AVERROES’S “CONCESSION TO AVICENNA”

Reviewed by: Discovering the Septuagint: A Guided Reader ed. by Karen H. Jobes Larry Perkins karen h. jobes (ed.), Discovering the Septuagint: A Guided Reader (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2016). Pp. 351. $39.99. As senior editor, Karen H. Jobes has worked with nine former students and teaching assistants to produce a "guided reader" to the Septuagint for individuals who possess "proficiency in New Testament Greek." She has provided a useful tool to assist those interested in the Greek OT to find their initial way into this complex body of Hellenistic Jewish texts. [End Page 521] The contributors provide lexical and grammatical notes, as well as limited explanations where interference from a Hebrew Vorlage may have influenced a translator's choices. Annotated readings include portions of Greek Genesis and Exodus; the complete texts of Ruth, Jonah, and Malachi; selected Psalms; and portions of Hosea and Isaiah. In addition, segments from four of the six additions to Greek Esther are included, the only selections representing compositional Greek materials in the Septuagint. The various commentators note where NT writers incorporated quotations from the texts presented. For each selection the respective translation from A New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS) is provided. Jobes aims to introduce people to the Greek OT as people in the first century C.E. who had no access to the respective Hebrew texts would have encountered and understood it. In this respect the volume engages the Greek OT in its reception history. This is an important feature of the Septuagint's reality, yet individuals using this reader have no easy way to compare the Septuagint translation with a presumed Hebrew Vorlage to evaluate the Septuagint text as produced by the translator. Consequently, they cannot fully appreciate the decisions that the original translators faced in rendering their Hebrew texts. Moreover, it is difficult for readers to appreciate the translation "strategies" adopted by the respective translators. Some comments made regarding significant differences between the presumed Hebrew text and resultant translation lack context because the reader has little sense of the translation technique employed by the original translator. It is probably too much to expect that readers will also have proficiency in Hebrew, but it might be possible to use a modern English translation such as the NRSV, which tends to reflect Hebrew structure, as a means of encouraging readers to make comparisons. Otherwise, this dimension of the Septuagint's reality will not be appreciated. Generally, the volume is well produced, but occasional lapses occur. For example, on p. 152 there is no English translation provided for Esth 1:1s (1:1). The diaeresis is missing for πρόϊμος (Hos 6:3, pp. 219-20). Occasionally a relative clause is referred to as a "phrase" (Jonah 3:2, p. 249). Sometimes one looks for explanation but does not find it. For example, in Jonah 1:16 the sailors fear τὸν κύριον greatly, but nothing is said about why in this case the translator twice uses an article with κύριος, given its absence in v. 14 and 2:1. Perhaps it would be helpful to identify this as an anaphoric usage, given that pagan sailors are responding religiously to Yhwh. Sometimes the observations raise more questions. For example, the commentator at Ps 33:5 explains the choice of paroikiōn (παροικιῶν) as a modification made by the translator "to contextualize the translation for his audience" (p. 189). Perhaps, but the translator may have thought the nominal form was a derivative of the verbal root gûr I in his Hebrew text, referring in some way to living in a foreign country (see LXX Ps 54:15 [55:16]; LXX 118:54 [119:54]). The claim is made in the introduction (p. 11) that "the Septuagint is valuable for sketching the history of the Hebrew text during an era that is much earlier than any extant manuscripts." Given the challenges we have in dating when specific portions of the Hebrew Scriptures were translated, however, it is quite possible that we possess extant Hebrew texts roughly contemporaneous with several of the translations, for example, Isaiah. These are minor issues in an otherwise useful volume. [End Page 522] Larry Perkins 6296 189A Street, Surrey, BC V3S8S3, Canada Copyright © 2019 The...

Maimonides’s Guide for the Perplexed had a significant influence on both Jewish and Christian philosophy, although the vast majority of Jewish and Christian readers in the Middle Ages could not read the original Judeo-Arabic (Arabic written in Hebrew characters) text. Instead, they had access to the text through Hebrew and Latin translations. The article focuses on words derived from the root sh-h-r in the original text of Maimonides, first (section 1) on the understanding of Maimonides himself, where they take on two meanings; the first sense of these words is an adjective that refers to things well-known to the larger public; the second sense is that in which the opinions held by the public are opposed to the intelligibles. Second (section 2), while one of Maimonides’ Hebrew translators, Ibn Tibbon, did understand the original meaning of the words in the Guide, the other, Alharizi did not; he missed the distinction between rational understanding and generally admitted opinions. This misunderstanding changed the meaning of three important passages of the Guide. Finally (section 3) the mistranslation of Alharizi influenced the medieval philosophers that either read his translation, such as Rabbi Aaron ben Elijah of Nicomedia, or a Latin translation based upon it, such as Meister Eckhart.

This list, although so carefully prepared, is necessarily still incomplete and subject to revision and additions. The writer gives twenty‐seven Arabic printed texts; seven Arabic selections; nine English translations; eleven English translations, selections; six French translations; four French translations, selections; thirteen German translations; six German translations, selections; five Latin translations; three Latin translations, selections; one Hungarian translation; one Czech translation; five Dutch translations; one Greek translation; one Hebrew translation; one Hindi translation; one Hindustani translation; four Italian translations; three Persian translations; one Polish translation; one Russian translation; one Spanish translation; two Swedish translations; one Turkish translation; three Urdu translations. The total number of texts and translations here listed is one hundred and eighteen.For additional information and facsimiles of some Oriental versions see The Moslem World Vol. V. pp. 244‐261. Editor.

