438 Dominik Schlosser
Paul of Samosata, who, as the Damascene scholar argues, started the
doctrine of Jesus’ divine and human nature, and proceeded rapidly as
a result of Constantine’s turn to the Christian faith, motivated by a
vision of the cross, and the corresponding public recognition of Chris-
tianity. As a consequence of the controversies publicly conducted at
the councils about Christological issues and of the doctrinal decisions
promulgated at them, as well as of the resulting schisms into various
churches and groups, this development – according to Ibn al-Qayyim’s
presentation – finally led to a situation in which “each of them [...]
[took] his God freely as he wished and damned those who followed
another [God] and permitted him to dissociate from him”.^80
Regarding Ibn al-Qayyim’s explications (based on Ibn Taymiyya’s
depiction) of the young Christian communities up to Constantine’s
acceptance of Christianity,^81 two thematic complexes show that he con-
sidered the genesis of early Christianity a conclusive means of argumen-
tation against Christian doctrines and Christians and that he applies it as
such in the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā: on the one hand, Ibn al-Qayyim speaks
about two of the events that Eutychios mentions in his Annales,^82 in which
he more or less explicitly ascertains the gradually beginning falsification
of the “true religion of Jesus”: first, the shifting of Easter from the 14th of
Nisan to the following Sunday in the communities outside of Asia Minor,
which, according to Eutychios, transpired in the period of Marcus Aure-
lius’ rule;^83 and second, the teaching of Paul of Samosata. In Ibn al-Qayy-
im’s depiction the rescheduling of Easter appears as the work of several
bishops and patriarchs that grew out of the Christians’ striving to separate
themselves from the Jewish practice of Pesach.^84 Figuring in the Hidāyat
al-ḥayārā as a protagonist of the falsification of “true” Christianity is,
remarkably, Paul of Samosata, whose doctrine is described in other medi-
eval Muslim anti-Christian polemics – for example, Ibn Ḥazm’s Kitāb
al-Fiṣal and al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ of Ibn Taymiyya – as an avowal of the uni-
ty of God and the mere creatureliness of Jesus and which is thus moved
into proximity with Islamic teachings.^85 Ibn al-Qayyim, by contrast, goes
80 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Hidāyat al-ḥayārā, p. 573.
81 See the corresponding sections in Ibn Taymiyya, al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ, vol. 3,
pp. 5–19. On this, see Ibn al-Baṭrīq, Annales, vol. 1, pp. 93–121.
82 See ibid., pp. 104–105, 114.
83 See ibid., p. 104.
84 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Hidāyat al-ḥayārā, p. 545.
85 See Ibn Ḥazm, al-Fiṣal fī al-milal, vol. 1, pp. 109–110. In the Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ Ibn
Ḥazm’s remarks on Paul of Samosata are quoted verbatim, see Ibn Taymiyya,
al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ, vol. 2, p. 312.
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