Nothing Pure : Jewish Law, Christian Supersession, and Bible Translation in Old English / Mo Pareles.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pareles, Mo, Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (270 p.)

Place of Publication:

Toronto : University of Toronto Press, [2023]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Early English culture depended on a Judaism translated away from Jews. Revealing the importance of Jewish law to the workings of early Christian England, Nothing Pure presents a Jewish revision of the history of English Bible translation. The book illuminates the paradoxical process by which the abjection and dehumanization of Jews, a bitter milestone in the history of European racism, was first articulated in the cultural translation of Jewish literature. It locates Old English Bible translation within the history of cultural translation, so that instead of appearing as the romantically liberated fragments of a suppressed mode of literacy, these authorized and semi-authorized vernacular works can be seen as privileged texts appropriating a Jewish source culture into an English Christian host culture. Mo Pareles proposes a theory of translation called supersessionary translation to explain the aesthetics of these texts: while at first glance they appear to dismiss irrelevant Jewish laws according to an arbitrary pattern, closer analysis reveals that they are masterful attempts to subject the legacy of Judaism, through translation, to the control of a system that has purportedly superseded and replaced it. Ultimately, Nothing Pure demonstrates the surprisingly central role of Jewish law in translation to Christian identity in late Old English ecclesiastical and monastic writings.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction: A Brief History of Supersessionary Disgust

1 Exsanguinating Leviticus: Supersessionary Translation in the Old English Heptateuch

2 Men as Meat: Jewish Law and Orders of Being in Ælfric’s Translations of Maccabees and Job

3 The Benedictine Invention of Heterosexuality: Jewish (Law’s) Sexual Difference in Time

4 Ænlic Wimman: Judith and the Exception

5 Like Dogs and Wolves: Wulfstan as Biblical Translator

Afterword: Cleansings

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jul 2024)

ISBN:

9781487550707