Fresh Translation Research Articles

A Comparative Handbook to the Gospel of Mark: Comparisons with Pseudepigrapha, the Qumran Scrolls, and Rabbinic Literature. Edited by BRUCE CHILTON, DARRELL BOCK, DANIEL M. GURTNER, JACOB NEUSNER, LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN, and DANIEL ODEN.

This first in a series of ‘handbooks’ on the context of the New Testament gospels is written to accompany Mark, now generally agreed to have been the first of the gospels to be composed. This is the first major difference to the series which it surely seeks to succeed, the hefty Strack–Billerbeck Kommentar zum neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, which took the gospels in canonical order. What the editors also now seek to add are elements from pseudepigrapha and, of course, the Qumran scrolls. These three categories together constitute the Judaic context of Mark, that is, ‘resources from the Judaic environment that appear useful for understanding the text’ (p. xii). They hope to avoid the ‘parallelomania’ of commentators such as Strack–Billerbeck (p. viii), and to provide ‘comparison’ (p. xi), indeed ‘not a commentary’ (p. xi), rather an aid for commentators (p. xii). Analogies may be ‘simple’, ‘topical’, ‘interpretative’, or ‘close’ (pp. viii–xi). It is, however, perhaps unfortunate that the first two examples of such analogies they provide are taken from Q, and only the latter two from Mark). This programme will allow them to place (singular) Christianity within the matrix of contemporary (plural) Judaisms (p. viii; p. 36, however, allows for the idea of plural Christianities). The final elements which the handbook seeks to add are ‘a fresh translation’ (p. vii) of Mark and an Aramaic retroversion where appropriate.

Zola d’Ouest en Est: le naturalisme en France et dans les deux Allemagnes by Aurélie Barjonet

first-hand experience with the war. Nevertheless, male and female writers from this second generation inherited the legacy of the Algerian war. As a result, evidence of the specters of this war, which was only officially labeled as such by the French government in 1999, can be found throughout their writing. Most of the works addressed in the second part were published after 1980. Among the genres treated are theater, roman policier, and bande dessinée. The inclusion of narratives by several female writers highlights the gendered nature of colonization , war, and the post-colonial. The presence of a variety of literary genres and subaltern voices across two generations contributes to the overall strength and quality of the volume. It concludes with a roundtable discussion led by Guy Dugas, with the participation of Maïssa Bey, Virginie Buisson, Bertrand Leclair, and Arno Bertina. This informal format provides another framework through which readers can access the voices and experiences of post-colonial writers, as they discuss the themes of artistic production and the Algerian War. I recommend this book to scholars whose research focuses on war literature, the Algerian War, decolonization, and the post-colonial era in France and Algeria; it will be equally interesting to individuals researching the history and socio-political role of publishing houses and editors. University of North Dakota Sarah E. Mosher BARJONET, AURÉLIE. Zola d’Ouest en Est: le naturalisme en France et dans les deux Allemagnes. Rennes: PU de Rennes, 2010. ISBN 978-2-7535-1178-1. Pp. 280. 20 a. During the nineteenth century, the themes and style of Zola’s novels as well as his public defense of Alfred Dreyfus earned him, depending on the audience, a degree of either admiration or scorn that shaped his reputation until after World War II. Barjonet’s study traces the critical reception of Zola after 1945 in East Germany and to a lesser extent in West Germany and France. In this account of scholars’ efforts to reevaluate Zola’s literary legacy, she highlights the central role that political ideology played in shaping critical opinions. Just as post-war East Germany began reeducating its citizenry for the demands of the new socialist state, Rita Schober, the réceptrice dominante for Zola, was chosen to direct the publication of fresh translations of the Rougon-Macquart series, and her editorial work effectively resituated Zola’s place in literary history. Schober’s critical introductions, written between 1952 and 1976, diverged from the traditionally negative Marxist view of Zola’s naturalist, biological explanations of society. Instead, she praised the novelist for being at once a progressive social critic—who wrote at a time when “la problématique sociale” (107) was rarely a topic for literature—as well as a public figure who took action to combat the injustice of the Dreyfus Affair. Barjonet describes the personalities of those whose literary, political, and social debates contributed to this initial reinterpretation of Zola for East German readers. A second phase of the novelist’s réhabilitation occurred when Schober’s critical appreciation of his works shifted toward a focus on form and stylistics. Although the postfaces that she wrote for the RougonMacquart series after the fall of the Berlin Wall permitted her to revisit her interpretations of these novels, she continued even in 2005 to reject the mythological aspects of Zola’s œuvre, seeing them as proof of his “approche déshistoricisée” (133) and as an indication of the novelist’s “incapacité à percer la causalité réelle 1026 FRENCH REVIEW 86.5 des rapports sociaux” (135). For Barjonet, such assessments underscore the fact that Schober did not abandon “toutes ses critiques de Zola après la réunification, malgré une approche littéraire moderne” (135). In West Germany, where social criticism was less prominent during the post-war period, scholars took more interest in structures and forms characteristic of Zola’s novels. Among French critics, on the other hand, the centenary of the writer’s birth prompted a reexamination of his letters and manuscripts. This renewed interest in Zola, reflected in works by Poulet, Bachelard, Sartre, Barthes, Butor, Deleuze, Picon, Mitterand, and Borie, established Zola’s role as a modern myth...

