Comparing, now, this Jewish story with what we saw of it in the Qur'an, little difference will be found; and what there is no doubt arose from Mohammed hearing of it by the ear from the Jews. What makes this the more likely is that Abraham's father is in the Qur'an called Azar,(Surah 6.74) while both in the Midrash and Torah he is called Terah. But the Prophet probably heard the name in Syria (where, as we learn from Eusebius, the name had somewhat of a similar sound), and so remembered it.
The Moslems, of course, hold that their Prophet gained the tale of Abraham's being cast into the fire neither from Jews nor Christians, but through Gabriel from on high; and as the Jews, being children of Abraham, so accepted it, the Qur'an, they say, must be right. But it could only have been the common folk among the Jews who believed it so; for those who had any knowledge of its origin must have known its puerilitysource.<ref>The origin of the whole story will be found in ''Genesis 15:7: I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees.'' Now Ur in Babylonian means a "city" as In Ur-Shalim (Jerusalem), "the City of Peace." And the Chaldaean Ur1 was the residence of Abraham. This name Ur closely resembles in speech another word, Or signifying light or fire. And so ages after, a jewish commentator ignorant of Babylonian, when translating the Scripture into Chaldean, put the above verse from Genesis, as follows: ''I'm the Lord that delivered thee out of the Chaldean fiery oven.'' The same writer has also the following comment on Genesis 11:27: ''"Now this happened at the time when Nimrod cast Abraham into the oven of fire, because he would not worship the idols, that leave was withheld from the fire to hurt him'' - a strange confusion of words, - Ur the city, for Or light and fire. The original Babylonian text is here given, as indeed the author does in most of the oriental quotations. A close translation is also given, but only the general purport is here attempted. It is as if a Persian seeing notice of the departure of the English post, should put in his diary that an Englishman had lost his skin, - not knowing that the same word for skin in Persian means the Post in English. No wonder then that an ignorant Jew should have mistaken a word like this, and made it the foundation whereon to build the grand tale of Abraham's fiery Oven. But it is somewhat difficult to understand how a Prophet like Mohammed could have given credence to such a fable, and entered it in a revelation held to have come down from heaven. And yet the evidence of it all is complete, as quoted above from the Jewish writer. Apart from this we know from Genesis that Nimrod lived not in the days of Abraham but ages before his birth. The name indeed is not in the Qur'an, though freely given in the Moslem Commentaries and Tradition. As if a historian should tell us that Alexander the Great cast Nadir Shah into the fire, not knowing the ages that elapsed between the two, or that Nadir never was so thrown.</ref>
===Visit of the Queen of Saba (Sheba) to Solomon===
