ʿAbd al Jabbār: Critique of Christian Origins (review)

ʿAbd al Jabbār, a respected figure among the Muʿtazila, a group of rationalist Muslim theologians, spent the years of his long life (ca. 320s/930s to 415/1025) between the cities of Baghdad and Rayy in Iran. His account of the history of Christianity, likely the first such undertaking by a Muslim, examines significant aspects of Christian doctrine and attends to aspects of Christian liturgy, pious practices in daily life, social customs (some of which are singled out for criticism), and miracle stories that prominently feature ascetics. ʿAbd al Jabbār's approach of combining refutations of the Christians' doctrines with critical discussions of their history and practices grounds the novelty of the work. Given the author's geographical location in Iran, the focus of the work's critique on East Syrian Christians and their practices is easily contextualized.

The introduction to the volume situates the Critique within the framework of early Islamic anti-Christian polemical literature. It presents ʿAbd al Jabbār's life and works, comments usefully on still unedited works by him, and attempts to modify scholarly judgments of the author's role primarily as a compiler of earlier material by highlighting the "shockingly original" (p. xxxvi) character of the Critique. It discusses the Critique in relation to literature that expounded on the signs or proofs of Muhammad's prophethood and thus to texts situated in an explicitly inter-religious environment. It describes ʿAbd al Jabbār's method, characterizes the cultural context of the Critique by way of detailing various groups of people with whom the author interacted and whom he targeted in his refutation, and attempts to identify multiple written and oral sources for the Critique.

The Critique of Christian Origins is only a portion of one of ʿAbd al Jabbār's larger works, the Tathbīt dalāʾil al-nubuwwa (Confirmation of the Proofs of Prophecy), edited previously for the first time by ʿAbd al-Karim\ ʿUthman\ in 1966. The present volume offers a corrected edition with full vocalization of the Arabic text of the Critique, accompanied on facing pages by the first English translation of the text. Throughout the Arabic text, the edition provides a numbering system that is also represented in the translation. This feature facilitates access to both texts for purposes of comparison. The translation adds numerous headings and subheadings, which in turn supply the bulk of the information listed in the table of contents. They offer the reader a quick orientation to the main points and structure of this voluminous work.

Overall, the translation into English is certainly the work of (a) competent translator(s). Still, there are a number of infelicities in grammar and word choice. Some are a bit jarring: for example "screw" (p. 152 [639]) in the sense of "have sex with." Occasionally, however, greater precision and care to theological nuance would have been necessary. Instead of "We did not say God is Christ" (p. 3 [22]), one would need to translate it as "We did not say about Christ that he is God," or at least, "We did not say that God is in Christ." If there is a good reason to translate the verb waladat in reference to Mary as "Mary begot (sic!)" Christ/God, as happens in several instances (p. 15 [137 and 144]; p. 19 [184 and 189]; p. 82 [488 and 491]), it would require a footnote or comment on why the same verb at other times should be rendered as "Mary gave birth to" (p. 19 [186]). At stake is the difference between referring to the one who was born as "Christ" or "God," but not any difference between how she did, or even could, act. (The English verb "beget" refers properly only to males; the preterite form is "begat.")

The annotations are, for the most part, helpful. They provide references to citations from, and parallels to, the Qur'ān and biblical...