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WORK TITLE: The Murderous History of Bible Translations
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WEBSITE: http://www.harryfreedmanbooks.com/
CITY: London, England
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COUNTRY: United Kingdom
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http://www.harryfreedmanbooks.com/aboutme.shtml
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1950, in London, UK; married; children: two.
EDUCATION:Undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in psychology, philosophy, and Aramaic.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Form CEO in various businesses, including restaurants, property management, construction, health care, and consultancy.
WRITINGS
Also author of How to Get a Job in a Recession.
SIDELIGHTS
After a long career as a business executive and consultant to nonprofit organizations, Harry Freedman shifted his professional focus to writing. Many of his nonfiction books examine the history of scripture. A specialist in Aramaic, which was the focus of his Ph.D. thesis, Freedman translated Sancino Press’s 1992 publication of the 10-volume Midrash Rabbah, a collection of canonical Jewish texts written in ancient Hebrew and in Aramaic. Freedman is also the author of a novel, Jerusalem Imperiled, about a young Jewish priest from Roman-occupied Jerusalem who is sent to Rome as a slave.
The Gospels' Veiled Agenda
In The Gospels’ Veiled Agenda: Revolution, Priesthood and the Holy Grail, Freedman depicts Jesus not as the Christian Messiah but as a Jewish revolutionary intent on destroying a Jewish priesthood that he saw as corrupt. This priesthood had attained its power by collaborating with Israel’s Roman governors and in doing so had compromised its spiritual purity. Jesus considered it essential to create a new priesthood unbeholden to Rome and devoted to spiritual leadership.
Simon Rocker, reviewing the book in the Jewish Chronicle, observed that the author “deploys his knowledge of midrash with ingenuity” and supports his speculations with careful scholarship. New Age Spirituality contributor Wendy Stokes expressed similar praise, describing The Gospels’ Veiled Agenda as “impressive with its new revelations and its attention to detail.”
The Talmud
The Talmud: A Biography: Banned, Censored and Burned: The Book They Couldn’t Suppress is a history of Judaism’s central text, through which the history of the Jewish people can also be told. Freedman explains that the Talmud, which has become the final authority on Jewish law and practice, originated as a series of academic discussions among scholars in Babylon after the Romans’ destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. As a text that developed over time and was transmitted orally for several centuries, the Talmud incorporated influences from Hebraic traditions and from Islamic thought. Once its teachings were transcribed into writing, the Talmud became a fixed repository of Jewish religious law and tradition, a canonical text to be studied and preserved. Freedman discusses anti-Semitism and its attempts to ban or destroy the Talmud, as well its relationship to Christian scholarship, Enlightenment philosophy, and scientific thought. He weaves into the book biographical material on some of the major figures in Talmudic history, including Maimonides and Baruch Spinoza.
Writing in Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, R. Goldenberg found the book “riddled with inaccuracy and occasional bad taste,” observing that the author has aimed to engage nonspecialist readers by choosing entertaining stories and material at the expense of coherence. But a Kirkus Reviews contributor praised the book highly, concluding that the author ‘brings impressive research to the biography of a 2,000-year-old text that still excites scholars, inspires controversy and reflects turbulent events in Jewish history.” The book also received a high rating in Publishers Weekly, where a reviewer deemed it a “masterful and engaging introduction to the history of the Talmud.” In a review for the Jewish Book Council Web Site, Wallace Greene hailed The Talmud as a “broad, ambitious work, which succeeds as an outline for further study.”
The Murderous History of Bible Translations
Though the printing press eventually made ownership of the Bible almost universal among literate Christians, The Murderous History of Bible Translations: Power, Conflict, and the Quest for Meaning shows how the publication and dissemination of Christianity’s central text has been fraught with errors, conflicts, and even dangers. Comprising material from the Hebrew Bible as well as writings from Christ’s disciples, the Christian Bible was composed in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic; it was translated into Latin in the fourth century CE, and in 1546 this Latin version was declared the single authentic and official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. In effect, this kept control of Christian teachings in the hands of the literate clergy, since most churchgoers could neither read nor understand Latin. But as dissatisfaction with church control grew in the period leading up to the Protestant Reformation, people demanded the right to read the Bible in their own languages. They wanted to experience the words of scripture as they had been written, not as their priests and bishops had interpreted them. Clerics so feared this potential undermining of their authority that they imposed severe penalties on any vernacular translations of the Bible.
English scholar John Wycliffe, who died in 1384, produced a translation of the Latin Bible into Middle English in 1382. By 1401, a law was passed making any unauthorized translation of the Bible into English a crime punishable as heresy. Jan Hus, a Czech priest who supervised the creation of the first Bible in Czech in 1416, was burned at the stake for this crime. William Tyndale, an English scholar who traveled to Germany to complete his English translation of the Bible and arranged for it to be smuggled into England, was strangled to death and burned at the stake for heresy in 1536. As Freedman points out in the book, the act of Bible translation became less deadly after the period of religious wars in Europe came to an end. In other parts of the world, including Papua New Guinea and the Middle East, Bible translators continue to risk their lives.