Review: Common English Bible. New Testament: A Fresh Translation to Touch the Heart and Mind

Review: Common English Bible. New Testament: A Fresh Translation to Touch the Heart and Mind

One and Many: A Comparative Study of Plato’s Philosophy and Daoism Represented by Ge Hong by Ji Zhang (review)

Reviewed by: One and Many: A Comparative Study of Plato’s Philosophy and Daoism Represented by Ge Hong by Ji Zhang Marianna Benetatou (bio) Ji Zhang. One and Many: A Comparative Study of Plato’s Philosophy and Daoism Represented by Ge Hong. Monograph/Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, no. 22. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2012. xxvi + 368 pp. Paperback $27.00, isbn 978-0-8248-3554-5. Daoism has rarely been the object of comparative studies. Ji Zhang’s One and Many: A Comparative Study of Plato’s Philosophy and Daoism Represented by Ge Hong is an attempt to fill the gap. The author proposes “to read Plato through Ge Hong” (p. xxiv) in order to understand the core of Platonic philosophy, namely the theory of forms, within the conceptual framework of Daoism. Further, Platonic ontology, as exposed in Parmenides, is contrasted with Ge Hong’s cosmogony metaphor in Baopuzi, and the Timaeus creation myth is compared to Daoist alchemical texts. The Daoist relational ontology of essence and existence is characterized as biological, empirical, and existential, while Plato’s rational philosophy is psychological, immaterial, and ideal (p. 77). The author expresses serious objections to the utility of the Platonic legacy in persisting to shape science as a set of mathematical formulas expressing universal laws ruled by causality. Instead, he advances the model of Daoist alchemical empiricism as an appropriate substitute to inspire and guide modern science, particularly physics and cosmology. In this context, primordial indeterminateness generates actual things according to the ever-changing cycle of the five elements (wu xing). Zhang criticizes the philosophical method of searching for a commensurable ground for comparison as partial and inadequate. He has recourse to a direct confrontation between the two philosophers, Ge Hong and Plato. Traditions confront each other with whatever speculative categories they possess, regardless of their commensurability or convergence. Particularly, Daoism has never formulated an epistemology, but the author is confident that its worldview can be an adequate match to Plato’s rational inquiry into the intelligibility of what is. The most interesting part of the book is, without doubt, the well-documented exposition of Ge Hong’s philosophy as the inheritor and epitomizer of Daoist tradition. Ge Hong (284–344? c.e.), a relatively unknown Daoist in Western literature, occupies an important position in Daoist tradition both as a theoretician and an alchemist. As we learn from the very beginning, his masterwork Baopuzi has been translated with obvious inaccuracies. Zhang offers us a fresh translation of some important fragments along with a critical study retracing Ge’s thought to Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Wang Bi. He follows the traditional Chinese method of extracting layers of meaning from previous texts, thus revealing the predominant patterns of thought running through Daoist writers through the ages. He draws a parallel between Laozi’s cosmogonical metaphor of dao as the mother of the myriad things and Ge’s genealogical metaphor of xuan (primal indeterminateness) [End Page 344] as the ancestor of qi (determinate things). Wu (not being) and you (being) are understood within the cosmogonical metaphor as an ontological unity, whose self-changing from wu to you explains becoming. By conceiving primordial unity as both being and not being, Daoist ontology includes becoming and change, the physical objects and experience. Daoist all-inclusiveness is repeatedly contrasted with the Platonic distinction of being and not being, of essence and becoming, of intelligible forms and sensible objects. The pivotal concepts of being and not being acquire an altogether different meaning, therefore different ontological status, in the philosophies under examination. Daoist constant change is further contrasted with Plato’s conception of movement as motion and variation. Moreover, Zhang draws some interesting parallels between Daoist ontology and alchemical practice. In this context, the alchemical transmutation of the elements coincides for the practitioner with a transformative and self-liberating journey back to the original unity of the dao. He thus becomes an immortal, a being realizing within his physical body some important intuitions of ontology, such as physical immortality, freedom, indeterminate action (wu wei) and empty mind. Lastly, Daoism, particularly through alchemical experimentation, has formulated an empirical and highly original theory of the beginnings of the universe...

