Arabic in Hebrew Letters: An introduction to ‘Judeo-Arabic’

III. Bible Translations

Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language in the first centuries of the Common Era. Although it was replaced by Aramaic or Greek in daily life, it kept – as the language of the Pentateuch, apart from some Aramaic parts – its liturgical importance. As a result of this tension, the necessity of Bible translations arose and manifested itself in the so-called targumim, the Aramaic translations. With the Arabic/Islamic conquest in the seventh century CE, the linguistic landscape shaped once again and now Arabic turned to be the predominant language. The Aramaic targumim met the same fate as the Hebrew Bible did before: Despite having become a tradition on its own, even in liturgy, it was eventually no longer understood and needed to be replaced – or at least accompanied – by Arabic translations and some those will briefly be presented here.

Saʿadia’s Tafsīr

The most prominent Arabic Bible translation from a Jew is the Tafsīr of Saʿadia Gaon, a versatilely interested Jewish scholar (882/892–942). As the title suggests (tafsīr means literally ‘explanation’, ‘commentary’ and with reference to the Qur ʾān ‘exegesis’, too), his translation was originally part of his commentary, however, the translation has become/became independent and was received even by non-Jews.

Linguistically, Saʿadia’s Tafsīr aims at an idiomatically correct and clear Arabic (what is called in Arabic stylistics faṣīḥ) and its orthography follows the conventions of Classical Arabic, i. e.: matres lectiones are only used to mark long vowels. Consequently, he is not afraid to move away from the Hebrew original and sometimes even makes additions corresponding to his philosophical, rationalist worldview. This includes for example the avoidance of what could be understood as anthropomorphism of God.

Due to its popularity on the one hand and its closeness to the ideals of Classical Arabic conventions on the other, Blau and Hopkins considered the impact of Saʿadia’s Tafsīr comparable to that of the Bible translation of Martin Luther on German. Albeit this assumption is not tenable from a historical point of view, its narrative nevertheless demonstrates that in some cases, a translation can step out of the role of being the mere repetition of an original in other words.

 

Early and non-Saʿadianic translations

As the heading suggests, the translations presented in this paragraph are partly older than, partly contemporary to that of Saʿadia, but they differ in their translation technique. One of their features is phonetic orthography: Matres lectiones are not only used for long vowels (as it is the case in Classical Arabic or in Saʿadia’s Tafsīr), but generally for some vowels regardless their length. Another characteristic is their strongly intended closeness to the Hebrew original: An early version of the book of Proverbs (cf. Blau 2002, p. 147–154) for example exhibits the usage of cognate roots, even though the corresponding Arabic root is less common or at least phonetically similar roots or the translation with corresponding morphological patterns. Another example, a translation of the book of Exodus (MS Bodl. Heb. b. 10.73), translates some Hebrew words with two words in Arabic: the former resorts to the cognate root, the letter to the more common one.

All those aspects do not render the Biblical text an understandable, i. e. independently readable Arabic version, quite the contrary, they rather create a ‘hebraized’ Arabic that makes the Arabic transparent for the linguistic qualities of the original.

 

Šarḥ
From the 14th/15th century onwards, a new genre of Bible translation emerged: the šarḥ. The šarḥ steps in to replace Saʿadia’s translation as it has become increasingly unintelligible. The noun šarḥ means ‘explanation’, ‘commentary’, but the same root as a verb signifies (i. a.) ‘to expose’, ‘to make clearly visible’, but also ‘to cut open’ in the surgical sense. This etymology offers a quite precise idea of what characterises this type of translation. Like the early or non-Saʿadianic Bible translations, the šarḥ aims to be as close as possible to the Hebrew original using similar mechanisms as already mentioned: corresponding or phonetically close roots or the reproduction of the Hebrew syntax. In cases, where cognate verbs are used with different prepositions, it may occur that rather the preposition corresponding to the Hebrew is preferred. Again, the result is far from being idiomatically correct or ‘natural’ Arabic, rather the Arabic language is somehow purposefully ‘distorted’ to make the Hebrew original shine through it. The so produced texts were likely to be used in a didactical context, they were, as it seems, supposed to convey an idea as close as possible to the Bible and ‘mechanically’ taught with original and translation next to each other.