Though much of The Murderous History of Bible Translation focuses on violence and conflict, Freedman also discusses the enriching influences of vernacular renderings of scripture. He expresses admiration for Martin Luther’s careful and clear sixteenth-century German translation and for the King James Bible, an English translation commissioned by James I and completed in 1611 that has been recognized as a poetic masterpiece and one of the most important books in the English language.
Writing in Booklist, Bryce Christensen deemed The Murderous History of Bible Translation a “fascinating look at the tangled backstory of the Western world’s Good Book.” New Statesman contributor Matthew Adams, however, perceived several weaknesses in the book, including a vague and “perfunctory” treatment of the complex religious and cultural divisions that had inspired Reformation scholars to risk their lives to render scripture into the languages of the people. Also observing that Freedman oversimplifies at times and “lacks theological nuance,” Library Journal reviewer Brian Sullivan nevertheless praised The Murderous History of Bible Translation for its “wide accessibility.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, July 1, 2016, Bryce Christensen, review of The Murderous History of Bible Translations: Power, Conflict, and the Quest for Meaning, p. 5.
Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, January, 2015, R. Goldenberg, review of The Talmud: A Biography: Banned, Censored and Burned: The Book They Couldn’t Suppress, p. 820.
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2014, review of The Talmud: A Biography; September 15, 2016, review of The Murderous History of Bible Translations.
Library Journal, August 1, 2016, Brian Sullivan, review of The Murderous History of Bible Translations, p. 99.
New Statesman, September 16, 2016, Matthew Adams, review of The Murderous History of Bible Translations, p. 48.
Publishers Weekly, September 8, 2014, review of The Talmud, p. 58; September 12, 2016, review of The Murderous History of Bible Translations, p. 52.
Spectator, May 14, 2016, Ian Thomson, review of The Murderous History of Bible Translations, p. 38.
ONLINE
Harry Freedman Website, http://www.harryfreedmanbooks.com (July 2, 2017).
Historical Novel Society Web Site, https://historicalnovelsociety.org/ (July 2, 2017), review of The Murderous History of Bible Translations.
History Extra, http://www.historyextra.com/ (July 1, 2017), Emma Mason, review of The Murderous History of Bible Translations.
Jewish Book Council Web Site, http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/ (July 2, 2017), Wallace Greene, review of The Talmud.
Jewish Chronicle Online, https://www.thejc.com/ (July 2, 2017), Simon Rocker, review of The Gospels’ Veiled Agenda: Revolution, Priesthood and the Holy Grail.
New Age Spirituality, http://new-age-spirituality.com/ (July 2, 2017), Wendy Stokes, review of The Gospels’ Veiled Agenda.
Scotsman Online, http://www.scotsman.com/ (July 2, 2017), Stuart Kelly, review of The Murderous History of Bible Translations.
Times of Israel Online, http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/ (July 2, 2017), Ben Rothke, review of The Talmud.
About Me
I have been writing books and articles for many years but for most of that time it was something I did on the side, alsongside my commercial career. In recent years I have been able to devote more time to my writing.
My forthcoming book is The Murderous History of Bible Translations, to be published by Bloomsbury, in early 2016. Bloomsbury also published my previous book The Talmud: A Biography in February 2014.
I wrote The Murderous History of Bible Translations to highlight a subject that I believe demands attention. Nearly all of us have a copy of the Bible on our bookshelves. We take it for granted that we can read it in our native language or, if we choose, in all most any other language under the sun. It is our privilege, and our right. But that wasn't always the case; translations of the Bible were not always allowed. There was a time when religious authorities banned ordinary people from reading Scripture in their own language; in case they got the ‘wrong’ ideas.
Of course what the authorities really feared was that they would lose control. So much of religion is about dogma and not every 'official' dogma is confirmed by the Bible. There was a time when it was felt better to tell people what to believe, than to have them discover it for themselves. Those who disagreed with this approach, who felt that the Bible should be brought to the masses, risked their lives in doing so. And even now, in the modern world, when translators are no longer persecuted, their translations often remain controversial. Publishing a translation of the Bible is one of the most emotionally fraught activities one can undertake.
I wrote my previous book, The Talmud: A Biography because I'd had so many conversations over the years with people who had heard of the Talmud but didn't really know what it was.
The Talmud is an important, and yet in many ways neglected, part of world culture. It is as ancient as many of the world's classics, lengthier than possibly any other, complex in its composition, frequently profound in its content and it has had a far more tumultuous story than most. A story which is not contained in the words on its pages. It was this story, or at least a good part of it, which I have tried to tell.
