Find it on Archive.org here.
The history of Christian
literature took a new turn in the 8th century when monks in the
monasteries of Palestine began to write theology and saints' lives in
Arabic, and they instituted a veritable programme for translating the
Bible and other Christian texts from Greek (and Syriac) into the
language of the Qur'an, the "lingua franca" of the Islamic caliphate.
This is the subject of the present volume. Two key factors leading to
this change where that the confrontation with the developing theology of
Islam created a direct need for apologetics to face this new religious
challenge in its own language; and that as the memory of Byzantine power
waned, so too did the knowledge of Greek. Issues of particular interest
in this apologetic literature are those of the freedom of the will, a
key topic in the controversies between the Melkites and the Muslims, and
of the legitimacy of icon veneration, a subject of great contemporary
concern at the time of Iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire.
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