Bibliographie
Primary Sources
Ḫātūnābādī (d. 1127/1714), Muḥammad Bāqir, Tarǧama-yi Anāǧīl-i arbaʿa: Tarǧama, taʿlīqāt va tawżīḥāt, Rasūl Ǧaʿfariyān (ed.), Tihrān, Nuqṭa, 1375/[1996]; 2nd edition Tihrān, Nuqṭa, 1384/2005.
Ibn Ḫaldūn (d. 808/1406), ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad, Tārīḫ Ibn Ḫaldūn, 8 vols., Suhayl Zakkār & Ḫalīl Šaḥāda (eds.), Bayrūt, al-Fikr, 1421/2000.
Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064), Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī, al-Fiṣal fī al-milal wa-l-ahwāʾ wa-l-niḥal, vol. 2, al-Qāhira, M.ʿA. Ṣabīḥ, 1348/1929‒1930.
Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064), Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī, al-Fiṣal fī al-milal wa-l-ahwāʾ wa-l-niḥal, vol. 2, Bayrūt, Dār al-Ǧῑl, 1416/1996.
al-Šahrastānī (d. 548/1153), Tāǧ al-Dīn, al-Milal wa-l-niḥal, Aḥmad Fahīmī Muḥammad (ed.), Bayrūt, al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1413/1992.
Secondary Sources
Accad, Martin, “The Gospels in the Muslim Discourse of the Ninth to the Fourteenth Centuries: An Exegetical Inventorial Table”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 14, 2003, p. 67‒91 (I), p. 205‒220 (II), p. 337‒352 (III), p. 459‒479 (IV).
Ansari, Hassan, “Ibn Ḥazm selon certains savants shīʿites”, in Camilla Adang, Maribel Fierro, & Sabine Schmidtke (eds.), Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba: The Life and Works of a Controversial Thinker, (Handbook of Oriental Studies, 103), Leiden, Brill, 2013, p. 645‒661.
Ansari, Hassan, “Ibn Ḥazm va tašayyuʿ ” (1396/[2017]), <http://ansari.kateban.com/post/3369>, accessed on March 20, 2019.
Beaumont, Mark I., “Early Muslim Interpretation of the Gospels”, Transformation 22, 2005, p. 20‒27.
Halft, Dennis, ‘The Arabic Vulgate in Safavid Persia: Arabic Printing of the Gospels, Catholic Missionaries, and the Rise of Shīʿī Anti-Christian Polemics’, PhD dissertation, Freie Universität Berlin, 2016, <https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/1332>, accessed on February 24, 2019.
Ometto, Franco, “Khatun Abadi: The Ayatollah Who Translated the Gospels”, Islamochristiana 28, 2002, p. 55‒72.
Reynolds, Gabriel S., “On the Qurʾanic Accusation of Scriptural Falsification (taḥrīf) and Christian Anti-Jewish Polemic”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 130, 2010, p. 189‒202.
Savory, Roger, Iran under the Safavids, Cambridge [Eng.], Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Thomas, David, “The Bible in Early Muslim Anti-Christian Polemic”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 7, 1996, p. 29‒38.
Urvoy, Dominique, “Le sens de la polémique anti-biblique chez Ibn Ḥazm”, in Camilla Adang, Maribel Fierro & Sabine Schmidtke (eds.), Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba: The Life and Works of a Controversial Thinker, (Handbook of Oriental Studies, 103), Leiden, Brill, 2013, p. 485‒496.
Van Gorder, A. Christian, Christianity in Persia and the Status of Non-Muslims in Iran, Lanham, Lexington, 2010.
Haut de page
Notes
Reynolds, “On the Qurʾanic Accusation”, p. 192‒195.
Q V, 46 presents al-Inǧīl, “the Gospel” (in singular), as the book that was bestowed on Jesus by God. There is no place for the ‘evangelists’ in the Qurʾān. No human being in the Qurʾān is presented as the writer, composer or scribe of the Gospel(s).
