Multilingualism and Translation in Ancient Judaism

Multilingualism and Translation in Ancient Judaism
Author: Steven D. Fraade
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2023-09-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1009203673

In this book, Steven Fraade explores the practice and conception of multilingualism and translation in ancient Judaism. Interrogating the deep and dialectical relationship between them, he situates representative scriptural and other texts within their broader synchronic - Greco-Roman context, as well as diachronic context - the history of Judaism and beyond. Neither systematic nor comprehensive, his selection of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek primary sources, here fluently translated into clear English, best illustrate the fundamental issues and the performative aspects relating to translation and multilingualism. Fraade scrutinizes and analyzes the texts to reveal the inner dynamics and the pedagogical-social implications that are implicit when multilingualism and translation are paired. His book demonstrates the need for a more thorough and integrated treatment of these topics, and their relevance to the study of ancient Judaism, than has been heretofore recognized.

Multilingualism and Translation in Ancient Judaism

Multilingualism and Translation in Ancient Judaism
Author: Steven D. Fraade
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2023-07-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1009203711

In this book, Steven Fraade explores the practice and conception of multilingualism and translation in ancient Judaism. Interrogating the deep and dialectical relationship between them, he situates representative scriptural and other texts within their broader synchronic - Greco-Roman context, as well as diachronic context - the history of Judaism and beyond. Neither systematic nor comprehensive, his selection of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek primary sources, here fluently translated into clear English, best illustrate the fundamental issues and the performative aspects relating to translation and multilingualism. Fraade scrutinizes and analyzes the texts to reveal the inner dynamics and the pedagogical-social implications that are implicit when multilingualism and translation are paired. His book demonstrates the need for a more thorough and integrated treatment of these topics, and their relevance to the study of ancient Judaism, than has been heretofore recognized.

Rabbis, Language and Translation in Late Antiquity

Rabbis, Language and Translation in Late Antiquity
Author: Willem F. Smelik
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 559
Release: 2013-10-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1107470501

Exposed to multiple languages as a result of annexation, migration, pilgrimage and its position on key trade routes, the Roman Palestine of Late Antiquity was a border area where Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic dialects were all in common use. This study analyses the way scriptural translation was perceived and practised by the rabbinic movement in this multilingual world. Drawing on a wide range of classical rabbinic sources, including unused manuscript materials, Willem F. Smelik traces developments in rabbinic thought and argues that foreign languages were deemed highly valuable for the lexical and semantic light they shed on the meanings of lexemes in the holy tongue. Key themes, such as the reception of translations of the Hebrew Scriptures, multilingualism in society, and rabbinic rules for translation, are discussed at length. This book will be invaluable for students of ancient Judaism, rabbinic studies, Old Testament studies, early Christianity and translation studies.

Transformative Translations in Jewish History and Culture

Transformative Translations in Jewish History and Culture
Author: Thulin, Mirjam
Publisher: Universitätsverlag Potsdam
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2019
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3869564687

PaRDeS. Zeitschrift der Vereinigung für Jüdische Studien e.V., möchte die fruchtbare und facettenreiche Kultur des Judentums sowie seine Berührungspunkte zur Umwelt in den unterschiedlichen Bereichen dokumentieren. Daneben dient die Zeitschrift als Forum zur Positionierung der Fächer Jüdische Studien und Judaistik innerhalb des wissenschaftlichen Diskurses sowie zur Diskussion ihrer historischen und gesellschaftlichen Verantwortung. PaRDeS. Journal of the Association of Jewish Studies e. V. The journal aims at documenting the fruitful and multifarious culture of Judaism as well as its relations to its environment within diverse areas of research. In addition, the journal is meant to promote Jewish Studies within academic discourse and discuss its historic and social responsibility.

Making History

Making History
Author: Carol Bakhos
Publisher: SBL Press
Total Pages: 491
Release: 2024-03-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1951498968

Essays in this volume honor Richard L. Kalmin, one of the leading scholars of rabbinic literature. Volume contributors explore a variety of topics related to Kalmin’s wide-ranging work from the development of the Talmud to rabbinic storytelling, from the transmission of tales across geographic and cultural boundaries to ancient Jewish and Iranian interactions. Many of the essays reflect current trends in how scholars use ancient Jewish literary sources to address questions of historical import. Contributors include Carol Bakhos, Beth A. Berkowitz, Noah Bickart, Robert Brody, Joshua Cahan, Shaye J. D. Cohen, Steven D. Fraade, Shamma Friedman, Alyssa M. Gray, Judith Hauptman, Christine Hayes, Catherine Hezser, Marc Hirshman, David Kraemer, Marjorie Lehman, Kristen Lindbeck, Jonathan S. Milgram, Chaim Milikowsky, Michael L. Satlow, Marcus Mordecai Schwartz, Seth Schwartz, Burton L. Visotzky, and Sarah Wolf.

