The seventh-century Melkite Palestine

Sean Anthony did well in Part I with the Doctrina; very well with 'Urwa's letters in Part II's chapters. Chapter 6 in Part III is an absolute tour de force.

Anthony here is looking into Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri's transmission (and perhaps adaptation), on the late Marwânid court's behalf, of Islam's equivalent to the "coming of the magi". Anthony brings the Naskha of Abu'l-Yaman alongside the Maghazi corpores of Ma'mar and of Ibn Ishaq. This is where Emperor Heraclius learns by astrology of Ishmael's coming.

There's a parallel letter without vision. Bukhari has this too, from Ibrahim b. Sa'd < Salih [Ibn Kaysan] < Ibn Shihab. To this I bring Nasai's Kubra ed. Abd al-Ghaffar Sulayman al-Bandari (Beirut: Dar al-Kutubi'l-'Ilmiyati, 1994) 6.309 #11064 : Abu Dawud Sulayman b. Sayf < Ya'qub < his father Ibrahim b. Sa'd < so on. This backs up that part of what went into Bukhari. As noted, Anthony doesn't need it. Anthony may have figured that he'd provided enough asanid in the Figure 13 bundle to make his point. I cannot blame him; I can only falsify him, to which end I find him thiqa and sahih.

For the vision, note: this was not of Muhammad's coming. So this is all earlier than Zuhri himself. As the Gospels had reached into Jewish messianism, so Zuhri reached into Christian tropes. And they weren't just "tropes" - at least, not Marwânid tropes. The vocabulary is Aramaic, when in Zuhri's day the court was insisting on Arabic. And not just any Aramaic: it's the main Christian rival to Syriac, that of Palaestina. Zuhri further credited this to a "Nâtûrâ". Who dat? - Anthony asks.

After Sophronius, Jerusalem lost its patriarch. This was because the Greek kingdom was still pushing the Monotheletism, so didn't care to give to the Palestinians a new patriarch as long as they remained Melkite. The core Melkite dissident movement shifted to the Latins, where bishop Martin had Rome. More than a few Melkite Greeks and Syrians remained in the Levant meanwhile. Of these Maximus the Confessor was the most famed, to posterity anyway. Also the locals in Palestine maintained their own Aramaic against the "haeretics", who were doing their thing in Syriac.

This may explain how come I don't find much Maximus in Syriac. The man himself seems not to have minded the also-Syriac Nestorians out East, but they were never his direct concern. Where he didn't communicate in Greek, he did so in Latin... and perhaps in Palestinian. I don't know that Maximus floated the astrology meme, either; but his friends sure did, and one of them reported this meme to PseudoFredegar of Gaul in Latin. This meme is going East with Dyotheletes into Syriac Si'rt and Kartuli Iberia. The Miaphysites will get wind of it, too; because it's in the Book of Patriarchs from Abba George at Wadi Habib (fl. mid 90s / 710s) - tho' this survives only in Severus Ibn Muqaffa's Arabic translation and extension. (Characteristically, Egyptians go more for oneiromancy than for astrology.) With Heraclius' defeat and the discredit of his Monotheletist compromise, Melkites and Miaphysites could agree on something!

But, back to the seventh century Palestinian Melkites. Who was leading them? For one, Maximus assuredly carried a lot of weight with them. And in bishop Martin they had a champion in the West - but as I keep reminding y'all, he wasn't a pope (yet). For Jerusalem, Anthony notes a sort of patriarchal steward, the Nâtûré of the Throne. He dismisses that this might be a calque of "notary"; and I'll add here that Zuhri doesn't use the O, he uses the A. An O-to-A shift is possible out East but Zuhri was consistently working with Palestinian sources here. So this man is probably Zuhri's Nâtûrâ.

Wisely Anthony does not count the Roman interviews about the Prophet and his dogma. But let us be less wise for a moment. To add to other parallel, in the Naskha / Ibn Kaysan synopsis is what the people are commanded to do: وَيَأْمُرُنَا بِالصَّلاَةِ وَالصِّدْقِ وَالْعَفَافِ. In Armenian, Pseudo-Sebeos says about the same: Mahmet legislated that they were not to // eat carrion, not to drink wine, not to speak falsehoods, and not to commit adultery. Howard-Johnston thought this latter came from Palestine. For another such summary-list, this one provided to the Negus of the Habasha up in Abyssinia, we may read the first essay in John Wansbrough's Quranic Studies. (I think George at the wadi will depend on a Marwani Madinese source, whence the Ka'ba is south.) So this credal dialogue was authentic Zuhri and may well have been included in Zuhri's collection of Christian sources.