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Introduction: God's self-veiling between Gregory of Nyssa and al-Shura (42):51
One of the oldest Arabic Christian theological texts available to us in more than fragmentary form is an anonymous eighth-century Melkite, apology preserved in a parchment manuscript of the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai, Sinai ar,154 (ff. 99r-139v). Margaret Dunlop Gibson, the text's first editor, entitled it Fi tathlith Allah al-wahid or "On the Triune Nature of God"1-misleading titles, the reader quickly learns, because after a very few pages about the Trinity the treatise turns to matters of soteriology and Christology.
It is to Tathlith's soteriological chapter2 that we first turn. There we learn how, as a result of the Fall, Satan gained ascendancy over Adam and his progeny. God in his mercy sent prophets and apostles, but they were unable to prise humanity from Satan's grasp. Finally, in order to reverse the effects of the Fall and to save humankind from Satan's sovereignty in the most fitting way, God sent his Word who "put on this weak, defeated humanity from Mary the Good, whom God chose 'above the women of the worlds,' and veiled himself through her."3
The striking metaphor of "self-veiling" - rendered by the Arabic word ihtajaba related to the noun hijah or "veil" - is, of course, not new with the eighth-century Arabic apology. The student of Greek soteriological literature will instantly be reminded of the Catechetical Orations of Gregory of Nyssa, who taught that, in Christ, God's "divinity was hidden by the veil (prokalymma) of our nature" so that he might accomplish his stratagem against the Devil.4 We might note in passing that it is no surprise that much of the vocabulary and imagery of the early Arabic Melkite theological literature should derive from Greek sources. After all, the greatest of the eighth-century Melkite theologians was John of Damascus.5
However, Tathhth.description of the Virgin Mary as the one "whom God chose above the women of the worlds"6 is not taken from Gregory or the Damascene, but is rather a direct citation of the Qur'an. It is there, in Surat Al- Imran (3):42, that the story of the Annunciation begins with the words: "O Mary! God has chosen you and purified you, and Chosen you above the women of...