Early Christian Exegesis of the Quran
J. Scott Bridger
The earliest Christian responses to the distinct ideas that would eventually be inscripturated in the Quran began to appear in the later part of the seventh century. By this time Muslim forces had conquered half of the world’s Christian population. Initially, leaders from the various ecclesiastical communities responded by offering theological interpretations of the historical and
political events surrounding the conquests, which they generally interpreted as a sign of God’s judgment. Subsequently, as they learned more, they began responding to the religious message carried by their conquerors.
Notably, the earliest works that preserve Christian-Muslim encounters rarely contain explicit references to Muḥammad, Islam, or the Quran. Some scholars regard this as evidence that the text had yet to be fixed or canonized. There is, nonetheless, ample evidence of a burgeoning religious dispute between Christians and early adherents of “Islam.” For instance, the Chalcedonian monk, Anastasios of Sinai (d. ca. 700), writing in the late seventh century, instructs Greek-speaking Christians to repudiate the accusation by “Arabs” that Christians have taken Jesus and Mary to be “two gods” in place of the one true God (cf. 5.116) and the accusation that Christians believe God has procreated a son (cf. 2.116; 112.3). Additionally, writing in Syriac during the last decade of the seventh century, the Syrian Orthodox (i.e., Jacobite) Bishop Jacob of Edessa (d. 708) evidences awareness of the Muslim affirmation that Jesus is God’s “Word” and “a Spirit from Him” (cf. 4.171). Later, these two quranic statements would prove useful for Christian apologists, particularly those writing in Arabic, who sought to interpret them in a manner that comported with their own teachings.
By the time of John of Damascus (d. ca. 749), explicit references to Muslim “writings” and a “book” are more widespread. In
Heresy of the Ishmaelites
, John considers Muḥammad a false prophet and the Muslim “scripture” a preposterous imitation of the Bible; nonetheless, he couches his emphasis on the uniqueness and unity of God in a fashion similar to the Quran.
Throughout the course of the eighth and ninth centuries, Arabic began to replace Greek and Aramaic/Syriac as both a daily and an ecclesiastical language of many Christian communities. But adopting Arabic as a language of Christian theological discourse posed certain challenges. By this time the language had largely been infused with religious meaning derived from the Quran. Thus the Christian theologians who authored works in Arabic were compelled to do so with Islamic and quranic frames of reference in mind, even when Christians were their primary audience.
One of the earliest examples dates from about 755 (or 788). It is the anonymous Melkite (i.e., Chalcedonian) text, “On the Triune Nature of God.” The treatise is replete with quranic allusions and echoes, particularly in the opening prayer, which is reminiscent of the rhymed prose style we encounter in parts of the Quran. Throughout the text the author uses quranic points of
contact in order to draw his readers into the Bible’s world of discourse and the message of salvation centered on Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. The work offers a unique example of a contextualized articulation of the Christian faith authored within the world of Islam. It also demonstrates the emergence of a spectrum of Christian approaches to the Quran.
On the polemical side of this spectrum is the ninth-century Arabic treatise,
The Apology of al-Kindī
. Likely authored by a Jacobite or Nestorian Christian, this work was highly influential among those writing about Islam both inside and outside the Muslim world, particularly after it was translated into Latin in 1141. The author of the
Apology
attributes the Quran to a Nestorian monk who purportedly taught Muḥammad in accord with the gospel. Subsequently, Muḥammad’s followers, according to the
Apology
, are thought to have corrupted the book and its teachings.
On the more irenic, if not ambiguous, side of the spectrum is the eight- or ninth-century anonymous Melkite text, “Answers to the Shaykh.” Interestingly, the author defends his belief in the Trinity and incarnation on the basis of
kutub Allah
(i.e., “Books of God”), most likely a reference to both the Bible and the Quran.
Another Melkite theologian, Theodore Abū Qurra (d. ca. 830), made both positive and negative uses of the Quran. Positively, in a text depicting a debate in the court of the ‘Abbāsid Caliph al-Ma’mūn (d. 833), Abū Qurra uses the Quran to defend the integrity of the Bible. He also makes positive use of the quranic reference to Jesus as God’s “Word” to construct a defense of Christ’s eternality. Negatively, Abū Qurra points to the Muslim story in which Allah sanctions Muḥammad’s marriage to his adopted son’s former wife (cf. 33.37) and the reference to celestial virgins (cf. 44.54; 52.20; 56.22) as proof of the Quran’s profane origins. Abū Qurra and his contemporaries, namely, the Jacobite theologian Abū Ra‘iṭa al-Takrītī (d. 835) and the Nestorian theologian ‘Ammār al-Baṣrī (d. 850), are among the first named Christians to author original treatises in Arabic utilizing distinctive interpretations of the Quran in their defenses of Christianity.