Language:
English
Year of publication:
2022
Titel der Quelle:
Orientalia Christiana Periodica
Angaben zur Quelle:
88,1 (2022) 81-104
Keywords:
Moses Islamic interpretations
;
Moses Christian interpretations
;
Bible. Influence
;
Islamic literature History and criticism
;
Islam Relations
Abstract:
The Munâjât Mûsâ or ‘the Intimate Conversations of God with Moses on Mount Sinai’ is a Moses apokryphon, probably originally written in Arabic, that describes how God gave Moses a series of moral injunctions and rituals and how Moses questioned God about His being and His power. The exchange between the two also features cosmogonic and soteriological themes and culminates in God’s promise of a fuller and final revelation in the future. In the Christian version God announces the Divine incarnation, while in the case of the Islamic Munâjât Mûsâ, God gives a preview of the advent of Muhammad. Judging from the vast amount of surviving manuscripts from all over the Islamicate world (including translations into Aljamiado, Swahili, Hausa, Persian and Malay), these versions must have been very popular. Eastern Christians also had versions in Syriac, Ethiopic and Armenian, while Ethiopian Jews reworked it into a Jewish text. In this paper I introduce the various versions, list their manuscripts, and analyze and compare some of the narrative strategies through which they appropriate Moses and the revelation on Sinai as known the Hebrew Bible. I also argue that there are elements in the apocryphon pointing to an Islamic origin.
Note:
Appeared also in "Dialogues and Disputes in Biblical Disguise from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages" (2022) 190-202.
URL:
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