Multiglossia in Judeo-Arabic

Multiglossia in Judeo-Arabic
Author: Benjamin Hary
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2021-10-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004497129

This volume contains a study of multiglossia in Judeo-Arabic in addition to a critical edition, annotated translation, and a cultural and a grammatical study of The Purim Scroll of the Cairene Jewish Community, written in 1524 to commemorate the deliverance of the Jews of Cairo from Ahmad Pasha, the governor of Egypt. 'Multiglossia' is a linguistic state in which different varieties of a language exist side by side in a language community and are used under different circumstances or with various functions. 'Judeo-Arabic' has been written and spoken in various forms by Jews throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Part One places the language of the Judeo-Arabic text of the Scroll within the multiglossic history of Judeo-Arabic. Part Two introduces the two critical editions of the Scroll, both in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic, with the variant readings followed by an annotated translation. Part Three presents a detailed grammar of the Scroll using the framework of Judeo-Arabic multiglossia.

Multilingualism in Ancient Contexts

Multilingualism in Ancient Contexts
Author: Louis C. Jonker
Publisher: African Sun Media
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2021-05-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1991201176

Multilingualism remains a thorny issue in many contexts, be it cultural, political, or educational. Debates and discourses on this issue in contexts of diversity (particularly in multicultural societies, but also in immigration situations) are often conducted with present-day communicational and educational needs in mind, or with political and identity agendas. This is nothing new. There are a vast number of witnesses from the ancient West-Asian and Mediterranean world attesting to the same debates in long past societies. Could an investigation into the linguistic landscapes of ancient societies shed any light on our present-day debates and discourses? This volume suggests that this is indeed the case. In fourteen chapters, written and visual sources of the ancient world are investigated and explored by scholars, specialising in those fields of study, to engage in an interdisciplinary discourse with modern-day debates about multilingualism. A final chapter – by an expert in language in education – responds critically to the contributions in the book to open avenues for further interdisciplinary engagement – together with contemporary linguists and educationists – on the matter of multilingualism.

Characterizing Old Greek Deuteronomy as an Ancient Translation

Characterizing Old Greek Deuteronomy as an Ancient Translation
Author: Jean Maurais
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2022-06-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004516581

Much can be learned about a translation’s linguistic and cultural context by studying it as a text, a literary artifact of the culture that produced it. However, its nature as a translation warrants a careful approach, one that pays attention to the process by which its various features came about. In Characterizing Old Greek Deuteronomy as an Ancient Translation, Jean Maurais develops a framework derived from Descriptive Translation Studies to bring both these aspects in conversation. He then outlines how the Deuteronomy translator went about his task and provides a characterization of the work as a literary product.

From Tradition to Commentary

From Tradition to Commentary
Author: Steven D. Fraade
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1438403143

This book examines Torah and its interpretation both as a recurring theme in the early rabbinic commentary and as the very practice of the commentary. It studies the phenomenon of ancient rabbinic scriptural commentary in relation to the perspectives of literary and historical criticisms and their complex intersection. The author discusses extensively the nature of ancient commentary, comparing and contrasting it with the antecedents in the pesharim of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the allegorical commentaries of Philo of Alexandria. He develops a model for a dynamic understanding of the literary structure and sociohistorical function of early rabbinic commentary, and then applies this model to the Sifre — to the oldest extant running commentary to Deuteronomy and one of the oldest rabbinic collections of exegesis. Fraade examines the commentary's representation of revelation and its reception at Mt. Sinai, with particular attention to its fractured refiguration and interrelation of Scripture, tradition, and history. He discusses the commentary's discursive empowering of the class of sages in their collective self-understanding as Israel's authorized teachers, leaders, legislators, and judges. The author also probes the tension between Torah and nature as witnesses to Israel's covenant with God.

Sharing and Hiding Religious Knowledge in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Sharing and Hiding Religious Knowledge in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Author: Mladen Popović
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2018-08-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3110593661

Few studies focus on the modes of knowledge transmission (or concealment), or the trends of continuity or change from the Ancient to the Late Antique worlds. In Antiquity, knowledge was cherished as a scarce good, cultivated through the close teacher-student relationship and often preserved in the closed circle of the initated. From Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform texts to a Shi'ite Islamic tradition, this volume explores how and why knowledge was shared or concealed by diverse communities in a range of Ancient and Late Antique cultural contexts. From caves by the Dead Sea to Alexandria, both normative and heterodox approaches to knowledge in Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities are explored. Biblical and qur'anic passages, as well as gnostic, rabbinic and esoteric Islamic approaches are discussed. In this volume, a range of scholars from Assyrian studies to Jewish, Christian and Islamic studies examine diverse approaches to, and modes of, knowledge transmission and concealment, shedding new light on both the interconnectedness, as well as the unique aspects, of the monotheistic faiths, and their relationship to the ancient civilisations of the Fertile Crescent.