Review of JOSEF STERN, JAMES T. ROBINSON, YONATAN SHEMESH (EDS.), MAIMONIDES’ ‘GUIDE OF THE PERPLEXED’ IN TRANSLATION. A HISTORY FROM THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY TO TWENTIETH.
Pedro Mantas-España
Mediterranea. International Journal on the Transfer of Knowledge, 2022
PEDRO MANTAS ESPAÑA UNIVERSITY OF CÓRDOBA INTERPRETING MEANINGS In the last decades, research and publications on Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed have grown exponentially, due in part to the influence that Shlomo Pines's translation has exerted on academics. Yet it is unusual and great news to find a history that revolves around the transmission of the text through the most relevant translations and translators. Josef Stern has noted (p. 5) that throughout its history the Guide has been read, commented on and criticized mostly in translation, not in its original Judeo-Arabic, that is, not the original Arabic Dalālat al-ḥārʾirīn but the Hebrew Moreh hanevukhim, Old Spanish Mostrador e enseñador de los turbados and translations into modern languages. Despite the abundant scholarly literature on a vast range of topics of study linked to the Guide, there has been virtually no discussion of the fact that the texts that have generally been read are translations. In this sense, the volume under review tells a reception story which focuses on the translators' understanding of the book, their choice of lexicon and syntactical formulations, the desirability of consistency in translation, and the ways in which the translated text fosters the enhancement of a philosophical vocabulary in the target languages. The volume is divided into two parts: « The History of Translations of the Guide » (chapters 1 to 11) and « The Impact of the Guide in Translation » (chapters 12 to 15)-my review is divided accordingly into two sections. In the first, I summarise the content of the chapters, for which I am indebted to the wonderful « Introduction » and the « Appendix-A Note on the Publication of Pines's Translation of the Guide », written by Josef Stern. Although mainly descriptive, the first section of the review enters one of the problems raised by the volumeguiding us to a particularly interesting discussion: the translation and the problems derived from the interpretation of meanings concealed in the pages of
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Review of: Josef Stern, James T. Robinson, Yonatan Shemesh (eds.), Maimonides’ ‘Guide of the Perplexed’ in Translation. A History from the Thirteenth Century to Twentieth, Chicago University Press, Chicago, ILL. 2019, VII + 481 pp., ISBN 9780226457635
Pedro Mantas-España
Mediterranea, 2022
PEDRO MANTAS ESPAÑA UNIVERSITY OF CÓRDOBA INTERPRETING MEANINGS In the last decades, research and publications on Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed have grown exponentially, due in part to the influence that Shlomo Pines's translation has exerted on academics. Yet it is unusual and great news to find a history that revolves around the transmission of the text through the most relevant translations and translators. Josef Stern has noted (p. 5) that throughout its history the Guide has been read, commented on and criticized mostly in translation, not in its original Judeo-Arabic, that is, not the original Arabic Dalālat al-ḥārʾirīn but the Hebrew Moreh hanevukhim, Old Spanish Mostrador e enseñador de los turbados and translations into modern languages. Despite the abundant scholarly literature on a vast range of topics of study linked to the Guide, there has been virtually no discussion of the fact that the texts that have generally been read are translations. In this sense, the volume under review tells a reception story which focuses on the translators' understanding of the book, their choice of lexicon and syntactical formulations, the desirability of consistency in translation, and the ways in which the translated text fosters the enhancement of a philosophical vocabulary in the target languages. The volume is divided into two parts: « The History of Translations of the Guide » (chapters 1 to 11) and « The Impact of the Guide in Translation » (chapters 12 to 15)-my review is divided accordingly into two sections. In the first, I summarise the content of the chapters, for which I am indebted to the wonderful « Introduction » and the « Appendix-A Note on the Publication of Pines's Translation of the Guide », written by Josef Stern. Although mainly descriptive, the first section of the review enters one of the problems raised by the volumeguiding us to a particularly interesting discussion: the translation and the problems derived from the interpretation of meanings concealed in the pages of
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Notes on Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera as a Translator of the Guide of the Perplexed
Silvia Di Donato
Revue des études hébraïques et juives. Medieval and Early Modern Translations of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed, 2019
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Al-Harizi's Translation of Guide of the Perplexed 2.25 and the Philosophical Implications for the Question of Creation
Shalom Sadik
JUDAICA, 2023
