man’s character and whole nature are, reflected in the manner in which he tells a story; and as we possess many of the stories told in the Koran, in other records, we thereby have a key to the character of Mohammed. Not only that, but we find in the treatment which these Biblical stories receive at the hands of the Arabs an unfailing guide to the moral and intellectual plane on which Mohammed's contemporaries lived. For this reason a study and comparison of the Koran stories of Biblical persons and incidents is of more real benefit to him who has but a little time to give to such study, than a deeply theological analysis of the supposed "heavenly" origin of the Koran.
ISLAM AND DIVORCE
