11 Babylonian Talmud Megillah 3a.
12 The liturgical role of a translator is also found in the early Church. A report by a Christian pilgrim in the fourth century mentions a Greek-speaking bishop in Jerusalem who, when preaching, had a presbyter standing alongside him, to translate his sermon into Aramaic. Griffith, 2013, citing John Wilkinson (trans.), Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land: Newly Translated with Supporting Documents and Notes (Jerusalem: Ariel Publishing House, 1981), p. 46.
13 Alexander, 1988.
14 Babylonian Talmud Gittin 56b.
15 Dio Cassius, 67.14. Flavius Clemens is often equated with the Apostolic Father, Clement of Rome, but the earliest sources suggest otherwise (Lampe, 2006).
16 Mishnah Megillah 4.10. The priestly blessing (Numbers 6.22–27) was also not to be translated, not because it was ignominious but because it was prefaced by the words ‘thus you shall bless’, i.e. in these exact, Hebrew words.
17 Jerusalem Talmud Megillah 4.1 (74d).
18 When reading from the prophets, three consecutive sentences could be delivered before pausing for the translator.
19 See for example Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 22.19 and Ch. Albeck’s comments in ‘Halacha Hitzona b’Targumei Eretz Yisrael uv‘Aggada’, B. M. Lewin Jubilee Volume, ed. J. L. Fishman (Jerusalem, 1940), pp. 95–6.
20 S. A. Kaufman, ‘Targum Pseudo Jonathan and Late Jewish Literary Aramaic’, in M. Asher et al., eds, Moshe Goshen-Gottstein: In Memoriam, Studies in Bible and Exegesis 3, Bar Ilan University Press, Ramat Gan, 1993; E. M. Cook, Rewriting the Bible: the Text and Language of the Pseudo-Jonathan Targum (PhD Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1986).
21 Isaac Casaubon, a sixteenth-century Christian scholar, records hearing the Targum read in the synagogue in Frankfurt in 1590 (Grafton & Weinberg, 2011).
22 McNamara, 2010.
23 Moore, 1927. p. 176.
24 An excellent account of the discovery of the Genizah, and of the roles of Mrs Lewis and Mrs Smith in its discovery, is in Soskice, 2009.
25 I think it preferable to follow Sokoloff and translate Memra in this way, rather than adopting McNamara’s translation of Memra as Word, which of course predetermines the point he is trying to make. Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, Bar Ilan University Press, Ramat Gan, 1990.
26 Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 2,8.
27 For a discussion of Logos in a targumic context, with reference to Memra, see McNamara, 2010.
28 (Flesher, 2011). The Targum in question is Pseudo-Jonathan, an interesting but relatively unimportant Targum in the grand scale of things, which was unknown until the thirteenth century and which happens to have a high profile because a medieval printer decided to include in it his compendium of Bible commentaries. It is still printed in what are known as ‘rabbinic bibles’ (mikraot gedolot) today.
Chapter 3
1 E.g. Talita Kumi (Mark 5.41); Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani (Matthew 27.46, Mark 15.34); Mammon (Matthew 6.24, Luke 16.13); Korban (Mark 7.11); Raca (Matthew 5.22).
2 This Aramaic layer is most visible in parts of the Gospel of Mark, and in a theoretical gospel called ‘Q’, which is thought to be the original basis of both Matthew and Luke. Martin McNamara writes that it is clear that ‘an Aramaic substratum has to be reckoned with, at least as far as the Gospels and parts of the Acts of the Apostles are concerned’ (McNamara, 2010) p. 247.
3 The Greek words οφειληματα and αμαρτιας in Matthew 6.12 and Luke 11.4 respectively both derive from the Aramaic בויח. The Aramaic word for sin is אטח. The King James translation of Matthew 6.12 is ‘And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors’ and of Luke 11.4 is ‘And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.’ Yet the underlying Aramaic oral text would have been identical.
4 See, for example, Younan, 2000.
5 Tatian, Oratio ad Grecos, 42, quoted in Williams, 2012, p. 144.
6 Schmid, 2012. Sebastian Brock points out that if Tatian composed the Diatessaron while he was in Rome its original language is likely to have been Greek. If however he wrote it after he returned home he is likely to have used Syriac (Brock, 1997).
7 Soskice, 2009.
8 ‘Curzon’s Visits to Monasteries in the Levant’, The Ecclesiologist, Series 7, Volume 10, August 1849.
9 W. Cureton, Remains of a Very Antient Recension of the Four Gospels in Syriac, London: John Murray, 1858, p. ii.
10 W. Cureton, Remains of a Very Antient Recension of the Four Gospels in Syriac, London: John Murray, 1858, dedication page.
