How did the religious heritage of the Levant (Sham) help direct the evolution of theology from Judaism to Christianity to Islam, and how did arguments amongst religious scholars and their involvement in politics lead to violence amongst the religious masses? These are the two main questions Youssef Ziedan poses and attempts to find answers to in his new and long-awaited book “Al-Lahoot Al-Araby wa Ossol Al-Onf Al-Diny (Arab Theology and the Origins of Religious Violence).
After tackling a sensitive era of the history of the Coptic church in his previous and successful novel “Azazel (Beelzebub), Ziedan – the revered historian – tries here to make sense of the storm of criticism which followed its publication as well as the heated arguments, and often violence, pervasive in dialogues between the three major religions in the Middle East in contemporary history.
The title in itself is controversial. The new term Ziedan coins, Arab Theology, is unheard of and troubling; few consider the Arab/Muslim “science of the divine to remotely resemble the Christian use of the term theology. However, Ziedan’s wide historical view and underlying thesis makes the title less problematic.
In the book, he applies a signature idea – “we can’t understand the Arabic/Islamic heritage without grasping its deep roots in the vast human heritage from which it stems – to throw light on the evolution of theology. Adding to this idea of “heritage continuum – the insight that “the three Abrahamic religions are in fact one religion, sharing one essence – Ziedan goes a step further to postulate that the newer religions have tried to solve the theological problems of its predecessor(s).
The methodology Ziedan tells his readers he wants to apply in the book is to shun religious beliefs and tendencies and he correctly affirms that without this objectivity the entire point of this study is lost.
Sadly however, one cannot say that Ziedan did achieve the difficult task he set out to accomplish.
In one chapter, Ziedan preaches how Islam had corrected the deformed image Judaism painted of God and his prophets. Such plain bias the author shows against Judaism makes one stand in disbelief in the face of statements such as “I didn’t want to discredit any religion, I am only restoring the memories (history). Other instances exhibit criticism of the church clergymen who, Ziedan holds, at a certain time “forgot God so He made them forget themselves.
When it comes to the transition that theology as a field witnessed when passed along from late Christian Arabs to early Muslim Arabs, Ziedan uses his history expertise to tell an intriguing story of an almost uninterrupted dialectic about the nature of God.
The lens through which Ziedan views this evolution of theology, is his theory that the ideas of the geographically defined Levant (Sham) region persevered and its people held on to their image of God and shaped their Christianity and Islam accordingly. Unlike the Egyptians and Romans who were used to the idea, the Levant rejected anything coming close to God’s divinity, not a person such as Jesus and not a book such as the Quran. In Christianity they initiated the debate about the nature of Jesus as man or God, and in Islam they initiated the similar debate about the nature of the Quran; was it created by God or is it eternal?
Although this theory brings together Christian and Muslim theology in some aspect, they remain disparate on points such as the relation of Jesus Christ to God. Most churches hold that Jesus of Nazareth is equal in essence to God and have dubbed Arius a heretic and an infidel for saying that Jesus was created by God, therefore can’t equal Him in essence. Muslims, on the other hand, believe that Jesus was a human prophet, and their theologians, as Ziedan tells us, gave Arius an Arabic and a dignified stature (i.e. Abdallah Ibn Arius may God bless him).
Sometimes such telling historical anecdotes that Ziedan uses in his book serve their goal well. At other times, however, too much historical detail takes away from the point instead of reinforcing it.
The “Arab Theology is overall an interesting historical panorama of theology from a new and reasonable angle. Near its end, Ziedan builds on the idea of heritage being passed from one generation to the next, evolving but only gradually, to examine how violence, politics, and religion evolve in one vicious triangle from which the world still suffers from its destructive processes today.
Stay tuned to a review of this part of the book in a coming article.