Most people who have had a good Jewish education have studied, or at least dipped into the Talmud. We value it because it is, as I have tried to explain in the book, the foundation of Judaism. We rarely stop to acknowledge it as part of our cultural heritage. Yet, in a world which is far more culturally interconnected than ever before, the Talmud is not just the heritage of the Jews. It is a classic of world literature. And its story deserves to be told. You will find the resource site for The Talmud: A Biography at talmudbiography.com
Before I started writing I had a varied and fascinating career, full of variety and change.
I started by setting up and running a wholefood restaurant in Devon. Since then I have run companies in property, construction, health care and consultancy and I've worked as a chief executive in the voluntary sector. For the last fifteen years or so I have been coaching people to help them make the most of their careers.
I discovered quite early on that I need variety as well as challenges. I went back to university, part time, and studied first for an MA and then a PhD, on an obscure Aramaic translation of the Bible. I started writing articles on academic topics and social issues, contributing occasionally to books and, when I got a bit more time, writing my own.
I've got two great, grown up kids, one grandchild (so far!) a wonderful wife and I live in London, which is a fantastic city. I hope you will like my books, and, if you do, buy them and recommend them to your friends. I will be happy to send you a signed copy; you can order one from the Contact page.
I'm always glad to hear from people who are interested in what I do; please use the contact page to get in touch or email me on harry AT harryfreedmanbooks DOT com.
Harry Freedman
Harry Freedman
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My latest book is The Murderous History of Bible Translations. It was published by Bloomsbury in May 2016. It's astonishing just how controversial the apparently innocent act of translating the bible has been. People have been excomunicated, ostracised and yes, even killed for it. Even once the violence subsided, as the world entered a more enlightened age, translating the Bible remained controversial. It can also be big business, as one of the final chapters shows. The whole subject is fascinating ; I am sure that you will agree that the book is well worth reading!
My last book was The Talmud: A Biography, published by Bloomsbury in February 2014. The Talmud is the religious and legal pillar of Judaism. Containing nearly 2,000,000 words in thirty seven volumes, it covers topics as diverse as law, faith, medicine, magic, ethics, sex, humour and prayer. It is a highly complex, profoundly logical and frequently impenetrable work with a history like no other. In its 1,500 year history the Talmud has been banned, censored and burnt, dissected by scholars and rabbis, probed by philosophers, poets, republicans and kings. Its story is a fascinating insight into the history of Judaism. You can visit the book's website at www.talmudbiography.com.
I have been writing books and articles for many years but for most of that time it was something I did on the side. I've had a varied and fascinating career full of variety and change.
I started, when I was much younger, running a wholefood restaurant in Devon. Since then I have run companies in property, construction, health care and consultancy and I've worked as a chief executive in the voluntary sector. For the last fifteen years or so I have been coaching people to help them make the most of their careers.
I discovered quite early on that I need variety as well as challenges. I went back to university, part time, and studied first for an MA and then a PhD, on an obscure Aramaic translation of the Bible. I started writing articles on academic topics and social issues, contributing occasionally to books and, when I got a bit more time, writing my own. I now have a fantastic agent, Sheila Ableman, who helps me to navigate the complex world of book publishing, she can be found at sheila @ sheilaableman.co.uk.
I've got two great, grown up kids, a wonderful wife and I live close to the centre of London, which is a fantastic location. I hope you will like my books, and, if you do, buy them and recommend them to your friends.
I'm always glad to hear from people who are interested in what I do; please use the contact page to get in touch or email me on harry AT harryfreedmanbooks DOT com.
You can also read more about my books on www.harryfreedmanbooks.com and www.talmudbiography.com
Harry Freedman (author)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Harry Freedman is a British author who writes on the history of religion and culture. His history of the Kabbalah is due to be published by Bloomsbury in 2019.
Born in London in 1950, Freedman has worked as CEO in a variety of small and medium enterprises as well as in the voluntary sector.
He wrote The Talmud: A Biography, published by Bloomsbury in 2014. In the book he asserts that the Talmud is a classic of world literature and that its story is an account of one of the most important cultural, historical and religious works of our time.
In 2011 he published Jerusalem Imperilled the first novel in a trilogy. Published only as an e-book it tells the story of Levi, a young priest in Roman occupied Jerusalem, who is captured and sent to Rome as a slave.
His most recent book is The Murderous History of Bible Translations. Published by Bloomsbury in 2016 the book discusses controversial Bible translations, many of which have led to religious conflict and violence.