Reviewed by: Commentary on the Torah, with a New English Translation and the Hebrew Text Stuart Robertson Commentary on the Torah, with a New English Translation and the Hebrew Text, by Richard Elliott Friedman. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001. 681 pp. $50.00. Other reviewers of Friedman's fresh translation and commentary on the Five Books of Moses have already mentioned Rashi in the same breath. It is not without reason. The Jews to whom Rashi explained the Torah were not intentionally so diverse as the Jews for whom Friedman writes. He reports in the "Introduction" that he met with laypersons [End Page 168] studying the weekly reading from the Torah led by an orthodox and another by a reform rabbi. Indeed, he did not write for Jews alone; in this ecumenical age Jews, Christians, and others study the Torah together. His commentary differs from the recent Etz Hayyim, which was prepared specifically for use in the synagogue. It also differs from other recent commentaries in that he does not intentionally engage in conversation with other commentators. Friedman interacts with Rashi while avoiding the "Rashi fundamentalism" that has had an opposite effect than Rashi intended, closing the discussion rather than opening it. Drawing on the wide range of resources that have blossomed in the modern world, both in biblical studies and beyond, Friedman here tries "to offer new explanations for old problems and to address new ones . . . to open windows through which it shed its light on us" (Introduction, p. viii). He intends to join other classical commentaries that had as their purpose to study the Torah, and to relate it to modern life as Rashi (1040-1105) related the Torah to life in the 11th and 12th centuries. He intends a distinctly classical commentary. Friedman's previous books, Who Wrote the Bible (1987), The Hidden Face of God (1995), and The Hidden Book in the Bible (1998), engaged the entire Tanach. In them he amply showed both his participation with other Bible scholars in the community, and how he has made his own way through the stream. This new commentary on the Torah caps (for the moment) his biblical studies. There are two levels of interest in this commentary: Friedman's fresh translation and his fresh commentary. The Hebrew text appears without the critical apparatus, so that text-critical issues appear only as he introduces them. The Hebrew appears side by side with the English translation, which engages the Hebrew grammar creatively. For example, the sense of participles is often lost in English translations that treat them as finite verbs. But Friedman preserves the elastic sense of participles. The commentary is often philological, that is, alert to nuances of words, as well as explaining significances of the overall syntax of sentences. At times when he explains his view of the significance of passages, Friedman appears to be squarely in the tradition he inherits, and at other times he does not hesitate to depart from the tradition, or perhaps, better put, to add to the tradition, which is alive rather than static. I wished Friedman interacted more with Christian reading of the Torah. For example, in his discussion of Genesis 18:3, he goes so far as to use Christian terminology: "God, in this conception, can . . . make Himself known to humans by a sort of emanation from the Godhead that is visible to human eyes. It is a hypostasis, a concrete expression of the divine presence, which is otherwise inexpressible to human beings." Here is a textbook situation to engage an idea that is distinctly different for Jews and Christians. But he did not specifically refer to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. Interaction with Christians is an unavoidable part of the developing tradition. I may have [End Page 169] missed other places where Friedman does engage Christian interpretations, but this was a golden moment that he avoided. Friedman's translations are often remarkably sensitive. Genesis 1:1, which Everett Fox's translation begins, "When God began to create . . ." Friedman renders, "In the beginning of God's creating. . . ." Both differ from the traditional and incorrect, "In the beginning God created," but Friedman's is more literal. He writes: "Even...

