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)

except the four last, they agree to be now entirely lost, and their contents unknown; tho’ the Sabians have several books which they attribute to some of the antediluvian prophets. And of those four, the Pentateuch, Psalms, and Gospel, they say, have undergone so many alterations and corruptions, that tho’ there may possibly be some part of the true word of God therein, yet no credit is to be given to the present copies in the hands of the Jews and Christians. The Jews in particular are frequently reflected on in the Korân for falsifying and corrupting their copies of their law; and some instances of such pretended corruptions, both in that book and the two others, are produced by Mohammedan writers; wherein they merely follow their own prejudices, and the fabulous accounts of spurious legends. Whether they have any copy of the Pentateuch among them different from that of the Jews or not, I am not entirely satisfied, since a person who travelled into the east was told, that they had the books of Moses, tho’ very much corrupted ¹; but I know no body that has ever seen them. However they certainly have and privately read a book which they call the Psalms of David, in Arabic and Persian, to which are added some prayers of Moses, Jonas, and others ². This Mr. Reland supposes to be a translation from our copies, (tho’ no doubt falsified in more places than one;) but Mr. D’Herbelot says it contains not the same Psalms which are in our Psalter, being no more than an extract from thence mixed with other very different pieces ³. The easiest way to reconcile these two learned gentlemen, is to presume that they speak of different copies. The Mohammedans have also a Gospel in Arabic, attributed to St. Barnabas, wherein the history of Jesus Christ is related in a manner very different from what we find in the true Gospels, and correspondent to those traditions which Mohammed has followed in his Korân. Of this Gospel the Moriscoes in Africa have a translation in Spanish ⁴; and there is in the library of prince Eugene of Savoy, a manuscript of some antiquity, containing an Italian translation of the same Gospel ⁵, made, it is to be supposed, for the use of renegades. This book appears to be no original forgery of the Mohammedans, tho’ they have no doubt interpolated and altered it since, the better to serve their purpose; and in particular instead of the Paraclete or Comforter ⁶, they have in this apocryphal gospel inserted the word Periclyte, that is the famous or illustrious,