Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Attitude Toward Christianity 455
the contradictions between the Torah and the Gospels.^167 Since for Ibn
al-Qayyim it is thoroughly unimaginable that the agglomeration of
contradictions and incongruities found in the four canonical Gospels
could come from God, he sees it as conclusive evidence that numerous
changes have been made to the original text of the Gospel and that
the Christians therefore invoke a scripture corrupted by text falsifica-
tions and replacements.^168 But this finding does not prevent him from
quoting, as needed, verses from the Gospels as Jesus’ authentic utter-
ances, using them as correctives to Christian standpoints, and thereby
underpinning his own a priori positions by recourse to the canonical
writings of the rival party. Like his predecessors in the field of Mus-
lim polemics against Christianity, Ibn al-Qayyim thus does not eschew
citing certain logoi, like the promise of the “Paraclete” in the Gospel of
John, as testimonies to the prophetic mission of Muḥammad,^169 and he
cites Jesuanic statements to prove that Jesus’ understanding of himself
reduces to absurdity the strivings of individual Christian denomina-
tions to attribute to him a sonship of God or a divine nature.^170 But Ibn
al-Qayyim does not fail to notice the inconsistency of this approach:
this is shown by the fact that, in regard to the passages in the Gospels
that he claims foretell the coming of Muḥammad, he takes recourse to
the apodictic statement that the four evangelists had managed to keep
these annunciations of Muḥammad secret, but that God had prevented
the exchange and elimination of individual text passages^171 or that the
wealth of such passages had made it impossible to replace them entire-
ly with others.^172
167 On Ibn Ḥazm’s attack on the integrity of the Gospels, see especially Behloul,
Samuel-Martin: Ibn Ḥazms Evangelienkritik. Eine methodische Untersuc-
hung, Leiden, Boston and Cologne 2002, pp. 135–221. See also Pulcini, The-
odore and Laderman, Gary: Exegesis as Polemical Discourse. Ibn Hazm on
Jewish and Christian Scriptures, Atlanta 1998, pp. 97–128; Kassis, Hanna E.:
Critique of Scriptures. Polemics of al-Jâhiz and Ibn Hazm Against Christi-
anity and Judaism, in: Yossef Schwartz and Volkhard Krech (eds.): Religious
Apologetics. Philosophical Argumentation, Tübingen 2004, pp. 237–250, here
pp. 245–249; and Aasi, Haider Ghulām: Muslim Understanding of Other
Religions. A Study of Ibn Hazm’s Kitāb al-Faṣl fī al-Milal wa al-Ahwāʾ wa
al-Niḥal, New Delhi 2007, pp. 115–187.
168 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Hidāyat al-ḥayārā, p. 429.
169 Ibid., pp. 323–341.
170 Ibid., pp. 492–493.
171 Ibid., p. 416.
172 Ibid., p. 415.
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