Venerable Anastasios of Sinai on Islam

Venerable Anastasios of Sinai on Islam[1]

Priest George Maksimov

From the Life

Little is known about the life of the Venerable Anastasios. He was born in Alexandria, according to other information on Cyprus, around 640. The Venerable Anastasios was abbot of Mount Sinai. From there he more than once traveled through Syria, Arabia, and into Egypt, with polemical and missionary purposes. He was a prominent theologian and exegete, an active opponent of the Monophysites and Monothelites; his contemporaries called him “a new Moses.” He died after 700.

Works

The principal work of the Venerable Anastasios is the “Guide” (Hodegos). It is composed of separate chapters and letters in which Anastasios examines general and particular objections of the Monophysites of various tendencies, on the basis of Scripture and according to the testimony of the ancient Fathers. Of the same character is also the book “Questions and Answers.”

Also attributed to him is a large work consisting of 56 short soul-profiting stories from the life of the Sinai ascetics — literature of the same genre as “The Spiritual Meadow” of St. John Moschos or the earlier collections of Rufinus, Palladius, and Blessed Theodoret.

Nau, the editor of these stories, distinguishes two Anastasii — one as the author of stories 42–51 and 54–56, whom he identifies with the Venerable Anastasios the Sinaite, the author of the Hodegos [2]. The Greek researcher of the Venerable’s works, Sakkos, rejected his theory. According to him, this Anastasios is a compiler of the ninth century (or later) of earlier stories which he collected with apologetic intentions [3]. Another Anastasios that Nau identified, possibly as an earlier Anastasios, as the author of stories 1–40; Sakkos identified these stories as the “Life of the Holy Fathers” belonging to Saint Anastasios of Antioch (†571). Thus he concludes that there are three Anastasii, whereas Nau concludes that there are two. Griffith limits himself to placing the author of stories 1–40 in a generation earlier than the Venerable Anastasios [4].

Despite the difficulties which the identification of the various Anastasii presents, their material offers certain interesting information about the situation on Sinai at the beginning of the seventh century and partly about the relations between the Sinai monks and the Saracens — pagans, Christians, and subsequently Muslims [5]. Of particular interest for our account are, in descending order, stories 1–40, the Hodegos, and the shorter stories 42–49. They are very rich in information about the natural environment and the socio-political conditions of life on Sinai. The stories describe the Sinai Peninsula as a dwelling place of monks and ascetics. These stories present primarily Sinai monastic life and spiritual experience, and all researchers agree that all the authors-Anastasii were Sinai monks.

Besides the monks, the peninsula was also inhabited by those whom the stories call “Saracens,” and the Hodegos calls “Arabs.” The stories depict an organic interdependence and interaction between the two communities. Saracens and monks were very well informed about one another. Many Saracens knew and even visited remote desert hermits (25), who, in turn, provided them with food and healed them (10, 24). The monks exerted a beneficial influence on the Saracens. Some Saracens lived with ascetics, possibly as their attendants (12); they were even called “brothers” (19) [6]. These were Christianized Saracens living on Sinai. Some hermits did not receive visiting Saracens into their cells because they were not Christians (25). There are also stories in which the name or presence of Saracens instilled fear in the minds of hermits (22).

As non-Christians, they did not share Christian piety and were not inclined to accept miracles according to the interpretation of Christians, but explained them as ordinary occurrences. Saracens and Jews are described in the stories as people who do not believe in miracles and mock “the God of the Christians” and their most venerated symbol — the Cross.

The Saracens appear in the first 40 stories rather as pagans than as Muslims. Islam and Muslims are explicitly mentioned in a story which Nau placed as a conclusion or as an addition to the first collection of stories, made, in his opinion, by a later author. This story concerns the conquest of Sinai by the Muslims and the conversion of the Christianized Saracens by the Muslim Arabs. With the Muslim invasion, the Saracen Christians for the most part fell away into Islam. However, not all; and the story mentions one such case when a Saracen Christian decides to save himself by flight in order to preserve his faith, and for this he sacrifices his wife, children, and home.

