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316 Sidney Griffithpassages that equally clearly speak of Christians, and not Jews, one also findsthe address "Scripture People," e.g., al-Nisa' (4) 171 and al-Ma 'ida (5) 77.Nazorean doctrines in the Qur 'anChristology is without a doubt at the heart of the Qur'iin's doctrinal ObileCtionChristianity; it is the Christians' affirmation that Jesus, the Messiah, Mary'sis the Son of God that elicited the Qur' iin' s stark imperative, "Believe in GodHis messengers and do not say, 'three'. Stop it; it is better for you. God issingle God. Glory be to Him, that He should have as a son anything in theor on the earth" (al-Nisa' [4] 171). 38 This passage, in fact, is the only one inQur'iin that seems directly and explicitly to refer to the Christian doctrineTrinity, unless, following the suggestions of some commentators, one wouldthat the affirmation, "He did not beget and is not begotten, and none is His(al-lkhla~ [112] 3-4) is to be so interpreted. 39 As for the enigmatic phraseQur'iin's dictum, "They have disbelieved who say, 'God is thalithu thartathal~m·(al-Ma 'ida [5] 73), in its context it is most reasonably understood as pri1cnmilya!lepithet of Jesus, the Messiah, as we explain below, which evokes atypology that in turn refers to the doctrine of the Trinity.The phrase, "They have disbelieved who say that God is ... " -used threein the same Sura (al-Ma 'ida [5] 17, 72, 73), and twice directly reprovingwho say, "God is the Messiah," (vv. 17, 72)- obviously intends rhetorically, ·polemically, to emphasize the incompatibility of the Christian belief thatthe Son of God with the main premise of Qur'iinic monotheism. In theinstance, the text says, "They have disbelieved who say, 'God is the Messiah, · .of Mary.' Say, 'Who could prevent God, if He wished, from destroyingMessiah, son of Mary, and his mother too, together with all those on the face·the earth?'" (v. 17). In the second instance, the Qur'iin says, "They havelieved who say, 'God is the Messiah, son of Mary.' The Messiah said, '0of Israel worship God, my Lord and your Lord. Surely, he who associatesgods with God, God forbids him access to the Garden and his dwelling is theEvildoers have no supporters'" (v. 72). The polemical intent here is obvious.conundrum is in the third instance of the. formula: "They have disbelievedsay, 'God is thalithu thalathatin.' For there is no god except one God; if theynot stop saying what they say, those who have disbelieved will bepunished" (v. 73).In another place, the present writer has argued at some length that thephrase, thalithu thalathatin in al-Ma 'ida (5) 73 can most reasonably be "v''~"u"u38 Interestingly, Arabic-speaking Christian apologists in Islamic times, beginning with thetheir texts, regularly cited the Qur'an's verse ai-Nisli' (4) 171 in their defenses of theness of the doctrine of the Trinity, arguing that in fact in this verse the Qur'iin itself posits thedivine persons: God, His Word and His Spirit.39 Regarding the Qur'an's position on the Trinity in this Sura and elsewhere see the contributionManfred Kropp to the present volume. ·Al-Na~?iirii in the Qur 'an: a hermeneutical reflection 317Arabic rendering of the Syriac epithet for Christ, tlfthliya, 40 thereby positingsynum~trv in the opening phrases of verses 72 and 73. In texts written by theNicene, Syriac writers, Ephraem the Syrian (c. 306-373) and Jacob of(c. 451-521 ), this adjective, in the sense of "trine," "treble" or "threefold,"Jesus the Messiah as "the threefold one" in reference to a series ofin the biblical narratives that speak of "three days;" Christian interreadthem typologically to refer to Jesus's three days in the tomb, and also,ourse, if somewhat obliquely, in reference to Jesus as one of the three personsthree-personed, triune God. In connection with the present discussion of the's polemics against the doctrines of those it calls Nazoreans, the recogniofthissense of the enigmatic phrase, thalithu thalathatin, removes the reasoncommentators, ancient and modern, Muslim and non-Muslim, have used into another passage in the same Siira, a!-Ma 'ida ( 5) 116, to claim that theiin's conception of the Christian Trinity is that it consists of three persons:Mf}ry and Jesus. This misconception then sent those researchers exclusivelythe historical-critical method off on a search for early Christian groupsespoused such a trinity; Fran9ois de Blois, for example, very ingeniouslythem among the same Judea-Christians, Mandaeans and others, whom heassociated with the early Christian Nazarenes.· Hn•"'''"'''"part classical Muslim commentators reached something of a consensusthe Arabic phrase thalithu thalathatin in al-Ma 'ida (5) 73, understood asofthree," actually means "one ofthree" and that it is Jesus the Messiah whoso described. While some of them then took the Qur'iinic verse to be a rejectionthey perceived to be Christian tritheism, others rejected this idea as macrightlypointing out that the Christians did not in fact profess a belief ingods. Rather, these latter commentators offered two alternate explanations.said that the phrase refers to one of the three aqanfm (i.e. hypostases)the Christians perceive in the one God. Others proposed that, as applied tothe epithet named him the third member of the Trinity: God, Mary andThey cited as confirmation the verse referred to above: "When God said,. Jesus, son of Mary, did you say to the people: "Take me and my mother as twoapart from God"?' " (al-Ma 'ida [5] 116). Referring to this verse, theythat it suggests that the epithet "third of three" in verse 73 means thatwas the third in the Christians' Trinitarian triad. 41 Subsequently, manySee Griffith, "Syriacisms in the 'Arabic Qur' iin' ." In this article, the author failed to call attention tothe phrase thliniya thnayni in a/-Tawba (9) 40, which is grammatically parallel to thiilithuthaliithatin. in al-Mii'ida (5) 116, "one of two" II "one of three." He is grateful to Prof. Manfred Kropp and to' Joseph Witzturn for bringing it to his attention. But this parallel sense of the phrase thlilith thallithatin·to mean "one of three" does not, in his opinion, preclude its selection to reflect the Syriac epithet forJesus, tlfthiiyd, for in both Syriac and Arabic the ordinal number evokes a triad, and the Syriac epithetdoes describe Jesus as one of the three "persons"/"hypostases" (qnomf! in Syriac, aqlinTm in Arabic).See the summaries of the traditional interpretations in Ibn Taymiyya, Al-TafsTr al-kabTr, ed. 'Abdal-Ral,unan 'Umayra, Beirut: Dar al-Kutub ai-'IImiyya, 1998, 4:53-58; See also ai-Tabar'i, Jiimi'·,.,_,,Qt-G>avorn. vol. 10, 481-83; vol. II, 233-37; Fakhr ad-Din ai-Riizl, TafsTr al-mashhiir bi-1-Tajsfral-kabTr wa-MaflitTI;z al-ghayb, Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1981,4:63-65.