The Post-Quranic Arabic Bible

Academia.org recently raised to our attention Miriam Hjälm, "The Qurʾānic Subtext of Early Arabic Bible Translations".

The Arabic Bible wot we got exists only in later mediaeval copies. Its language is close to the Qurân's; and both to the Syriac Bible tradition. There are longstanding questions about whether the Qurân used that Arabic Bible, and if so to what extent. Baumstark was big on this, as you may read in translation in Ibn Warraq's Christmas in the Quran. Sidney Griffith is just as big on the opposition, that no Arabic Bible existed until long after the Quran became The Arabic Book.

This post isn't to take sides. But it will list where Hjälm takes sides, and evaluate those instances.

Hjälm comments that the Arabic translator has Daniel 3 refer to the sura 3 Hajj when talking about Nabuchadnezzar's (sic) idols. For Genesis, the translator edits its closing Joseph tale such that it is more in alignment with sura 12 than translations elsewhere. In the books of Samuel, or "Reigns" in the Septuagint, Saul is "Talut". I do not think that this form of the name ever existed before sura 2.

Some other changes are harder to square with an Islam-leading audience. The translation of Job has Uz somewhere around Harran. Ibn Sa'd in the 'Abbâsi era thought Uz was 'Âd. Again, without taking sides, at least this points to a translator not working in an Islamic milieu.

For purpose of evangelism, the whole Reigns cycle wasn't anyone's first choice for translation. Daniel, as apocalyptic, supposedly was popular in Late Antiquity. Especially out East: Chase Robinson wrote a study mentioning that when the Arabs invaded Khuzestan, Tus, and Tustar. Likewise the, I dunno, first book in the Torah Genesis.

Hjälm thereby sets some important constraints on the Arabic Bible. It does not look like Daniel 1-6 circulated in Arabic before the taking of the Khuzestan. Likewise, Genesis - and the Torah generally - didn't get into full Arabic until the move into Egypt (and I'd say 'Abd al-'Aziz's reign there). If we follow the "lectionary theory" whereby the Arabic biblical readings were piecemeal and sporadic, this lectionary stage persisted well into the Islamic era.

That still leaves the Psalms.