Richard
Bell:
...in
spite of traditions to the effect that the picture of Jesus was found on one of
the pillars of Ka'aba, there is no good evidence of any seats of Christianity
in the Hijaz or in the near neighbourhood of Mecca or even of Medina. (Richard
Bell, The Origin of Islam in its Christian Environment, 1925; 1968 (Reprinted),
The Gunning Lectures Edinburgh University & London: Frank Cass and Company
Limited, p.42.)
New
Catholic Encyclopaedia confirms that during the time of the Muhammad:
The
Hijaz [Arabian peninsula] had not been touched by Christian preaching. Hence
organisation of the Christian church was neither to be expected nor found. (New
Catholic Encyclopaedia, Op.Cit, Vol. 1, pp. 721-722.)
This is
also mentioned in the books dealing with Christianity among Arabs in
pre-Islamic times from the point of view of poets:
The
testimony of poets to the influence of Christianity in a spiritual and a
sociological sense is negative. (J S Trimingham, Christianity Among the Arabs
in Pre-Islamic Times, 1971, Longman Publishers, pp.247)
Malik
Ben Nabi narrates an interesting story:
Moreover,
if Judeo-Christian thought had really made inroads into Jahiliyyan society and
culture, the absence of an Arabic translation of the Bible could not be
explained. As for the New Testament, it is certain that no Arabic translation
of it existed in the fourth century of Hijrah. This is evident from the
reference by Ghazzali, who had to resort to a Coptic manuscript to write his
Rad, a respectable refutation of the divinity of Jesus according to the Gospel.
In translating the work of the Arab philosopher, Rev. Fr. Chidiac searched
everywhere for Gospel sources which could have served at the time of the
composition of Rad. He finally found a manuscript in the library of Leningrad
written about 1060 by a certain Ibn al-Assal as the first edition of a
Christian text in Arabic. Thus, there did not exist an Arabic edition of the
Gospels at the time of Ghazzali, and, a fortiori, it did not exist during the
Pre-Islamic period. (Malik BenNabi, Op.Cit, p.154.)
It is
interesting to know that the Gospels were first translated in Arabic during the
first Abbasid century. This was mainly due to the debates between Muslims and
Christians concerning the status of Gospels, as well as the concept of God, and
the defense of icons in the Church.
Sidney
H Griffith has done extensive research on the appearance of Arabic Gospel.
Regarding the manuscript evidence, he says:
The
oldest known, dated manuscripts containing Arabic translations of the New
Testament are in the collections of St. Catherine's monastery at Mt. Sinai.
Sinai Arabic MS 151 contains an Arabic version of the Epistles of Paul, the
Acts of the Apostles, and the Catholic Epistles. It is the oldest dated New
Testament manuscripts. The colophon of this MS informs us that one Bisr Ibn
as-Sirri made the translation from Syriac in Damascus during Ramadan of the
Higrah year 253, i.e., 867 AD.
The
author went on to say:
The
oldest, dated manuscript containing the Gospels in Arabic is Sinai Arabic MS
72. Here the text of the four canonical Gospels is marked off according to the
lessons of the temporal cycle of the Greek liturgical calendar of the Jerusalem
Church. A colophon informs us that the MS was written by Stephen of Ramleh in
the year 284 of the Arabs, i.e., 897 AD.
Concerning
the presence of Arabic Gospels in the pre-Islamic period, Sidney Griffith,
after extensive study, concludes that:
All one
can say about the possibility of a pre-Islamic, Christian version of the Gospel
in Arabic is that no sure sign of it's actual existence has yet emerged.
Furthermore, even if some unambiguous evidence of it should turn up as a result
of more recent investigations, it is clear that after the Islamic conquest of
the territories of the oriental patriarchates, and once Arabic has become the
official and de facto public language of the caliphate, the church faced a much
different pastoral problem than was the case with the earlier missions among
the pre-Islamic Arabs.
(Sidney
H Griffith, "The Gospel In Arabic: An Enquiry Into Its Appearance In The
First Abbasid Century", Oriens Christianus, Volume 69, p. 131-132.)
Further,
what about the Old Testament in Arabic? Ernst Würthwein informs us in his book
The Text Of The Old Testament that:
With
the victory of Islam the use of Arabic spread widely, and for Jews and
Christians in the conquered lands it became the language of daily life. This
gave rise to the need of Arabic versions of the Bible, which need was met by a
number of versions mainly independent and concerned primarily for
interpretation.
Ernst
Würthwein, The Text Of The Old Testament, 1988, William B Eerdmans Publishing
Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, pp. 104.