"The Greatest Historian" in New English

"The Greatest Historian" in New English STEVEN J. WILLETT ^^.acaulay famously declared Thucydides to be "thegreatest historian thateverlived."This judgment reflects a good deal ofpartisanhyperbole, and quitea numberofotherhistorians ancientand modernmight justify the claim,includingHerodotus,Sima Qian, Ibn Khaldun,and Gibbon,butThucydides is certainly themostdifficult Greek historian to translate. MartinHammond'snewEnglish translation *is thefirst sinceStevenLattimore attempted to capturethe fullnuance and complexity of Thucydides'prose withoutresort to excessivesimplification or paraphrase.1 Indeed , to date Lattimore's versionis the only one thatcan stand comparison with Hobbes' magisterialtranslation, which many othersubsequenttranslators have raided for theirown work. Given the importanceof Thucydidesfor western historiography, whatever hisinternational rank,anothernew Englishversionis a signalevent.BeforeI look morecloselyat theHammond/Rhodes edition,letmesayup front thatI have no intention of comparingit closelywith RobertB. Strassler's LandmarkThucydides , now nearlyfifteenyearsbehindus .Whatever itsvirtues, andthey aremany, he choseto use RichardCrawley'sold 1874 translation with onlylightrevision to avoidthetimeand costofa fresh translation .Crawleytendsto simplify theexceptionalcomplexity of Thucydides'speeches,while Lattimoreconfronts them withEnglishthatcapturesmuchofthedifficulty. Crawleyis * Thucydides, ThePeloponnesian War , translated byMartin Hammond , introduction andnotes byP.J.Rhodes. NewYorkandOxford : Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 2009.lxiv + 708pages.$19.95,paperback. ARION 19. 1SPRING/SUMMER 20II 174 "THEGREATEST HISTORIAN" INNEWENGLISH more successfulin narrativepassages, especially where Thucydides employsa matter-of-fact stylethatoftenrisesto vivid,energetic descriptions ofaction.In testing Hammond's translation, then,I willfocuson how he handlesa representativenarrative episodeand a sectionfroma majorspeech. First, however, let'ssurvey thecontents. P.J.Rhodes'contribution to theeditionincludesthefortyfour -page introduction (pagesix-liii),theselective bibliography (liv-lvii), the detailed book-by-book summaryand analysis(lviii-lxiv),the appendixof weightsand measures (473-474), the 157-pageexplanatory notes(475-632), and (presumably) thenoteson theGreektext(633-43). The authorstake the OxfordClassical Text of H. StuartJonesas theirstarting-point and thensupplytextualnotesforthose places wherethe texttheytranslatediffers fromthe OCT and forplaces wheretheyaccept OCT readingsthatsome modernscholarsdo not: "Not all ofthesedivergences have a significant effect on thesenseor thedetail,butwherethey do the textual issues are discussed in the Explanatory Notes" (633). Martin Hammond was responsibleforthe translation,most of the "decisions on which reading to adopt in themanyplaces wheretheGreektextis in doubt" (page v), and the comprehensivesixty-four-page index (644-708). I assume that both Hammond and Rhodes workedtogether to assemblethe noteson the Greektext, even if the formermade most of the decisionson which readings to accept,and thatbothcooperatedon selecting the sheaf of ten maps. All but two of the maps are in fact adaptedfrom existing booksbyRhodes,B. W.Henderson, J. F. Lazenby,K. J.Dover and SimonHornblower.2 Whilethe maps are not as richand variedas thosein theLandmark Thucydides , theyare adequate to followthenarrative. Three aspects of this editionare, however,noteworthy. First,Rhodes' introduction is one of thebestI've everread forthegeneralreader.In forty-four crisp,concisepages,he managesto lay out thecontextto thewar,to analyzethe evolving militarystrategyfrom the Archidamian War StevenJ. Willett175 through itsmiddleand finalstages,to providea shortbiographyofThucydidesalongwithan accountofthecomposition of his history,and to detail Thucydides' historical methodsand style.He concludeswitha shortprospectus of laterGreekhistorians who followedThucydides. The sizeof the introduction beliesthe breadthand varietyof complex materialRhodes is able to deployin a lucidexpositionthat stemsfromhis long engagement withThucydides.Second, thenotesbenefit fromall thenew researchthathas developed sincetheLandmarkThucydides , particularly fromthe commentary bySimonHornblower, whichis an essentialaccompaniment to A. W. Gomme'smonumental commentary as completed by AnthonyAndrewes and K. J. Dover.3 Rhodesmakesitclearthat"These notesseekto helpa range of readers,includingreaderswithouta greatdeal of backgroundknowledge ,to understand bothThucydides'subject matterand his treatment of it" (475). Despite thatcaveat, thesynthesis ofmaterialhe offers is sufficiently diverseand varied - especially in the analysis of narrative - that it shouldproveusefulto a broad rangeof readers,fromstudentsto professionalhistorians.Finally,the translationis based on a freshexaminationof thetextualtradition. The tenpages ofdensenoteson theGreektexttestify to theeditors ' determination that this translationshould come as close as possible to what Thucydidesactuallywrote. For thatreasonalone ithas an advantageno othercurrent translation ,in or out ofcopyright, can match. Most generalreadersand teacherswill selectthisedition primarily forthetranslation and secondarily forthesupport material.I will test Hammond's work by examiningtwo passages thatreflect opposingaspectsof Thucydides'style: his treatment of narrative and his treatment of speeches.A closecomparisonoftheEnglishwiththeGreekshouldshow clearlyhow Hammond has trackedThucydides'verycomplex syntax. Bothpassages come fromBook 2. The narrative excerpt describestheTheban attackon Plataea in 431 bce. The lit- 176 "THEGREATEST HISTORIAN" INNEWENGLISH tie city of Plataea, Athens' only ally at the Battle of Marathonin 490 bce, had always been hostileto Thebes, whichconcludedthattheimminence of war gave it an opportunity to seize the citywitha preemptive attackwhile peace stillheld.The Thebanforces...

