Content area
Full text
'Abd al Jabbar: Critique of Christian Origins Edited, translated, and annotated by Gabriel Said Reynolds and Samir Khalil Samir Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2010.
'Abd al Jabbar, a respected figure among the Mu'tazila, a group of rationalist Muslim theologians, spent the years of his long life (ca. 320s/930s to 415/1025) between the cities of Baghdad and Rayy in Iran. His account of the history of Christianity, likely the first such undertaking by a Muslim, examines significant aspects of Christian doctrine and attends to aspects of Christian liturgy, pious practices in daily life, social customs (some of which are singled out for criticism), and miracle stories that prominently feature ascetics. 'Abd al Jabbar's approach of combining refutations of the Christians' doctrines with critical discussions of their history and practices grounds the novelty of the work. Given the author's geographical location in Iran, the focus of the work's critique on East Syrian Christians and their practices is easily contextualized.
The introduction to the volume situates the Critique within the framework of early Islamic anti-Christian polemical literature. It presents 'Abd al Jabbar's life and works, comments usefully on still unedited works by him, and attempts to modify scholarly judgments of the author's role primarily as a compiler of earlier material by highlighting the "shockingly original" (p. xxxvi) character of the Critique. It discusses the Critique in relation to literature that expounded on the signs or proofs of Muhammad's prophethood and thus to texts situated in an explicitly inter-religious environment. It describes 'Abd al Jabbar's method, characterizes the cultural context of the Critique by way of detailing various groups of people with whom the author interacted and whom he targeted in his refutation, and attempts to identify multiple written and oral sources for the Critique.
The Critique of Christian Origins is only a portion of one of...