the Koran alludes when it reproaches the Christians with having "split up
their religion into parties." But for Muhammad thus to have confounded
Gnosticism with Christianity itself, its prevalence in Arabia must have been
far more universal than we have any reason to believe it really was. In fact,
we have no historical authority for supposing that the doctrines of these
heretics were taught or professed in Arabia at all. It is certain, on the
other hand, that the Basilidans, Valentinians, and other gnostic sects had
either died out, or been reabsorbed into the orthodox Church, towards the
middle of the fifth century, and had disappeared from Egypt before the sixth.
It is nevertheless possible that the gnostic doctrine concerning the
Crucifixion was adopted by Muhammad as likely to reconcile the Jews to Islam,
as a religion embracing both Judaism and Christianity, if they might believe
that Jesus had not been put to death, and thus find the stumbling-block of
the atonement removed out of their path. The Jews would in this case have
simply been called upon to believe in Jesus as being what the Koran
represents him, a holy teacher, who, like the patriarch Enoch or the prophet
Elijah, had been miraculously taken from the earth. But, in all other
respects, the sober and matter-of-fact statements of the Koran relative to
the family and history of Jesus, are altogether opposed to the wild and
fantastic doctrines of Gnostic emanations, and especially to the manner in
which they supposed Jesus, at his Baptism, to have been brought into union
with a higher nature. It is quite clear that Muhammad borrowed in several
points from the doctrines of the Ebionites, Essenes, and Sabeites. Epiphanius
(H‘r. x.) describes the notions of the Ebionites of Nabath‘a, Moabitis, and
Basanitis with regard to Adam and Jesus, almost in the very words of Sura
iii. 52. He tells us that they observed circumcision, were opposed to
celibacy, forbad turning to the sunrise, but enjoined Jerusalem as their
Kebla (as did Muhammad during twelve years), that they prescribed (as did the
Sabeites), washings, very similar to those enjoined in the Koran, and allowed
oaths (by certain natural objects, as clouds, signs of the Zodiac, oil, the