The search for Truth necessarily takes the form of a depiction of error. Vincent Descombes, Proust: Philosophy of the Novel, 4 Theophrastus’ Characters, a series of 30 short sketches of vice written around 319 bc is, as Jeffrey Rusten puts it: ‘a pleasant little book for the casual reader, but an enormously difficult one for the scholar’.1 Its pleasantness lies in how it chooses to depict vices as ordinary as ‘bad timing’, ‘idle chatter’, and ‘superstition’, by providing a brief example of the daily habits of a man who embodies the quality in question.2 ‘The man with bad timing’ for example, is ‘the sort who goes up to someone who is busy and asks his advice. He sings love songs to his girlfriend when she has a fever. (…) If he’s a guest at a wedding, he launches into a tirade against women’.3 Its difficulty, on the other hand, lies in part in what Robin Lane Fox calls the ‘misreadings’ of its reception-history: in how it has not always been read as a pleasant book for entertainment, but for a range of other purposes instead.4 One of these ‘misreadings’ was the notion that the Characters offered a kind of moral instruction, an understanding inspired by a moralizing Proem that was appended to the sketches in the late Roman empire, or early Byzantine period, promising a comparison between vice and virtue, absent in Theophrastus’ own text.5 As the medieval manuscript tradition preserved this spurious Proem, this was how a series of Latin editors approached Theophrastus’ work, a reading instrumental in explaining why, across sixteenth-century Europe, it became so extraordinarily popular to edit or translate. ‘The printing presses’, so declares the preface to the sixteenth edition of the Characters that had been published that century, ‘became feverishly interested in this little work by Theophrastus’, designed as it was ‘for the correction of bad behaviour’ and ‘the removal of malice’.6 These early editors had a difficult task on their hands: how to make sense of the Proem’s moralizing claims, given that the Characters only contained a set of vices without corresponding virtues? And how to give these ordinary vices, each outlined in what seem like figures from observational comedy, the solemn dignity the Proem conferred on them? Turning to the prefaces, dedication letters and other paratexts of the editions of the Characters published in the sixteenth century, we find a number of surprising solutions to these problems. When taken together, they present us with three arguments for why bad examples might be instrumental in the instruction of good behaviour: an interpretive tradition that begins in 1517 and that ends with Isaac Casaubon’s celebrated editions of 1592 and 1599. The first argument is made by Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger, for whom the Characters shows us how to discern other people’s natures, in order to better manipulate them. Willibald Pirckheimer makes the second, positioning the Characters as a novel means of social control and a vehicle for corrective self-reflection. The third is elaborated by both Leonhard Lycius and Frédéric Morel, who frame Theophrastus' text as a pedagogical device used to prevent children adopting bad habits. This tradition has not before been studied in detail, with both literary historians and classicists preferring to focus on Casaubon’s later editions, rather than on those that preceded them.7 From these early editors’ ‘misreading’, or this error, we then gain a curious aesthetic justifying how bad examples of ordinary vices could teach readers how to behave. While the Characters has recently emerged in discussions about the cognitive value of literature – with arguments being made that its descriptions of types offer moral or practical knowledge – these claims have hinged on Casaubon’s later editions.8 By recovering this earlier approach, this article points to an alternative way in which Theophrastus’ sketches can shed light on the relationship between ethics and literature: one which would not contribute to current debates about literature and knowledge, but to discussions about the literary representation of bad behaviour. The Proem introduces the Characters as providing the answer to a problem. It opens with Theophrastus telling his interlocutor Polycles that he has long wondered why ‘even though Greece lies under the same sky, and all Greeks are educated in the same way, it happens that we do not have the same composition of character’.9 After long observation, the answer that Theophrastus has found to this question, it continues, is that there are men who are ‘good and bad’, two ‘classes of character’ that separate and distinguish individuals who share the same education and climate.10 Having come to this conclusion, Theophrastus states that he feels he ‘ought to write’ about how these two categories of men ‘normally behave in their lives’.11 The Proem’s explanation of the Characters’ ambition does not however end on this note. Rather it proposes that these sketches have a further moralizing purpose: that they will make Theophrastus and Polycles’ sons ‘better’.12 Theophrastus outlines two ways in which this will work. Their sons should first use this text, as ‘a guide’ to navigate which kind of people they should solicit and which they should avoid, so that they can learn ‘to associate with and become close to the finest men’.13 By mixing with these people, their sons will secondly develop an understanding of how ‘not to fall short’ of their standards: they will learn from others how to be excellent themselves.14 With this, the Proem introduces a morally instructive as well as an empirically clarifying purpose: Theophrastus will not only reveal the two distinct classes of men he has observed but will do so in order to teach readers how to better navigate the social world, and in doing so, how to give themselves a chance to become good. Both of these announced purposes, however, rely on the text of the Characters containing its missing virtues. This leaves the reader with the problem of trying to make sense both of how people can be separated into two classes of character, when only one class is depicted; and of how to use this text to learn to associate with ‘the finest men’ from portraits of their opposites. This disjunction between text and paratext did not, however, deter the Latin translators from attempting to show how the Characters could in some way fulfil the Proem’s moral pledge. If the Proem ignited its readers to approach the Characters with these particular moralizing intentions in mind – to encourage them to mine portraits of men with bad timing for signs of instruction and revelation – several other factors helped fan the flames. These readers were aware that Theophrastus was Aristotle’s successor at the Lyceum – ‘prince after Aristotle of the Peripatetics’ as one title proudly claims – and, in several cases, that he was an important botanist, metaphysician and philosopher of the senses in his own right.15 They were often further familiar with the study of character as a crucial part of ancient philosophy, with Aristotle’s Ethics having made its way into Latin translation long before.16 Armed with these elements of context, these Latin editors and translators retained additional grounds on which to base a reading of the Characters as providing moral guidance, despite the striking absence of the promised virtues. This did mean, however, that they needed to justify how exactly these bad examples might serve the end of helping to transform a reader’s actions for the better, and it is as a result of this obligation that we find our aesthetic. The first Latin translator to rise to this challenge was the fifteenth-century humanist, Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger, whose c.1434/5 manuscript translation of the Characters was printed in Vienna in July 1517, edited by the humanist Johannes Gremper.17 This Vienna edition is the text’s editio princeps – whether we argue it in terms of primacy or influence18 – not Willibald Pirckheimer’s 1527 edition, as has often been claimed.19 Lapo’s translation of 15 sketches is prefaced by a detailed dedication letter in which we find the first argument for how these examples of vice were thought to hold the potential to change their reader’s behaviour. Lapo’s dedication seems to be addressed to Francesco dal Legname, a fifteenth-century Papal chamberlain.20 In it Lapo sets up the Characters as having a number of fundamental qualities. He declares it to be a text which collects only ‘vices’, he associates it with moral philosophy through a methodological connection with Aristotle, and he indicates that it is a work from which ‘much utility’ can be derived.21 Its utility lies in how it exposes ‘certain images and characteristics’ through which its reader can learn to ‘judge’ others, understand their natures and thus ‘master them with intelligence and wisdom’. Lapo clarifies that this will have particular interest for those who, in his elusive phrase, are ‘in charge of very various cases’, those who, presumably like dal Legname, encounter people of all different types, whose qualities they are entrusted to discern. The Characters, Lapo hopes, is then a text that will not only help its readers to recognize the vices of others, but on the basis of this recognition, learn how to better engage with them. In this way, Lapo’s reading extends an aspect of the moralizing purpose of the Characters that we found in the Proem, where the Characters serves as a guide to the social world.22 Rather than suggesting that by using this guide, the reader will be able to get close to men of the finest sort – a reading that would depend on the representation of virtue – Lapo here inverts the power dynamic, positioning the Characters as advice to a man of the finest sort about how to best deal with those around him who are not good. If in both readings, the Characters is imagined to be a text that helps its reader to better judge others, in Lapo’s version, it only requires bad examples to be able to do so. While Lapo’s reading shares with the Proem a similar scaffold and structure, it further differs in the aim it wishes to bring about: substituting a transformation in the reader’s virtue, for a transformation in the reader’s ability to best handle other people’s vice. The second and rather different approach to the transformative effects of the Characters emerges in the succeeding translation of 1527 published by Pirckheimer in the newly Lutheran Nuremberg. Pirckheimer had received the original Greek manuscript when it was sent to him by Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola in September 1515.23 Gianfrancesco wrote to Pirckheimer explaining that he hoped to use the Characters to redeem ‘the debt’ he owed him: a debt which possibly refers to advice that Pirckheimer gave Gianfrancesco the year before on a draft of his De reformandis moribus oratio, a discourse Gianfrancesco intended to address to Pope Leo X on the need for ecclesiastical reform.24 Gianfrancesco was not aware of just how apt his gift of thanks was for the action it seems to be thanking, but several years later, the connection between the Characters and the reforming of mores became very clear to Pirckheimer, when he decided to send his edition of Theophrastus’ text to Albrecht Dürer, explaining how it could help to improve people’s corrupt customs. While the exchange of goods was common between these two friends – with Pirckheimer asking Dürer to pick him up precious stones, Greek manuscripts and birds’ feathers while the artist was in Venice – this seems to have been the only occasion on which Pirckheimer gave Dürer a book.25 Why it was this Greek text that he decided to dedicate to Dürer, what purpose he wanted his new Latin translation to serve and why he chose to do so at this moment in time – so many years after he had received the Characters as a gift from Gianfrancesco – are all questions that remain unanswered.26 Tentative responses, however, are not hard