He published The Gospels' Veiled Agenda in December 2009. In it he asserted that the Gospels draw on Old Testament sources in order to present a picture of Jesus that resonated culturally with the 1st-century Jewish audience for whom the Gospels were intended. He claimed that the Holy Grail is mentioned in all four gospels and is a central icon in understanding Jesus' true agenda.[1]
In his book, How to Get a Job in a Recession, Freedman advises how to look for jobs more successfully than everyone else. In his book and articles,[2] he emphasizes that there are still plenty of new opportunities coming onto the market. He claims that even if there are fewer jobs in your particular industry, the chances of getting back to work quickly in another field are still high even in this new recruiting atmosphere.[3]
Freedman’s academic qualifications include first and postgraduate degrees in psychology, philosophy and Aramaic.
Works[edit]
The Murderous History of Bible Translations (2016, ISBN 9781472921673)
The Talmud: A Biography (2014, ISBN 9781472905949)
Jerusalem Imperilled (2011, ASIN B006791GR4)
The Gospels' Veiled Agenda (2009, ISBN 978-1-84694-260-0)
Freedman, Harry: THE TALMUD--A BIOGRAPHY
Kirkus Reviews. (Sept. 1, 2014):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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Freedman, Harry THE TALMUD--A BIOGRAPHY Bloomsbury (Adult Nonfiction) $26.00 10, 14 ISBN: 978-1-4729-0594-9
A history of the Jewish people as reflected in its central text. The Talmud, Freedman (The Gospels' Veiled Agenda: Revolution, Priesthood and the Holy Grail, 2009, etc.) explains in this capacious history, is an "arcane and obscure" compendium of interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. Containing nearly 2 million words, the original Talmud recorded discussions that took place among scholars in Babylon between the third and fifth centuries. Although the Talmud is now considered "the final authority on Jewish religious law and practice," it began as an academic exercise of biblical exegesis, with analyses transmitted orally. "Talmudic scholars would happily base their rulings on it when responding to inquiries," the author writes, "but they weren't particularly bothered about laying it out in front of the masses as an object of study." Once the Talmud became fixed in writing, it took on the function of law, and it became the focus of waves of anti-Semitism. Copies in France were destroyed in 1242, when Pope Gregory IX, in a sweeping condemnation of Jews, ordered the text to be burned. From 1553 to 1559, all copies found in Rome went up in flames. In creating the biography of a book, Freedman offers biographical sketches of major figures involved in its story, including the 11th-century rabbi known as Rashi, whose commentary forms part of the modern Talmud; Maimonides, "a giant on the Tamudic stage"; and Baruch Spinoza, a philosopher whose ideas challenged the teachings of the Talmud. The modern Talmud is a layered work, comprising quotations from the Mishnah, a codification of Jewish law written in the second to third centuries; Babylonian commentaries; additions by the original editors of the Talmud; and later material intended to provide introductions and conclusions to various topics. Freedman brings impressive research to the biography of a 2,000-year-old text that still excites scholars, inspires controversy and reflects turbulent events in Jewish history.
The Talmud, a Biography: Banned, Censored and Burned--The Book They Couldn't Suppress
Publishers Weekly. 261.36 (Sept. 8, 2014): p58.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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The Talmud, a Biography: Banned, Censored and Burned--The Book They Couldn't Suppress
Harry Freedman. Bloomsbury, $26.99 (256p) ISBN 978-1-4729-0594-9
This history by Freedman (The Gospels' Welled Agenda: Revolution, Priesthood and the Holy Grail) is reminiscent of the school of Wissenschaft des Judentums (the scientific study of Judaism), in which an honest accounting of history enriches, rather than endangers, understanding of Judaism. Freedman veers slightly from this approach, however, in describing the Talmud as an expansion of the written Bible. The Talmud consists of excerpts of the legal work known as the Mishnah, plus the Gemara, wide-ranging rabbinical discussion on those laws. Though this discussion ties laws to text, the actual origins of most of these laws are lost in history.
This premise--that the Talmud is a Bible commentary--nevertheless does not diminish the book as a history of the Talmud, its oral origins and its written composition, the relationship of Jewish communities to that work, and the influence of other cultures (e.g., Islamic intellectual cultures). Overall, this is not only a masterful and engaging introduction to the history of the Talmud, but a useful lens through which to view Jewish history. Agent: Sheila Ableman, Sheila Ableman Literary Agency. (Oct.)
Rewriting holy writ
Ian Thomson
Spectator. 331.9794 (May 14, 2016): p38.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
http://www.spectator.co.uk
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The Murderous History of Bible Translations: Power, Conflict and the Quest for Meaning
by Harry Freedman
Bloomsbury, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 248, ISBN 9781472921673
Jesuits, the leading apologists for Rome and Catholic revival in Elizabethan England, cast a long shadow over the paranoid post-Armada years. For one thing, they set much store by Romish 'persuasion' (sophistical reasoning) and were often superb linguists. Among the languages codified by Jesuits were Guaraní in Paraguay and Sri Lankan Tamil. Jesuit attempts to translate the Bible into local vernaculars were often less successful, however. Japanese converts to Jesuitism apparently still believe that Noah survived the flood in a canoe; scribal error had corrupted the Ark into an unlikely means of salvation.
