Theology in Arabic Seminars - Fall 2025
Rodrigo Adem
Friday, Oct 10, 12:15 pm EDT (17:15PM BST/18:15 CEST), at Georgetown University and on Zoom:
Michael Rapoport, PhD, Florida Atlantic University
Freedom from Calamity: Choosing the Choosing Agent in the “Divine Science” of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Compendium (Mulakhkhaṣ)
Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Compendium offers a relatively brief presentation of the philosophical sciences according to his new organization. He begins with logic, then proceeds to a discussion of philosophy (ḥikma) in three “books,” beginning with general things, then substances and accidents, and concluding with divine science. This final book is dedicated to proving the existence of God as a willing, choosing, and omnipotent agent rather than a necessary agent. We will read selections of Rāzī’s engagement with the philosophers, which he concludes with a choice: truth, or calamity?
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Wednesday, Nov 5, 12:15 pm EST (17:15PM GMT/18:15 CEST) on Zoom
Peter Tarras, PhD, LMU München
The Earliest Arabic Version of Jacob of Serugh’s Letter to the Monks of Sinai: Reception Context and Theological Resonances
In this paper, I will present excerpts from an edition and English translation of the oldest Arabic version of Jacob of Serugh's Letter to the Monks of Sinai. The text, preserved in a single manuscript from the 9th/10th century CE (Sinai ar. 461), has not yet been noted in research on the Arabic reception of Jacob or on this specific manuscript. Alongside the only Syriac manuscript (BL Add. 14587, dated 603 CE) containing the text, it is the oldest textual witness. Furthermore, the text may be revealing for the reception of the non-Chalcedonian author in the milieu of arabophone Chalcedonian monks on Sinai from the 9th century CE onwards. The manuscripts produced here in a workshop around the scribe Thomas of Fustat preserve the oldest Arabic translations of Jacob's works, even though some of them were censored and subjected to biblioclasm probably in the 12th century CE. Jacob's Letter shows how the arabophone monks of Sinai could recognise Jacob as an author honouring their distinctive monastic mission in literary terms. At the same time, the theology formulated in the Letter, with its clearly anti-Jewish and supersessionist motifs, resonates with the texts of Arabic Chalcedonian authors of the time when the translation must have been made, some of whom may also have been monks on the Sinai. In the paper, I will talk about the work on the text of the Letter, say something about the style of the translation and the reconstructable history of its transmission, and also shed light on Jacob's Arabic reception on the Sinai and the resonance of the letter's theology with other Arabic texts.
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