New, Open Access Book on the Arabic Text of Paul

I just noticed this week that there’s a new book on the Arabic text of Paul. Included is a list of Arabic manuscripts of Paul and info about the digital edition of the main manuscript focus (Vat. Ar. 13). The digital edition includes a French translation of the manuscript. For background on that, see here. Wonderfully, it’s open access so it’s free. It’s part of Brill’s Biblia Arabica series.

Les manuscrits arabes des lettres de Paul: État de la question et étude de cas (1 Corinthiens dans le Vat. Ar. 13)

Author: Sara Schulthess
Series: Biblia Arabica, Volume: 6

Cet ouvrage ouvre une fenêtre sur la transmission des lettres de Paul en arabe. Il s’interroge sur le manque d’intérêt depuis le début du 20ème siècle pour les manuscrits arabes du Nouveau Testament et apporte une contribution à la récente reprise scientifique de ce champ, en étudiant le corpus largement inexploré des manuscrits arabes des lettres de Paul. Après un état des lieux établi à l’aide d’un répertoire de manuscrits, l’étude se concentre sur un manuscrit, le Vaticanus Arabicus 13. L’édition de la Première lettre aux Corinthiens de ce document du 9ème siècle est suivie d’une analyse linguistique et philologique pointue ; elle permet de dégager des éléments exégétiques qui mettent en lumière l’intérêt théologique du texte.

This work provides an insight into the transmission of the Letters of Paul into Arabic. It aims to understand the lack of interest since the beginning of the 20th century for the Arabic manuscripts of the New Testament and to contribute to the current scholarly rediscovery for this field by studying the largely unexplored corpus of the Arabic manuscripts of the Letters of Paul. After a broad overview with the help of a list of witnesses, the study focuses on a specific manuscript: Vaticanus Arabicus 13. The edition of First Corinthians of this 9th century document is followed by a close analysis of linguistic and philological aspects, while the underlining of interesting exegetical points reveals the theological interest of the text.

Bibliography of the Arabic Bible

Fresh from the Biblia Arabica project comes a new bibliography of the Arabic Bible which is said to be a classified and annotated history of scholarship. 

You can find it at biblia-arabica.com/bibl and read more about it on the introductory blog post. Here’s a snippet of that:

The bibliography aims to include all Arabic Bible prints and all secondary literature on Arabic versions of the Bible, regardless of language. Currently we have entries in Arabic, English, Hebrew, French, German, Italian, Latin, and (coming soon) Russian. Translations made by three different communities––Jewish, Christian, and Samaritan––as well as citations by Muslim authors are all within scope. For more about this, see the Introduction.

That said, what we are releasing today is the first 200 of about 1500 entries we have drafted. These published entries make up part or all of the following subject collections: Generalia (edited by Ronny Vollandt), Gospels (edited by Robert Turnbull and Vevian Zaki), Pauline Epistles (edited by Vevian Zaki), Qaraite Translations (edited by Ronny Vollandt and Michael Wechsler), and Quotations in Christian Arabic Writings (edited by Peter Tarras).

Our plan is to upload new entries fortnightly, so stay tuned!

This looks very helpful.