THE KITĀB BAHJAT AL-MUʾMIN, THE BOOK OF THE DELIGHT OF THE BELIEVER

The K. Bahjat al-muʾmin is a compilation of 365 philosophical and theological questions and answers composed by the Melkite deacon ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Fāḍl al-Anṭākī in 1052.Footnote ¹ At the beginning of his work al-Anṭākī expounds its structure saying that he made the questions correspond to the number of days in a year so that the believer may have something to read each day and that he arranged them in four sections according to the body parts.Footnote ² The first section, which will be discussed in some detail below, presents principal philosophical and theological matters; the second consists of a translation of 100 questions and answers attributed to Caesarius, the brother of Gregory of Nazianzus, but is in fact by a 6^th century author; the third are 100 exegetical and liturgical problems which al-Anṭākī draws from John of Damascus, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Athanasius and Maximus, yet without indicating the titles of their works quoted; and the fourth section deals with 65 topics pertaining to the Old and New Testament.Footnote ³ Nasrallah lists six complete manuscripts of the work and several others which preserve only parts of it.Footnote ⁴ I had access only to Bodleian, MS Marsh 408 which is dated in the colophon on fol. 163a18 to 1032 hijrī, i.e. 1622/3 and is thus one of the oldest known manuscripts. It is a rather large volume (22,5 × 30 × 4,5 cm) of 180 numbered folios, the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin covering fols 1–163, followed by excerpts in the same vein and therefore most probably compiled by al-Anṭākī as well.Footnote ⁵ The dimensions of a folio are 20  ×  30 cm, of the written area 11,5 × 20,5 cm which allows for a spacious margin. There are 19 lines per page, catchwords in the middle of the lower margin and the foliation is done in a European hand and in pencil in the upper left hand corner. Headings are rubricated as are dots which are used to divide the text.

The first part of the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin, which is the only one I shall consider in the present article, deals with the following 100 topics:

1–3. Creation of the world. 4. God's Oneness. 5. Against the eternity of Satan. 6. Against a multitude of Gods. 7–9. Against the eternity of the world. 10. Against ungenerated matter and form. 11. World being brought forth (muḥdath). 12. Against an ensouled sphere. 13. Theodicy. 14. God's generosity. 15. Two kinds of world. 16–7. The four elements 18. Four elements and five senses. 19. Creation of body and soul. 20. God's knowledge of the particulars. 21. Definition of soul. 22. Creatio ex nihilo. 23. Matter. 24–6. Definition of body, nature, substance. 27. Difference between nature and substance. 28–30. Definition of accident, intellect, sense. 31. Difference between sense and intellect. 32. Localisation of intellect in the body. 33. Intellect and pain. 34. Intellect having no opposite. 35. Against the indivisible part. 36. God's knowledge and free will. 37. Against the identity of the knower and his object. 38. Potentiality and actuality of God's knowledge. 39. Against every body requiring space. 40–1. God's incorporeality and immobility. 42–3. Virtues. 44. The four fundamental inquiries. 45. Vision. 46. God's knowledge of human deeds. 47. Evil. 48. Satan's influence on the soul. 49. Relation between the sun and light not like between God and the world. 50. God's name. 51. Interpretation of the Bible on the creation. 52. Opposition of heaven and earth. 53. Heaven and the firmament. 54–5. Interpretation of the Bible on water and earth 56. Difference between earth and dryness. 57. Incomplete creation of the earth. 58. Excess of water. 59. Darkness. 60–2. Definition of light, day, night. 63. Interpretation of the biblical expression ‘one day’. 64. Definition of evening and morning. 65. The Bible on morning and evening. 66. Arrangement of the four elements. 67–8. Interpretation of the Bible on the accumulation of water. 69–71. Interpretation of the Bible on seeds. 72. Reason for plants having roots. 73. Reason for some plants having many seeds. 74. Use of poisonous plants. 75. Interpretation of the Bible on the creation of plants. 76. Creation of birds. 77. Man being in God's likeness. 78. Man's rationality. 79. Man's superiority over the other animals. 80–1. Interpretation of the Bible on man and Adam. 82–3. Tree of life, of the knowledge of good and evil. 84. God's curse of the serpent. 85. Reason for Satan's choosing the serpent. 86. Against the serpent's rationality. 87–8. Reasons for God not hindering Satan. 89–90. Adam's disobedience. 91. Interpretation of the Bible on creation. 92. The seventh day. 93. Moses' prophecy. 94–6. The causes of sighing, laughter, weeping. 97. Wealth and poverty. 98–100. Bodily resurrection.

