Sources of the Arabic Life of John Damascene and the Arabic Translation of the Expositio fidei

What is it about?

When C. Bacha first published the Arabic Life of John of Damascus, he pro- posed this Arabic Life as the source of the Greek ‘official’Life (bhg 884). G. Graf affirmed this position by comparing the two texts and showing that they both follow the same narrative plot. V. Kontouma, however, against their position argued that the Greek Life was actually a metaphrastic life written earlier by John iii of Antioch (d. 1021). She proposed that, later, the writer of the Arabic Life, Michael of Antioch, found a metaphrastic folder in the monastery of St. Simeon Stylites the Younger from which he translated the Arabic Life of John of Damascus. Thus, John and Michael probably used the same metaphrastic folder. It seems, then, that the heart of the question is to determine the precise sources of the Arabic Life. For this reason, I will present, in the first part, the sources of the Arabic Life. In the second part, I will talk about the Greek text that the translator used for his translation of the Expositio fidei. I will conclude with a comparison between the Arabic and Greek texts. These conclusions will complete those I made previously on the Dialectica and its translation in 2015.

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Photo by T Foz on Unsplash

Photo by T Foz on Unsplash