CAIN AND ABEL. 81
body, scratched in the earth and hid it before their eyes; then said Adam, I shall do as this raven has done, and at once he took Abel's corpse, dug in the earth and hid it." In the Quran a verse follows * which, without knowledge of the source from which it has come, seems to stand in no. connection with what has gone before, but which will be made clear by the following explanation. The verse according to my translation runs thus : " Wherefore we commanded the children of Israel, that he who slayeth a soul, without having slain a soul, or committed wicked- ness in the earth, shall be as if he had slain all mankind ; but he who saveth a soul alive, shall be as if he had saved the lives of all mankind." One perceives here no connec- tion at all, if one does not consider the following Hebrew passage : 2 " We find it said in the case of Cain who murdered his brother : The voice of thy brother's bloods crieth. 3 It is not said here Uood in the singular, but bloods in the plural, i.e., his own blood and the blood of his seed. Man was created single in order to show that to him who kills a single individual, it shall be reckoned that he has slain the whole race ; but to him who preservos the life of a single individual it is counted that he hath preserved the whole race." By this comparison it is made clear what led Muhammad to this general digression ; he had evidently received this rule from his informants when they related to him this particular event. Another
1 Sura V. 35. 8 Mishna Sanhedrin IV. 5.
vpi Vi la -iB
ii DTI nn
3 Genesis, iv. 10, not D"T (singular), but iffi (plural). Compare the translation of Onkelos. L
