Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/95

 which may refer to the previous revelations made to the Jews and Christians which the Prophet regarded as true but afterwards corrupted, so that the Qur'an is simply the pure transcription of Divine Truth imperfectly represented by those earlier revelations. Under the 'Umayyads, when a rigid orthodoxy was taking form in quarters not sympathetic towards the official Khalif, a view arose that the actual words expressed in the Qur'an were co-eternal with God, and it was only the writing down of these words which had taken place in time. It seems probable that this theory of an eternal "word" was suggested by the Christian doctrine of the "Logos." It can be traced primarily to the teaching of St. John Damascene (d. circ. 160 A.H. = A.D. 776) who served as secretary of state under one of the 'Umayyads, either Yazid II. or Hijam, and his pupil Theodore Abucara (d. 217 = 832), who express the relation of the Christian Logos to the Eternal Father in terms very closely resembling those employed in Muslim theology to denote the relation between the Qur'an or revealed word and God. (cf. Von Kremer: Streifzuege. pp. 7–9). We know from the extant works of these two Christian writers that theological discussions between Muslims and Christians were by no means uncommon at the time.

The Mu'tazilites of whom Wasil b. 'Ata (d. 131) is generally regarded as the founder, were a sect of rationalistic tendencies, and they were opposed to the doctrine of the eternity of the Qur'an and the