This article focuses on the various translations of an important chapter regarding the question of creation in Maimonides's Guide 2.25. I will try to explain the differences between the original JudeoArabic text and the R. Ibn Tibbon translation on the one hand, and the Al-Harizi translation and the Latin translation on the other hand, and account for some of the differences of interpretation. The first part of the article will describe the original meaning of the chapter and the internal tension between the different arguments that Maimonides explores. These internal tensions and contradictions can be interpreted as an indication that Maimonides was hiding his true esoteric eternalist opinion. In the second part of the article, I will analyze Al-Harizi's translation and show that he made the text more coherent and more supportive of the creationist interpretation of Maimonides.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Persecution and the Art of Translation: Some New Evidence Concerning the Latin Translation of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed
Yossef Schwartz
YOD, revue d'études hébraïques et juives 22 , 2019
The ongoing work on a critical edition of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed in its medieval Latin translation, and the recently published detailed studies of the Latin manuscripts provide us with a unique opportunity to reconsider a field of study which, after more than 150 years of intensive scholarly engagement, still present us with some remarkable lacunae. In confronting the new material evidence, this paper raises some basic questions regarding the unique nature of Maimonides’s work itself and the way it is reflected through its reception among European readers, Jews and Christians alike. My two main goals here are, first, to emphasize the unique character of the early Latin reception of the Guide, which was less philosophically oriented and more Hebraistic in nature, and, second, to emphasize its close ties to a set of persecutional acts that took place in the very same period.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Alfred L. Ivry, “Review of ‘Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, Part One’, trans. by Michael Schwarz,” Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 91, no. 3-4 (January-April 2001): 482-484
Alfred L. Ivry
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Commentator's Preface to The Guide: An Explanatory Commentary on Each Chapter of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed
Scott M Alexander
maimonides-guide.com, 2019
This is my Commentator's Preface to my book, The Guide, An Explanatory Commentary on Each Chapter of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed. In it I set forth the aims, methods and perspective of this unique essay style commentary on the Guide, now completed through Volume I of the Guide, and including my commentary on Maimonides' Introduction to Volume II.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Warren Zev Harvey, “Michael Friedlander’s Pioneering English Translation of the Guide,” in Josef Stern, et al., eds., Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed in Translation: A History from the Thirteenth Century to the Twentieth (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2019), 209-223
Warren Zev Harvey
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Maimonides as Muslim Theologian: Al-Kawtharī’s Edition of al-Tabrīzī’s Commentary on Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed - DRAFT
Amir Mazor
Zutot 19 (2022), 93-102
The article focuses on a Muslim commentary on a section from Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, written by a 13th-century Persian scholar. Whereas the first part of the article briefly discusses the reception of Maimonides’ Guide in medieval Islam, the nature of the commentary, and the identity of its composer, the second and main part discusses a mid-20th-century Egyptian critical edition of the commentary. This part focuses on the Muslim editor’s preface to the commentary, in which he depicts Maimonides and his Guide in a positive light, against the negative portrayal of Jews and Judaism. The contemporary political context is suggested as a motive for this apologetic and polemical depiction. https://brill.com/view/journals/zuto/aop/article-10.1163-18750214-bja10002/article-10.1163-18750214-bja10002.xml
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed: A Critical Guide
Aaron Segal
Cambridge University Press, 2021
Guide of the Perplexed (c. ) is the greatest and most influential text in the history of Jewish philosophy. Controversial in its day, the Guide directly influenced Aquinas, Spinoza, and Leibniz, and the history of Jewish philosophy took a decisive turn after its appearance. While there continues to be keen interest in Maimonides and his philosophy, this is the first scholarly collection in English devoted specifically to the Guide. It includes contributions from an international team of scholars addressing the most important philosophical themes that range over the three parts of this sprawling workincluding topics in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of law, ethics, and political philosophy. There are also essays on the Guide's hermeneutic puzzles, and on its overall structure and philosophical trajectory. The volume will be of interest to philosophers, Judaists, theologians, and medievalists. daniel frank is Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University. His publications include The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy (with Oliver Leaman, Cambridge, ), and Spinoza on Politics (with Jason Waller, ). aaron segal is Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is co-editor of Jewish Philosophy Past and Present: Contemporary Responses to Classical Sources (with Daniel Frank, ), and Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age (with Samuel Lebens and Dani Rabinowitz, ).
