Philoponian Monophysitism in South Arabia at the Advent of Islam With Implications for the English Translation of ‘Thalātha’ in Qurʾān 4. 171 and 5. 73

摘要

The Qurʾān seems to be speaking to two different kinds of Christians. Those addressed in the early Makkan sūras do not provoke the rebuke that comes in the later Madinan sūras. This is because the Christians met by the Prophet in Najran were very different from those in Makka. Though South Arabia was staunchly Monophysite from early on, the sixth-century tritheistic Monophysite doctrine of John Philoponus was dominant in Najran during the Prophet's lifetime. The Arabic word for ‘trinity’ (al-thālūth), was in use at that time, and yet never appears in the Arabic Qurʾān. This paper explores how the deliberate word choices within the Qurʾān distinguish between the trinitarianism of Waraqa b. Nawfal and the Monophysite Philoponian tritheism of the Najrani bishop, Abū Ḥāritha. The Qurʾān clearly addresses tritheists, and deliberately ignores the word ‘trinity’, a distinction missed in some contemporary English renderings of the Qurʾān.