to find, and lie embedded within the text of the dedication. It is by recovering them that we find an alternative orientation to how Theophrastus’ sketches of vice might have moral import. Pirckheimer’s dedication begins by describing Theophrastus as having depicted ‘human feelings’.27 Despite the fact that the ‘feelings’ that Theophrastus represents do not correspond, as we know, to the more glamorous capital vices – the vices that make tragedies, and which present clear problems like Envy or Lust – Pirckheimer insists on taking them very seriously. These feelings, according to Pickheimer, are held in ‘the deepest recesses of the heart’, and are kept there, ‘most of the time’, through law and education.28 They only ‘erupt’ from their concealment if they have ‘occasion to do so’, and this occasion is when ‘the fear of lawgivers and pedagogues, by which they have long been constrained and suppressed has been removed’. At this point, vices burst out into the light of day, ‘and show themselves openly’. If this sentence contains within it an argument of political philosophy – that the fear of the law and educators is needed to keep vices at bay – it is also a contemporary political comment, as for Pirckheimer, ‘the age we live in makes clear beyond all others’ that this principle is ‘wholly true’.29 The problem of ‘the age we live in’, Pirckheimer clarifies, is that ‘an excess of freedom’ has produced ‘an excess of contempt’, that people are no longer afraid of ‘lawgivers and pedagogues’ and are now therefore contemptuously showing their vices ‘openly’.30 This new lack of submission to authority means, as Pirckheimer’s dedication continues, that when lawgivers and pedagogues preach the truth, they are ignored rather than obeyed. The result is that ‘everywhere the truth is preached, yet (…) least performed, just as if the kingdom of God were better brought about by mere words than by works’.31 The preference that this comparison betrays for salvation by ‘works’ rather than by ‘mere words’ exposes Pirckheimer’s ‘disillusionment’, as Jeffrey Ashcroft describes, ‘with the failure (…) of the Lutheran reformation to improve personal and social morality’.32 Pirckheimer had hosted Luther at his house in 1518, and had even been included in the excommunication bull against Luther in 1521, but by the time he wrote this, he had begun to disavow the Reform.33 While for Luther, salvation is ‘instilled in us without our works by grace alone’, Pirckheimer reveals in this phrase that he thought that ‘works’ were still needed to achieve salvation; and that preaching was not enough to bring it about.34 Pirckheimer’s dissatisfaction with Reform meant that he was looking for an alternative approach to moral education to those on offer, and one which would transform people’s actions, not only their beliefs. His options for what this alternative could be were, however, limited. He did not think that the swarm of vices which concerned him could be stopped by lawgivers preaching ‘the truth’, as these lawgivers no longer commanded any authority or inspired any fear. Nor did he think that these vices could be tempered by personal criticism of particular behaviour, as ‘we are all now so sensitive that no one can bear to hear his vices reproved’.35 This is where Theophrastus’ Characters comes in. ‘Nothing’, Pirckheimer says, would be ‘more useful’ for a person who is too sensitive to criticism than reading the kinds of book of which the Characters is the ‘most excellent’ example.36 The Characters, he thought, could get round the problem of being able to reform morals where preaching and critique could not, by virtue of two of its qualities. Firstly, how it delights rather than admonishes its reader, overcoming the need to rely on the now absent political emotion of fear. Secondly, how it encourages a process of corrective self-reflection that indirectly takes place while reading, avoiding any pointed reproach or critique. The Characters is a book, as Pirckheimer continues, ‘in which each of us can contemplate the condition of his own soul as if in a mirror, and by contemplating improve These sketches of vice depict who in our contemporary in’, readers to with the vices, and then by a process of to themselves of the vices that they they as of when contemplating in a mirror, Pirckheimer that the reader will of their soul when reading and contemplating a text that is like a This introduces an aesthetic process for what happens when a reader images of vice. Pirckheimer, it is not that a reader the of these vices as them to them as someone like It is rather a process of moral instruction by a written text that works by a of what we might where a reader with a character and then to the very that made them similar to this character in the first This an aesthetic that was across the newly Lutheran as the of good moral examples to As puts in the newly moral by good example was not only common but a of If Luther did not think that ‘works’ would achieve he did think that man was to to the of the and moral and it was often to these that this of all were published with that qualities in moral and Pirckheimer’s approach to the Characters then seems to have emerged from this Lutheran even if it its by the moral use of of ordinary vice rather than If this goes some way to what Pirckheimer in printing an edition of this Greek text in we are still with why he thought to send it to sense of Pirckheimer’s here can be found in two of the where he at how the sketches in the Characters are like written and where he that Dürer will be to of them by telling Dürer that are not able to it with own then at least it in This for Dürer to make images of this text – to Pirckheimer’s translation – a explanation of the between the argument about the value of the Characters with its If Dürer were to these they would not only hold the same potential as the text by to a who had been by but given the in they could have This was a power that having all images of Luther in in the knowledge that political on a as in printed as it did in Having received the Characters before he Dürer has not any of an at a Pirckheimer from this It is in part this failure to his alternative approach to moral reform that why, by Pirckheimer decided to to a of fear. to in the he that when with ‘the common who has been by now will but fear and If Pirckheimer does not achieve his own intentions for his translation of this text, he does us with a of a particular reading of the Characters that introduces a new way of in these sketches of vice. He also a connection between a moral reading of the Characters and the of which will and across the sixteenth century, with all but three of the editions being published in or by editors with the This only the connection between and the of as by figures as and with this connection a it is that a part of the Characters’ in close to Pirckheimer’s sense that this text a of the Lutheran aesthetic of moral While the of these editions are often too brief to a reading of the Characters that is similar to what we can is how these editors also the Characters to have moral by virtue of the of with which they chose to In these editions, the Characters is often with of moral philosophy or within that are designed to this find the in the edition by the published in where the Characters is between Aristotle’s Ethics and of under the title edition the Ethics and the Characters close together, by the works De and This connection with Aristotle is that the edition by the Characters in a Greek of Aristotle’s find an example of the approach in an edition published in in in which the Characters one of works in the and the In this the reader was to search for a moral quality and then the to find it elaborated or through the means of a This is a that the editors might have from the of and 4 of which the Characters as examples of vices for the reader to up in the in order to learn how to according to While this a sense of the and of this moral reading of the Characters as a text of practical philosophy, as well as a sense that it have had a particular to a it two editions which a third approach to explaining how this set of vices might and a behaviour. These are the editions of Leonhard Lycius and Frédéric Morel, published in in and in These two editions, in time and are by virtue of their on a taken from to their understanding of the Theophrastus’ a very example of the who, for the that they used to to the education of that one part of this would be as they used to their children to who were by their to get on so that – on the brought on by their – children would be educated to this vice and live with more and The notion here is that if are to through the of the behaviour’ to which it can they will being by in the this vice with and rather than and The given to the representation of this is of crucial as if the seem to be themselves when they are the moral instruction that the of them is to would be this process to work, it does not only seem crucial that the is but that the it are that they this without in any aspect of the vice by which it has been The moral instruction of the Characters is imagined by both Lycius and to work in a similar like will vices through their in Theophrastus’ They will then that if they these vices they would be for and so will to adopting them in the In the words of Morel, Theophrastus’ of vice can help the same way that was for the children to the often on on the Characters’ to the the in the Proem that the Characters is designed for Theophrastus and Polycles’ and here with of to whom to dedicate his This is one of several new that Lycius and in their approach to understanding the moral instruction of the only do they newly the way in which the Characters is designed to the but the of the vices seem or and a sense that this is a text designed to vices that might have in the rather than those which Morel, all this printing a book of vices that some might think will more than it to It is he by showing these vices in his readers will learn ‘to It is with Casaubon’s translation published in in 1592 that we to a fundamental with several of the we have been in the Latin the first time in the century, we find an two moral to the text that newly rely on the representation of both vice and just like the earlier Latin that the Characters is a work that is interested in behaviour. he begins in his dedication to and of is the third and ‘most way that the had of with philosophy and is about as a of moral instruction is how it proposes to teach ethics through ‘a of the way men as they (…) to this or that virtue or By providing these descriptions of behaviour, in the wanted to us (…) to a and a which could not be ‘more of a This in its sense means, ‘to a to someone who providing a striking as for how the Characters works on its If Theophrastus is providing the reader with in the same way a a to be he is in some way the reader to what they these sketches of makes clear how this of is to work when he the relationship between the Characters and the of philosophy and is about the Characters, in Casaubon’s is how it as an between the of and the philosopher between virtue and us to one and the The approach, on the other – similar to the – does not and vices in the but us the of to be and those to be ‘to the of other men and to from for our own an ‘an between philosophy and is therefore being between one concerned with virtue and and concerned with good and bad moral for readers to or If the for the Characters’ and the its they work to to a text with a of good and bad examples which through or to a reader’s This is the first moralizing approach to the Characters that He then continues, through a of to a second way in which the Characters is with moral that it is the text’s relationship with that for why the Characters is a between philosophy and rather than philosophy and The and between the and the he of is that ‘the the as they the can that have taken The relationship here with is that the from the with it one new by virtue of

