Ninth-Century Arabic Christian Apology and Polemics: A Terminological Study of ‛Ammār al-Baṣrī’s Kitāb al-Masā’il wa-l-Ajwiba
Ninth-Century Arabic Christian Apology and Polemics: A Terminological Study of ‛Ammār al-Baṣrī’s Kitāb al-Masā’il wa-l-Ajwiba
The book demonstrates that ʿAmmār al-Baṣrī’s Kitāb al-Masā’il wa-l-ajwiba is an significant piece of Christian theology that played an important role in the transmission of Greek wisdom and Hellenistic knowledge to Muslim theology. On the basis of various Arab Christian and sources and their terminologies, the book exhibits that the Christian authors of the ninth century had already had a ready set of terminology in Arabic. The study proves that the terminology of the Kitāb al-Masā’il wa-l-ajwiba corresponds to Greek philosophical terminology, more specifically in the form these terms were used by Church Fathers in Patristic literature. Through representative examples: the concept of the intellect, referred to by the term ʿaql; terms denoting the body and incarnation; terms referring to eternity or perpetuity, continuity; terms denoting creation; terms of fatherhood and sonship; and terms referring to unity, unification and union, the comparative terminological examination including contemporary and later Muslim sources also shows that in some cases Christian authors influenced the formation of Muslim terminology, while in others both parties relied on a shared tradition, or mutually known sources.