Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 21 (2024): 159-160

Reseñas

ARBACHE, Samir, L’Évangile árabe selon Matthieu, Marc, Luc et Jean. Texte du Sinai Arabe 72

traduit du grec au VIII

siècle. 2 vols. Col. «Langues et cultures anciennes» 34 (Brussels:

Éditions Safran, 2023), 438 + 496 (934) pp. ISBN: 978-2-87457-135-0

In 1994 Professor Arbache presented an excellent doctoral thesis under the title Une

ancienne version arabe des evangiles: langue, texte et lexique at the University Michel Montaigne

Bordeaux III in two volumes under the direction of the late professors Jacques Langhade

and Gérard Troupeau. That research now sees the light with a new dress that notably

enriches that first work. If that research already represented an important contribution for

the study of biblical translations into Arabic, specifically of the Gospels, it now acquires an

even greater dimension. To this must be added the superb edition and layout by Éditions

Safran.

The value of the text contained in MS Sinai Arabic 72 (hereafter S 72) has been

recognised since this text was first known to have been copied in the South Palestinian

Melkite monastery of Mār Khariṭōn in the Judean desert at the end of the 9th century

(897). This version, moreover, as the author indicates in his study, corresponds to a group

of manuscripts which, to some extent, informs about the “history of the text” and, in his

opinion, allows to suppose that the original translation must have been made in the middle

of the 8th century.

The work consists of two volumes structured in four parts, three parts in the first

volume and one part in the second. The first volume is focused on the study of the text

divided into three parts, preceded by a foreword, acknowledgements and a preface by

Patrick Scauflaire, Rector of the Catholic University of Lille, and Christian Cannuyer,

President of the Royal Belgian Society of Oriental Studies; the second part, in turn,

includes the edition of the Arabic text together with its French translation, preceded by an

introduction; and the third part contains the Arabic-Greek and Greek-Arabic lexicon.

Preceded by a brief introduction (p. 19), the first part ("L’approche linguistique”, pp. 19-

112) consists of three chapters with the following titles and summary contents:

1. “Les anciennes versions arabes des évangiles. Problématique générale” (pp. 21-36) in

which the author offers, in three sections, the historical, religious and cultural context on

the eve of Islam and after the arrival of Islam and the change of world order in the Near

East with the establishment of the Arab-Islamic state.

2. “Le manuscrit Sinaï arabe 72. Une approche informatique” (pp. 37-56) is composed

of two sections: in the first, the author gives the codicological and palaeographical

description of the manuscript, while in the second he offers the computerised approach

applied to the treatment of the lexicon. This is followed by a conclusion (p. 55) and the

Reseñas

160

acknowledgments to the members of the Centre Informatique et Bible de Maredsous, CIB

(p. 55).

3. “La langue de S 72” (pp. 57-100) consists of four sections, preceded by an

introduction (pp. 57-58) containing respectively the analysis of the most important

phonetic and orthographic, morphological, syntactic and lexical aspects of S 72.

The second part of the first volume includes the edition of the Arabic text together

with the French translation (pp. 118-343), preceded by an introductory study on the Arabic

text (manuscripts of the same group and manuscripts related to the group of S 72), the

abbreviations used in the edition of the Arabic text (p. 116), a few words on the translation

method adopted by the author (pp. 116-117), and the notes on the critical apparatus of the

Arabic text (p. 117).

The third part opens with a brief presentation and notes on how to use the two lexical

lists (p. 347) that follow: firstly the Arabic-Greek lexicon (pp. 349-391) and secondly the

Greek-Arabic lexicon (pp. 393-438), which in both cases include the lemmas, their

correspondences and frequency of use.

The second volume contains an Arabic-Greek concordance (pp. 448-934) with the

lemmas, their frequency, their root (if any), their Greek equivalents numbered and ranked in

decreasing order according to their agreement with the Arabic lemma, and the context of

each Arabic lemma. The concordance is preceded by some indications on how to use the

concordance (p. 446) which are exemplified in a table (p. 447).

With these two volumes, Professor Arbache provides us with an excellent edition of the

manuscript S 72, a text of great value given the early date of its translation. In addition, the

author has managed to combine an outstanding edition of the Arabic text with an excelent

French translation, a complete philological analysis of the text and lexical tools of great

value and very important for researchers.

The two magnificent volumes offered by Professor Arbache are the result of many years

of work and a profound knowledge of the text and its linguistic, liturgical, cultural and

historical context. This knowledge has enabled the author to provide a valuable working

tool for other researchers working in the field of biblical translations.

We hope that the author will provide new editions and studies with which to contribute

to the development of the studies on biblical translations into Arabic. For the time being,

we can only rejoice and congratulate Professor Samir Arbache for this excellent piece of

work on the early Gospels in Arabic.

Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala

University of Córdoba