Inevitably, translation is a frayed and ragged version of the original ( Traduttore traditore, the Italians say: 'The translator is a traitor'), but the Bible presents a special challenge. Not one word in the Old Testament is believed by Jews and Gentiles to be unintended or extraneous, so there is little room for error. The King James Bible of 1611 of course remains a marvel of cadenced tautness and high-flown poetry, but that was an exception.
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In his scholarly and entertaining account of biblical inerrancy down the ages, Harry Freedman makes much of the so-called 'Wicked' or 'Adulterous' English language version of 1631, which neglected to include the word 'not' in the seventh commandment. Amid the familiar exhortations 'thou shalt not kill' and 'thou shalt not steale' was the clamorous slip up 'thou shalt commit adultery'. The edition was hastily withdrawn on the orders of a horrified Charles I.
Others have gone so far as to tinker with holy writ. The gay-friendly Queen James Bible, published in New York in 2012, rephrased or simply removed perceived anti-homosexual passages on the grounds that James I was himself, in the words of the anonymous editors, 'a well known bisexual'. This is a queer kind of logic, but there is always a special risk, says Freedman, in tampering with the gist of God's word. The 1998 Complete Jewish Bible intruded words in Yiddish slang, when Yiddish wasn't even a 'twinkle in the eye' of first-century Jewish Christians. The intention (a perfectly laudable one) was to demonstrate the Jewish provenance of the New Testament. The disciples are warned, hip-jive style, not to schmoose on the road, while in John x 19-20 the Judeans say of Jesus: 'He's meshugga! Why do you listen to him?' The American comedian-crooner Lord Buckley (now sadly forgotten) had burlesqued Jesus of Nazareth in a similar way: 'Here come the Nazz, cool as anyone you ever see, right across the water--walkin'!' But that was a stand-up routine, not the Holy Bible.
Freedman (who has a PhD in the language spoken by Jesus and his followers, Aramaic) is at pains to point out the Hebraic roots of the New Testament. Matthew's gospel, the most demonstrably 'Jewish' of the four, seeks to show how every recorded act of Jesus is rooted in Jewish scripture. The first Christians, a messianic Jewish sect, adhered to circumcision and Mosaic law, and were known to outsiders as Nazarenes. (Even today, the word for 'Christian' in Arabic is Nasrani. ) Christianity did not detach from Judaism definitively until 70 AD, when Roman legions under Emperor Titus destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem.
For Jews, of course, the Bible is only the Old Testament, but even then the designation Old Testament is 'inappropriate', says Freedman, as it implies that the Hebrew Bible has been superseded. Perhaps that is the point. Illuminated Anglo-Saxon translations of the Bible (of which the Lindisfarne manuscript is the oldest to have survived) sometimes encouraged anti-Semitism. An Old English version of the Old Testament, for example, mistranslated Moses's face as gehyrned, or 'horned'. In the medieval mind it followed that all Jews had devilish horns. (Michelangelo's 1513 statue of Moses is one of the most famous of such depictions.)
As the Reformation spread across northern Europe, so the translated Bible became a useful weapon of protest against the licentiousness and unbridled greed (as it was seen) of the Vatican, with its lubricious friars and other purple embarrassments. William Tyndale's early-16th-century translation of the Bible did for English what Luther had done for German: it loaded and vivified our language with coinages that we still use ('my brother's keeper', 'pour out one's heart', 'signs of the times'). Daringly, Tyndale translated the Greek ekklesia as 'congregation' rather than 'church'. Congregational singing--an innovation of the Reformation--allowed the faithful to become participants in church worship rather than remain as mute spectators.
Freedman's history, a breezy affair from start to finish ('Luther was a shrewd operator'), is the beginning of wisdom in all things scripturally buckled, deformed and misshaped. If only we had a Lord Buckley version. 'The Nazz. That was the cat's name. A carpenter-kitty.'
The Murderous History of Bible Translations: Power, Conflict, and the Quest for Meaning
Bryce Christensen
Booklist. 112.21 (July 1, 2016): p5.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
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* The Murderous History of Bible Translations: Power, Conflict, and the Quest for Meaning. By Harry Freedman. Nov. 2016. 256p. Bloomsbury, $28 (9781632866011). 220.4.
