The Christians' Torah, as Arabs read it

I found this Monday but I figured a little more time was needed: ʿAlāʾ al-Dīni 'l-Bājī on "the Torah". Camilla Adang is the author of the article.

Bâjî was (probably) of a town Beja from out west; maybe Portugal, maybe Morocco. He did a lot of writing but few read him. One polemicist had this one work of Bâjî's copied with other antiChristian tracts. This one goes after Christian translations of the Torah into Arabic. He seems aware of Jewish translations, albeit not Samaritan excepting via Origen's "Samaritikon"; but those aren't his problem. This man is not a Biqaʿi.

Bâjî claims that he found his Torah specifically among the Melkites. Adang finds of the Arabic Biblical parallels: Arab^Copt for Genesis and seemingly for Exodus; Arab^Syr2 for Leviticus; and Arab^Syr_Hex1b for Numbers and Deuteronomy. Arab^Syr2 would be a Peshitta; nowhere is Palaestinian Aramaic. Some Melkites did survive in the old Greek cities Alexandria and Antioch. These would seem the best match.

It seems strange that Melkites should grab a translation from Copts who should be Miaphysites. Some Copts, like Ibn al-Qunbar, were known to cross the Aegean, as it were. Anyway Egyptians were all Septuagintals over the base text. Syrians were divided: Philoxenus of Manbij/Mabbug and Paul of Tella are implicated in west-Syrian LXX, if I recall. Arab^Syr2 as Peshitta is not that; Arab^Syr_Hex1b might be that. However even this had got corrected toward the Peshitta even beyond what the MT would allow.

The textual state of the Christian Bible in Araby was... not great. Bâjî's complaint was valid. I do think the Bible is in better shape now, but again Muslims can still make hay with it. I wonder if Arab Christians back then could retort, yeah, the text isn't great, but where the best reconstruction coincides with the Qurân, it's not supporting the Qurân. The Qurân assumes a rogue text, itself. A mistake upon a mistake is rarely a correction.