A Christian Bible for Jewish Children

Abstract

vel, it is an intra-cultural translation, in which the target culture (German Jews) constitutes a sub-culture1 of the (German) source culture. On the linguistic level, the source text (Christian Bible stories) was itself based on a translation (the German Bible); in the work examined, it was adapted (in German) as well as reverse-translated into the original (Hebrew) language. The German adaptation and the Hebrew reverse-translation are printed side by side.2 The text examined is p57o ina,3 biblical stories for Jewish children published in Breslau (then Prussia) in 1837 by the Jewish scholar and teacher David Samose.4 Samose (1789-1864) is known for his Hebrew translations of German children's literature for Jewish children.5 His bilingual German/Hebrew textbook of biblical stories was not the first of its kind; it had been preceded by several Bible stories for Jewish children in the last decades of the eighteenth and the first decades of the nineteenth century in various Jewish communities; numerous other books would follow.6 The remarkable thing about Samosc's book is its