In these questions and answers al-Anṭākī uses theological and philosophical sources, of which he mainly indicates the former by name. He quotes Basil (8 times), Gregory of Nyssa (6 times), John Chrysostom (3 times), John of Damascus and Gregory of Nazianzus (each once), but hardly ever mentions one of their works by title. Sepmeijer has shown that Basil's Hexaëmeron which had been translated by al-Anṭākī is a major source of the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin, used in Questions 47, 51, 53, 55, 58, 59, 63, 67, 68, 71, 74 and 76, yet often anonymously.Footnote ⁶

The Greek philosophers mentioned by name are Aristotle (three times), Plato (twice), Pythagoras, Galen and Plotinus (each once).Footnote ⁷ In the MS Marsh 408 the only Arabic philosopher referred to is Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī al-Naḥwī in Question 49, but this reference must, as I will argue below, be corrected to Yaḥyā al-Naḥwī, i.e. John Philoponus. Philoponus' De Aeternitate mundi contra Proclum is the source for three of al-Anṭākī's questions, namely Questions 14, 49 and 60. In Question 60, al-Anṭākī anonymously quotes Philoponus who, in turn, quotes Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus. Thus where the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin seems to draw on Plato, Aristotle's De Anima and Plotinus, al-Anṭākī in fact uses the Arabic version of Philoponus' Contra Proclum lost today. He further excerpts from two Arabic renderings of Greek works, namely the De Anima-paraphrase and Nemesius' De Natura homini and from ʿAlī b. Rabban al-Ṭabarī's Firdaws al-ḥikma which is largely based on Greek sources itself. These excerpts are almost verbatim and without any reference to their sources.Footnote ⁸

A perusal of the 100 questions answered in the first part of the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin singles out Questions 7 to 9 as the most likely candidates for which al-Anṭākī may have used Philoponus' Contra Proclum. They provide counter-arguments for the claim that the world is eternal and refute three different lines of argumentation.Footnote ⁹

Question 7 reads:

Whereas this argument seems reminiscent of Proclus' third proof for the eternity of the world, al-Anṭākī's answer is not similar to Philoponus' refutation. For he counters that the presented claim is only true for natural things. Water, for example, needs a body to make its action, i.e. watering this body, manifest and fire needs a body which it may consume. Unlike Philoponus al-Anṭākī does apparently not take the argument to refer to the Aristotelian doctrine that everything potential needs something, which is actually what the potential is only potentially, to make it actual. He rather discusses the case that the action of a potential agent needs a recipient through which the action becomes actual and dismisses its applicability to God by claiming that God needs no intermediary (mutawassiṭ) between Him and His effects (muʿtallāt). Al-Anṭākī may be inspired by a passage in Philoponus' fourth refutation which does not explicitly answer to the Proclean proof, but tackles the problem that if the world were not always existent, God would only be a potential and therefore imperfect creator before it was created.Footnote ¹¹ Against this Philoponus argues that each substance is perfect in itself and not through its relation to another. Yet, the example he gives – the essence of fire being complete, even if there is nothing heated by it – is contradictory to the one presented by al-Anṭākī and makes him therefore an unlikely source for the latter.

Question 8 reads:

The keyword of this question, the generosity of the Creator also figures prominently in Proclus' first proof, but there the line of argumentation is different. Further, the first Proclean proof is taken up in Question 14 of the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin as will be shown shortly. Al-Anṭākī's reply to the claim of Question 8 is that even if the world is the Creator's generosity and wisdom, it does not always have to be together with Him. On the contrary, there has to be a difference between the eternal and between the thing acted upon (mafʿūl) and which is bestowed generously (majūd bihi), otherwise God would not be generous. The Creator is also not subject to change, because change, according to Aristotle,Footnote ¹³ is to change from one condition to another in one's essence and the Creator is neither in any condition nor having any form (lābis ṣuratan). The formulation of the Aristotelian definition of alteration in Philoponus' fourth refutation as change from one form to another may have inspired al-Anṭākī and could explain his claim in this context that the Creator does not have a form.Footnote ¹⁴ However, the parallels are in no way striking.

