Note 393 — THE MAN WHO STOLE THE DISH OF GOLD WHEREIN THE DOG ATE.
Richard Francis Burton translation
The Moslems borrowed the horrible idea of a “jealous God” from their kinsmen, the Jews. Every race creates its own Deity after the fashion of itself: Jehovah is distinctly a Hebrew; the Christian Theos is originally a Judæo-Greek and Allah a half-Badawi Arab. In this tale Allah, despotic and unjust, brings a generous and noble-minded man to beggary, simply because he fed his dogs off gold plate. Wisdom and morality have their infancy and youth: the great value of such tales as these is to show and enable us to measure man’s development.