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Warren Zev Harvey, “Review of ‘Moses Maimonides, The Guide to the Perplexed’, by Lenn E. Goodman and Phillip I. Lieberman; and ‘A Guide to The Guide to the Perplexed: A Reader’s Companion to Maimonides’ Masterwork’, by Lenn E. Goodman,” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (7 September 2024)
Warren Zev Harvey
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Commentaries on the Guide of the Perplexed: A Brief Literary History
Igor H. De Souza
Medieval Jewish Philosophy and Its Literary Forms, 2019
An overview of the Hebrew tradition of commentaries on Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed. A literary-chronological periodization is proposed. Identifies 5 major periods/clusters of commentary from 1250s to 1800.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
From Maimonides to Samuel ibn Tibbon:The Transformation of the Dalalat al-Ḥā’irīn into the Moreh ha-Nevukhim [Hebrew]
Carlos Fraenkel
2007
This book offers an account of a key event in Jewish intellectual history that is also an important chapter in the history of Western philosophy: the dissemination of Maimonides’ chief philosophical work, the Guide of the Perplexed, through Samuel ibn Tibbon at the beginning of the 13th century in Southern France. Whereas Maimonides interpreted Judaism as a philosophical religion, Ibn Tibbon turned this interpretation into the foundation of Jewish philosophy up to Spinoza, making it into a systematic justification for studying Greco-Arabic philosophy and science in a religious setting. If Maimonides’ work was the gate through which philosophy became an important component of Jewish culture, Ibn Tibbon built the hinge without which this gate would have remained shut. The book examines Ibn Tibbon’s relationship to Maimonides in all its facets: how he translated Maimonides’ work from Arabic into Hebrew, explained its technical terminology, and interpreted and taught its doctrines. Due attention is also paid to Ibn Tibbon’s comprehensive criticism of Maimonides. The book includes the edition of what may be called the first commentary on the Guide: about 100 glosses attributed to Ibn Tibbon that were discovered through examining 145 manuscripts of Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation. The glosses illustrate the different aspects of Ibn Tibbon’s relationship to Maimonides and the complex transition of Maimonides’ work from one cultural context to another.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Perspicue et fideliter conversus: Johannes Buxtorf the Younger's Translation of the Guide of the Perplexed, in "Yod"22 (2019), pp. 133-153
Saverio Campanini
Yod, 2019
Johannes Buxtorf the Younger’s Latin translation of the Guide of the Perplexed (1629) is studied in its bibliographical, linguistic and paratextual features. The translator’s preface is analyzed in detail highlighting the peculiar intentions of Buxtorf in editing this medieval philosophical work. Its main function is identified by the translator as a mean towards learning Hebrew, although he was well aware that the original language of the Guide was rather Arabic. A specific ideological bias as to the function of the Guide in designing and promoting a “rational” Judaism, compatible with Protestant ideals is detected among the most interesting motives of this translation, one which would be destined to a long fortune among Christian Hebraists of the subsequent epochs.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
CRITICAL EDITION OF EGIDIO DA VITERBO’S LATIN TRANSLATION OF THE QUR’ĀN (1518): SOME METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
Katarzyna K. Starczewska
