the Messiah a question intended to rebuke those who had taken him and his mother as two deities apart from Allah.

Ibn al-Bitrīq said:

“It is likewise put to the Nestorians: Tell us about the human nature with which the divine nature united so that he came to be called the Messiah. Was he, from the moment he was in Mary’s womb until she bore him, nursed him, he grew up, was crucified and killed—was he throughout that entire period the Messiah? Or was he for thirty years merely a man like other men, after which the divine nature united with the human nature and he then became the Messiah?

“If they say, ‘He was not the Messiah while he was in Mary’s womb; Mary only gave birth to a man who lived for thirty years as one of humankind, and then the divine united with the human and he became the Messiah,’ they have abandoned their own position, branded the Gospel, Paul, and all the Church’s books as false, and stepped outside the creed of Christianity.

“But if they say, ‘The divine nature united with the human nature at the moment of conception, and he was the Messiah while carried in the womb, when he was born, when he was nursed, and until he was crucified and killed,’ they have conceded that Mary gave birth to one divine Messiah, a single hypostasis.

“So it is said to him: This very dichotomy demonstrates the invalidity of the Christians’ doctrine—an innovation of their three main sects and others—for they claim that the union took place from the instant Mary conceived him and that it increased little by little as the body of the Messiah grew,”}