Critique of Christian Origins: A Parallel English-Arabic Text (Brigham Young University - Islamic Translation Series) Bilingual Edition

Let me start off by saying that I have no knowledge of Arabic. I bought this book for the English translation and that is what this review will discuss.Abd al-Jabbar (935-1025) was a Mu'tazlite theologian. He decided to try his hand at writing polemics and the result is this book.The book is divided into three parts - Introduction, Doctrine and Practice. Each part then has smaller sections of varying length.In Part 3 there is an account of how Christianity was corrupted. Abd al-Jabbar puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of Paul. He concocts a story that Paul appealed to the Romans for protection against the Jews in exchange for his followers adopting Roman customs. Abd al-Jabbar makes some historical howlers which really show how worthless his account is. He makes Paul, Empress Helena and Constantine contemporaries. Paul goes to Constantinople not Rome (300 years before it was built)! My favourite is that Pontius Pilate is a Roman king and is the father of Constantine. Constantine's mother, Helena, encourages her son to call a council and then proceed to massacre any Christians that don't agree with him. Dan Brown would be proud! I found this historical mess perplexing as Abd al-Jabbar had access to many Christian Arabic chronicles that would have corrected these mistakes. On the positive side he does demonstrate some genuine familiarity with the Gospels.In Part 3 Abd al-Jabbar has a section on 'The Moral Corruption in Byzantine Society' where he claims the Byzantines tolerate prostitution (as if Islamic societies didn't), castrate babies to make eunuchs (as if Islamic societies didn't), don't respect Muslim power (Emperor Basil II was winning victories in the East), nuns go around having orgies (really?), women have male friends who aren't related to them (shock! horror!) and eat pork (yum). I found this attempt by Abd al-Jabbar to claim moral superiority for Islamic societies to be laughable (and amateurish).This is a very valuable book. I was glad to be able to read for myself what the Muslim critiques of Christianity were and evaluate their worth. It is astonishing that Muslims could live in close proximity to Christians in the Middle East for centuries and still have such a rudimentary understanding of their doctrines and history!

It seems to me the translators in doing a great service of rendering the work into English have some hidden agenda: to twist the Qur'anic verses. A case in point is in relation to Ayah 9:31 where the translators, after mentioning that "Elsewhere (9:30) Christians are reprimanded for calling Christ the Son of God," state that "And yet in the very next verse (9:31) the Qur'an seems to imply that Christians and Jews err in considering monks and rabbis as Lords instead of God and Christ.[2]" Here the translators try to show that even the Qur'an supports the divinity of Jesus (which actually has no explicit textual supports from the Bible itself-the proof my christian friends have failed to bring forward) despite the fact that the Qur'an unequivocally condemns and rejects such belief (Surah Al-Ikhlas affirms that God has no son). To confuse the (Muslim) readers further, the translators put a note (note 2) that states "Note, however, that the text is vocalized today with Christ in the accusative so that Christ is grouped with monks and rabbis in the verse." The translators here try to give an impression or mislead that vocalization of the Qur'anic verses is of a recent enterprise as indicated by the word "today", and that prior to that Christ was recited in the genitive form. Let us ask the translators: when was the vocalization of the Qur'an started? Was it in the past one hundred years? What are the evidences that the Muslims, prior to the vocalization, read Isa in the genitive form in the above mentioned Ayah (verse)?

This translation, quite well written, was one of the important works of Islamic writings of Christianity in the period 4th Hijrah/10th CE. The actual author, Al-Jabbar was a Mu'tazilite theologian who was more famous for his writings on al-Mughni and al-Muhit bi'l-Taklif, which reflected greatly on his school of thought. Nonetheless, the writings about Christianity and other sects opposed to the author is an important contribution to the Muslim understanding of Christianity throughout ages.This present work presented had one important aspect; it reflects the understanding of Muslim(s) towards then Christian theology and the different sects he observed and reflected in his writings. An interesting observation are mentioning other Christian sectarian such as Nestorians; at which present Christian groups would definitely disagree on their claims. Despite certain shortfalls in the few parts of the translation, his works fairly represents a much balanced understanding of "types" of Christian groups or beliefs existed then, much more when compared to the mythical "beliefs" of Islam which existed in Europe well into centuries till recent times.The topic was seperated into several sections, from the critique on theology, narrative accounts in the Christian sacred texts, Christian history etc. For someone living in the 10th CE, there is little help but giving due appraisal for a Muslim to spend so much time writing about Christianity (despite it's polemic tone) and the defence of his faith above other forms of beliefs or sects.As for the footnotes, my opinion is that a number of them reflects more of the author's theological standings or apologetic stance towards Christianity, hence my reservations since it affects or disrupts the original author's intent. To add my comments to one similar review , a certain "N. Aziz" needs to be corrected. Islam, or Muslims, do not conform to a so-called a "type of text" to "read" the Qur'an. To note, there is no "koine Arabic" before/early Islam, hence the different readings compensate the lingual varieties of Arabic dialects existed then, which fit perfectly to the Arab society. There is, though, existed a eloquent forms of Arabic speech, that is considered a "prestige" form of Arabic spoken tongue which Arabs in Mecca tended to send children to learn from Bedouin tribes when they are young, as with Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him). Alternatively, these varietes can be historically attested with the vast colloquial use of Arabic dialects today in this world. Hence, the reviewer's term "how the text is to be pronounced" is a gross and serious lack of understanding in geographical assessment of Arabic languages at before/early Islam and the relationship with the Qur'an.With regards to N.Aziz Egyptian text, strange but not surprising, that the reviewer did not mention HOW the Egyptian codex was put into place, and what CRITERIA did the Muslims USE for the CORRECT reading, and TEXTUAL STYLE/SCRIPT leading to Egyptian codex? (the emphasis are uppercase for a academic reflection). Similarly, the reviewer's assumption echoes the speculative western Judeo-Christian approach to the Qur'an, popularly introduced in the last decades after John Warnsbrough's title "Quranic studies", which has resulted by now anything other than positive signs; rather the opposite, thanks to the highly exaggerative, if not "unbelievable" assertions in the guise of specialist such as Luxemburgh, Luiling and Nevo on the "alternative" Muslim history and the Qur'an. The present translator's other title which I would recommend, namely "The Quran in Its Historical Context", present the problems of such approach, coincidentally at the critique of their own and their apologetic stance as well.Muslims took the Qur'an through much a different direction and interest in terms of the preservation of the text and reverence of the Arabic language of the Qur'an, makes the text of the Qur'an in a position much different to that of Christian text, with the exception of Judaism in terms of Hebrew.