Question 9 reads:

In his rather short answer al-Anṭākī denies that the Agent's action depends on the occurrence of a particular thought or the removal of an opposition. He dismisses the possibility that an argument starting from a thing brought forth in an action may result in a statement about that very action. Some aspects of al-Anṭākī's question and answer may have been inspired by Philoponus, however their combination, as it stands, does not bear any resemblance to Contra Proclum.

Having thus established that in his K. Bahjat al-muʾmin al-Anṭākī does not use Philoponus' refutation of Proclus' De Aeternitate mundi where one would first and foremost expect him to, let us now have a look at the questions and answers in which he quotes him.

PROCLUS' PROOF FOR THE ETERNITY OF THE WORLD BASED ON GOD'S GENEROSITY AND PHILOPONUS' REFUTATION IN AL-ANṬĀKĪ AND AL-ISFIZĀRĪ

The first certain instance in which al-Anṭākī uses Philoponus' Contra Proclum in his K. Bahjat al-muʾmin is Question 14, which he presents not so much as a discussion of the world being eternal than of God being eternally creating it. Judging from the two extant Arabic versions of the first Proclean proof, this focus can be traced back to Proclus.Footnote ¹⁵ Within the answer to Question 14 there occurs a shift in expression – whereas the consequence of God's generosity is first said to be either the world being always created (makhlūq) or God always creating it (khāliq lahu), it then shifts to the world being eternally existent (abadī fī al-wujūd, mawjūd or similar). This latter phrasing is the one used throughout by al-Isfizārī who discusses the same issue obviously based on the same Philoponus source as al-Anṭākī. It thus seems obvious to assume that this latter phrasing was the one more prominent in Philoponus' refutation. This can, however, not be corroborated by a comparison with the text of Contra Proclum itself, since its Arabic version in its entirety is lost today and the Greek original is incomplete at the beginning, missing the presentation of the first Proclean proof and the first part of its refutation. So al-Anṭākī's Question 14 and part of al-Isfizārī's 25^th of his 28 Questions on Metaphysical Matters, his Kitāb fī Masāʾil al-umūr al-ilāhiyya wa-hiya thamāniya wa-ʿishrūn masʾala remain all that survives of the beginning of Philoponus' first refutation. Whereas al-Anṭākī mentions neither Proclus nor Philoponus in his quotation, al-Isfizārī refers to them both and even mentions the title of the latter's work from which he quotes as the Kitāb fī al-Radd ʿalā Buruqlūs. A comparison of al-Anṭākī's and al-Isfizārī's quotations aims at giving the most comprehensive picture of the lost Philoponus text possible. One must, of course, allow for the two authors quoting different sentences of their source as well as changing it while quoting. The beginnings of the two passages differ considerably as al-Anṭākī obviously summarises the Proclean argument, whereas al-Isfizārī discusses the apparent lack of permanence in some of the divine attributes and inserts the Proclus-Philoponus controversy into this new context.

Arabic Text

Translation

It is obvious that the two authors use Philoponus very differently. Al-Anṭākī agrees with Philoponus' refutation of Proclus' first proof and implicitly even passes it off as his own in his Question 14. Al-Isfizārī, on the other hand, points out that both Proclus and Philoponus are wrong in their claims – Proclus in claiming that an always actually generous creator implies an always actually existent world and Philoponus in claiming that this Proclean statement implies that the world is the cause of God's existence. It is interesting to note that al-Anṭākī does nowhere talk about the world as the cause of God's existence, but only as the cause of His generosity. If this were indeed the original reading of Contra Proclum al-Isfizārī may have changed it in order to make Philoponus' portrayal of Proclus' position more extreme and therefore in his eyes more ridiculous.Footnote ³⁵ In a detailed analysis which follows the above-mentioned passage al-Isfizārī explains why Philoponus' argument for refuting Proclus is misleading. For the transposition of ‘if A exists, then B exists’ to ‘if B does not exist, then A does not exist’ does in no way imply that A is the cause of B. He further points out that the transposition does only work if the initial conditional statement is set up in the correct order. That is one has to say ‘if the world is always existent God is always generous’ and transpose to ‘if God is not always generous the world is not always existent’, not the other way round. Consequently, God's generosity is the cause of the world's existence, not vice versa. To prove his point, al-Isfizārī turns back to the Aristotelian statement presented by Philoponus and explains that one has to say ‘if this is man, then it is a living being’ and not ‘if this is a living being, then it is man’. For living being causes man, not man living being. Al-Isfizārī thus follows Aristotle who has already cautioned against an incorrect order of conditional statements in the Topics II, 8, 113b15.Footnote ³⁶

The evidence of both, al-Isfizārī and al-Anṭākī makes it certain that in the lost beginning of Philoponus' first refutation he used the conditional statement ‘if man then living being’ and its contrapositive to prove the claim ‘if God's eternal generosity then the world's eternal existence’ wrong.

