From Controversy to Apologetics:
A Chronological Overview of Eastern Christian Writings against Islam from the Rise of Islam until the Third/Ninth Century
By the middle of the ninth century, the Christian-Muslim polemic had reached the epitome of its sophistication and intellectualism, one which became the sanctioned apparatus for apologetics. Although Islam had come into existence a century earlier, it quickly developed a systematised theology that adopted early on opinions about other religions, the Abrahamic religions notwithstanding. The immediate territorial expansion after the death of Muhammad included Christian centres of Byzantium. The Christians were no strangers to dealing with other religions, and the different churches in Syria, …show more content…
They were also faced with the gradual linguistic transition in all matters caliphal and administrative; which in effect included productions in Syriac and Greek, and soon after in …show more content…
It will follow the topical and linguistic transformation of text: from the generic (social, territorial, political, liturgical) to the systemic (doctrinal, dogmatic, defence). It will also shed light on how the unified seventh century polemical corpus gradually dissolved with the rise of a new narrative: Apologetics belonging to the Melkites (Chalcedonians), the Jacobites (Monophysites) or the Nestorians (Church of the East) began to address not only Muslim criticism, but also defended their Christology to each another. But first, the paper will attempt to construct a distinction between apologetics and controversy in context through an examination of the chronological transformation of the Eastern provinces of Byzantium, to what became to be known as Dar
A Chronological Overview of Eastern Christian Writings against Islam from the Rise of Islam until the Third/Ninth Century
By the middle of the ninth century, the Christian-Muslim polemic had reached the epitome of its sophistication and intellectualism, one which became the sanctioned apparatus for apologetics. Although Islam had come into existence a century earlier, it quickly developed a systematised theology that adopted early on opinions about other religions, the Abrahamic religions notwithstanding. The immediate territorial expansion after the death of Muhammad included Christian centres of Byzantium. The Christians were no strangers to dealing with other religions, and the different churches in Syria, …show more content…
They were also faced with the gradual linguistic transition in all matters caliphal and administrative; which in effect included productions in Syriac and Greek, and soon after in …show more content…
It will follow the topical and linguistic transformation of text: from the generic (social, territorial, political, liturgical) to the systemic (doctrinal, dogmatic, defence). It will also shed light on how the unified seventh century polemical corpus gradually dissolved with the rise of a new narrative: Apologetics belonging to the Melkites (Chalcedonians), the Jacobites (Monophysites) or the Nestorians (Church of the East) began to address not only Muslim criticism, but also defended their Christology to each another. But first, the paper will attempt to construct a distinction between apologetics and controversy in context through an examination of the chronological transformation of the Eastern provinces of Byzantium, to what became to be known as Dar