This appendix provides editions of the Latin and the Hebrew texts (both in Hebrew characters) carried by MS Lyon, Bibliotheque municipale 15, fols. 176 v -173 r , accompanied by the re-transliteration into Latin characters of the former and an English translation. The two central columns of each double-page spread reproduce each successive double-columned leaf. To the left of these columns, the appendix gives Francesc Garcia's original Latin text as reconstructed from the Hebrew transliteration next to it; to the right, it gives an English version of the Hebrew translation of Garcia's text. The numbers supplied in the far left column are editorial, meant to facilitate reference to individual sentences. Angle brackets have been used to indicate material that was evidently originally present in Garcia's Latin text but has now disappeared, either from the Latin and the transliteration or from the translation. Keywords: English translation; European medieval intellectual history; Francesc Garcia; Hebrew text; Latin text

Book Δ of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Averroes’s three commentaries on it provide explanations of over thirty important metaphysical terms that are commonly used by many of the sciences. The Hebrew translation of Metaphysics Δ with Averroes’s Long Commentary, and its subsequent revision, provide a good lens with which to view the development of basic Hebrew scientific terminology and the way scientific terms were translated from Greek into Arabic and then into Hebrew. An examination of the differences between the original Hebrew translation and the later revision of this text shows that the revision was undertaken not only to clarify and correct, sometimes unsuccessfully, the original translation, but also, and more importantly, to promote the development of a standardized Hebrew scientific language. This standardization extends from the basic and formulaic terms that serve to outline the structure of the Long Commentary to central Aristotelian scientific terms, such as being, essence, substance, whole, and universal. This study thus addresses the question of how medieval translators proceeded in their terminological choices as well as how revisers proceeded and why. It is a case study of the medieval Arabic into Hebrew translation process.

