Luther in Arabic

Abstract

Luther in Arabic Mark N. Swanson Recent years have seen considerable interest in the study of Western Protestant missions in the Arabic-speaking world, resulting in books about eighteenth-century Moravian encounters with the Copts;1 the endeavors of the nineteenth-century American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions;2 American Presbyterian work that led to the formation of the Evangelical Synod of the Nile;3 and specifically Lutheran projects, whether the German Lutheran work in Palestine that eventually led to the formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL), or American Lutheran endeavors, including the Middle East Lutheran Mission (MELM) in Lebanon backed by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS).4 The Synod of the Nile and the ELCJHL will appear more than once in this essay, as will the seminaries with which they are related, namely and respectively, the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo (ETSC), an Egyptian Presbyterian school that has sometimes been pulled into wider regional and ecumenical roles, and the Near East School of Theology (NEST) in Beirut, which has been a regional, ecumenical school from its inception. The specifically Lutheran presence in the Arabic-speaking world is tiny, although the ELCJHL plays a role in education, theological reflection, inter-religious relations, and global Lutheran affairs far greater than its size might indicate. I think it is fair to say that the specifically Arabic-language Lutheran library in particular, as well as the Reformation-tradition library in general, is still rather thin (in contrast, say, to the library of Catholic works in Arabic, whether in [End Page 87] manuscript collections5 or as published since the nineteenth century by Catholic presses in centers including Beirut, Jerusalem, and Mosul). The works may be few, but their stories are worth telling. The Small Catechism The first publication of Luther’s Small Catechism in Arabic translation was undertaken at Halle in 1729 by Johann Heinrich Callenberg (1694–1760), a follower of August Herman Francke who was interested in evangelistic ministries to Jews and Muslims. An itinerant Syrian teacher of Arabic known as Salomon Negri Damasceni (= Sulaymān ibn Ya‘qūb al-Shāmī al-Ṣāliḥānī, 1665–1727) made a pair of sojourns in Halle, during which he taught Arabic at Francke’s school for orphans and attracted students like Callenberg.6 At some point Negri made—probably as a teaching tool—a translation of the Small Catechism, of which autograph copies from Halle dating to 1716 have been preserved.7 In 1729 (and in fact after Negri’s death), Callenberg published Negri’s translation: Catechismus Luthers minor arabice quem olim sub ductu B. Sal. Negri Damasceni in hanc linguam transtulit et vulgavit H. Henr. Callenberg. I did not know of this translation during the years that I taught at ETSC (in the 1980s and 90s). Then, the one Arabic-language translation of the Small Catechism of which I was aware was a product of the LCMS work in Lebanon. For the celebration of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s birth in 1983, the MELM Center in Beirut published A Brief Exposition of the Fundamentals of Christian Doctrine, consisting of a (28-page) translation of the Small Catechism as well as a (141-page) commentary—which turned out to be a translation of A Short Exposition of Dr. Martin Luther’s Small Catechism by Heinrich Christian Schwan (1819–1905), the third president of the LCMS. The volume is physically well-produced and was circulated quite widely. At least two other translations are available today. The Common Prayer Book (Kitāb al-ṣalāt al-‘āmm) of the ELCJHL (2nd ed. 2004) contains a translation of the catechism made by the Rev. Dr. Hermann Schneller and Mr. Elias Naṣrallah Ḥaddād (known for their ministry to orphans and underprivileged children, including the [End Page 88] founding of the Schneller School Bekaa at Khirbet Kanafar, Lebanon, in 1952). In 2002, the Division of Congregational Ministries of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America published The Small Catechism of Dr. Martin Luther and The Book of Fundamental Lutheran Doctrines, translated by the Rev. Numan Smir (Nu‘mān Samīr), the founding pastor of the...