11 I have to confess that when writing my book The Talmud: A Biography I recounted the well-known tale that Mrs Smith and Mrs Gibson had rescued the manuscripts from the monastery’s dining hall, where they were being used as butter dishes! I have since read Janet Soskice’s excellent Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels (London: Chatto & Windus, 2009), which comprehensively and convincingly refutes this account as nothing more than apocryphal. As Ecclesiastes might have said: Of researching books there is no end . . . ’
12 Williams, 2012.
13 W. H. P. Hatch, ‘The Subscription of the Chester Beatty Manuscript of the Harclean Gospels’, Harvard Theological Review, 30 (1937), pp. 141–55, quoted in Parpulov, 2012, p. 309.
14 Kiraz, 2001.
15 Jerome, Letter to Chromatius, Jovinus, and Eusebius, 5, quoted in Rebenich, 2002.
16 Sutcliffe, 1975. p. 81.
17 Nirenberg, 2013.
18 Quoted in Rebenich, 2002, p. 15. The disagreement reflected the schism over the consubstantial doctrine that was dividing the Church in Antioch.
19 Rebenich, 2002.
20 Sutcliffe, 1975.
21 Metzger, 2001.
22 Jerome, ‘Preface to the Four Gospels’, in Jerome, The Principal Works of St. Jerome, ed. Philip Schaff, Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1893, p. 488, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vii.ii.viii.html.
23 Jerome, Epistle 57.5, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. W. H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W. G. Martley Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893), http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001057.htm.
24 Metzger, 2001. p. 33.
25 Rebenich, 2002.
26 Rebenich, 2002. p. 53.
27 Rebenich, 2002 p. 34, quoting Jerome’s Epistle 22.17.
28 Op. cit., pp. 36–7, quoting Jerome’s Epistle 22.16.
29 Jerome, ‘Introduction to Book of Job’, in The Principal Works of St. Jerome, ed. Philip Schaff, Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1893, p. 491, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vii.iii.viii.html.
30 Jerome, ‘Preface to the Book of Hebrew Questions’, in Jerome, The Principal Works of St. Jerome, ed. Philip Schaff, Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1893, p. 486, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vii.ii.v.html.
31 Jerome, ‘Introduction to book of Job, in Jerome, The Principal Works of St. Jerome, ed. Philip Schaff, Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1893, p. 492, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vii.iii.viii.html.
32 Loewe, 1975.
33 Metzger, 2001.
34 Heather and Matthews, 1991. Images of the codex can be found at http://app.ub.uu.se/arv/codex/faksimiledition/contents.html.
35 Epitome of The Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius, Compiled By Photius, Patriarch Of Constantinople, trans. Edward Walford, London, 1855.
36 Wace, 1911.
37 Heather and Matthews, 1991.
38 Rebenich, 2002.
39 Metzger, 2001.
40 Henri Van Hoof, ‘Traduction biblique et genèse linguistique’, Babel, 36(1), 1990, pp. 38–43.
41 Epitome of The Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius, Compiled by Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, trans. Edward Walford, London, 1855, Book 2, Ch. 5.
42 Heather and Matthews, 1991.
43 Nersessian, 2001.
44 Delisle and Woodsworth, 1995.
45 Holland, 2012.
Chapter 4
1 Griffith, 2013. p. 2.
2 Qur’an, Al Baqarah 2:285.
3 Griffith, 2013.
4 Qur’an, Al Baqarah 2:136.
5 Griffith, 2013. Griffith mentions only Christian homiletical collections such as those complied by Jacob of Serug and Ephrem the Syrian. But Jewish works such as Pirkei d’ Rabbi Eliezer, a post-Islamic ‘interpreted’ Bible written in Hebrew, suggest that similar tracts could have been composed for Arabic-speaking Jews.
6 Tritton, 1930.
7 Griffith, 2013.
8 Griffith, 2013. See also ‘H. Kachouch, The Arabic Versions of the Gospels: A Case Study of John 1:1 and 1:18’, in David Thomas (ed.), The Bible in Arab Christianity (The History of Christian–Muslim Relations, Vol. 6; Leiden: Brill, 2007), referenced in Griffith, 2013.
9 Bennison, 2009.
10 Gutas, 1998.
11 Griffith, 2013, citing Richard Steiner, A Biblical Translation in the Making: The Evolution and Impact of Saadia Gaon’s Tafsīr, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
12 ‘Hunayn Ibn Ishaq: A Forgotten Legend’, Samir Johna, American Foundation For Syriac Studies, July 2011 http://www.syriacstudies.com/2011/07/13_hunayn_ibn_ishaq_a_forgotten_legend_samir_johna/
13 For a biography of Saadia Gaon see Malter, 1921.
14 Exodus 35.3.
15 Schur, 1995.
16 Even though the city of Babylon had ceased to exist many centuries earlier, the name remained. For a history of the Babylonian Talmud and the story of its evolution in the academies of Babylon see my book The Talmud: A Biography (Freedman, 2014).
