Ktābā d’ellat koll ‘ellān (16th century)

MS 70

A medieval Christian apologetic work disguised as encyclopaedic knowledge

Although Ktābā d’ellat koll ‘ellān ‘The Book of the Cause of All Causes’, also known as Causa causarum, is ‘one of the major medieval encyclopaedic texts of Syriac tradition’, it has been greatly overlooked by research (Reinink, p. 275). Composed between the end of the 10th and beginning of the 11th century CE by an anonymous bishop of Edessa, who was part of the minority group of Syrian Jacobite Christians, the text has survived only incomplete. The detailed contents description at the beginning describe a work ‘divided into nine Discourses, which are subdivided into […] five to ten chapters’, but no manuscript that continues beyond Discourse 7: Chapter 2 is known (Reinink, p. 276).

The unknown author introduces his work as ‘a universal book (destined) for all peoples under the heavens, which teaches how the knowledge of the Truth can be acquired’ (Reinink, p. 275). The book instructs its readers on how to achieve universal truth/knowledge by seeking seclusion in a monastery (or similar) to purify the soul, to engage with nature, ‘the common father and teacher of the human race’, which ‘leads to the awareness that there is one God, who is the Creator and Ruler of the Universe’ (Reinink, p. 279). Only then is it advised to study books, starting with Genesis, the first book of Moses, which all three Abrahamic religions accept, before continuing to ‘the perfect teaching of the Holy Gospel (the spiritual Law), which leads to the perfect knowledge of the Truth’ (Reinink,
p. 279). Essentially, the work is a ‘demonstration that Christianity is the “universal religion”, since only this religion embraces all three levels of knowledge leading to the perfect knowledge of God’ (Reinink, 280). Causa causarum is consequently not an expression of religious tolerance or an attempt at unifying religions, but a work of Christian apologetics, defending Christianity against other beliefs.

Further Resource
Descriptive catalogue record available at our Digital Library (scroll down to MS 70)