Rabbis of the (Scientific) Revolution: Revealing the Hidden Corpus of Early Modern Translations Produced by Jewish Religious Thinkers (2021)
This essay discusses the corpus of translations of non-Jewish texts into Jewish languages, which emerged during the early modern period. Particular attention is given to Hebrew translations produced by members of the Jewish religious elite during the long eighteenth century, which have hitherto been viewed as original Jewish works. The article argues that translation was perfectly suited to the combination of attraction and anxiety with which many early modern Jews, particularly members of the Jewish religious elite, observed the cultural developments of their time. These authors acknowledged (what they viewed as) their own cultural inferiority, but feared the potential hazards of direct exposure to non-Jewish texts and ideas. Jewish translators thus became cultural gatekeepers rather than passive recipients of non-Jewish culture. They mistranslated both deliberately and accidentally, added and omitted, gave new meanings to texts and ideas, and harnessed their sources to meet their own agendas. The works of these translators reveal a form of cultural transfer that relied on the mindful adaptation and reformulation of new ideas by discreet, almost inadvertent innovators.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Charles H. Manekin;
Hans Hinrich Biesterfeldt;
(2021)
Moritz Steinschneider. The Hebrew Translations of the Middle Ages and the Jews as Transmitters
(/isis/citation/CBB127737064/)
Article
Glasner, Ruth;
(2002)
On Gersonides' Knowledge of Languages
(/isis/citation/CBB000202153/)
Article
Feiner, Shmuel;
(2002)
Seductive Science and the Emergence of the Secular Jewish Intellectual
(/isis/citation/CBB000202836/)
Book
Rehav Rubin;
(2019)
Portraying the Land: Hebrew Maps of the Land of Israel from Rashi to the Early 20th Century
(/isis/citation/CBB589984320/)
Article
Mauro Zonta;
(2017)
Twenty-Nine Hebrew Glosses on Averroes' Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics
(/isis/citation/CBB743642146/)
Article
Gerrit Bos;
Sandra Hajek;
Katrin Kogman-Appel;
Guido Mensching;
(2019)
A Glossary of Latin and Italo-Romance Medico-Botanical Terms in Hebrew Characters on an Illustrated Manuscript Page (Ms. Oxford, Bodleian Opp. 688, fol. 117b)
(/isis/citation/CBB928682370/)
Chapter
Katz, David S.;
(2001)
The Occult Bible: Hebraic Millenarianism in Eighteenth-Century England
(/isis/citation/CBB000500712/)
Article
Elisheva Baumgarten;
(2019)
Ask the Midwives: A Hebrew Manual on Midwifery from Medieval Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB270291607/)
Article
Carmen Caballero-Navas;
(2019)
Virtuous and Wise: Apprehending Female Medical Practice from Hebrew Texts on Women’s Healthcare
(/isis/citation/CBB030031484/)
Book
Gerrit Bos;
Klaus-Dietrich Fischer;
(2021)
A Glimpse into Medical Practice among Jews around 1500: Latin-German Pharmaceutical Glossaries in Hebrew Characters extant in Ms Leiden Universiteitsbibliotheek, Cod. Or. 4732/1 (SCAL 15), fols. 1a–17b
(/isis/citation/CBB783910241/)
Article
Maud Kozodoy;
(2019)
Late Medieval Jewish Physicians and their Manuscripts
(/isis/citation/CBB352216580/)
Book
Zonta, Mauro;
(2006)
Hebrew Scholasticism in the Fifteenth Century: A History and Source Book
(/isis/citation/CBB000773075/)
Chapter
Ferrario, Gabriele;
(2010)
The Jews and Alchemy: Notes from a Problematic Approach
(/isis/citation/CBB001023504/)
Book
Chad Alan Goldberg;
(2017)
Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought
(/isis/citation/CBB694231685/)
Book
Gimbel, Steven;
(2012)
Einstein's Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion
(/isis/citation/CBB001210082/)
Book
Shari Rabin;
(2017)
Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America
(/isis/citation/CBB425248084/)
Book
Freudenthal, Gad;
(2011)
Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures
(/isis/citation/CBB001232565/)
Thesis
Dan Tsahor;
(2015)
Hebrew Encyclopedias: Objectivity, Jewish History, and the National Territory
(/isis/citation/CBB054216437/)
Article
Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas;
(2018)
A Treatise on the Construction of Astrolabes by Jacob ben Abi Abraham Isaac al-Corsuno (Barcelona, 1378): Edition, Translation and Commentary
(/isis/citation/CBB167768461/)
Article
Zonta, Mauro;
(2011)
About Todros Todrosi's Medieval Hebrew Translation of al-Fārābī's Lost Long Commentary/Gloss-Commentary on Aristotle's Topics, Book VIII
(/isis/citation/CBB001210984/)
Be the first to comment!