This article is about Masihiyun Arab and the Arabic Bible.

ARAB CHRISTIANITY AND THE ARABIC BIBLE.
BROTHERS & SISTERS in Christ and Islam, have you ever read or stumbled upon an ARABIC BIBLE(Biblica Arabia) ?
Do you know that there are Arab Christians(Masihiyun Arab) who are citizens of Muslim majority countries and whose lingua franca(Language) is ARABIC? Do you know that Arab Christians are one of the oldest Christian communities in the world ?

I am shocked at the result of a survey which shows that the vast majority of the Nigerian citizens have not seen an ARABIC BIBLE,nor realised that there are ARABS of the Christian faith. Nigeria is a religiously polarised country, Christian south and Muslim North. Religious tension rears its ugly head occasionally. But when it is not effectively managed the authorities,it results in a bloody riot and a toll on human lives. In view of the foregoing, how would the Nigerian public now react to the discovery of an Arabic BIBLE aimed at a change of perception and a semblance of religious tolerance?

There are those who will say that the words 'ARABIC BIBLE' and 'ARAB CHRISTIANITY' are examples of oxymoron because they won't espouse ecumenism or anything next to it. However, it stands to reason that this latest discovery had left many in awe and it's still hard to believe that such phrase as Arab CHRISTIANITY is a reality in such countries as IRAQ,LEBANON,EGYPT,SYRIA,ISRAEL,PALESTINE,TURKEY,and JORDAN. There is always a rude awakening when one learns of the existence of an Arabic BIBLE and it attests to the readiness of the mind to unlearn wrong notions and stereotypes which were the products of one's unknowing years. For instance, if Joseph recieves a wrapped gift from Musa,a muslim, and later discovers the gift to be a Bible written in Arabic, he is likely to return the gift or dump it in the bin. But if Joseph knows that a Bible written in Arabic is only one of the many translations of the Hebrew Bible, he is most likely to treasure it .

In 2015 ,and for the first thing in the history of Nigeria,there was an outcry over an harmless Hausa word(Ajami)written in Arabic on the Nigerian currency. As a researcher, I availed myself the opportunity to study Israel, a Jewish country with a slender minority of Arab Muslims, and discovered that there the Israeli Shekel has an Arabic inscription and it's merely a symbol of inclusion in a country where Arab Muslims are the largest minority group(17.7% of the total population of Israel). The misconception that says Arabic is the language of Muslims attests to a fallacy of generalisation and it's baffling to realise that more people are bound to persist in this error. This message should hence resonate with people who show fanatical tendencies so much that they always are ignorant of certain things that matter.

To set the record straight, there are far too many of us who despite being Muslims don't know that there is AN ARABIC BIBLE . When I first came across a copy , I was shocked to the bones and I rather allowed myself to be shamed by this simple fact which, I never believed,speaks for itself.The same degree of humility is expected of you if you are just getting to know of an ARABIC BIBLE Arabic is a language and speaking Arabic does not make me an Arab or a Muslim . Sometime ago, we were told of a Christian lecturer who bagged a PhD in Arabic from UNILAG. As though it was newsworthy,. We won't admit how much we hate one another openly but when we go to the market no one cares about the religion of the meat seller. When you buy Dano milk ,you can see an ARABIC word on it. It says ' HALAL' which means LAWFUL and highly recommended for human consumption. What truth does it speak to our conscience? That BIGOTRY is an arch enemy of truth and knowledge.

In my proceeding essay, I offered a short history on the translation of the Bible which can not be sufficiently treated in this discourse. Hence, it is necessary to begin by saying that there was indeed a turbulent chapter in the history of the Christianity and and nothing could be worse than the persecution of Christians in Gaul ( what is now known as France) under Emperor Marcus Aurelius . The moral codes of Christianity derived mainly from the teachings of Jesus offended the Romans whose beliefs were radically different. An average Roman citizen believed in PATRIOTISM and devotion to the state as the highest goal,where as Christians in Rome and Roman provinces maintained their conscientious objection to the affairs of the state and rejected conscription into the Roman army. For the over 300 years that saw the decline of Rome , Christianity which had begun with the ministry of Jesus in Judea in the 1st Century . By the time of Emperor Constantine I , the Western Sector of the Roman Empire had fallen. Meanwhile, the conversation of Rome from PAGANISM to Christian worship had begun in Constantinople with the enactment of the Edict of Milan in 313.

The translation of the BIBLE from Hebrew into Greek began with the commissioning by Emperor Constantine I of the 50 Bibles of Constantine . As more and more people converted to Christianity across the world (especially on the heels of Western Imperialism) , translation into several languages was successfully carried out with the result that Christianity has become the largest religion in the world. Similarly,the same thing can be said of the translation of the QURAN from Arabic,it original language,into several languages across the world. As for Arabic Quran and other versions, there are rigorous standards for determining shared linguistic properties , clarity of translation and these go back to the original language which constitutes the basis for any other translation. This rigidity seems to imply that the language of the Quran is is fixed not nationalistic or regional . It's readership is not limited to one particular Arabian stock as even non-Arabs can read the Quran in its original form.



Peace!
Layinka Jibril is a researcher and historian.
Areas of interest : History of Religions, Etymology of Words and World History.
T: 09034059633
E: oyebanji.yinka@yahoo.com