A Muslim Theologian in the Sectarian Milieu: 'Abd al-Jabbar and the Critique of Christian Origins.

• Author: Schmidtke, Sabine
• Position: Book review

A Muslim Theologian in the Sectarian Milieu: 'Abd al-Jabbar and the Critique of Christian Origins. By GABRIEL SAID REYNOLDS. Islamic History and Civilization. Studies and Texts, 56. Leiden: BRILL, 2004. Pp. xv + 297. $151.

The subject of the volume under review--the polemical section against Christianity of the Kitab Tathbit dala'il al-nubuwwa by the Mu'tazili qadi al-qudat and leading theologian 'Abd al-Jabbar al-Hamadhani (d. 415/1025)--gave rise in the 1960s to a fierce debate between Shlomo Pines and Samuel Miklos Stern which forms a sad episode in modern scholarship. The text of this work is preserved in a single manuscript in the Suleymaniye/Istanbul (Sehid Ali Pasa 1575) that has been known since the publication of Hellmut Ritter's "Philologika III" (Der Islam 18 [1929]: 18). In the mid-1960s Stern set out for Istanbul, initially only with the intention of seeing whether the text contains any anti-Isma'ili material, and discovered therein a lengthy excursus devoted to anti-Christian polemics which significantly differed from all earlier Muslim treatments of Christianity then known. Stern subsequently discussed his findings with Pines, and the two agreed to divide the analysis of the Tathbit between them. In the words of Pines, "Stern chose to study the latter portion of the MS which deals in a very hostile spirit with the Isma'ili sect ... It was my task to explore the first half [i.e., the section dealing with Christianity; S.S.]" (Reynolds, p. 3 n. 7). Instead, however, both scholars focused on the section devoted to Christianity and came to completely opposite conclusions.

In 1966 Pines published a provocative monograph, The Jewish Christians of the Early Centuries of Christianity according to a New Source, in which he argued that 'Abd al-Jabbar did not himself compose the section on Christianity, but rather had an unknown Judaeo-Christian source at his disposal which he incorporated into the Tathbit as an excursus. Pines' "Judaeo-Christian thesis" was sharply rejected by Stern, who considered it historically untenable that 'Abd al-Jabbar could have had at his disposal a Judaeo-Christian source when there is no reliable historical evidence that Judaeo-Christianity survived beyond the 4th century C.E. As a result of this debate, the friendship between the two scholars ended.

Reynolds outlines the Stern/Pines debate and subsequent scholarship in chapter one of his study, clearly distancing himself from Pines. Being in principle an...