The Muslim conquest of Sinai, according to this account, had not so much the aim of taking possession of the desert lands as of bringing the native Sinai inhabitants back into the Arab socio-cultural sphere and to Arab monotheism. The account relates that the Saracens lived in great numbers in the oasis of Pharan, where there was located the Monastery of St. Katherine built between the years 548 and 565. Evidently, here was the greatest concentration of Christianized Saracens of this region. They were Arabic-speaking, in contrast to the majority of the Sinai monks, who were Greek-speaking. The Muslims also seized the holy mountain itself. The monks defined the act of the Muslims’ seizure of the holy mountain as a “devastation” and “defilement” of the holy place.

If the first group of stories is relatively rich in information about the coexistence of Sinai monks and Saracens, the second is very poor. Only one story (44) includes Saracens living in the village of Karsatas near Damascus. It is told how the Saracens seized and defiled a Christian church. One of them shot an arrow at the icon of St. Theodore, which immediately began to bleed. As a result, 24 Saracens met a swift death. According to Sahas, “the icon-venerating context compels one to assign the story to a later time” [7]; however, in our view, the mere mention of an icon in this account can hardly serve as sufficient grounds for that.

Quite definite mentions of Muslims we encounter in the Hodegos of the Venerable Anastasios. Here he is dealing not with native Saracens, but with Arabs. Under the influence of the conquests he speaks of them as of “the Amalek of the desert, which has risen up to strike us, the people of Christ” (PG 89; 1156). This assertion coincides with the attitudes and reactions contemporary to him to the Arab conquest among Christians of all confessions (Orthodox, Monophysites, Nestorians), whose common idea consisted in the fact that the Muslim conquest is a punishment of God for unbelief and heresies among Christians — an accusation which each group put forward against the others (PG 89; 476–477).

In chapter 126, examining the question whether Satan is the cause of the fall of man, he answers: “such also are the myths of the Greeks (that is, pagans) and of the Arabs” (PG 89; 776). From the fact that he places the Arabs here together with pagans, Sahas supposes that the Venerable one possibly perceived them as pagans [8]. Griffith considers that the Venerable Anastasios is speaking here about pagan Arabs, mentally distinguishing them from the monotheist Arabs, whose claims he describes elsewhere [9]. It seems that the opinion of the latter is more well-founded, since the monotheistic character of the claims of the Arabs toward Christianity cited by the Venerable Anastasios is evident.

In the Hodegos, the Venerable Anastasios makes three indirect references specifically to the religion of Islam.

First, he condemns the statement of the Arab Muslims that Christians believe in two gods (PG 89; 41). The indicated anti-Christian argument against the Trinity is known already from the Qur’an: “do not say ‘three,’ but desist—it will be better for you. Truly, Allah is only one God. Exalted is He above having a child” (Qur’an 4:171); “those who say: ‘God is the third of three’ do not believe—while there is no deity except the one God” (Qur’an 5:73). Apparently, the words about two gods whom Christians supposedly worship besides the One even go back to a specific verse: “and when Allah said: O Jesus, son of Mary! Did you say to people: ‘Take me and my mother as two gods besides Allah?’” (Qur’an 5:116). This statement represents a fundamental Muslim misunderstanding of Trinitarian and Christological teaching, and the Venerable Anastasios demonstrates knowledge of this already in a very early period. It is unlikely that his awareness was based on knowledge of the Qur’an itself, as Sahas supposes [10]; it is more probable that this was known through contact with Arab Christians familiar with Islam, or through communication with adherents of the new faith themselves.