New Books across the Disciplines

Elaine Hobby’s critical edition of the earliest English translation of The birth of mankind, written (at least ostensibly) by Eucharius Rosslin, is a most welcome addition to several other recent volumes on childbirth and gynaecology that have appeared in this series. The phenomenal success of the volume, from the publication of the original German (1513) and its Latin translation, to the versions in many other European vernaculars, including English, alone justifies Hobby’s undertaking; in addition, she brings impeccable scholarship and some fresh insights to her task. In a relatively short but incisive introduction, she recognizes that her volume will be used by both specialist and general readers—just as Rosslin’s sixteenth-century English translators sought to appeal not only to the midwives for whom Rosslin originally wrote, but also to lay readers (of both sexes) with a broader interest in the subject of reproduction and sexuality. Thus, on the one hand, she engages with detailed critical debates (reassessing debts to Vesalian anatomy in the 1545 edition, and arguing strongly that Richard Jonas, the original translator, was probably the same Jonas who was Highmaster of St Paul’s school), and, on the other, she does not neglect to provide a clear overview of Renaissance understandings of reproductive physiology and humoral medicine. Since there is already a very good modern English translation of Rosslin’s German text (by Wendy Arons), readers may ask why we need Hobby’s edition of the early English version. The answer is that from the viewpoint of historians of both medicine and of the book, The birth of mankind is particularly rich and complex. The first translation (1540) was undertaken by a layman, who added to Rosslin’s text a final section, drawn (without acknowledgement) from the Hippocratic corpus, and treating the conception of mankind. This version was revised in 1545 by a physician, Thomas Raynalde, who also added a new first part, setting out in English the very recent anatomical discoveries of Vesalius, as well as reproducing the latter’s anatomical illustrations. Given that the work remained in print until 1654, going through many editions, Hobby faced a difficult choice as to the base text. She settled on the 1560 version for the reason that it underwent relatively little further change, and thus represents the version which circulated most widely for nearly a century. The decision reflects her wish to make her edition as accessible as possible to less specialist readers. Accordingly, only major differences from one edition to another are signalled in the footnotes, which—apart from useful indications of flagrant mistranslations, unacknowledged borrowings from classical sources or key historical references—are largely given over to translating less familiar sixteenth-century usage into modern English. In addition, the reader is provided with a generous medical glossary at the end of the volume. The illustrations, probably a key to the work’s early success, are reproduced satisfactorily, with the exception of the reversed images on p. 88. Specialist readers have to turn to the appendices (of which there are no fewer than fourteen) to track down both portions of text which had been excised by 1560 and tables of changes introduced between one edition and another. Hobby has painstakingly collated some fifteen different editions, but leaves it to others, should they wish, to draw their own conclusions as to the significance of the numerous small changes. Hobby’s (and/or Ashgate’s) decision to organize the volume primarily so that the general reader can peruse it comfortably and conveniently may occasionally frustrate those of who work closely in this field, but on balance I think it is justified, for this is a work which made a major contribution to the circulation of knowledge about sexuality and reproductive medicine from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, and thus deserves as wide a readership as possible. And it is important to stress that Hobby has certainly not compromised the quality of her scholarly research. This volume has surely set the agenda—and a very high standard—for a pan-European study of the reception of Rosslin’s Rose Garden.

This chapter presents the Hebrew text and the English translation of the second version of Abraham Ibn Ezra's Book of the World. The translation of the text talks about the conjunctions of the planets. There are 120 conjunctions of the seven planets, and each conjunction has its own judgment and verdict. But the great conjunctionthe conjunction of Saturn with Jupiter at the beginning of Aries, which happens once every thousand years or close to thatis the root. All the Ancients agreed that the sign of Capricorn with Mercury governs India, and Aries and Jupiter govern Babylonia, and Taurus and Mars govern Shur, and Gemini andVenus govern Egypt, and Cancer and Mars govern Jerusalem (but the correct datum is Leo with Saturn), and Leo and Mars govern the land of ?in (China), and Virgo and Mars govern Spain.Keywords:Abraham Ibn Ezra; Book of the World; conjunctions; English translation; Hebrew text; planets