PHILOPONUS, NOT YAḤYĀ B. ʿADĪ ON LIGHT

Question 49 of the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin is particularly interesting insofar as al-Anṭākī gives his source at the end of the passage in a way which suggests that he quotes more or less verbatim. He says ‘This belongs to the discourse of Yaḥyā [b. ʿAdī] the Grammarian (hādhā min kalām Yaḥyā [b. ʿAdī] al-Naḥwī), may God have mercy upon him’. It is obvious to assume that the patronymic Ibn ʿAdī was added in the transmission process by a scribe who knew Ibn ʿAdī, but had probably never heard of John Philoponus. The assumption that al-Anṭākī himself had anything to do with it seems untenable as he not only quotes three different passages of Contra Proclum in the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin, but also quotes from the latter's Contra Aristotelem in his K. al-Minfaʿa as Marwan Rashed has shown.Footnote ³⁷ That quotation is even introduced with a similar expression as the one used in our Question 49, namely ‘The fourteenth chapter which contains a discourse of John the Grammarian (kalām li-Yaḥyā al-Naḥwī)’. This suggests that al-Anṭākī knew Philoponus well and would not have confused him with Ibn ʿAdī. The way in which he refers to Philoponus and the latter's discourse in the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin further seems to indicate that al-Anṭākī quotes from an existing Arabic version of Philoponus' Contra Proclum and does not translate ad hoc from a Greek text. In the latter case he would probably have stated that he did as he does in Question 83 where he adds after the mention of his source, namely John Chrysostom's Commentary on the Torah, that ‘I rendered it (naqalnāhu) from Greek into Arabic’.

The passage quoted in Question 49 of the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin is taken from the first chapter of Contra Proclum, but apparently from a later part than the passage quoted in Question 14, as its model can be found in the extant Greek of Philoponus' work. In the following I compare al-Anṭākī's quotation with the original of Contra Proclum:

Greek and Arabic Text

TranslationFootnote ⁴²– Al-Anṭākī, K. Bahjat al-muʾmin

Question 49

Answer

In al-Anṭākī's Question 49 an obvious shift in focus occurs. The question itself reveals proximity in contents to Question 14 which starts off with Proclus’ account on the generosity of the Creator and His being the cause of the world and Philoponus' criticism thereof. One may well imagine how al-Anṭākī has excerpted the material for his Question 14 from Contra Proclum first and then continued excerpting from the same source on a different aspect for his Question 49. Philoponus' intention is to invalidate the parallel which some people draw between God and the sun in order to argue for a co-existence of God and the world similar to the alleged one of the sun and its light.Footnote ⁴³ Al-Anṭākī follows Philoponus insofar as he denies the correctness of this parallel at the beginning of his answer, but then elaborates on the sun and the two different kinds of light. He also seems to preserve some of Philoponus' argument for why the simile does not apply. In Contra Proclum the reason is that the sun does not co-exist with its light, for sunlight perishes. In the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin the general claim that the sun is the cause of its light is said to be incorrect. Here some textual corruption must have occurred, which can be remedied by changing ‘cause’ to ‘co-existing cause’. Al-Anṭākī then presents a proof for the perishing of sunlight. This may imply that his original intention, which probably got corrupted during the transmission process, was to follow the same line of argument as Philoponus. Be that as it may it is striking that in Question 49 in its entirety al-Anṭākī obviously deviates from the focus of Contra Proclum and is more interested in the issue of sun and light than in the question of the relationship between the Creator and the world. It seems unlikely that this shift in focus was already introduced in the Arabic version of Contra Proclum. The extant quotations of Philoponus' work preserved in al-Bīrūnī are, as Giannakis and Rashed show, faithful to the Greek and thus suggest as their source an accurate translation rather than a paraphrastic one.Footnote ⁴⁴ However, these quotations only cover a sentence each, so it is conceivable that the translator omitted entire passages of his model. However, it seems more probable that al-Anṭākī, for whatever reasons, decided to transfer the passage from being a discussion of an invalid simile to a discussion of light. The words by which he mentions his source at the end of Question 49 suggest that he only dropped sentences from his source but did not rephrased it. It is also worth noting that al-Anṭākī suppresses Proclus' name which occurs in the Greek text of Philoponus. For it is Proclus who, according to Philoponus, distinguishes between material and immaterial light. It is unlikely that the Arabic translator of Contra Proclum would have omitted Proclus' name in particular. Further down he obviously kept the names of Plato, Plotinus and Aristotle, for al-Anṭākī quotes them in his Question 60. There, however, he does not give Philoponus as his source. So he might have felt that supplying the name of Proclus in addition to the one of Philoponus in Question 49 could confuse his readers and therefore omitted it.

