Faithful Renderings
Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation
312 pages
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6 x 9
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© 2006
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 the theory and practice of translation in the West.
Bringing together central issues in translation studies with episodes in Jewish–Christian history, Naomi Seidman considers a range of texts, from the Bible to Elie Wiesel’s Night, delving into such controversies as the accuracy of various Bible translations, the medieval use of converts from Judaism to Christianity as translators, the censorship of anti-Christian references in Jewish texts, and the translation of Holocaust testimony. Faithful Renderings ultimately reveals that translation is not a marginal phenomenon but rather a crucial issue for understanding the relations between Jews and Christians and indeed the development of each religious community.
Bringing together central issues in translation studies with episodes in Jewish–Christian history, Naomi Seidman considers a range of texts, from the Bible to Elie Wiesel’s Night, delving into such controversies as the accuracy of various Bible translations, the medieval use of converts from Judaism to Christianity as translators, the censorship of anti-Christian references in Jewish texts, and the translation of Holocaust testimony. Faithful Renderings ultimately reveals that translation is not a marginal phenomenon but rather a crucial issue for understanding the relations between Jews and Christians and indeed the development of each religious community.
“Faithful Renderings is a very exciting book indeed, at once dense and lucid, astonishingly learned and deeply thoughtful. From the Septuagint to Isaac Singer, Seidman skillfully homes in on revealing episodes in the complex history of Jewish-Christian translational theory, polemic, and practice taking place within shifting but ever-asymmetrical fields of power. Refusing to essentialize or simplify, she nonetheless brilliantly illumines the historical particularity of Jewish approaches to translation--which is also to say, of Jewish articulations of displacement, doubleness, and difference.”— Virginia Burrus, Drew University
“Naomi Seidman’s Faithful Renderings is an astonishing achievement—astonishing in its originality, breadth of learning, and rhetorical power. Ranging from the Septuagint to Bashevis Singer, from Martin Luther to Elie Wiesel, Seidman thoroughly transforms our understanding of the dialogues and disputations that make up the Jewish–Christian encounter. With this work, Seidman establishes herself as one of the most compelling and powerful voices in Jewish cultural studies.”—David Biale, University of California, Davis
“Faithful Renderings is a wonderfully nomadic book, trekking from Jewish-non-Jewish translation encounter to Jewish-non-Jewish translation encounter not just temporally, from the Septuagint to Life is Beautiful, but thematically as well, interweaving, for example, a discussion of the Virgin Birth and Christian legends of the Seventy in their monkish ‘cells’ into an astonishing critical tour de force that brilliantly illumines both the Septuagint project and its afterlife and the politics of sacred translation in general. Seidman’s careful readings of her critical cases—the Septuagint, Aquila, Jerome, Luther, Buber and Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Wiesel, Singer—are always provocative and often disturbing, not least because she is constantly sidestepping the expected Jewish-vs.-Christian alignments in order to set up surprising and yet somehow strangely inevitable juxtapositions.”—Douglas Robinson, University of Mississippi
“Learned, literate, plainspoken, sensible, and above all original. Naomi Seidman’s stubborn but undogmatic insistence on seeing connections between religious difference and translation theory has given her a new angle of vision, and from that angle even what might have seemed familiar is newly alive and fascinating.”—Lawrence Rosenwald, Wellesley College
"[An] ambitious study...it is stimulating, often affording a fresh perspective on familiar texts. Seidman’s métier is cultural theory and hermeneutics, and it is here that she has something to offer biblical specialists."—Cameron Boyd-Taylor, Review of Biblical Literature
"Seidman reveals what a complicated, and sometimes dangerous, business translation is. . . . Certainly as an examination of the intricacies both of translation and of Jewish-Christian relations it is superb."—Ann Conway-Jones, Journal of Jewish Studies
"Faithful Renderings so dazzles with knowledge and insight that it is a daunting read. . . . Even more remarkable is the attentiveness to nuance, offering rich detail, for example, about debates in virtually every age over the spirit and letter in translation."—Mary C. Boys, Theological Studies
"An outstanding and valuable contribution to translation studies and a description of Jewish approaches to translation throughout history."
"[An] important contribution to the fields of Translation Studies, Jewish Studies, and Holocaust Studies, to name just a few of the disciplines [this] work will enrich."
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
The Translator as Double Agent
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Immaculate Translation
Sexual Fidelity, Textual Transmission, and the Virgin Birth
CHAPTER TWO
Sexual Fidelity, Textual Transmission, and the Virgin Birth
CHAPTER TWO
"The Beauty of Greece in the Tents of Shem"
Aquila between the Camps
Aquila between the Camps
CHAPTER THREE
False Friends
Conversion and Translation from Jerome to Luther
Conversion and Translation from Jerome to Luther
CHAPTER FOUR
A Translator Culture
CHAPTER FIVE
The Holocaust in Every Tongue
CHAPTER SIX
Translation and Assimilation
Singer in America
EPILOGUE
Endecktes Judenthum?
A Translator's Note
Notes
Index
CHAPTER FIVE
The Holocaust in Every Tongue
CHAPTER SIX
Translation and Assimilation
Singer in America
EPILOGUE
Endecktes Judenthum?
A Translator's Note
Notes
Index
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Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory
Religion: Christianity | Judaism
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