Senses of Scripture, Treasures of Tradition: The Bible in Arabic among Jews, Christians and Muslims (original) (raw)

The Status Quaestionis of Research on the Arabic Bible

Semitic Linguistics and Manuscripts : A Liber Discipulorum in Honour of Professor Geoffrey Khan, 2018

In what follows, I seek to offer a status quaestionis of research on the Arabic Bible. As a newly emerging field of academic research, it has a need to clearly define itself and to develop methodological standards. This is necessary not least to close scholarly lacunae and produce new, seminal perspectives on the field. versions in Arabic, their various text types, their Vorlagen and translation strategies, their geographical , chronological and denominational distribution, as well as to the ways they were produced, disseminated and consumed can, for the time being, only be answered tentatively. This contribution thus attempts to bring together different strands of a dynamic field, which has received considerable momentum since the turn of the new millennium.

From Theodore Abū Qurra to Abed Azrié: The Arabic Bible in Context

Miriam Hjälm (ed.), Senses of Scripture, Treasures of Tradition: The Bible in Arabic among Jews, Christians and Muslims, Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 11-57

The present article offers a survey of how Arabic Biblical translations have been used in Christian literature in Arabic and in Arab Christian culture from ca. 800 to the present. The article is divided into two parts: the first part focuses on theology and society; the second discusses art, material culture, and music. The examples include: Theodore Abū Qurra’s treatise On Veneration of Icons; the “Violet Psalm fragment” of an Arabic translation of the Psalms in Greek letters; Arab Christian authors’ views on the Septuagint chronology of Genesis; Arab Christian authors’ interpretation of Biblical anthropomorphisms; the recent polemic between Pope Shenouda and Mattā al-Miskīn on deification; the Arabic Psalm inscriptions of the “Aleppo-Zimmer”; and Abed Azrié’s oratory “L’Évangile selon Jean”. The article also includes several excursuses, which explore particular points in further detail (e.g., Excursus A attempts to identify the addressee of Theodore Abū Qurra’s treatise, whereas Excursus G re-dates five manuscripts from the Sinai Arabic collection).