Among the most famous Muslim authors of the early Islamic period are Aḥmad b. Isḥāq al-Yaʿqūbī (d. 284/897‒898), Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Bābawayh al-Qummī (“Šayḫ al-Ṣadūq”, d. 381/991), and Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Ḥazm (d. 456/1064), who noticed the role of the evangelists in the formation of the Christian beliefs. Regarding former research about the topic, see Beaumont, “Early Muslim Interpretation”, p. 22‒27; and Accad, “The Gospels”, p. 67‒73.
The polemical works of al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm al-Rassī (d. 246/860) and Ibn Ḥazm are significant examples in this regard. See Thomas, “The Bible”, p. 29‒38.
See Urvoy, “Le sens”, p. 486.
Ibn Ḥazm, al-Fiṣal, vol. 2, p. 2‒9.
Ibn Ḥazm, al-Fiṣal, vol. 2, p. 3.
Ibn Ḥazm, al-Fiṣal, vol. 2, p. 6‒9.
Ibn Ḥazm gave the apostles pejorative titles: “Matthew the Taxman” (Mattā al-šurṭī), “John the Reckless” (Yuḥannā al-mustaḫiff), “Mark the Apostate” (Mārquš al-murtadd), “Luke the Heretic” (Lūqā al-zindīq), “Peter the Damned” (Bāṭira al-laʿīn), and “Paul the Deceiver” (Būlus al-muwaswis) or “Paul the Conspirator” (Būlus al-madsūs). The titles were motivated in different ways. Matthew’s title was chosen according to his business as a tax collector, mentioned in Matthew 9:9, which he ran before his apostleship. John’s title probably derived from his authorship of the Book of Revelation, viewed by Ibn Ḥazm as a collection of superstitions (see al-Fiṣal, vol. 2, p. 4). In Mark’s and Luke’s cases, their titles were in a kind of verbal harmony with their names. In Peter’s case, it probably came from Matthew 16:23 (“Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan!’”). Finally, Paul’s title was created in order to be rhymed with his name. (The source of the second reading of the title attributed to Paul, Būlus al-madsūs, is Ibn Ḥazm, al-Fiṣal, vol. 2, the Bayrūt edition, 1996, p. 50). Later in his book, Ibn Ḥazm attributed some other titles to the apostles, replacing Peter with Judas and Jacob (see idem, al-Fiṣal, vol. 2, p. 20).
Ibn Ḥazm, al-Fiṣal, vol. 2, p. 6.
Ibn Ḥazm, al-Fiṣal, vol. 2, p. 6.
Ibn Ḥazm, al-Fiṣal, vol. 2, p. 2. Regarding the translations of the New Testament in a variety of languages, Ibn Ḥazm probably intended to show that this diversity had caused the deviation of the contents of the available copies of the New Testament from the original one.
Ibn Ḥazm’s conclusion regarding the role of the evangelists is incapsulated in his comment on Matthew 11:27 (“No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”): “… [if we take it right] it would mean that the disciples and Christians do not know God at all and, of course, do not know Christ. They had a wrong understanding of God the Almighty and the Son. And whoever is ignorant of God, and does not know him is a heretic. So, they all are heretics, and their predecessors and their successors” (Ibn Ḥazm, al-Fiṣal, vol. 2, p. 28). For further observation, see Urvoy, “Le sens”, p. 492‒493.
An edition of Ḫātūnābādī’s translation and commentary has been published by R. Ǧaʿfariyān (see Ḫātūnābādī, Tarǧama-yi Anāǧīl). D. Halft developed a study of Ḫātūnābādī’s commented translation of the Gospels in his PhD dissertation (see Halft, ‘The Arabic Vulgate’). Some significant information about Ḫātūnābādī’s translation, its origins, and copies can be found on p. 166‒171.
Ḫātūnābādī, Tarǧama-yi Anāǧīl, p. 4.
Ḫātūnābādī, Tarǧama-yi Anāǧīl, p. 229‒231.
