Universal Salvation in Christian and Islamic Thought: The Arabic Reception of Isaac of Nineveh

Abstract

This article examines the interreligious exchange of ideas concerning hell, divine mercy, and universal salvation, as attested in a tenth-century Arabic translation of the writings of Isaac of Nineveh. This translation was produced in Iraq by an East Syrian Christian named Ḥanūn ibn Yūḥannā ibn al-Ṣalt. In the translation’s preface, Ḥanūn tells an anonymous addressee about Isaac’s doctrine of universal salvation. As Alexander Treiger first suggested, Ḥanūn’s addressee was likely Muslim. By analyzing Ḥanūn’s discussion of Isaac’s views in light of contemporary Islamic sources, as well as a Judeo-Arabic text, I argue that Ḥanūn recast Isaac’s teachings in order to speak to a multireligious audience and address conversations in Islamic circles concerning the eternality of hell and the scope of God’s mercy. Ḥanūn’s treatment thus reveals soteriology as a shared field in the ‘Abbasid world, in which Jewish, Christian, and Islamic views intersected and influenced one another.