17 Stern, 2001.
18 Steiner, 2011.
19 Steiner, 2011. However Henry Malter believes Saadia wrote his first translation in Egypt (Malter, 1921).
20 Saadia translated the Pentateuch, Isaiah, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Lamentations, Esther and Daniel (Griffith, 2013).
21 Steiner, 2011.
22 Griffith, 2013.
23 Preface to the Tafsir, translated in Steiner, 2011, p. 1.
24 Schaff, 1882a. p. 62.
25 Lockwood, 1969.
26 Goldberg, 2006.
27 Metzger, 2001.
28 Berend, 2007 (Goldberg, 2006).
Chapter 5
1 Brown, 2003.
2 The Lindisfarne Gospels can be viewed on the British Library’s website, http://www.bl.uk/turning-the-pages/?id=fdbcc772-3e21-468d-8ca1-9c192f0f939c&type=book.
3 Griffith, 2013.
4 Mellinkoff, 1970.
5 Exodus 35.34, Hebrew ןרק. The Septuagint chooses δεδόξασται, which Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton in his 1851 translation renders as ‘glorified’. See also Mellinkoff, 1970, p. 142, note 4.
6 Mellinkoff, 1970. p. 21.
7 Michelangelo’s Moses is in Rome’s San Pietro In Vincoli.
8 Levine, 2006.
9 Thomsett, 2011.
10 A description of the Lyon manuscript can be found in Anne Brenon, ‘Cathars and the Representation of the Divine: Christians of the Invisible’, Iconoclasm and Iconoclash: Struggle for Religious Identity, ed. Willem J. van Asselt, Paul Van Geest and Daniela Muller, Leiden: Brill, 2007 pp. 247–61.
11 O’Shea, 2001.
12 The true figure is unknown but as Zoe Oldenbourg points out, it could not have reached the one million mark as has been suggested (Oldenbourg, 1961).
13 Sneddon, 2012.
14 Lambert, 1992.
15 O’Shea, 2001.
16 Lerner, 1972.
17 Lichtmann, 1997.
18 Lerner, 1972.
19 Lichtmann, 1997 p. 67, translating from Paul Verdeyen, SJ, ‘Le Proces D’Inquisition contre Marguertie Porete et Guiard de Cressonessart (1309–1310)’, Revue d’Histoire Ecclesiastique, 81 (1986), pp. 47–94.
20 Ibid.
21 Schaff, 1882b. p. 261.
22 Thomsett, 2011. p. 113.
23 Schaff, 1882b. p. 261.
24 Schaff, 1882b. p. 262.
25 Bruce, 1984.
26 Knighton, 1995. p. 242.
27 Daniell, 2001. p. 57.
28 Knighton, 1995. p. 245.
29 Schaff, 1882d. p. 192.
30 See Rosalyn Rossignol, Critical Companion to Chaucer: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, New York: Infobase Publishing, 2006, s.v. John Wycliffe.
31 Neville Chamberlain, BBC Radio broadcast, 27 September 1938.
32 Fudge, 2010.
33 Fudge, 2010. p. 48.
34 Fudge, 2013.
35 Quoted in Richard Rolt and Richard Houston, The Lives of the Principal Reformers, Both Englishmen and Foreigners: Comprehending the General History of the Reformation; from Its Beginning, in 1360, by Dr. John Wickliffe, to Its Establishment, in 1600, Under Queen Elizabeth: With an Introduction; Wherein the Reformation is Amply Vindicated, and Its Necessity Fully Shewn, from the Degeneracy of the Clergy, and the Tyranny of the Popes. Published by E. Bakewell et al., London, 1759.
36 Other inventions (few of which were manufactured due to the technical limitations of the time) include a device for measuring the speed of the wind, a parachute, a giant crossbow and a diving suit (DaVinci Inventions, 2008).
37 Arnold, 2011. p. 5.
38 Letter printed in the first edition of the first six books of the Annals of Tacitus, 1515, quoted in Schaff, 1882b, p. 328.
39 Arnold, 2011.
40 Pico Della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man: A New Translation and Commentary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
41 Idel, 2011.
42 Martines, 2006.
43 Arnold, 2011.
44 Freedman, 2014.
45 G. Lloyd Jones, Introduction in (Reuchlin, 1983).
46 Psalms 6.32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143, which Reuchlin published in 1512 under the title In Septem Psalmos Poenitentiales.