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For readers who take for granted the easy availability of the Bible in every library--in every hotel room!--Freedman's engrossing history of Biblical translations documents the high human cost of such availability. Freedman devotes particular attention to William Tyndale, the brilliant sixteenth-century polyglot strangled and then burned as a heretic by clerics outraged by his challenge to their control of Holy Writ in England. But readers encounter all too many other bold translators--including Jan Hus of Bohemia and Jacob van Liesveldt of Holland--who paid the same price for similar offenses. Merely reading from the Bible in vernacular Gallic sent the medieval beguine Marguerite Ponte to the stake. Such martyrdom underscores the tensions running throughout a narrative stretching from ancient fights between Jewish and Christian scholars wrangling over the Hebrew word almah, through Reformation-era disputes between Protestant and Catholic exegetes arguing over the Greek word ecclesia, to modern debates between progressives and conservatives split over masculine scriptural pronouns. Despite the rancor, Freedman recognizes that the best Bible translations--including the one Luther delivered in painstakingly wrought sixteenth-century German and the one James I commissioned in poetic seventeenth-century English--have forever enriched world literature. A fascinating look at the tangled backstory of the Western world's Good Book.--Bryce Christensen
Freedman, Harry. The Murderous History of Bible Translations: Power, Conflict, and the Quest for Meaning
Brian Sullivan
Library Journal. 141.13 (Aug. 1, 2016): p99.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
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Freedman, Harry. The Murderous History of Bible Translations: Power, Conflict, and the Quest for Meaning. Bloomsbury. Nov. 2016.256p. notes, bibliog. index. ISBN 9781632866011. $28; ebk. ISBN 9781472921680. REL
In this brisk, exciting narrative, Freedman (The Talmud: A Biography) shares some of the most compelling, contentious, and even murderous stories surrounding the many translations of the best-selling book in history, the Bible. Starting with the Greek Septuagint and working all the way up to present-day debates over gender-inclusive language and dynamic equivalence translations, Freedman's account, while not comprehensive, fascinatingly covers a vast range of times, places, and circumstances. Although he details the backgrounds of dozens of translations; highlights include the creation of the King James version; the story of the first female Bible translator, Julia Smith; and the executions of priest Jan Hus and Bible translator William Tyndale. Several themes recur throughout such as the politics of religion, power, and authority, and the emotional impact of familiar religious language. In order to keep the narrative moving, at times Freedman lacks theological nuance, oversimplifying various aspects of Catholic and Reformation theology, for instance. However, as a popular rather than scholarly work, these occasional overgeneralizations are understandable given the book's fast pace and wide accessibility. VERDICT Recommended for general readers interested in the thrilling history of a text many take for granted.--Brian Sullivan, Alfred Univ. Lib., NY
Sullivan, Brian
The Murderous History of Bible Translations: Power, Conflict, and the Quest for Meaning
Publishers Weekly. 263.37 (Sept. 12, 2016): p52.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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The Murderous History of Bible Translations: Power, Conflict, and the Quest for Meaning
Harry Freedman. Bloomsbury, $28 (256p) ISBN 978-1-63286-601-1
Aramaic and Hebrew scholar Freedman (The Gospels' Veiled Agenda) vividly explains how and why scripture has been translated, beginning shortly after the death of Alexander the Great, and carrying through to the present day, including the recent Queen James Bible. The author is open about his populist aim--to tell "the story of the translated Bible," without being a lengthy comprehensive history that would appeal more to scholars--and he succeeds in achieving that goal. Freedman buttresses his contention that while most translations were undertaken to provide access to the masses, and thus be "radical, liberating, and inspirational," religious conservatives used translations for the opposite reason, as a "barrier to social evolution." Freedman also demonstrates the enduring power of word choices, for example, how Jerome's Vulgate presentation of Moses spawned anti-Semitic superstitions that all Jews had horns, and, even more significantly, how the Septuagint translating the Hebrew word aimak as virgin instead of young woman bolstered Christian assertions that the Hebrew Bible foretold the birth of Jesus. For those interested in the complex history of Bible translation, this is a must-read. (Nov.)