Was Ḫātūnābādī familiar with Ibn Ḥazm’s polemical literature? It seems that the answer is negative. H. Ansari stated in an article that there is no trace of the attention of Šīʿī scholars regarding Ibn Ḥazm’s works before the Safavid era (see Ansari, “Ibn Ḥazm selon certains savants”, p. 645). In the Persian summary of the same article that was published some years later, Ansari modified the date to the “middle of the Safavid era” (see Ansari, “Ibn Ḥazm va tašayyuʿ ”). Despite this dating, there is no place for Ḫātūnābādī’s familiarity with Ibn Ḥazm in Ansari’s research. The article indicates the first Šīʿī readings of Ibn Ḥazm’s works among the Persian scholars, such as Qāḍī Nūrullāh Marʿašī (d. 1019/1610‒1611) and Ḥazīn-i Lāhīǧī (d. 1180/1766), not in Persia but in India. Having said this, it seems that Ḫātūnābādī was not unaware of existing anti-Christian polemical literature in general (see Ometto, “Khatun Abadi”, p. 69‒72). Still, further research is required to reveal the sources that inspired the chief mullā. Apart from the similarities between Ḫātūnābādī’s and Ibn Ḥazm’s arguments, there are some resemblances between their approaches and styles, such as distinguishing Jesus of the Qurʾān and Jesus of the Gospels with his name in Arabic and Aramaic, respectively as ʿĪsā and Yasūʿ.
Ḫātūnābādī, Tarǧama-yi Anāǧīl, p. 5. Ḫātūnābādī’s writing style is significantly different from Ibn Ḥazm’s one. He tried to be fair, reasonable, and well-advised in his writing.
The translation of biblical verses throughout this study follows the New International Version (NIV).
Ḫātūnābādī, Tarǧama-yi Anāǧīl, p. 240.
Ometto, “Khatun Abadi”, p. 69.
Ḫātūnābādī, Tarǧama-yi Anāǧīl, p. 230, 245.
Ḫātūnābādī, Tarǧama-yi Anāǧīl, p. 230.
Ḫātūnābādī, Tarǧama-yi Anāǧīl, p. 240.
Peter is called in Ḫātūnābādī’s commentary “head of the apostles” (raʾs al-ḥawāriyyῑn). This title, however, was not Ḫātūnābādī’s innovation. Al-Šahrastānī (d. 548/1153) presented Peter as “the superior disciple” (see his al-Milal wa-l-niḥal, p. 246). Ibn Ḫaldūn (d. 808/1406) presented Peter as “head of the apostles” (raʾs al-ḥawāriyyῑn) as well, claiming that Peter wrote his Gospel in ‘Roman’ (Latin) and attributed it to Mark, his disciple (see his Tārῑḫ, vol. 8, p. 239). The latter claim was mentioned by Ibn Ḥazm, too (see his al-Fiṣal, vol. 2, p. 3).
Ḫātūnābādī respectively presented Mark and Luke as the disciples of Peter and Paul. He also mentioned that Mark and Luke wrote their Gospels some decades after Jesus’ ministry (see his Tarǧama-yi Anāǧīl, p. 299). This note could probably support his idea of unreliability of the Gospels, showing that two evangelists did not even know Jesus in person.
Ḫātūnābādī, Tarǧama-yi Anāǧīl, p. 245.
Ḫātūnābādī, presenting Peter as the one who leads Jesus’ followers after his ascension, mentioned that either Peter nominated Mark to write his Gospel or he himself wrote it but attributed it to Mark (see Tarǧama-yi Anāǧīl, p. 256).
Ḫātūnābādī, Tarǧama-yi Anāǧīl, p. 231.
Ḫātūnābādī is not precise in his statement, where he qualifies the arguments of the clergyman as being exclusively based on the content of the Gospels. Actually, nowhere in the Gospels is it explicitly written that the resurrection solidified the faith of the disciples, or that the contents of the Gospels were inspired by the Holy Spirit. Perhaps he was confusing the Gospels with the Acts or some other Christian material.
See Van Gorder, Christianity in Persia, p. 62.
See Savory, Iran under the Safavids, p. 251.
Ḫātūnābādī’s conditional statement can be formulated as an ‘if p, then q, then r’ structure. Ḫātūnābādī’s hypothesis, the proposition ‘p’, is that the apostles, including the evangelists, were men of little faith, as Jesus stated. Hence, proposition ‘q’ is that they could not comprehend Jesus’ ministry. As a result, the proposition ‘r’ is that their account of Jesus’ message is not reliable at all.
Haut de page