Historical Statements of the Koran [pp. 195-230]

IHistorical Statements of the Koran.
The angels shall bring it. Verily, this shall be a sign unto
you, if ye believe."* The word, which Sale here renders
tranquillity, is sekinah or sekinaton, the Hebrew schechinah. To the Arabic commentators it seems to have been
exceedingly mysterious.
The enemy against whom Talut led the Hebrews, was Goliath, here called Jalut. The form in which these names appear, is easily explained. It is well known, that to an elevated style oriental rhetoric makes jingle an essential requisite. This may result, in part, from organic sensibility, since
rhyme is confessedly a product of the east, and since the
Hebrew Sriptures furnish some examples of paronomasia.t
The proximate cause of this perverted taste, however, is the
usage of the Koran, that standing miracle of perfect eloquence, in which not only pages, but whole chapters, have a
rhythmus and a rhyme, which to our ears is paltry, but to a
Turk's or Arab's is the music of the spheres. This childish
weakness leads the orientals to take undue liberties with foreign names. The Greeks who were above this folly, had
another of their own. Every thing with them must have a
meaning, sense or nonsense; and accordingly they tortured
Persian and Phoenician simples into Attic compounds. With
the Arabs on the other hand, and their disciples, sense must
yield to sound. Names historically cognate, must likewise
rhyme together. Thus in the case before us, Jalut really varies very little from Goliath, the radicals being the same.
But poor Saul is made to rhyme with the Philistine. Talut
and Jalut is a combination full of beauty to an Asiatic ear.
So is Harut and Marut, which occurs in this same chapter. t
So is Habel and Cabel, the Mohammedan improvement upon
Cain and dtbel.
In the account of Talut's campaign against Jalut, the other
* ii. 247.
t We say some examples, for a part of those collected by Gesenius
cannot be fairly reckoned as belonging to this class. His remarks upon
the subject have a tendency, indeed, to make the reader think, that
the Bible is deformed throughout with this most offensive form of rhetorical affectation, which he calls a liebling8zierde of the Hebrew language! We venture to affirm that a large proportion of the cited instances are purely accidental, and might easily be matched by German
phrases from the Lehrgebaeude; and that as to the rest, they almost
all occur in peculiar idiomatic and proverbial phrases, not as in Hariri,
at the end of every clause of every paragraph, prosaic or poetical.
$ ii. 102.
214