E. Coda [Book Announcement] Ch.H. Manekin – Y.T. Langermann – H.H. Biesterfeldt (eds), Moritz Steinschneider. The Hebrew Translations of the Middle Ages and the Jews as Transmitters. Vol. I..., Dordrecht-Heidelberg-New York-London 2013 (original) (raw)

Between the Bridge and the Barricade: Jewish Translation in Early Modern Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024. *OPEN ACCESS*

2024

Between the Bridge and the Barricade explores how translations of non-Jewish texts into Jewish languages impacted Jewish culture, literature, and history from the sixteenth century into modern times. Offering a comprehensive view of early modern Jewish translation, Iris Idelson-Shein charts major paths of textual migration from non-Jewish to Jewish literatures, analyzes translators’ motives, and identifies the translational norms distinctive to Jewish translation. Idelson-Shein reveals for the first time the liberal translational norms that allowed for early modern Jewish translators to make intensely creative and radical departures from the source texts—from “Judaizing” names, places, motifs, and language to mistranslating and omitting material both deliberately and accidently. Through this process of translation, Jewish translators created a new library of works that closely corresponded with the surrounding majority cultures yet was uniquely Jewish in character.

Why Was the New Testament Translated into Hebrew? An Introduction to the History of Hebrew Translations of the New Testament

After offering a short overview of the history of Hebrew translations of the New Testament from the Middle Ages to our time, this article focuses on the purposes of the different translations as reflected in what has been written and said about them by the translators themselves and by other people involved in their dissemination. Five such purposes are identified: 1. Jewish polemics against Christianity in the Middle Ages. 2. Christian study of the Hebrew language. 3. The quest for the Hebrew "original" of the New Testament. 4. The mission to the Jews. 5. The needs of the Christian communities in the State of Israel. Concluding remarks are then made regarding the way in which Hebrew translations of the New Testament were perceived throughout the ages and regarding the role they played.

“‘Reading Leads to Translating’ in a Multilingual Context: The View from Early Rabbinic Texts (and Beyond).”

“‘Reading Leads to Translating’ in a Multilingual Context: The View from Early Rabbinic Texts (and Beyond)., 2021

“‘Reading Leads to Translating’ in a Multilingual Context: The View from Early Rabbinic Texts (and Beyond).” Pages 217–31 in Social History of the Jews in Antiquity: Studies in Dialogue with Albert Baumgarten. Edited by Michal Bar-Asher Siegal and Jonathan Ben-Dov. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 185. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021.

Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, “Christian Scholarship and Jewish Prayer in 13th-Century England: Oxford, ms Arch. Selden A. 3,” in Linguistic and Philological Studies of the Hebrew Bible and its Manuscripts in Honor of Gary A. Rendsburg (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 367-391

One of the less-studied achievements of the 12th-century Renaissance in medieval England is the rediscovery of Hebrew alongside Greek and sciences.1 Christian monks and friars in the 12th and 13th centuries studied Hebrew with Jewish masters, but also from Hebrew books, which they acquired in various ways from their Jewish owners, or from manuscripts, which they created in collaboration with Jewish-trained scribes. Such volumes produced for Christian readers were bilingual Hebrew-Latin Bibles. Both the "converted" and the "tailor-made" books had a combined purpose. Through the comparison with the Hebraica veritas, they were meant to help learn Hebrew, but also to correct the Latin Vulgate, whose manuscripts were notoriously prone to variance. Some 25 Jewish manuscripts, either appropriated and annotated by Christians or specially made volumes in parallel Hebrew and Latin columns, are still preserved. Their relatively large number, along with their level of engagement with Hebrew and with Jewish Rabbinic and grammatical sources, show that Hebrew studies in medieval England were less marginal than previously thought.2 While these 1 I thank the Bodleian Library, and in particular Dr. César Merchán Hamann, the Victor Blank Curator of Hebraica and Judaica, for their kind permission to study the manuscript and reproduce the images of some of its folios. It is my pleasure to dedicate this essay to Gary Rendsburg, whose insights into Hebrew manuscripts have always been a source of inspiration.