This chapter presents the Hebrew text and the English translation of the second version of Abraham Ibn Ezra's Book of the World. The translation of the text talks about the conjunctions of the planets. There are 120 conjunctions of the seven planets, and each conjunction has its own judgment and verdict. But the great conjunction""the conjunction of Saturn with Jupiter at the beginning of Aries, which happens once every thousand years or close to that""is the root. All the Ancients agreed that the sign of Capricorn with Mercury governs India, and Aries and Jupiter govern Babylonia, and Taurus and Mars govern Shur, and Gemini andVenus govern Egypt, and Cancer and Mars govern Jerusalem (but the correct datum is Leo with Saturn), and Leo and Mars govern the land of ?in (China), and Virgo and Mars govern Spain.Keywords:Abraham Ibn Ezra; Book of the World; conjunctions; English translation; Hebrew text; planets

Reviewed by: The Community Rule: A Critical Edition with Translation by Sarianna Metso James M. Tucker sarianna metso, The Community Rule: A Critical Edition with Translation (EJL 51; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2019). Pp. x + 60. $49. In this volume, Sarianna Metso provides a new critical edition of the Qumran Community Rule manuscripts. Under the rubric of the Community Rule, the author includes fourteen manuscripts: 1QS, 1Q29a, 4QpapSa, 4QSb, 4QpapSc, 4QSd, 4QSe, 4QSf, 4QSg, 4QSh, 4QSi, 4QSj, 5QS, and 11QFragment related to Serekh ha-Yaḥad. In addition to new transcriptions of these manuscripts and fragmentary remains, M. provides a textual apparatus, textual notes, and an English translation. The presentation of the manuscripts takes as its starting point the editorial methods of the Hebrew Bible Critical Edition series (HBCE). The volume contains an introduction, bibliography, and Hebrew text with English translation. In the introduction, M. introduces her editorial method and offers a brief history of the discovery and a physical description of the Community Rule manuscripts; theoretical and methodological considerations; and the layout of the volume. As part of a rationale for a new edition, M. draws from the editorial method of the Hebrew Bible Critical Edition series (general editor Ronald Hendel, 2016). She clearly articulates her objective, namely, “to present an archetype” of the Community Rule. An “archetype” is “the latest attainable version of the text behind the existing manuscripts witnesses” (p. 1). The application of the word “critical” modifies the textual presentation, insofar as the Hebrew text is not extant in any single Community Rule manuscript. The reader, however, should be aware that there are equally valid editorial methods apart from the HBCE editorial principles. There have been significant developments, for example, in the fields of digital humanities, scholarly digital editions, and material philology that present significant challenges to the binaries made between a diplomatic text and critical text presentation. Tara L. Andrews, in her essay, “The Third Way: Philology and Critical Edition in the Digital Era” (Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship 10 [2013] 61–76) highlights how a digital medium circumvents the type of editorial decisions of the traditional methods of an archetype theory (e.g., HBCE) or diplomatic theory (BHS, Biblia Hebraica Quinta, or the Hebrew University Bible Project). In other words, many of the editorial decisions discussed by M. are reflective of the medium of a print edition—along with its limitations. According to the author, the apparatus helps the reader to see the development of the [End Page 128] text, since scribes creatively contributed to the development of the tradition. For M., the manuscript of “1QS alone makes it clear that its text is an amalgamation of disparate passages most likely originating from a variety of sources” (p. 2). The Cave 4, 5, and 11 fragmentary manuscripts further attest to a heterogeneous character of the tradition. In addition to manuscript variants, the apparatus contains brief notes on paleographical issues and/or differences of transcriptions in contrast to the author’s previous work; Elisha Qimron’s editions (The Scrolls of the Judaean Desert [Hebrew] [Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 2010]), and Phillip Alexander and Geza Vermes’s edition of the Cave 4 and 5 manuscripts in Qumran Cave 4.XIX: Serekh Ha-Yaḥad and Two Related Texts (DJD 26; Oxford: Clarendon, 1998). Under the heading of “Theoretical and Methodological Considerations,” M. alerts the reader to some lingering issues pertaining to how previous editors classified some of the Cave 1, 4, and 5 manuscripts (pp. 6–7). The issues revolve around the fragmentary nature of the manuscripts, appropriation of scholarly categories, and matters of presenting the Hebrew text of the Community Rule. Since some of the Cave 4 and 5 manuscripts present “variant editions” (p. 7), M. decided to present the Hebrew text and translation in a column format (see, e.g., pp. 26–37, 42–53). The two-column format presents 1QS adjacent to 4QSb and 4QSd, albeit with a single apparatus for both columns. In addition to an apparatus, M. provides a summary of the extant manuscripts just above the apparatus. The summary provides a list of the extant...