Second, he accuses the Arabs (along with the Jews and Manichaeans) of not accepting Holy Scripture in its entirety, but only partially (PG 89; 120). The Venerable Anastasios objects to this, saying that if they accept one part of Scripture, then they must also accept the other and believe in Christ. The Holy Father here presents a refutation of the Muslim doctrine of tahrif, which asserts the corruption of the Old and New Testaments and the superiority of the Qur’an over them as the final Divine Revelation. According to this doctrine, in the Old and New Testaments Muslims accept only that which corresponds to the Qur’an. It also goes back to the sacred book of the Muslims: “And among them are those who twist the Scripture with their tongues so that you may think it is from the Scripture, while it is not from the Scripture, and they say: ‘This is from God,’ but it is not from God, and they speak a lie against God knowingly. It is not for a man (meaning Christ) that God should give him the Scripture, and wisdom, and prophethood, and then he would say to people: ‘Be servants to me instead of God’” (3:78–79).

Finally, third. The Venerable Anastasios unites the Arabs and the Monophysite-Severians together and accuses them of not understanding the meaning of the words “nature” and “begetting,” perceiving them in a human and fleshly sense (PG 89; 169). The objection here, evidently, refers to Surah 112, the concise statement of Islamic theology. Parallels may also be found in other surahs of the Qur’an, for example: “and they say: ‘The Most Merciful has taken a son.’ Truly, you have committed a monstrous thing” (19:88–89); “how can He have a child when He has no consort?” (Qur’an 6:101); and others. The Venerable Anastasios asserts that the conceptions of the Arabs about Christ were formed as a reaction to the doctrinal formulations of the Monophysite-Severians [11]. In fact, the conceptions he indicates about Christ (as not God and not the Son of God) can be found in the Qur’an.

To this list, Sahas also adds one passage from the “Dialogue against the Jews.” In response to the claims of the Jews about their uniqueness as descendants of Abraham, the Venerable one reminds that “Ishmael also was a son of Abraham, and moreover the firstborn. Or do you think that because of Sarah Isaac should be preferred to Ishmael and to the sons of Abraham born from Keturah?” (PG 89; 1256). Sahas allows that perhaps “Anastasios here repeats a Muslim argument or, conversely, gives support to the Arabs by expressing an argument in favor of their primacy?” [12], but both seem overly strained, and most likely this is simply a polemical argument from Scripture, without any allusions to the contemporary descendants of Ishmael.

Place in Byzantine Anti-Islamic Polemics

The Venerable Anastasios the Sinaite gives, apparently, the first reference in Byzantine literature to the doctrine of Islam [13]. Concerning the significance of the figure of the Venerable one in the polemic with Islam, Sahas expresses himself quite critically: “on questions concerning Islam, Anastasios the Sinaite lacks sophistication and comprehensive investigation in comparison with John of Damascus. He does not make any kind of refutation of Islam, as does Damascene; he does not appear as a person who recognizes the emergence of a new Arab-Muslim reality for Byzantium, as Damascene demonstrates fifty years later.” And all his significance consists only in the fact that, by comparing these two figures, one can understand “how quickly Islamic doctrine and practice became known in Syria and Palestine, and how much the Eastern Christians learned about the Muslim reality in such a short period of time” [14]. However, such an evaluation seems to us unjustifiably understated...

From what the Venerable Anastasios cites, one can see a set of anti-Christian arguments (polytheism, corruption of Scripture, and the assertion of the impossibility for God to beget a Son in a physical sense) and, in inseparable connection with them, a set of counterarguments, which the Holy Father chiefly expounds. It should be emphasized that, however little the religion of the Arabs interests the Venerable one, in all the places where he refers to it, he sets forth its positions with the utmost adequacy — something which, alas, cannot always be said of later Byzantine polemicists. He does not limit himself merely to quoting or ridiculing, as, for example, we often see in the Venerable John of Damascus or Arethas of Caesarea. Behind these arguments one can see serious intellectual work directed toward their comprehension. And it yields tangible fruits:

1. The Venerable Anastasios exposes the inconsistency of the Muslim position regarding the Bible. According to his logic, if one recognizes part of Scripture as Revelation, then one must also recognize all the rest of it, since it possesses integrity. This thesis will be repeated by later, more developed Greek-speaking critics of Islam.