A Gathering for Our Time: The Dream of the Poem as an Anthology

A Gathering for Our Time:The Dream of the Poem as an Anthology Jonathan P. Decter Peter Cole's The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492 offers fresh translations of a rich corpus of Hebrew verse, some known to English reading audiences, some presented here for the first time. In addition to establishing himself as a fine poet in his own right, Cole had already applied his poetic talent to translating select poems of two of the great Hebrew poets of al-Andalus, Samuel Ha-Nagid and Solomon Ibn Gabirol. His translation style mixes the contemporary with the archaic, eschewing the Elizabethan and Victorian styles of earlier translators (what Cole calls a "wax-museum-like school of translation", 17), abandoning the rhyme of the original, but nonetheless preserving many idioms and allusions strange to the English ear within a sound world that gives that same ear thrill, aiming first and foremost to re-create something of the original's power and force. But it is not Cole's translation method that I wish to address here - this [End Page 167] is best left to other translators. Rather, I wish to discuss The Dream of the Poem as an anthology, pointing first to a few of the early English anthologies (between 1851 and 1917) that include the Hebrew poets of Spain, and then returning to the contemporary intellectual, cultural and political worlds to which Cole's volume speaks most eloquently.1 Of all literary forms, the anthology might appear, at first glance, to be the one in which an author comments least upon the material being presented (whether the editor includes texts in the original language only, his or her own translations, or the translations of others). Especially when there are no introductory or critical notes, it would seem that the compiler simply brings together materials as they truly exist, allowing the reader an opportunity for a convenient perusal of literary history. Yet, in the very process of sifting through materials and selecting texts, giving certain authors greater representation than others, choosing principles of organization and juxtaposing texts in specific orderings, the anthologist creates a narrative of literary history and suggests meaning.2 No anthology can escape being a partial representation of a literary corpus, and every anthology is shadowed by its own "anti-anthology" - the body of texts not selected. Anthologies are written for their own historical moments. They generally presume, seek to create, or have the effect of creating literary canons, collections of texts from bygone eras deemed relevant to a contemporary community for preservation and interpretation. The selection of texts can be informed by any number of motivating factors that pertain to aesthetic criteria, moral standards, modes of self-representation, nationalism, and the intended use of texts (performative, contemplative, devotional, etc.). It has been argued convincingly that many literary canons were established in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to establish the boundaries of communities; Gregory Jusdanis writes, "[T]he canon serves as a utopian site [End Page 168] of continuous textuality in which a nation, a class, or an individual may find an undifferentiated identity" (59). In the case of nations, canons -and anthologies with them- allow for a staking out of intellectual territory that parallels physical territorial claims. Jewish anthologies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries served as sites for the exploration of cultural identities, especially as Jews increasingly identified themselves as a "nation" whose past could be reconstructed and reclaimed in the same way as that of the German, French or Greek nations. This was the case whether the anthologies were produced in German by scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums (science of Judaism), in Hebrew by Zionist intellectuals, or in English by British and American scholars, rabbis, and translators, though each type of anthology imagined community differently and was directed toward a different purpose. An anthology could stand as a monument to a religious past within a modern, secular Jewish context or could be collected for devotional purposes in the spirit of religious revival; it could demonstrate the Jewish contribution to universal quests for truth and beauty or could stress a singular fascination with the...

