Martí’s apologetic creed exposition answered the Islamic charge of scriptural falsification before teaching doctrine

Evidence

Martí’s Explanatio symboli Apostolorum (1257) comes at the same issues from a different perspective. It is an exposition of the Christian credo, divided into twelve articles (each of which is attributed to one of the apostles). Before explaining the twelve articles of the credo, Martí needs to establish the authority of Scripture: he does so by refuting the Muslim charge of falsification of the scriptures (tahrîf) in an expanded version of his treatment of the subject in De seta Machometi. He can then go on to instruct his readers in the basic tenets of Christianity; for each of the twelve articles, he provides standard biblical proof texts (from both the Old and New Testaments), which the Saracen is now supposed to accept. Martí at times refers to the Koran, either to use it in support of Christian doctrine or to refute it where it opposes Christian doctrine. The work could thus be used either to instruct a convert from Islam in the basic tenets of Christianity or to educate those who are already Christians and inoculate them against Muslim anti-Christian arguments. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1208

Categorization

• XREF: The tahrîf doctrine and Christian counter-strategies connect to broader themes in Tolan’s book about how each tradition weaponized scripture-falsification accusations against the other.