2. The Venerable Anastasios observes that behind the rejection by the Arabs of the teaching about Christ as the God-man lies a basic misunderstanding of the words “begetting” and “nature” when applied to God, and more broadly, an underdevelopment of Islamic theological thought as a whole. This is a more subtle perception of the reasons for Islam’s rejection of Christian teaching than is demonstrated by some later polemicists, who are inclined to accuse Muhammad of having consciously rejected it.

3. The Venerable Anastasios is the first to expose the inadequacy of Qur’anic conceptions of the Christian doctrine of God — triadology — which subsequently became a favorite theme of disputes and refutations.

Thus, in the substantive aspect, the Sinaite Father outlined those solutions to disputed points of the Islamo-Christian dialogue which later received development in the works of Orthodox polemicists of the 8th–14th centuries. Finally, besides this, the Venerable Anastasios was in fact correct in the assumption that most Arabs had heard about Christ from the Monophysites — well-known monks and preachers from Syria and other places who traveled among the tribes of Arabia [15], and the version he proposed of the origin of Muslim conceptions about Christ under the influence of the Monophysites is much more historical than later polemical legends about the influence of an Arian monk on Muhammad.

Works:

PG, vol. 89.

Nau F. Le texte grec des recit utils a l'ame d'Anastase (le Sinaite) // Oriens Christianus №3, 1903. – pp. 56–88

Uthemann K.-H. (ed). CC, Greek 8, 1981.

Bibliography:

Darling R., Griffith S.H. Anastasius of Sinai, the Monophysites and the Qur'an // Eighth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference. Chicago, 1982. – pp. 13–14.

Griffith S.H. Anastasius of Sinai, the Hodegos and the Muslims // The Greek Orthodox Theological Review №32, 1987. – pp. 348–359.

Sahas D.J. Anastasius of Sinai on Islam // Contacts between Cultures. Vol. I, 1990. – pp. 332–338.

Notes:  

 

[1] The article represents a chapter from a study conducted with a grant from the foundation “Russian Orthodoxy.”

[2] Nau F. Le texte grec des recits du moine Anastase sur les saints peres du Sinai // Oriens Christianus №2, 1902. – pp. 58–89 for stories 1–40 and Nau F. Le texte grec des recit utils a l'ame d'Anastase (le Sinaite) // Oriens Christianus №3, 1903. – pp. 56–88 for stories 42–54.

[3] Sakkos S. Peri Anastasion Sinaiton. Thessalonike, 1964.

[4] Griffith S.H. Anastasius of Sinai, the Hodegos and the Muslims // The Greek Orthodox Theological Review №32, 1987. – p. 354.

[5] Sahas D.J. Anastasius of Sinai on Islam // Contacts between Cultures. Vol. I, 1990. – p. 333.

[6] Although some stories say that hermits had Saracen servants, story 26 speaks of a Christian named George Draam as a “servant of the Saracens.”

[7] Sahas D.J. Anastasius of Sinai... – p. 334.

[8] Sahas D.J. Anastasius of Sinai... – p. 335.

[9] Griffith S.H. Anastasius of Sinai... – p. 356.

[10] Sahas D.J. Anastasius of Sinai... – p. 336.

[11] Darling R., Griffith S.H. Anastasius of Sinai, the Monophysites and the Qur'an // Eighth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference. Chicago, 1982. – p. 14.

[12] Sahas D.J. Anastasius of Sinai... – p. 337.

[13] Darling R., Griffith S.H. Anastasius of Sinai... – p. 13.

[14] Sahas D.J. Anastasius of Sinai... – p. 338.

[15] Darling R., Griffith S.H. Anastasius of Sinai... – p. 14.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.