Harry Freedman: THE MURDEROUS HISTORY OF BIBLE TRANSLATIONS
Kirkus Reviews. (Sept. 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
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Harry Freedman THE MURDEROUS HISTORY OF BIBLE TRANSLATIONS Bloomsbury (Adult Nonfiction) 28.00 11, 15 ISBN: 978-1-63286-601-1
A retelling of the well-studied history of biblical translation.Freedman (The Talmud: A Biography, 2014), who has a doctorate in Aramaic, provides a basic, serviceable, Western-centered history of the translation of the Bible. Despite the title, only a small portion of his book centers on the gruesome and deadly history of pre-Reformation attempts at Bible translation. The author begins with pre-Christian translations of the Hebrew Bible, such as the Septuagint (Hebrew to Greek) and the Targum (Hebrew to Aramaic). Freedman moves on to cover the storied creation of the Vulgate by Saint Jerome. Eventually, he comes to the age of the Cathars, the French movement ruthlessly suppressed by Rome in the 13th century. “It was the first act,” writes Freedman, “in what was to become an endemic, medieval persecution of the translated Bible.” At this point, the author delves into names familiar to students of Reformation history and its run-up—e.g., John Wycliffe, the Lollards, Jan Hus, Erasmus, and others. The murder of William Tyndale is at the center of the book. From there on, with the advent of the Reformation, the translation of the Bible became a less and less fearsome act. “With the creation of the King James Bible [in 1611],” writes Freedman, “the age of the Bible translator living in fear for his life had drawn to an end.” Indeed, it would be the beginning of an explosion of translation activity, much of which is now largely forgotten. The author ends with the history of 20th-century English translations such as the New Jerusalem Bible, the Revised Standard Version, etc. Strangely, he does not mention such important developments as the New International Version. Freedman does pull in references to non-English translations, but his work is far from a complete translation history. Though it is worthwhile for those with an amateur interest in church history, it offers few new insights and only scratches the surface of global translation history. An interesting read but not an innovative history.
The word was God
Matthew Adams
New Statesman. 145.5332 (Sept. 16, 2016): p48.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 New Statesman, Ltd.
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The Murderous History of Bible Translations: Power, Conflict and the Quest for Meaning
Harry Freedman
Bloomsbury Continuum, 2$6pp, 20 [pounds sterling]
In 1411, the then archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, wrote to Pope Gregory XII about the condition of the Catholic Church. In his letter, as he looked back on recent threats to Catholicism, Arundel allowed himself some remarks about a dangerous nemesis: the "pestilent and wretched John Wyclif, of cursed memory, that son of the old serpent".
Wycliffe, he wrote, had "endeavoured by every means to attack the very faith and sacred doctrine of the Holy Church, devising--to fill up the measure of his malice the expedient of a new translation of the Scriptures into the mother tongue".
When Arundel wrote those words the phenomenon of Bible translation was almost new to England. An Anglo-Saxon version by Bishop Eadfrith, subsequently known as the Lindisfarne Gospels, was written in the 7th to 8th centuries but beyond that there had been nothing. With the arrival of Wycliffe's English rendering, "the Gospel that Christ gave to the doctors and clergy of the Church"--as an anonymous contemporary of Arundel put it--had "become vulgar and more open to lay men and women who can read than it usually is to quite learned clergy of good intelligence. And so the pearl of the Gospel is scattered abroad and trodden underfoot by swine."
Wycliffe's undertaking marks the point at which the story of Bible translation begins to get murderous. When his great work appeared in England in the late 14th century, it led to a series of proscriptions--issued throughout Europe--against the making and owning of vernacular versions of the Scriptures. In 1415 Jan Hus, a Czech follower of Wycliffe, was burned at the stake, with copies of Wycliffe's Bible used as kindling for the fire. In the early 16th century a resident of Norwich was executed for the crime of having a piece of paper bearing a vernacular transcription of the Lord's Prayer. And in 1536 the scholar William Tyndale was subjected to a botched strangling, then burned at the stake, for producing his magnificent English translation of the Bible.
Instead of beginning The Murderous History of Bible Translations with a detailed consideration of the forces that propelled Wycliffe to engage in his immeasurably influential act of scholarship, Harry Freedman devotes the first third of the book to a chronological survey of his subject, from the 2nd or 3rd century BC, when in Alexandria the Old Testament was first translated from Hebrew into Greek, to the appearance of a Slavic version in the 9th.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In some ways this portion of the book is necessary. It introduces the two texts on which the later, violent history of Bible translation depended (the Koine Greek Septuagint, which probably emerged from the translation made at Alexandria, and St Jerome's Latin Vulgate of 382AD); it also features some entertaining anecdotes and detail. I did not know that we owe the phrase "to fast" to a 4th-century Gothic translation of the Bible for which the translator, Ulfilas ("Little Wolf"), had to invent an alphabet; and it was instructive to be reminded that the 3rd-century ascetic Origen, on encountering a verse in Matthew in praise of those who live as eunuchs, assiduously embarked on an act of auto-castration.
For the most part, however, the early history of the translated Bible was almost entirely non-violent, and Freedman's broad survey of it is marred by a frustrating lack of argument. This shortcoming afflicts the rest of the book, which goes on to consider the nature of Bible translation from around 1300 to the early 1600s, as well as its development from the mid-i7th century to the 20th. The second part is more successful, if only because it marks the sole occasion on which Freedman deals in any detail with the lethal consequences of making, importing, printing, owning and reading translations of the Bible.
