On Attributes and Hypostases: Muslim Theology in the Interreligious Writings of Patriarch Timothy I (d. 823)

On Attributes and Hypostases: Muslim Theology in the Interreligious Writings of Patriarch Timothy I (d. 823)Medieval WorldsSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/8SFV2UCT/tei

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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.JoachimJakobOn Attributes and Hypostases: Muslim Theology in the Interreligious Writings of Patriarch Timothy I (d. 823)http://syriaca.org/cbss/8SFV2UCThttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/8SFV2UCThttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/8SFV2UCTMedieval Worlds172022120-144As Christians and Muslims encountered each other in the Middle East from the beginning of Islam in the 7th century CE onward, theology was not only a field of setting boundaries to distinguish one’s own community from the other but also an area of mutual influence between the communities. This article analyzes two letters of the East Syriac patriarch Timothy I (d. 823), both of which have an apologetic agenda but at the same time demonstrate Timothy’s familiarity with the Muslim intellectual milieu of his day. To defend the Christian doctrine of the Trinity against Muslim objections, Timothy made reference to the Islamic doctrine of divine attributes. He used relational attributes which consist of a subject, an act, and an object to show that there must be a certain plurality as well as relationships between the subjects, acts, and objects of the divine attributes. These relationships serve Timothy as a proof for the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. In this article, Timothy’s arguments and the teachings he ascribed to his Muslim counterparts are compared with what modern scholars have reconstructed about the teachings of Muslim thinkers from Timothy’s period; so far, such comparisons have been done for Christian Arabic writings more commonly than for Syriac ones. The result of this comparison shows that the positions of Timothy’s Muslim counterparts approximate very closely the ideas of the Muʿtazilite Abū l-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf. Thus, based on their content, it is possible to connect Timothy’s letters to the teachings of a concrete person among Muslim intellectuals of the period or to circles where Abū l-Hudhayl al-ʿAllāf seems to have been somehow involved. Jakob, Joachim. “On Attributes and Hypostases: Muslim Theology in the Interreligious Writings of Patriarch Timothy I (d. 823).” Medieval Worlds 17 (2022): 120–44. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no17_2022s120. Joachim Jakob, On Attributes and Hypostases: Muslim Theology in the Interreligious Writings of Patriarch Timothy I (d. 823), Medieval Worlds 17 (2022): 120–44, https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1553/medievalworlds_no17_2022s120.IX CEMuslim-Christian relationsNestoriansTimothy ITrinityVII-XVIII CEapologeticsletters