A Catalogue of Christian Arabic Bible Translations at the British Library

Abstract

The present work contains records of the Christian Arabic Bible translations and Bible commentaries that are kept at the Department of Asian and African Studies at the British Library. Many of these manuscripts have previously been described in various catalogues, yet with different levels of detail. The main problem, however, for those interested in the material is to navigate through all these printed Arabic, Syriac, and Coptic catalogues, as well as the handwritten acquisition registers, in order to get an overview of the corpus. As a means of enabling access to such an overview, this catalogue aims at systematizing and updating codicological and content-related information about these valuable sources, many of which have previously been described only by title and approximate date and some, which have not yet been catalogued. Based on recent research findings, it also provides information regarding the biblical versions transmitted in these translations as well as sample images of the manuscripts it describes and indices over scribes, commissioners, dating systems, immediate sources of acquisition, etc