LE SCEAU DE LA PROPHÉTIE : CONNEXIONS ENTRE LE CHRISTIANISME ET L’ISLAM SOUS LA DYNASTIE DES ABBASIDES
THE SEAL OF PROPHETHOOD: CONNECTIONS BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM UNDER THE ABBASID DYNASTY

Summary/Abstract: The approach to the relationship between Christianity and Islam, under the Abbasid Dynasty, has to deal with the analysis of the legend about Sergius Bahīrā, the Arab-Nestorian monk concerning whom Ibn Ishāq (ca. 704-ca. 767-768), Ibn Sa‘d (784-845), Ibn Hishām (d. ca. 834) and Al-Tabarī (839-923) declared that he foretold the prophetic vocation of Muhammad and his religious destiny as the founder of Islam. The “Apocalypse of Bahīrā” stands as an important primary source concerning the legendary existence of Sergius Bahīrā. The “Apocalypse of Bahīrā” and the “Apocalypse of Peter” (K) belong to the same literary genre: the apocalyptical-polemical literature of the Christian communities of the Near East after the Arab-Moslem invasion. Consequently, their meaning is not only counter-historical, but also pseudo-theocratic: the narrative, theological and apocalyptical voice of the Christian scribes imitates the omnipotent and omniscient voice of the Abrahamic God in order to counteract the violence of warfare by literary violence, and to substitute an incomprehensible historical reality through the Christian theocratic ideal which reveals the foundation of an “Empire of the Cross” at the end of the historical time. Viewed from this hermeneutical perspective, the Christology and Mariology included in the Qur’ān, as well as the Christian exegesis of the Qur’ān, show the interpenetration or consubstantiality of the divine languages which founded the Abrahamic religious realms.

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