The Thirty Years War: a documentary history

The Thirty Years War: A Documentary History fills a gap in recent studies of the great pan-European conflict, providing fresh translations of thirty-eight primary documents for the student and general reader. The selections are drawn from the standard political documents, from the Apology of the Bohemian Estates for the Defenestration of Prague to the text of the Treaty of Westphalia, as well as from imperial edicts, trial records, letters, diary entries, and satirical broadsheets, all directly translated from the Early New High German, French, Swedish, and Latin. The volume contains some ten illustrations and one map ...and on the whole is well organized and well presented with a judicious amount of footnotes and a slim For Further Reading section. A succinct introduction introduces the four sections, each with its own substantial introduction: (1) Outbreak of the Thirty Years War (1618-1623), (2) The Intervention of Denmark and Sweden (1623-1635), and (3) The Long War (1635-1648). The concluding section (4) Two Wartime Lives (1618-1648), interestingly juxtaposes the journals of a wandering mercenary and a settled townsman. The first is the diary of Peter Hagendorf, kept between the years 1624 and 1649 and only rediscovered in 1993. Hagendorf experienced the war as a common mercenary from the Baltic to Italy, from France to Pomerania. His counterpart is Hans Heberle, a shoemaker from a small town in the territory of the free imperial city of Ulm whose Zeytregister chronicled happenings both in the neighborhood and further afield. The engrossing accounts of their shifting fortunes over the three decades of the war really help to give this collection of texts, and the troublesome period itself, a human face. They are the stuff from which Grimmelshausen would craft his great novel of the war, The Adventuresome Simplicissimus (1668). Tryntje Helfferich is to be applauded for this consistently interesting and eminently useful volume. --Martin W. Walsh, University of Michigan, in Sixteenth Century Journal

Collocutio: Transformational Speeches

AbstractTransformational speeches represent the relationship between rhetoric and history, particularly attempts to exert control at moments of change in the life of a political community. Such speeches re-imagine the definition, principles, or motivation of a community. They also enlarge the scope and vocabulary of political speech. Finally, they interpret or constitute situations at the boundary between past and future. Collected in this Collocutio are fresh translations of historically significant transformational speeches from Bulgaria, Cuba, Mexico, Poland, and Romania.

The Buddha counsels a theist: A reading of the Tevijjasutta ( Dīghanikāya 13)

The dominant culture in India in the Buddha's day, Brahmanical culture, took as axiomatic the existence of a supernatural creator deity. This deity, termed ‘Brahmā’, was conceived as being ‘the all-seeing, the all-powerful, the Lord, the maker and creator, ruler, appointer and orderer, father of all that have been and will be’. Although the Buddha completely rejected such apparent metaphysical speculation as a ‘thicket of views’, he nowhere formulated a systematic repudiation of theism. In one canonical text, however, the Buddha, encountering a young Brahmin espousing theistic beliefs, gives a series of analogies and similes that help to illuminate his views on the matter. In short, the Buddha saw such a belief as being dangerously reflexive, and hence as a symptom of a debilitating conceptual and affective disorder. Thus, in the dialogue, the Buddha aims to ease this ailment of his interlocutor through a threefold strategy: (1) displaying the language usage that under girds the problem; (2) reorienting the interlocutor towards the primacy of his conceptual apparatus as the proper locus of concern; and (3) providing a practice through which the interlocutor may develop the skills necessary for conceptual and affective health. The parameters of the discussion in this sutta are wide enough to render it of relevance to contemporary debates on theism. That is, the issue at stake in the sutta may be read as being not only about a restricted local notion of deity, but about God, broadly conceived. The article contains fresh translations from the text under consideration, the Tevijjasutta of the Dīghanikāya (13).

The New Q: A Fresh Translation with Commentary (review)

The New Q: A Fresh Translation with Commentary (review)

The New Q: A Fresh Translation with Commentary – By Richard Valantasis

The New Q: A Fresh Translation with Commentary – By Richard Valantasis

Fresh Freud: No longer lost in translation.

The new translations of Freud into English highlight the question as to the nature of Freud's quest and achievement. They show a livelier Freud than the Strachey translations (Freud, 1953-1974), who used everyday language in his work instead of trying to establish a new technical vocabulary for an esoteric new discipline. However, with the new Penguin editions thus far, fresh Freud is no longer lost in translation. The Standard Edition was created importantly to create an authoritative international trademark and was made more natural scientific in appearance. The fresh translations show a Freud in tune with Karl Popper's (1976) approach in his later work that viewed science as essentially problem solving. The example of Mourning and Melancholia (Freud, 1917/ 1964, 1917/1981, 1917/2005) is discussed as an exercise in exploration, conjectures, criticism, construct formation, and problem solving. Translation issues are discussed. Instead of being a particular trade mark, the very fact of there being new and different translations opens Freud's works to further questioning about their meanings and intents in the marketplace of ideas and practices