PLATO, PLOTINUS AND ARISTOTLE ON LIGHT QUOTED VIA PHILOPONUS

So in Question 60 of the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin al-Anṭākī presents a further passage taken from Contra Proclum and thus continues with the topic raised in Question 49, namely the definition of light. In doing so he skips an amount of Philoponus' text which equals less than two pages of the Greek in Rabe's edition between his two quotations. In Contra Proclum the quotations of Plato, Plotinus and Aristotle are still embedded in the discussion whether the relation between God and the world is like the one between the sun and light. In the same vein as in Question 49 above, al-Anṭākī eliminates every mention of that. Therefore in comparison to the Greek his text is shorter, with some omissions and changes in the textual order.

Arabic Text

TranslationFootnote ⁴⁸–Al-Anṭākī, K. Bahjat al-muʾmin

Question 60

Answer

The Platonic quotation does not occur as such in Contra Proclum, where Philoponus only adds to some considerations about light, that Plato in fact ‘does hold that light is a form of the source of illumination’.Footnote ⁵⁰ So in this case it seems obvious that al-Anṭākī combined and re-arranged several of Philoponus' sentences to create a coherent allegedly Platonic statement. In the other two cases Philoponus himself introduces marked quotations of Plotinus and Aristotle on exactly the topic that al-Anṭākī wants to discuss, namely the definition of light. Therefore the latter does not have any apparent reason whatsoever to tamper with the text of Contra Proclum. If al-Anṭākī did not clearly present the statements as Plotinus' and Aristotle's definition of light, one could argue that he might have felt the need to bring the quotations in accordance with his own doctrines. Yet, this is not the case. On the contrary, it is remarkable that al-Anṭākī does in no way, neither affirmatively nor negatively, comment on the different definitions of light he presents. So one cannot be sure what his own take on light may have been, but it seems possible that he accepted all of the given definitions. It is noteworthy that the term ἐνέργεια is translated with different Arabic terms in the Plotinian and the Aristotelian definition. Does this suggest that the translator of Contra Proclum had access to an already existing Arabic translation of either Plotinus or Aristotle and inserted the passage quoted from there? Although it seems possible at first, it is highly unlikely as Philoponus himself does not quote verbatim.Footnote ⁵¹ There is also no convincing reason why al-Anṭākī would have wanted to change his source on this occasion.Footnote ⁵² The most possible explanation to account for this change in terminology and the slightly confused state of the Aristotelian quotation is to hold Philoponus' Arabic translator or a later transmitter responsible for it. Here the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin may thus preserve a faithfully quoted fragment of the lost Arabic Contra Proclum.

In conclusion it must be said that the various excerpts of Contra Proclum preserved in the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin are difficult to assess with regard to accuracy and faithfulness to their Philoponus source. As for the just analysed passages in Question 60 the assumption that they are quoted faithfully is obvious, except perhaps for the Platonic statement. The entire Question 49 al-Anṭākī himself claims to be the very words of Philoponus, so that only minor changes and probably omissions seem conceivable. The passages in Question 14 are the most likely to have undergone rephrasing as they are not ascribed to any authority whom al-Anṭākī may have felt obliged to quote faithfully. Yet, the cases of the DA-paraphrase, Nemesius and ʿAlī b. Rabban show that the author of the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin is not averse to excerpting verbatim from his unnamed sources.

The small number of unfortunately short quotations of Contra Proclum in al-Bīrūnī's India does not allow for a clear conception of Philoponus' lost Arabic version. Yet the combination of its evidence and the new evidence of the K. Bahjat al-muʾmin suggests a word by word translation in which some passages may or may not have been skipped. The question of the faithfulness of al-Anṭākī's quotations can only be solved entirely if the Arabic Contra Proclum is ever found.