Some remarks on the biblical quotations in Abo Qurrah's : Tract on the veneration of the holy icons

In his treatise on the holy icons,one of the first christian writers in arabic,theodore abu qurrah (c. 755-830),makes ample use of biblical quotations,almost exclusively taken from the septuagint although abu qurrah's arabic is distinguished by some colloquialisms and a certain influence from the syriac idiom in grammar and lexicon,g. graf found that he had a very good command of classical arabic. this good command of arabic does not only apply to the portions containing abu qurrah's general considerations of arguments. the many biblical passages,which he duly translated to prove his case,make no exception,but rather help demonstrate his linguistic sense for greek,as well as his ability to find corresponding syntactic expressions in arabic. the present paper discusses abu qurrah's translation technique in rendering the cited biblical passages into arabic,compared with the linguistic usage found in saadia gaon,the propaganda edition,and later versions notably van dyck's.