Handbook of Chinese mythology

Every year, at the Wa Huang Gong temple in Hebei Province, China, people gather to worship the great mother, Nuwa, the oldest deity in Chinese myth, praising her for bringing them a happy life. It is a vivid demonstration of both the ancient reach and the continuing relevance of mythology in the lives of the Chinese people. Compiled from ancient and scattered texts and based on groundbreaking new research, Handbook of Chinese Mythology is the most comprehensive English-language work on the subject ever written from an exclusively Chinese perspective. This work focuses on the Han Chinese people but ranges across the full spectrum of ancient and modern China, showing how key myths endured and evolved over time. A quick reference section covers all major deities, spirits, and demigods, as well as important places (Kunlun Mountain), mythical animals and plants (the crow with three feet; Fusang tree), and related items (Xirang-a kind of mythical soil; Bu Si Yao-mythical medicine for long life). No other work captures so well what Chinese mythology means to the people who lived and continue to live their lives by it. With more than 40 illustrations and photographs, fresh translations of primary sources, and insight based on the authors' own field research, Handbook of Chinese Mythology offers an illuminating account of a fascinating corner of the world of myth.

Letters of a Russian Traveller by Nikolai Karamzin, Andrew Kahn

MLR, 101.2, 2oo6 6ii Letters of a Russian Traveller. By NIKOLAI KARAMZIN. Trans., with an essay on Karamzin's discourses of Enlightenment, by ANDREW KAHN. (SVEC, 2003:04) Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. 2003. Xi+ 582 pp. ?69. ISBN o-7294-o8II6. Karamzin's Letters of a Russian Traveller, based on the author's travels through the German states to France, Switzerland, and England in 1789-90, are a seminal work inRussian travel writing. More broadly, they represent amajor early example of the corpus of writing through which the Russian elite, receptive toWestern culture as a result of the reforms of Peter the Great (sole ruler from I696 to I725) and Catherine the Great (r. I762-96), extended its cultural and intellectual horizons by means of exploration ofWestern civilization. Uplifted by that civilization, Karamzin's good natured, open-minded narrator displays a tolerant humanism. Like the narrator of Karamzin's contemporaneous works of short prose fiction in the Sentimentalist man ner, of which 'Poor Liza' (I 792) iS the most celebrated example, he has the capacity to empathize with fellow humans of all ages, classes, and nationalities and reveals his sensitivity by shedding many a tear.And yet behind the guileless persona of the narra tor there lies amore worldly-wise and ambitious young author intent upon turning his supposedly spontaneous jottings into a highly crafted literary work. In other respects too the Letters are perhaps not entirely what they seem. On the one hand, they can be made to yield a tolerant cosmopolitanism that is characteristic of the Enlightenment (of whose reception in Russia the Letters are themselves, up to a point, indicative). On the other hand, the traveller who delights in the cultural and intellectual riches and natural beauty of the lands he visits, aRussian Westernizer avant la lettre, so it would appear, is also a proud patriot who fervently admires Peter the Great (a ruler perceived as superior by far to Louis XIV), because Peter has enabled Russia quickly to catch up with theWest and has given her the opportunity shortly to surpass the hitherto more advanced civilization. Moreover, for all his seeming sympathy with the persecuted and the dispossessed, such as Jews and beggars, the narrator does not at bottom approve of the revolution that was beginning in France at the time of his journey. On the contrary, he is already the champion of monarchic government and it is easy to discern his kinship to Karamzin the journalist and historian who in the nineteenth century would staunchly defend serfdom and the Russian autocratic state. It is surprising that up until now the English-speaking reader has had tomake do either with the translation of the Letters that was produced from aGerman version in I803, very soon after the publication of the first complete edition of the Letters in Russia, or with a defective, abridged translation by Florence Jonas, published in I957. Andrew Kahn's fresh translation of the whole text is therefore welcome. All readers of a translation of a text of this magnitude will of course be able to find examples of unnaturalness, where in the necessary quest for literal accuracy the translator has remained too close to the syntax of the original, or erred in choice of word, or produced a stilted version. (Would any English writer, for instance, say: 'Ossian! You vividly felt the lamentable fate of everything sublunary' (p. 246)?) But Kahn is to be congratulated not merely for tackling this long and important work but also for producing an elegant, readable translation which captures the youthful joy of Karamzin's narrator. It is also amerit of the volume that the translation is accompanied by an exten sive apparatus. There is a short introduction which briefly acquaints the reader with Karamzin's biography, the cultural context of Catherine's Russia, Karamzin's activity as a publisher, his role in the creation of a reading public and inmoulding taste, his historical scholarship and political orientation, the publication history of the Letters, and the reception of the work, both in Russia and elsewhere. There is also a large corpus of notes on the text, almost seven hundred in all, inwhich Kahn provides a compendium of...

Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Jews and Muslims in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Islamic Spain (review)

Reviewed by: Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Jews and Muslims in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Islamic Spain Theodore Pulcini Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Jews and Muslims in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Islamic Spain, by Ross Brann. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002. 194 pp. $39.50. As tensions among Jews, Muslims, and Christians continue to manifest themselves in the Middle East and other parts of the world, academic interest in the co-existence (convivencia) of these groups in medieval Muslim Spain has surged. Popular treatments of convivencia, no doubt shaped by contemporary yearnings for peace, often romanticize this interaction. More careful studies, however, give due attention to the literary evidence of inter-communal tensions in al-Andalus. This book, by the Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies and Chair of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University, is clearly to be included in the latter category. Brann divides his study into five essays, which are preceded by an introduction in which he sets forth his methodological assumptions. Recognizing the complexity of the tribal, ethnic, socio-economic, factional, and, of course, religious "cleavages" that beset al-Andalus, Brann from the outset sets his scope narrowly on the relations between the Jewish minority and the Muslim majority during the "Golden Age" of Jewish civilization in medieval Spain, i.e., the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Even after thus carefully limiting his purview, he notes that the few select literary sources to be examined will enable him only to uncover "the ambivalence with which Andalusi Jewish and Muslim literary and religious intellectuals thought of, or more precisely, imagined one another," not to "advance broad or unsupportable claims for the experience of the Jews under all of Mediterranean Islam" (p. 8). Yet Brann maintains that these texts are not merely individual in their significance but rather "represent structures of sociocultural and [End Page 136] historical signification" beyond the experiences of the authors themselves (p. 8), often revealing "more about the cultural situation of the scriptor's textual community than that of the depicted subject" (p. 9). In his exegetical observations Brann shines in various ways: in his selection of texts to be examined, in his elaboration of their content, in his description of their historical context, and in his interpretation of their rhetoric. His fresh translation of significant portions of these texts, some previously unavailable in English, in itself makes this book a valuable contribution. Each of the five chapters presents either a single text or several related texts that are somehow indicative of the ways in which Muslims and Jews perceived one another in al-Andalus. The first three chapters are related in that all focus on Ismail ibn Naghrila, perhaps the most noteworthy Jew of Islamic Spain, as portrayed by various Muslim authors. Chapter 1 presents three eleventh-century texts: the Tabaqat al-umam of Ibn Said al-Andalusi, an account of Ibn Hayyan al-Qurtubi as transmitted in Ibn al-Khatib's Al-Ihata fi akhbar gharnata, and the Al-Tibyan of Abd Allah b. Buluggin. Although all of these texts depict Ibn Naghrila with a high degree of respect as a "model Jew" in the service of the Muslim state (the tendency is to transfer any negative assessments of Ismail to his son Yusuf), they manifest considerable variation, indicating the "unstable construction of the Jew in eleventh-century Andalus" (p. 53). In Chapter 2, Brann turns to perhaps the most strident of medieval Spain's Muslim commentators on the Jews, Ali ibn Hazm, who depicts Ibn Naghrila as a "composite Jew," a typological figure, a "linguistic trope"of what Ibn Hazm considers to be all of the faults and sinister proclivities of the Jewish race, especially the Jews of al-Andalus. In this, the strongest chapter of his book, Brann guides the reader through Ibn Hazm's dense polemical universe, providing a good sense of its richness without allowing his reader to get lost amid its convolutions. In Chapter 3, Brann provides a striking example of the conflicting attitudes of Andalusi Muslims toward their Jewish counterparts through an examination of Ibn Bassam's Treasury Concerning the Merits of the People of Iberia (Al-Dhakhira fi mahasin ahl al-jazira...

Declamation, Paternity, and Roman Identity: Authority and the Rhetorical Self

This book explores the much maligned and misunderstood genre of declamation. Instead of a bastard rhetoric, declamation should be seen as a venue within which the rhetoric of the legitimate self is constructed. These fictions of the self are uncannily real, and these stagey dramas are in fact rehearsals for the serious play of Roman identity. Critics of declamation find themselves recapitulating the very logic of the genre they are refusing. When declamation is read in the light of the contemporary theory of the subject a wholly different picture emerges: this is a canny game played with and within the rhetoric of the self. This book makes broad claims for what is often seen as a narrow topic. An appendix includes a fresh translation and brief discussion of a sample of surviving examples of declamation.

Renaissance Thought on the Celestial Hierarchy: The Decline of a Tradition?

