[P.585] Would Have Been Not Only Useful To Them, But More Approved Of By The Directors Of Their Consciences, Than The Entire Scripture.

Upon Mohammedans, it is vain to expect that the reading of the present Arabic version of the Bible should make the slightest impression.

If any of them were brought to conquer their inherent aversion to the book, they could not read a page in it without being tired and disgusted with its style. In the Koran they possess the purest and most elegant composition in their language, the rhythmical prose of which, exclusive of the sacred light in which they hold it, is alone sufficient to make a strong impression upon them. The Arabic of the greater part of the Bible, on the contrary, and especially that of the Gospels, is in the very worst style; the books of Moses and the Psalms are somewhat better. Grammatical rules, it is true, are observed, and chosen terms are sometimes employed; but the phraseology and whole construction is generally contrary to the spirit of the language, and so uncouth, harsh, affected, and full of foreign idioms, that no Musselman scholar would be tempted to prosecute the study of it, and a few only would thoroughly understand it. In style and phraseology it differs from the Koran more than the monkish Latin from the orations of Cicero.

I will not take upon me to declare how far the Roman and the Society’s Arabic translation of the Old Testament are defective, being unable to read the original Hebrew text; but I can affirm that they both disagree, in many instances, from the English translation.

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