On the occasion of the release of Professor Marlène KANAAN's book, Le Roman de Barlaam et Joasaph, version arabe chrétienne, Paris, Beauchesne, 2023, the Institute of the History of Religions of the University of Strasbourg-France organized on May 23 and 24, 2023 an international colloquium under the scientific direction of Michel TARDIEU, Honorary Professor at the Collège de France and Professor Guillaume DUCOEUR, Director of the Institute of the History of Religions-University of Strasbourg.

The Colloquium questioned the transmissions of the Indian core of the story of Barlaam and Joasaph to the Persian Manichean, Arab-Muslim, Greco-Latin, Arab-Christian and Jewish worlds and examined the different versions of Barlaam and Joasaph or Josaphat, whether handwritten, textual, or figurative, from the perspective of comparative history of religions and doctrines, in order to restore the significance of the recensions in their religious, theological, philosophical and political contexts of their time and to understand their precise aims. The colloquium seeked to determine the doctrinal particularities of these different versions to better appreciate the labor involved in rewriting the work, during its successive transmissions, in different cultures, and above all, in disparate and often divergent religious milieus, which seized upon it in order to illustrate through a hagiography their own system of thought and asceticism.

Pr KANAAN’s lecture entiteled Le débat entre chrétiens et idolâtres selon Ḫabar Barlām wa Yūwāṣaf, particularités, échos ecclésiastiques et utilisations apologétiques chez les auteurs arabes chrétiens was well received. Her book impact and her presence at this colloquium are a well-deserved tribute to her work.