8 Was Peter Movilă’s Confession of the Orthodox Faith a Source for the Teachings on the Orthodox Faith Printed in the 1752 Beirut Psalter?
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Abstract
The first Arabic book printed in Beirut, in 1752, was an Arabic Psalter. It was printed in Arabic types at the St George Greek Orthodox Monastery. A rare copy is preserved at the Library of the University of Uppsala (Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek). On page 2 starts a Brief Teaching on the Christian Faith (or Orthodox Catechism), followed by: On the Christian’s way and the sign of the Holy Cross. From line 9 on, there are questions and answers introduced by letters printed in red ink: s for suʿāl, “question,” followed by ğ for ğawāb, “answer.” There are 45 questions followed by answers—some brief, others, one to three pages long. A few Arabic and Greek texts could be the model and the inspiration for this Orthodox Catechism. Christodulos, the Bishop of Gaza and Ramla, prepared in 1675 the first Arabic translation of the Greek version of the Orthodox Confession composed by Peter Movilă (Mogila), the Metropolitan of Kiev. Christodulos’s version has the title: Kitāb iʿtirāf al-raʾy al-mustaqīm, The Book of the Confession of the Orthodox Faith, and it comprises three parts dedicated to Faith, Hope, and Love. The author of the Greek text is called Mūgīlās. The Arabic version includes a foreword concerning the approval of the text in Jassy (1642) and Constantinople (1643), a note composed by the translator, an opening word by Patriarch Nektarios of Jerusalem, and the Arabic translation of a letter of endorsement signed in Constantinople by Patriarchs and Metropolitans of the Eastern Churches. An intermediate between the two could be the Teaching of the Orthodox Christian Faith, Translated from Greek into Arabic by Sophronius of Kilis, in three parts that comprise 128 questions and their answers. This chapter presents a comparison of the three texts, offering insight into their possible relationship.