The Reverend Dr. David Compton, Bishop’s Vicar in the Kilkenny Union of Parishes, was awarded the degree of PhD by Trinity College Dublin on June 21st.
As a student in the university’s Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Dr. Compton produced a new English translation from classical Arabic of the book, The Interpreter of Desires, an allegorical desert love story written by the foremost medieval Islamic philosopher, Ibn al-ʿArabī.
The book is a collection of poems showing how the love that a man has for a woman is similar to human love for God, since humans can only understand God in human terms.
Dr. Compton also demonstrated in his dissertation for the first time that the book he translated contained virtually all of the theological concepts of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s greatest exposition on theology, The Bezels of Wisdom.