Renaissance Thought on the Celestial Hierarchy:The Decline of a Tradition? Feisal G. Mohamed The Dionysian arrangement of the angels was dismantled on the one hand because its author was increasingly regarded as a "counterfait," and on the other hand because Protestants upheld the Bible's supremacy over all the "vain babblings of idle men." In consequence, those who like Spenser celebrated the "trinall triplicities," look back upon a great past that had provided a vision hallowed by time and graced by an impressive array of intellects. —C. A. Patrides1 It has been some forty years now since C. A. Patrides first argued in these pages that English Renaissance views on the celestial hierarchy constitute "the decline of a tradition," an argument made so convincing by his encyclopedic articles on the subject that scholars have been content to accept it. Indeed there is a good deal of evidence suggesting that the tradition of the ninefold hierarchy of angels associated with the Pseudo-Dionysius suffered serious injury at the hands of the Renaissance and Reformation. Subjected to the scrutiny of Renaissance scholarship and in light of the rediscovery of several Neoplatonists, particularly Proclus, it became quite clear that the Corpus Dionysiacum had been written centuries later than its author pretended. In the mid-fifteenth century Lorenzo Valla argued that because the Areopagus was a legal rather than a philosophical assembly, because none of the Greek or Latin fathers make mention of Dionysius, and because the claim in the letter to Polycarp to have witnessed [End Page 559] in Heliopolis the solar eclipse at the moment of Christ's death is a clear fabrication, placement of the Corpus in the first century should be doubted.2 These suggestions went largely unnoticed until Desiderius Erasmus, returning from England (where William Grocyn had begun murmurs regarding the Areopagitic origin of the Corpus), discovered in Louvain a manuscript of Valla's commentary on the book of Acts and incorporated its conclusions in his influential annotations on the New Testament.3 The discovery of Dionysius's pseudonymity and Erasmus's suggestion that Dionysian ceremonies could no longer be connected to the apostolic church would damage permanently the now Pseudo-Areopagite's influence. In a classic case of complicity between Renaissance humanism and Reformation theology—both Protestant and Catholic, it must be stressed—the sixteenth century turned away from Dionysian thought in general and from The Celestial Hierarchy in particular. The interrogation of apostolic origin begun by prominent Catholic thinkers like Erasmus and Cardinal Cajetan was most convenient to reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin, both of whom described the author of the Corpus as "Dionysius, whoever he was."4 Such an open-and-shut presentation of sixteenth-century Dionysiana, however, ignores several factors. One of them is that Renaissance scholars were not the first to question the dating of the Corpus: Peter Abelard fueled general perception of his heretical tendencies by suggesting that Dionysius may not have been the Pauline convert mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles.5 Much more important, however, is the number of Renaissance scholars for whom Dionysius was a formative influence. Despite his stance on the authenticity of the Corpus, Lorenzo Valla describes Dionysius in the peroration to his Encomium Sancti Thomae Aquinatis as playing the flute in a celestial symphony before the throne of God.6 For Nicholas Cusanus, as F. Edward Cranz describes [End Page 560] it, "Dionysius is the most important Christian theologian with no runner-up who is even close."7 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola saw Dionysius's writings as following directly from the teachings of Paul.8 Marsilio Ficino employed Dionysius in his comments on angels in the Theologia Platonica, translated and commented on The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology, and consistently endorsed first-century dating of the Corpus Dionysiacum.9 Ambrogio Traversari, who described Dionysius as "Apostoli disciplus," would also produce a fresh translation acceptable to humanist tastes in 1437, which would receive wide dissemination in the 1499 edition produced by Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples.10 Lefèvre saw the Corpus as apostolic in origin and authority and went so far as to endorse the traditional conflation of Dionysius with Saint...

Commentary on the Torah, with a New English Translation and the Hebrew Text (review)

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...

Joel and Obadiah: A Commentary

In Joel and Obadiah, John Barton furnishes a fresh translation of the ancient manuscripts and discusses questions of historical background and literary architecture before providing a theologically sensitive and critically informed interpretation of the text. The Old Testament Library provides fresh and authoritative treatments of important aspects of Old Testament study through commentaries and general surveys. The contributors are scholars of international standing.

James 4.5 Reconsidered

Jas 4.5 poses several exegetical difficulties. Particularly elusive has been identifying the ‘scripture’ to which James refers. This article suggests a fresh translation and reading of vv. 5–6. It is argued that vv. 5b–6a constitute an indirect discourse construction. This is grammatically possible and best takes into account the paraenetic context of chapter 4. Further, the two main sections of these verses correspond functionally to the two cola of the quotation from Prov 3.34 in v. 6. Hence, vv. 5b–6a serve as an introductory gloss to the proverb designed to advance James's paraenetic aims.