Page 6 - Christianity among the Arabs

previously unaiiesieu in me oaiaiuc inscriptions, r ne
consonantal spelling of ‘sy (with the letters ayin-sin-yod}
does correspond to the name of Jesus as found in the Quran
(‘ysy, pronounced Tse or Tsa, depending on the reading

tradition). Could this be the first attestation of Jesus in
Safaitic and our earliest reference within Arabia to Jesus?

Wahb-EI calls upon Isay to “help him” (nsr-h) against “those

who deny you” {kfr-

k). Such a prayer
seems quite out of
place in a pagan

Arabian context,
where the “denial"
of a deity has not

been previously
attested as an
offense among thousands of recorded prayer texts. Both

verbs, nsrand kfr, are part and parcel of Christian vocabulary
but virtually unattested in other Safaitic inscriptions. Indeed,
the “denial” of Christ is a sin and established reproach in a

Christian context.

If this interpretation is correct, then the present inscription

may be the earliest attestation of Christ in Arabia, clearly
predating the fifth- and sixth-century Arabic inscriptions
discussed above. But how old is it? The text is undated, but if

we consider that the latest Safaitic inscriptions date to the
third century, it would seem likely that the present text was
produced during the final phase of Safaitic documentation,

perhaps dating to the same period as the tale of St. Hilarion.

The Safaitic context

of ‘sy also helps us
understand the
enigmatic

etymology of the
name in Arabic. The
seventh-century

Quranic form of
Jesus’s name, ‘ysy (Tse or Tsa), has long puzzled scholars as it

does not reflect a straight-forward adoption of the Hebrew-
Aramaic Yeshua into Arabic. Scholars have offered various