Habib Ibrahim: New Evidence for the Source of the Arabic Life of John Damascene and the Arabic Translation of the Expositio fidei

When C. Bacha first published the Arabic life of John of Damascus, he proposed this Arabic Life as the source of the Greek ‘official’ Life (BHG 884). G. Graf confirmed this position by comparing the two texts and showing that they both follow the same narrative plot. V. Kontouma, however, against their position argued that the Greek Life was actually a metaphrastic life written earlier by John III of Antioch (d. 1021). She proposed that, later, the writer of the Arabic life, Michael of Antioch, found a metaphrastic folder in the monastery of St. Simeon Stylites the Younger from which he translated the Arabic Life of John of Damascus. Thus, John and Michael use probably the same metaphrastic folder t. It seems, then, that the heart of the question is to find out what are the sources of the Arabic life. For this reason, I will present, in the first part, the sources of the Arabic life. In the second part, I will talk about the Greek text that the translator used for his translation of the Expositio Fidei. I will present the conclusions of the comparison between the Arabic and Greek texts. These conclusions would complete the ones I made on the Dialectica and its translation in the XVII International Conference on Patristics Studies (2015).