“Where the Plain Meaning Is Obscure or Unacceptable . . .:” The Treatment of Implicit Anthropomorphisms in the Medieval Karaite Tradition of Arabic Bible Translation

Abstract

The article scrutinizes the treatment of implicit biblical anthropomorphisms in the Arabic translations of medieval Karaites and puts forward a detailed taxonomy of the ways in which they responded to this theological challenge. It demonstrates that in view of such important extra-textual concerns, the Karaites did not feel more committed to a literal representation of the source text than their rabbinic predecessors and contemporaries. Moreover, they did not invent new ways of dealing with these “problematic” expressions, but further developed, consolidated, refined, and systematized older Jewish techniques found in canonical Aramaic Targums and Saʿadyah’s Tafsīr. In addition, they gave these techniques a new, scientific justification enlisting the linguistic convention of ellipsis (ikhtiṣār) to account for some verbal constructs that use the name of God. Finally, they cited the rabbinic dictum, “the Torah speaks in the language of man,” to explain why the Bible depicts the incorporeal God in corporeal terms.