"'Allah akbar!' exploded Carahue. 'They're terrified of magic. Merciful saints, I meant to say.'" (p. 129)
Ketlan was a big fan of Anthony Burgess and was envious that I had heard Burgess speak on James Joyce at Lancaster Duke's Playhouse. Ketlan got me to read Earthly Powers. In that novel, a Maltese character has always accepted that he prays to Deus in a church whereas his Muslim neighbor prays to Allah in a mosque. Now, however, the Catholic Church has adopted the vernacular liturgy so that suddenly the character finds himself praying, in his Arabic-influenced Maltese, to Allah in church. For him, this is a problem - but had he never addressed God in the vernacular in private prayer?
When Sheila and I were on holiday in Malta, we were looking around the back of a church during a Mass and heard the priest say, "Oh, Allah..."
Carahue acts in character as a recent convert from Islam to Christianity.
13 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, Sir Carahue could not help but still be influenced in some ways by old habits.
And Middle Eastern Christians, such as the Maronite Catholics of Lebanon, for the most part spoke Arabic as they everyday language, even if, officially, Aramaic was the official liturgical language of their rite of the Universal Church.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
If the Maronite New Testament is written in Aramaic, then it includes at least some of Jesus' original words. Of course, the Greek NT includes a few Aramaic phrases, then translates them.
Paul.
Sean,
I am not quite sure about Carahue's exact status but I will learn soon enough.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Officially, Aramaic is the language of the Maronite rite, so I'm sure the NT they use is in Aramaic. But, since Arabic is the everyday language of the Maronites, I'm also sure they use the Bible translated into Arabic.
Yes, the Greek NT includes some Aramaic carried over and then translated. Matthew is believed to have been originally written in Aramaic, and rendered into Greek very early on.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I know one Biblical scholar and met another who think that they need to know Aramaic in order to be able to deduce possible original versions of sayings that were recorded in Greek.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I certainly have no objection to that! A study of Aramaic should help to better understand the Semitisms to be found in the four Gospels. Esp. in Matthew and Mark.
Ad astra! Sean
Incidentally, a lot of the Koran was probably drawn from Aramaic liturgical and Gospel literature circulating in the Middle East in the 7th century. Arabic wasn't a written language then -- Semitic-speakers who were literate generally used Aramaic. The languages are close but not identical, and this lead to misunderstandings.
I wasn't thinking straight last night. If anyone DID read the NT in Aramaic, that could only be because someone had translated it into Aramaic from the original written GREEK so they would NOT be reading the EXACT words that had originally been spoken in Aramaic.
Kaor, Mr. Stiring and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: I thought had become a written language before Mohammed's time, even if only about a hundred years before his time. I do recall reading of how there was a pre-Islamic Arabic literature. But of course the sources I read might have been wrong.
I have read NJ Dawood's translation of the Koran, and I recall the parts of it affected or influenced by the OT/NT. But they are so different from what orthodox Christianity believes that it reinforces what I have also read about Mohammed knowing only heretical Christians or using non-canonical sources. Such as various apocryphal or gnostic works.
Paul: But I'm reasonably sure parts of the NT were originally written in Aramaic, most likely Matthew and Mark. We do see one of the earliest post Apostolic Christian writers (Papias, I think) stating that Matthew was originally written in the "Hebrew" (Aramaic) language before being translated into Greek. The rest, of course, were first written in Greek.
So, for the benefit of Aramaic and, later, Arabic speaking Christians, the NT was translated/retranslated into Aramaic.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it's probable that the original Aramaic texts, as well as translations of the Greek, were in circulation -- and that many different versions of them were.
Most of the Middle East (including the Persian-ruled parts of Mesopotamia) were Christian in that period, but the non-Greek-speaking parts were almost all "heretical" from the viewpoint of Constantinople, or Rome.
Monophysite in the main, but there were many different varieties of that, and various other sects, and all sorts of Apocrypha and gnostic documents were in circulation as well.
What early Islam mined was not the "high" version of Christianity, but the sort of folk-religion circulating among the Aramaic-speaking border and country populations, unregulated by ecclesiastical authority and wildly various. The sort of thing a bunch of quasi-literates from beyond the Byzantine and Persian frontiers would be familiar with.
The Koran contains a number of places where it looks like Aramaic words were shoehorned into different contexts -- for example, if you use an Aramaic reading, Mohammed is called the "witness" of the Prophets, not the "seal".
In any case, the Koran as we know it was a compilation and redaction first brought together in the late 7th-early 8th century, in the Umayyad period under Abd al-Malik, whose scholars also invented the system of diacritical markings in Arabic script. The Koranic inscriptions in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem date from this period. These are the first securely dated Koranic quotes.
Prior to this, different manuscripts and oral traditions were circulating, and most followers of the religion probably simply called it the "din Allah" (Faith of God) and didn't refer to written texts much.
Since the Umayyad caliphs controlled virtually all the Muslim world at the time, they were able to impose a canonical version of the Koran, which you may rest assured was composed in a way that suited their political interests.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, it's probable some Aramaic NT texts survived for a time, and maybe some were incorporated as parts of the Targums?
Yes, those Christians in the Mid East who rejected the definitions of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon were mostly either Nestorians or Monophysites (of various kinds), plus downright outlandish sects like the Docetists and Mandaeans. It's from them that we get surviving fragments of non-canonical gnostic/heretical works.
And I agree Mohammed took what he thought was standard Christian beliefs from these fringe sects near or beyond the East Roman and Persian borders. Including the trade routes on the west coast of Arabia from Medina south to Mecca, etc.
To call Mohammed the "witness" of the prophets looks more understandable to me than "seal."
Yes, I have read just enough about the textual history of the Koran to believe there were variant textual Koranic traditions. And that the Ummayad caliphs cobbled together a Koranic text that suited their political needs. The pre-Ummayad Yemeni texts of the Koran gives us plenty of evidence of textual variations!
Ad astra! Sean
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