George Sale, The Koran, commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed, translated into English immediately from the original Arabic; with Explanatory Notes, taken from the most approved Commentators. To which is prefixed A Preliminary Discource (1734)
In most of the last mentioned particulars the decisions of the Korân also agree with those of the Jews. By the law of Moses adultery, whether in a married woman or a virgin betrothed, was punished with death; and the man who debauched them was to suffer the same punishment 1. The penalty of simple fornication was scourging, the general punishment in cases where none is particularly appointed: and a betrothed bond-maid, if convicted of adultery, underwent the same punishment, being exempted from death, because she was not free 2. By the same law no person was to be put to death on the oath of one witness 3: and a man who slandered his wife was also to be chastised, that is scourged, and fined one hundred shekels of silver 4. The method of trying a woman suspected of adultery where evidence was wanting, by forcing her to drink the bitter water of jealousy 5, though disused by the Jews long before the time of Mohammed 6, yet, by reason of the oath of cursing with which the woman was charged, and to which she was obliged to say Amen, bears great resemblance to the expedient devised by that prophet on the like occasion.
The institutions of Mohammed relating to the pollution of women during their courses 7, the taking of slaves to wife 8, and the prohibiting of marriage within certain degrees 9, have likewise no small affinity with the institutions of Moses 10; and the parallel might be carried farther in several other particulars.
As to the prohibited degrees it may be observed, that the pagan Arabs abstained from marrying their mothers, daughters, and aunts both on the father’s side and on the mother’s, and held it a most scandalous thing to marry two sisters, or for a man to take his father’s wife 11; which last was notwithstanding too frequently practised 12, and is expressly forbidden in the Korân 13.
1 Lev. xx. 10. Deut. xxii. 22. The kind of death to be inflicted on adulterers in common cases being not expressed, the Talmudists generally suppose it to be strangling; which they think is designed where ever the phrase shall be put to death, or shall die the death, is used, as they imagine stoning is by the expression his blood shall be upon him: and hence it has been concluded by some, that the woman taken in adultery, mentioned in the gospel (John viii.) was a betrothed maiden, because such a one and her accomplice were plainly ordered to be stoned (Deut. xxii. 23, 24.) But the ancients seem to have been of a different opinion, and to have understood stoning to be the punishment of adulterers in general. V. Selden. Ux. Hebr. l. 3. c. 11, & 12.
2 Levit. xix. 20.
3 Deut. xix. 15. xvii. 6, and Numb. xxxv. 30.
4 Deut. xxii. 13, — 19.
5 Numb. v. 11, &c.
6 V. Selden. ubi supr. l. 3. c. 15. & Leon. Modena, de’ riti Hebraici, parte 4. c. 6.
8 Ib. chap. 4. p. 60, and 64, &c.
10 See Lev. xv. 24. xviii. 19, and xx. 18. Exod. xxi. 8, — 11. Deut. xxi. 10, — 14. Levit. xviii. and xx.
11 Abulfeda. Hist. Gen. al Shahrestani, apud Poc. Spec. p. 321, & 338.
12 V. Poc. ib. p. 337, &c.
