Irak and Mesopotamia and Khorasan are Nestorians."[1]
Al-Ghazali spent his first twenty years in Khorasan. Did he ever become acquainted with Christianity through perusal of the Gospel? We know that Arabic, if not Persian, translations existed at this period; and not only are there many references to Christ and His teaching in Al-Ghazali’s works, but there are some very few passages accurate enough to be called quotations. He himself states as we shall see later: "I have read in the Gospel."
That there were translations of the Bible into Arabic to which Al-Ghazali may have had access is probable. Dr. Kilgour tells of Arabic Gospel man uscripts of the ninth century and of translations of the Old Testament and portions of the New made in the Fayyoum before 942 A.D. "To the tenth century belong versions of some books of the Old Testament from Syriac, others from the LXX., and from the Coptic; and some fresh translations of the Pentateuch, using the Samaritan text as well as the Massoretic."[2]
Diglot manuscripts in Syriac and Arabic are quite numerous. The manuscript of the four Gospels, of which a few leaves are now in the British Museum, is a good specimen of such a diglot. It was brought by Tischendorf from the Syrian Con-
- ↑ Cf. "The Lesser Eastern Churches," Adrian Fortescue, London, 1913.
- ↑ Cf. The Moslem World, Vol. VI, p. 385.