The aim of this paper is to outline some of the methodological issues which have arisen during the elaboration of my PhD dissertation in progress: the critical edition and study of a Latin translation of the Qur‘ān (1518). The translation in question is preserved in two manuscripts: Cambridge MS Mm. v. 26 (C) and Milan MS D 100 inf. (M). The earlier manuscript dates back to 1530, whereas the Milan manuscript was copied in 1621. Only the M manuscript has been preserved in its entirety, preceded, what is more, by a three-folium prologue written by the copyist, David Colville (a Scottish orientalist). From this prologue we learn that the name of the translator of the Qur‘ān was Iohannes Gabriel Terrolensis and that his translation was later corrected by Iohannes Leo Granatinus (also known as al-Hasan al-Wazzān and Yūhannā al-Asad). The numerous corrections contribute to the emergence of diverse methodological problems as far as the formal criteria of the critical edition are concerned.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
“I Am Not Inferior to Them” Solomon Ibn Daʾud’s Introductions to His Arabic-to-Hebrew Philosophical and Medical Translations
Lucas Oro Hershtein
Maimonides Review of Philosophy and Religion, 2025
This paper contributes to the growing scholarly understanding of the early thirteenth- century Arabic-to-Hebrew translation movement by examining the person, contextual milieu, and translational ethos of Solomon ibn Daʾud (active ca. 1205–1233). Solomon, who translated works by Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭalyawsī, Ibn Sīnā, and Ibn Rušd, furnished each translation with an introductory section. These three prefaces outline his original theory of translation, which offers an alternative to Ibn Tibbon’s and Maimonides’s models that is somewhat closer to al-Ḥarizi’s perspective. Furthermore, they offer a glimpse into the complex personality of an author who claimed to be the first to translate medical works into Hebrew despite the existence of Maimonides’s works, which were already in circulation, and who spuriously claimed to have commentated on Ibn Sīnā when in reality, he was plagiarising an earlier commentary on the former by Ibn Rušd.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Michael Schwarz’s Hebrew Translation of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed
Aviram Ravitsky
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Back to the Sources: Alternative Versions of Maimonides' Letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon and Their Neglected Significance
Doron Forte
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
An Overview on Alkindi’s Translations at House of Wisdom: An Islamic Philosophical Reflection
Abdulrashid Musa
2018
Acquisition, utilization, preservation, and dissemination of important knowledge to desirable audience are part of the major targets of academic works particularly in an Islamic exposition. These could only be achieved if centers and institutions responsible are duly established and designed for educational development as done in Baghdad at the House of Wisdom by the Abbasid Caliphs (Al-Mamun). The contribution of Al-Kindi which is recorded as the first of its kind in the Arab world is virtually a companion for reflection to every researcher aiming to convey knowledge. Al-Kindi translated philosophical Greek works into Arabic, and therefore makes it useful to not only the Arabs, but also all those in contact with Arabic language. Relaying on secondary data, the research work gives an overview on the significance of Bayt Al-Hikma, enclosing the effort of Al-Kindi for preserving and disseminating important knowledge. Therefore, the research work presented some philosophical views of A...
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right
Rewriting Maimonides: Early Commentaries on the "Guide of the Perplexed"
Igor H. De Souza
Rewriting Maimonides, 2018
A history of the first phase of commentaries on the Guide (c.1250-1362), from Moses of Salerno to Moshe Narboni. Includes the partial texts of 6 commentaries on the Guide (on the General Introduction and Introduction the First Part), in Hebrew and English, on the basis of manuscript sources and with Hebrew critical apparatus. The author employs an innovative system that distinguishes clearly among the words of the commentator, his quotations of the Guide, his quotations of biblical verses also quoted in the Guide, and his quotations of biblical verses not found in the Guide.
downloadDownload free PDFView PDFchevron_right