Wednesday, June 08, 2022

The Arabic Bible

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST TODAY: The Bible in Arabic (Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala).
The earliest references to Arabic translations of the Bible date back to the pre-Islamic period, although at the present time we have no textual evidence that can prove this hypothesis. The first known evidence would date, according to some authors, to the end of the 8th century CE. This is the case of a fragment of Psalm 78 (Septuagint 77) from the Qubbet el-Khazneh (a repository located in the courtyard of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus) specifically verses 20-31 and 51-61, taken from a Greek text of the LXX, together with the corresponding Arabic translation in Greek script.

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Some PaleoJudaica posts on the Bible in Arabic are here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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