Arabic Christianity in the Monasteries of Ninth-Century Palestine

The history of Christian literature took a new turn in the 8th century when monks in the monasteries of Palestine began to write theology and saints lives in Arabic; they also instituted a veritable programme for translating the Bible and other Christian texts from Greek (and Syriac) into the language of the Quran, the lingua franca of the Islamic caliphate. This is the subject of the present volume. Two key factors leading to this change, as Professor Griffith indicates, were that the confrontation with the developing theology of Islam created a direct need for apologetics to face this new religious challenge in its own language; and, second, simply that as the memory of Byzantine power waned, so too did the knowledge of Greek. Issues of particular interest in this apologetic literature are those of the freedom of the will, a key topic in the controversies between Melkites and Muslims, and of the legitimacy of icon veneration, a subject of great contemporary concern at the time of Iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire. Lhistoire de la littrature chrtienne a pris un nouveau tournant au 8 sicle lorsque les religieux des monastres de Palestine commencrent crire la thologie et la vie des saints en arabe. De mme, ils institurent un vritable programme de traduction de la Bible et autres textes chrtiens du grec (et du syriaque) en langue corannique, la lingua franca du califat islamique. Tel est lobjet du prsent recueil. Deux facteurs determinants ayant conduit ce changement, comme lindique le professeur Griffith, taient, en premier lieu, la confrontation avec une thologie islamique croissante, qui crait un besoin pressant pour les apologtiques de faire face ce nouveau dfi religieux dans la langue propre celui-ci; en second lieu, au fur et mesure que sestompait la mmoire du pourvoir byzantin, il en allait de mme pour la connaissance que lon avait de la langue grecque. Ces textes traitent de q