In 1517, Venetian printer Daniel Bomberg produced an edition of the Hebrew Bible with the title ʾArbāʿāh ve-ʿEsrīm (The Twenty-Four, i.e., the Twenty-Four Books) that contained a Hebrew text based on several manuscripts, together with the Aramaic Targum and Jewish commentaries including those of Rashi (R. Solomon ben Isaac, 1040–1105) on the Pentateuch, the five scrolls and other books, R. David Kimḥi (ca. 1160–ca. 1235) on the prophets and Psalms, and Naḥmanides (Moses ben Naḥman, 1194–1270) on Job. This first edition of the Biblia Rabbinica (Rabbinic Bible), or Miqraʾot Gedolot (Amplified Scriptures), as it came to be known in Jewish circles, was edited by Felix Pratensis, a Jewish convert to Christianity. A second edition appeared in 1525, for which Bomberg enlisted as editor Jacob ben Ḥayyim, a Tunisian Jew who had resettled in Italy to escape persecution. This second Rabbinic Bible (titled Shaʿar Adonai he-Ḥādāsh, The New Gate of the Lord) offered a Hebrew text based on better manuscripts and a more accurate representation of the Masorah, along with the Aramaic Targum and a richer selection of Hebrew commentaries, including Rashi and Ibn Ezra (Abraham Ibn Ezra, 1089–ca. 1167) on most books.The first edition of the Rabbinic Bible (1517) was used by early Christian Hebraists such as Sebastian Münster, Johannes Reuchlin, Martin Bucer, and Philip Melanchthon. The Second Rabbinic Bible (1525) was even more influential on the course of Christian Hebrew scholarship, with its medieval Jewish commentaries providing essential exegetical information for Christian Hebraists for centuries. Moreover, the layout of the Second Rabbinic Bible served as a model for numerous new editions and printings of Miqraʾot Gedolot that presented the original Hebrew with Masorah, the Targum, and key medieval Jewish commentaries.The present volume is the final installment of Michael Carasik’s English-language version of the Mikraʾot Gedolot. Exodus appeared in 2005, followed by Leviticus (2009), Numbers (2011), Deuteronomy (2015), and now Genesis (2018). This is not a straightforward translation of any particular edition of the Rabbinic Bible but a new English manifestation of the Mikraʾot Gedolot format. Each page contains the vocalized Hebrew text (based on BHS) at the top center of the page, with the old JPS translation of 1917 (more word-for-word) in the upper right corner and the new JPS translation of 1985/1999 (more idiomatic) in the upper left. These English translations stand in place of the Aramaic Targum. The body of the text contains thought-provoking exegetical questions in English for each passage taken from the commentary of Isaac Abarbanel (1437–1508) and select English translations or paraphrases of the commentaries of Rashi, Rashbam (R. Samuel ben Meir, ca. 1080–ca. 1174), Ibn Ezra, and Naḥmanides. In a section called “Additional Comments” at the bottom of each page, Carasik gives insights on the text taken from other Jewish authorities, namely, Joseph Bekhor Shor (12th century), David Kimḥi, Ḥizkuni (Hezekiah ben Manoah, 13th century), Gersonides (Levi ben Gershon, 1288–1344), Abarbanel, Obadiah ben Jacob Sforno (ca. 1470–ca. 1550), and the Masorah. The introduction explains the format and translation principles for the various sources and offers advice for profitable reading. For the Genesis volume, Carasik provides a rendering of the introductions to the commentaries of Rashi, Rashbam, Ibn Ezra, Kimḥi, and Naḥmanides. Near the end of the volume are brief essays on special topics: “Peshat and Derash,” “Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” “Naḥmanides’ Mysticism,” and “Biblical Hebrew.” The volume concludes with a glossary, list of names, and recommendations for further reading.As Carasik explains in his introduction, his goal is not to provide a precise translation of these medieval Jewish commentaries that closely follows the wording of the original but rather to recast the commentaries so that they explain the Hebrew text as though speaking to English readers. Technical Hebrew comments, obscure references to biblical or rabbinic sources, and passages where later commentators essentially repeat Rashi are regularly omitted—although one still finds interesting comments on the Hebrew such as can be communicated in English (e.g., Gen 2:21). The longer and shorter commentaries of Ibn Ezra are combined and sometimes rewritten. This is often necessary for comprehensibility in English, given Ibn Ezra’s extreme conciseness. Carasik’s freedom in translation often allows him to render comments originally expressed in terse, efficient Hebrew into amusing English. For example, at Gen 2:18 on ʿēzer ke-negdō, “a helper as against him” or “a helper according to his opposite,” Rashi observes: “(If) he is worthy, (she is) a helper; (if) he is not worthy, (she is) against him to fight (him),” which Carasik translates: “If he is lucky, he gets a fitting one; if not, he gets a fighting one.” At the end of the volume Carasik gives a list of other English translations for each of the individual commentators for the benefit of those looking for more consistently literal English renderings.The value of The Commentator’s Bible for those in biblical studies is considerable. I will mention two points. First, these volumes provide convenient access to major medieval Jewish commentators, whose learned observations illuminate the biblical texts themselves and are foundational for understanding late medieval and Reformation-era Christian exegesis of the Hebrew Bible. Second, the contents and layout of this volume invite readers from outside the Jewish tradition into a rich experience of interfaith study.With the Genesis volume, Carasik’s The Commentator’s Bible on the entire Pentateuch is now complete. Further volumes on other books of the Tanak would be most welcome. As a tool for torah study and a handy resource for biblical scholars, The Commentator’s Bible is highly recommended.

This study investigated the relationship of attitudes and cultural background to reading comprehension in the second language (L2) of eighth‐grade students in three different social contexts: Israeli Arab students (n=73) learning Hebrew as their L2, Israeli Jewish students (n=83) learning English as their L2, and Canadian Arab students (n=52) learning English as their L2. Eighteen stories were selected for reading, six for each of the three groups, as follows: Israeli Arab – three Arab stories in Arabic and in Hebrew translation, and three Jewish stories in Hebrew and in Arabic translation; Israeli Jewish – three Jewish stories in Hebrew and in English translation, and three western stories in English and in Hebrew translation; Canadian Arab – three Arab stories in Arabic and in English translation, and three western stories in English and in Arabic translation. The results showed that the motivation of the students to learning their L2 was instrumental rather than integrative, regardless of social context. Furthermore, in the two Israeli groups, Arab and Jewish, students better comprehended their own culture's stories regardless of the language of the story. By contrast, the results for the Canadian Arab group showed that text language, not text content, was the strongest factor affecting reading comprehension.

Ferre, Lola (2023), Isaac Israelí’s The Definition of Fever and Its Essence in Its Hebrew Translations: The First Treatise of The Book on Fevers: Accompained by Arabic, Latin and Old Spanish Editions and English Translation. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society Press, 256 pp. ISBN: 978-1-60618-115-7.