A Digital Humanities Approach to Reconstructing the Arabic Text of The Gospels in the First Millennium: The Case of PAVONe project
Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting
Helsinki, 30 July - 3 August 2018.

This paper aims at presenting the role of PAVONe (Platform of the Arabic Versions of the New Testament), as a digital tool, in reconstructing the text of the Arabic translations of the Gospels in the first millennium.
It is well known that the oldest dated Arabic copy of the New Testament took place in Damascus in year 867; and it is the Arabic manuscript number 151, which was translated from the Syriac and conserved in St. Catherine monastery in Egypt. The manuscript comprises the Acts of the Apostles book, Paul’s epistles, and the Catholic epistles. The oldest dated manuscript, which includes the Gospels in Arabic, is a lectionary based on the calendar of Jerusalem church. That lectionary dates to 897 and is conserved in the Arabic Sinaitic manuscript number 72. Conversely, there is a general agreement that the Arabic Vatican manuscript number 13 includes the oldest gospels text; and it dates to the 9th century.
But, what about the period before the dated manuscripts of the Gospels?
This contribution will focus on the period from which no manuscripts of the Gospels in Arabic were obtained: Previous studies to PAVONe omitted the period from which no written texts were obtained, particularly the period before Islam until the mid of the 8th century. Consequently, the absence of manuscript copies was assumed to correspond to the absence of the translation of the Gospels. PAVONe dedicated special importance to this period and worked on collecting, identifying, and transcribing all the Gospels verses cited in Christian and Muslim writings from the above-mentioned period. The results of this work offer new opportunities for researchers to understand various aspects of the Arabic translations of the Gospels and their receptions by Muslims.