The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam's Holy Book by

Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Elsevier Science - A
Published: 2010-10-13T04:00:00+00:00

In the mouth of the people, or more probably from Muhammad himself, the legend received the embellishment that Jethro wanted to convert his fellow-countrymen to the faith, and that they were punished on account of their unbelief. A reproach which is specially brought against them, or rather the point of the exhortation, viz., to give just weight and measure,462 must be founded on some legend or other, although I have not yet come across it in Jewish writings.463 Jethro shows himself as a preacher quite according to Muhammad’s ideas. He preaches about the Last Day464 and asserts that he desires no reward;465 on the other hand his townspeople reproach him with working no miracles.466 I have presented the facts and quotations here as though there were no doubt that all these passages refer to Jethro, but exception might be taken to this. An altogether different name is found in the Koran, and it is not easy to explain how Jethro came by it. However, we must first try to show that Shu’aib and Jethro are identical, and then put forward our conjectures as to how the many-named Jethro added this name to his others. The identity is first shown by the fact that those to whom he was sent are called “Midianites;”467 in the second place, the two first passages468 give the events concerning him between the story of Lot and that of Moses.

Now if we can find among the rabbis any intimation favorable to this supposition, then nothing important will remain to oppose its adoption469 as a probable hypothesis. Very little, however, can be adduced to show how Shu‘aib and Jethro came to be one and the same person. Muhammad may have confused the name Hobab—often used for Jethro and probably pronounced Chobab—with Shu’aib. Perhaps an etymological explanation may be thought of here, for the rabbis assert that the staff used later by Moses and called the divine staff grew in Jethro’s garden.470 Now Sha‘ba means staff and Shu’aib may be taken as the possessor of the staff. If Shu’aib is the same as Jethro, there are passages471 in which the former is mentioned, while those to whom he is sent are not called Midianites; and so we find a new name for these people, viz., “men of the wood,” which name is evidently derived from the thorn bushes which were in the vicinity.

It remains for us to justify the bringing forward of two more passages, 472 and it is all the more difficult for us to do so, because in order to prove our point we must accuse Muhammad himself of a misunderstanding. In these passages Shu’aib is not mentioned, but the people who are held up as a warning are called “men of the well,” without any other particulars being given about them. But further these “men of the well”473 are mentioned in one passage along with the “men of the wood,” and so it seems certain that Muhammad regarded them as two different peoples; but nevertheless we allow ourselves to believe them to be really identical.

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