The Book of Exodus (and Specifically Exod 3's "YHWH" and "Ahyeh" In the Arabic Christian Tradition

[austindsurls]

Dear colleagues,

     Greetings! I hope you are well. I could use help in research for a chapter I have been tasked to write. The volume is "The Old Testament Around the World," and I am to write about some text, topic, or aspect of the Book of Exodus, but from a Arab Christian perspective. While I am looking at modern Arab Christian scholar's notes and research on the book of Exodus, I would also like to see what the medieval Arab Christian tradition will yield.

      If there are any commentaries on the Book of Exodus, that would be helpful to me. Also, I am thinking to see if the medieval Arab Christian tradition can shed light on the divine name YHWH revealed in Exodus 3:15, or perhaps the engimatic ehyeh asher ehyeh (rendered ahyah alladhi ahyah in the Smith-Van Dyke translation of the Bible) pseudo-name. Can you direct me to any resources on this topic? Thank you in advance.

Most sincerely,

Austin Surls

[Abigail Bernard]

Hi Austin and all, 

I would be interested in this too. 

I do not know anything on the topic, however, something interesting I came across was that in the Apology of Al-Kindi (c. 830 AD), the author of the Christian response quotes Exodus 3:15. In his quotation, however, he quotes the divine name in Hebrew, instead of translating it into Arabic. I am not sure if this is from the Syriac tradition, or if he was working from Hebrew. I would be very interested if anyone had any thoughts. 

You can see this on page 27 (Arabic pagination), a little over halfway down : https://archive.org/details/ApologyOfAl-kindiarabic/page/n43/mode/2up . 

Blessings,

Abigail Houtz

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[Peter Tarras]

Dear Austin,

The natural place to start would be Georg Graf's Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, vol. 1, pp. 85-108. This will give you a good overview of the state of research (up to 1944) and numerous prints and, above all, manuscripts of the Pentateuch, as well as Christian Arabic translation strands that had already been identified by then.

As a supplement to this, I recommend Michel van Esbroeck's 1988 "Les versions orientales de la Bible", which has a section dedicated to Christian Arabic Bible translations.

Next you should check out Ronny Vollandt's contribution in Textual History of the Bible, vol. 1C (pp. 239ff.) on the "secondary" Arabic Pentateuch translations. Even more details and a more up-to-date overview of the state of research you will in find in the same author's Arabic Versions of the Pentateuch.

There's an earlier monograph on Copto-Arabic Pentateuch translations by Joseph Francis Rhode, The Arabic Versions of the Pentateuch in the Church of Egypt.

For what it's worth, the Chalcedonian theologian Theodore Abū Qurra (d. ca. 835), one of the earliest Christian Arabic authors known by name, reproduces God's name from Exodus 3:14 as follows: أنا الذي لم أزل (ed. Basha, p. 140). This is clearly a strongly theologically motivated "translation", perhaps inspired by the LXX. It's no coincidence, however, that the wording is the same as in his reproduction of John 1:1: في البدء لم تزل الكلمة والكلمة لم تزل عند الله (ed. Bacha, p. 32).  

Hope this is of some help!

Best wishes,

Peter

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[Alexander Treiger]

Dear Austin and All,

The "Ehye asher ehye" form transliterated into Arabic is also used in the dialogue of Abraham of Tiberias (ed. Marcuzzo, p. 345).

See attached fragment.

Warm wishes,

Alexander

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[Martino Diez]

Dear Austin,

Following on the query, the “ehye asher ehye” is also transliterated - with a missing letter (sher instead of asher) - and paraphrased in al-Makin ibn al-‘Amid, Universal History, p. 434, par. 257:

قلُ لهم ”أهيا شرِ أهيا“، الذي تأويله ”الأزلي الذي لم يزل

In general, ch. 27 on Moses is a paraphrase of the book of Exodus with many literal quotations, so it may be worth a look.

All my best,

Martino

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[Ronney el Gemayel]

Hello, You find also "أَهيا شَرَ أهِيا" in Ammar al-Basri Questions and Answers (nbr 5). 

Blessings!

P. Ronney el Gemayel, S.J.

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[Aurélie Bischofberger]

Dear Austin and all,

 

While my own research focuses primarily on Christian Arabic versions of Leviticus, I have collated Exod 3:14 in a number of Christian Arabic Pentateuch manuscripts from my corpus, which may be of interest for your fascinating chapter project.

In the manuscripts I checked, Exodus is attested in several different Christian Arabic translations as well as in a recension of Saadia’s Tafsīr. Most versions are similar to Theodore Abū Qurra’s reading quoted to us by Peter Tarras yesterday: Saadia reads الازلي الذي لا يزول, the Peshitta-based ArabSyr2 الأزلي الّذي لم يزل, the Syro-Hexapla-based version attributed to Al-Hāriṯ reads أنا الّذي لم يزل, the later Coptic-based ArabCopt has أنا هو الأزلي.

By contrast, other Peshitta-based versions (ArabSyr1 and possibly ArabSyr3) preserve a direct calque of the Hebrew , already reflected in the Syriac of the Peshitta ܐܗܝܗܿ ܐܿܫܪ ܐܗܝܗ. The phrase اهيا اشر اهيا is attested with minor orthographic variations (اشر without alif: شر; and اهيا with -h: اهيه).

 

Best wishes,

Aurélie

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