Jaarboek Thomas Instituut 1997 - Thomas Instituut te Utrecht

AQUINAS AND INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE 41
possible, collaboration".
3.1. The Middle East, from the eighth to the tenth century A.D.
There are two interesting things about this region and period. In the
eighth century, Christians and Muslims (and Jews) live together quite
peacefully under the rule of the Omayyad and Abbaside Caliphs. We
hear the first reactions by Christians of several Eastern Churches to
Islam as a new religious phenomenon, and, somewhat later, the first
systematic responses to these reactions by Muslim theologians. The
first interesting thing is that it will become clear that the character of
these first exchanges will largely determine later exchanges between
Christians and Muslims in East and West. The second interesting thing
is that in the Middle East Christians and Muslims share the same
cultural background and the same languages, so that they should be
able to understand each other quite well, in spite of their religious
differences'" .
89 A first form of collaboration has been established between the
Thomas Institute and the research group on the relations between Jews and
Christians of the Catholic Theological University in Utrecht, managed by Dr.
Marcel Poorthuis. As a result of this collaboration, Dr. Marcus van Loopik
presented a lecture on the Disputation of Barcelona (1263) between Moses ben
Nachman (Nachmanides) and Pablo Christiani to the members of the research
group of the Thomas Institute in february 1998. We hope to be able to publish
this lecture in the next Jaarboek. Because we have not yet been able to
establish such a collaboration with researchers on texts by Muslim authors,
this part of the research program is still rather weak. Apart from that, it will
be clear from the present listing that the Christian authors are
overrepresented. This is mainly due to the accessibility of printed texts in
libraries, but of course the interests of the present author playa part as well.
It may be hoped that the future will see more scholarly work on the dialogues
between Jews and Muslims, because they lived together for a long time in the
Middle Ages. In the mean time, one may consult Joden in de wereld van de
islam, red. J-M. Cohen - I.E. Zwiep, Amsterdam s.a.
90 For a first survey in the Dutch language, see E.Platti, "Een andere
bijbelse godsdienst: naar een christelijke omgang met de islam", Tijdschrift
voor Theologie 37 (1997), 6-22, summary 23, with many references to
literature. On p. 12, Platti mentions the influence of John Damascene on