Book cover of Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation

Book description

Faithful Renderings reads translation history through the lens of Jewish-Christian difference and, conversely, views Jewish-Christian difference as an effect of translation. Subjecting translation to a theological-political analysis, Seidman asks how the charged Jewish-Christian relationship-and more particularly the dependence of Christianity on the texts and translations of a rival religion-has haunted…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Faithful Renderings as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

In 1893 the eminent scholar of Jewish studies, Moritz Steinschneider, astutely identified Jews as “Dolmetscher”— mediators between East and West, Christianity and Islam, ancient and modern languages. While early academic interest in Jewish translation primarily focused on the Middle Ages, the past two decades have seen a burgeoning fascination with translation across other periods (and spaces) of Jewish history.

Several outstanding books have emerged by literary historians such as Abigail Gillman, Aya Elyada, Tessa Rajak, and Omri Asscher, making it challenging to single out just one recommendation. But Naomi Seidman’s book had me hooked from page 1, where Seidman recounts…

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