47 Arnold, 2011.
48 Smith, 1911. p. 29.
49 Arnold, 2011.
50 Martines, 2006.
51 Holborn, 1982.
52 Quoted in Schaff, 1882b, p. 429.
53 Martin Luther, Address to the Nobility of the German Nation, quoted in Bainton, 1963, p. 1.
54 Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, American Edition, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1958, 4;351, quoted in (Ages, 1967) p. 66.
55 Gritsch, 2003.
56 Ellingworth, 2007.
57 Gritsch, 2003.
58 Volz, 1963.
59 Romans 3.28.
60 Schaff, 1882c.
61 Gritsch, 2012. p. 140.
62 Gritsch, 2012.
63 Gritsch, 2003.
64 Sheehan, 2005.
65 The twelth-century Jewish Bible interpreter and grammarian David Kimchi considers the Hebrew word to imply that the mountain is to be distinguished by its height. His equally erudite predecessor, Abraham Ibn Ezra, associates it with a root word in Leviticus 21.20 meaning rounded or humped.
Chapter 6
1 Daniell, 2001 p. 3. David Daniell, the William Tyndale scholar par excellence, is the principal source for the account that follows of Tyndale’s life and work.
2 Moynahan, 2002.
3 (Daniell, 2001) p. 103, quoting John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, Vol. IV, ed. S. R. Cattley and J. Pratt, London: Religious Tract Society, 1877, pp. 617–18.
4 William Tyndale, Prologue to the Book of Genesis.
5 Preface to The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, William Tyndale, 1528, reproduced in The Works of the English Reformers: William Tyndale and John Frith, Vol.1, ed. Thomas Russell, London: Ebenezer Palmer, 1831, p. 79. Tyndale calls Strasbourg by its medieval name, Argentine.
6 Daniell, 2001. p. 147.
7 Practice of Prelates, William Tyndale, 1530, reproduced in The Works of the English Reformers: William Tyndale and John Frith, Volume 1, ed. Thomas Russell, London: Ebenezer Palmer, 1831, p. 483.
8 Edwa
rd Hall, The Union of Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (1548), cited in McGrath, 2001.
9 Daniell, 2001.
10 Genesis 1.3; Wycliffe’s verb ‘made’ is not in the original Hebrew.
11 Matthew 22.21. Caesar is in the original Greek text. Wycliffe’s ‘those things’ is a translator’s interpolation, Tyndale condenses it to ‘that’.
12 (Teems, 2012) p. 268ff. includes a list of words that first appeared in Tyndale’s translation.
13 Exodus 12.27: ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover which passed over the houses of the Children of Israel in Egypt.’ Wycliffe renders this: ‘It is the sacrifice of the passing of the Lord . . .’
14 Moynahan, 2002.
15 For example, changing Tyndale’s highly accurate rendering of Genesis 46.34 ‘For an abomination unto the Egyptians are all that feed sheep’ to ‘For the Egyptians abhor all shepherds’. For further examples see Daniell, 2001, pp. 336ff.
16 Daniell, 2001.
17 Bruce, 1961.
18 Metzger, 2001.
Chapter 7
1 Jenkins and Preston, 2007.
2 Yaacob Dweck, The Scandal of Kabbalah: Leon Modena, Jewish Mysticism, Early Modern Venice, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.
3 Foster, 1963.
4 Jenkins and Preston, 2007.
5 Rhetoric and Politics in Italian Humanism’, Delio Cantimori, trans. Frances A. Yates, Journal of the Warburg Institute, 1(2) (Oct. 1937), pp. 83–102.
6 Foster, 1963.
7 Brown, 1891. The book was Christoforo Marcello’s Universalis Anima Traditionis.
8 Montaigne, Of Prayers, 1580, in Essays of Michel de Montaigne, trans. Charles Cotton, 1877; Project Gutenberg 2006, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3600/3600-h/3600-h.htm#link2HCH0056.
9 E.g. Reuben’s speech in Genesis 37.21–22, where his attempt to save Joseph from the pit becomes a lecture in morality; see Bainton, 1963, p. 27.
10 Genesis 46.27; Acts 7.14.
11 Bainton, 1963. p. 8.
12 Arnold, 2011. The three Marys are the prostitute in Luke 7, Mary Magdalen of Luke 8 and John 22, and the sister of Martha in John 11 and Luke 10.
13 Wait, 2001.
14 Sayce, 1963.
15 Conerly, 1993.
16 Morreale, 1969.
17 Details of the facsimile edition, and a further history of the Bible, can be found at http://www.facsimile-editions.com/en/ab/.
The Murderous History of Bible Translations Page 25