Arab Christianity in the Monasteries of Ninth-Century Palestine.

• Author: Madigan, Daniel A.

This extremely valuable collection of reprints is poorly served by its title. In eleven articles, originally published between 1983 and 1989, Griffith sets out to examine not so much the nature of ninth-century monastic life in Palestine but rather the theological response to Islam which took shape there and the emergence of a Christian literature, mostly apologetic in nature, in Arabic, the public language of the new Islamic society consolidated after the ??Abbasid revolution of 750. This represents a momentous transition in a very short time: the Greek-speaking Palestinian monk John of Damascus (d. c. 750) had undertaken a systematic summary of Christian doctrine in its Chalcedonian and Maximist phase, along with an epitome of its philosophical underpinnings, and so became recognized as the last father of the Church in the East; Theodore Abu Qurrah (c. 750-c. 825), one generation later from the same monastery of Mar Sabas, wrote principally in Arabic and was little known beyond the Islamic world. However, his writings reveal to us a great deal about the Christian community under Islamic rule. The collection's eleven articles trace this abrupt transition and examine the emergence of a new theological synthesis characteristic of Christianity in a Muslim environment between 750 and 1050.

Apart from John and Theodore the principal protagonist in this process is Stephen of Ramlah, whom Griffith identifies as the author and not merely the copyist of the important Summa theologiae arablea, which dates from the late ninth century and which is sometimes attributed to Theodore. A substantial part of the collection is devoted to the work of these three, though the Damascene is examined more by way of introduction to Theodore and Stephen.

The work begins with a study of the attitudes of ninth-century Christian apologists, writing in Arabic and Syriac, toward Muhammed and the Quran. The profile of Islam, and the Christian appraisal of Islamic teachings that the writers of this period proposed, effectively set the agenda for the future of Christian apologetics within dar al-Islam.

There follows a careful search for the first Arabic version of the four canonical Gospels. Griffith highlights the circumstances which fostered the translation of the Gospels into Arabic, with reference both to the liturgical and the apologetical requirements of the Christian community. Within the Islamic context this inquiry necessarily involves the definition of the Gospel...