Page 9 - Christianity among the Arabs

The grafting of the new upon the old is embodied in the
inscription itself. The present text is a typical Safaitic

composition, but the old gods and prayers are replaced by a
Christian invocation. Wahb-EI may therefore have been a
convert who modified the Safaitic writing tradition to

accommodate his new faith, invoking Jesus with the same
formulaic structure used to invoke the old gods.

Wahb-EI’s text may be precious evidence of the earliest

penetration of Christianity into Arabia, but the exact
circumstances that brought the faith to the basalt desert

remain unclear. Wahb-EI may have had close contacts with

settled areas, such as Bostra in Syria or the cities of the

Decapolis in Transjordan, which appear in other Safaitic
texts. On the other hand, it is possible that his inscription
reflects the efforts of missionaries to convert the nomads.

Although we have no literary accounts describing such
attempts in the Harra, the desert’s proximity to centers of
Christianity would have certainly attracted proselytizers.

Indeed, one finds strewn about the Harra isolated Greek
graffiti, sometimes with clear expressions of Christianity. Are
these the traces of ancient missionaries who preached to the

local, Safaitic-writing nomads?

For now, the identification of Wahb-EI’s text as the earliest

witness to Arabian Christianity must remain a tantalizing
possibility until future discoveries provide further examples
of Christianity inscribed in Safaitic.(4)

Footnotes

1. See Orly Goldwasser, “How the Alphabet Was Born from
Hieroglyphs,” BAR, March/April 2010; Matthieu Richelie, “A
Very Brief History of Old Hebrew Script,” BAR, Summer

2021.

Endnotes

1. Christian J. Robin, Ali Ibrahim Al-Ghabban, and Sa‘Td F. Al-
Sa’Td, “Inscriptions Antiques de la Region de Najran (Arabie
Seoudite Meridionale): Nouveaux Jalons pour I’Histoire de