Dialexis

When I was looking into the Epiphanius / John Damascene intersection I (re)ran across references to a Dialexis. This is called Dialogue between a Saracen and a Christian in English; it is in JP Migne PG 96 and subsequently edited by Kotter in 1981 but not before a translation got loose.

Robert Hoyland discussed this work in a single paragraph, ending his John section, p. 489; also there are footnotes nn. 121, 123 running over to the next page. More dismissed than discussed, truth be told. Blink and you'll miss it. I missed it until now.

Apparently the Dialexis has a summary also in Greek. And Theodore Abû Qurra got in on it; Griffith in "Free Will in Christian Kalâm", doi 10.2143/MUS.100.1.2011439 82-91 in fact assigns its current redaction to him. Glei and Khoury assign it later still, to that one's pupil John the Deacon (one of many such Johns; this isn't the Neapolitano, nor is it the Coptic historian whose text is Severus' main source for the AD eighth-century). Thus Hoyland, anyway.

Since the late 1990s there seems more interest in the Dialexis as being an early delineation - in Greek - of Christian / Muslim comparative theology. Catholic University got a thesis on that. And there's Marios Begzos, "Inter-Religious Dialogue in Byzantine Thought" which I find in Two Traditions, One Space pp. 40f.; but this assumes Kotter so isn't up to date. Daniel Janosik's John of Damascus: First Apologist to the Muslims is up to date... that date being 2016. I haven't looked since then.

The Dialexis is mostly about free-will and theodicy. Here is late Umayyad qadar, which issue became hot late in Hishâm's rule in the 110s AH / 730s AD. Interesting that Jacob of Edessa had got into this very question for the Syriac Miaphysites a generation earlier; see here Michael Cook, Early Muslim Dogma.

As to the rest, some of it carries over prior Christian / Jewish disputation, like on how Mary could be theotokos (n. 121), although I can easily imagine Nestorians on the hook for this as well. The question on how John Forerunner relates to Jesus, however, seems specifically Damascene and, yes, truly Islamic. I am not seeing, say, the Mandaeans or even the Manichees with this much influence there and then.