In England and in northern Europe, this story becomes that of the Reformation: the foundation of the modern world. Yet Freedman dispenses with it in 70 pages. Consequently, his account of the struggles of Wycliffe and the Lollards, and of Martin Luther's translation of the Bible into German, feels perfunctory. The same goes for his account of Tyndale's translation--a work that cost Tyndale his life, provided the makers of the King James Bible with almost 90 per cent of their final text, shaped the lineaments of the English language and became one of the foundations of modern English prose.
The stylistic ineptitude on display in Freedman's pages suggests that he has tried hard to reverse that achievement. When his prose is not so full of cliches as to border on parody (in the space of three pages, we get "smelt a rat", "left much to be desired", "times were changing", "a new age was dawning" and, wonderfully, "stuck to his guns as far as the bigger picture was concerned"), it manages to meet the additional challenge of uniting cliche with nonsense: "The translated Bible, quite unwittingly, sat at the heart of events."
The cumulative effect of such deficiencies makes what might and should have been a focused, inspiring and engaged study of the sanguinary history of Bible translation feel vague, dispiriting and at times frivolous. The figures at the heart of Freedman's book undertook work of great care, labour, risk and sacrifice. They ought to be honoured accordingly.
Freedman, Harry. The Talmud: a biography: banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress
R. Goldenberg
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 52.5 (Jan. 2015): p820.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 American Library Association CHOICE
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Freedman, Harry. The Talmud: a biography: banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress. Bloomsbury, 2014. 243p bibl index ISBN 9781472905949 cloth, $26.00
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This book offers a scattering of information about the Babylonian Talmud and its history: how the text came to be, later developments in methods of study and application, adjustment to the Muslim and Christian worlds (including a history of Christian censorship), the sometimes traumatic encounter with modernity, and finally the Talmud's current role in Jewish life. Freedman (independent scholar) makes clear that this is no academic volume; his goal is to make the Talmud's story interesting and perhaps even inspiring to the unacquainted reader. He has selected materials and quoted modern scholars with a view toward that end. The problem is that this goal has become a license to assemble bits and pieces of stories, some historical and some folkloric, along with other fragments of information, without even trying to finish with a comprehensive picture that conveys a coherent message. To make things worse, the book is badly edited, with striking violations of ordinary English syntax, and is riddled with inaccuracy and occasional bad taste. Academic libraries do not need this volume, and public libraries can probably do without it as well. Summing Up: Not recommended.--R. Goldenberg, SUNY at Stony Brook
Goldenberg, R.
The Murderous History of Bible Translations: Power, Conflict and the Quest for Meaning
BY HARRY FREEMAN
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This is a fascinating account of how the “Good Book” inspired spectacularly bad behavior. The author writes to make readers aware of the dangers posed by radical fundamentalism and religious extremism. He is adept at untangling the complex history of bible translation from the days of Alexander the Great through today’s controversies regarding gender-neutral bibles.
A whole lot of blood is spilled in these pages. With the exceptions of Martin Luther and King James, bible translators met with very messy endings. The ruthless suppression of vernacular bibles was non-sectarian: both the Spanish Inquisition and the various Protestant denominations burned translators and translations that threatened their authority, for, as Freedman aptly states, “The Bible which liberates can also be the Bible that controls.” The history of biblical translation is inextricably linked with the rise of a new revolutionary technology – printing. Just as the Internet is turning our world upside down, printing – by making the Word of God available to everyone – undermined the authority of the Church, aristocracy and civil authorities.
A complex and important story told in clear, non-academic language that should appeal to anyone with an interest in history or bible studies.
Book review: The Murderous History Of Bible Translations by Harry Freedman 1536, English translator of the Bible, William Tyndale (1494 - 1536) being tied to a stake before being strangled and burnt to death. Picture: Hulton Archive/Getty Images STUART KELLY 10:00Sunday 01 May 2016 Share this article 0 HAVE YOUR SAY Just as translators have been persecuted, language itself has been martyred in the effort to bring the Bible to a wider audience, writes Stuart Kelly The Murderous History Of Bible Translations by Harry Freedman | Bloomsbury, £20 ‘So liek teh Ceiling Kitteh lieks teh ppl lots and sez ‘Oh hai I givez u me only kitteh and ifs u beleeve him u wont evr diez no moar, kthxbai!’”. For the uninitiated, that is John 3:16 “translated” into LOLcat – unbelievably over three-fifths of the Bible can now be read in this asinine form. It doesn’t get into Harry Freedman’s brisk and intelligent guide to the frequently violent circumstances surrounding Biblical translation, though I would certainly consider at least a Chinese burn to those murdering the English language in this way. Indeed, the “murderous” part of the title here is by far the least interesting, and one suspects a degree of “sexing up” given how careful and judicious much of the book actually is. The execution of William Tyndale is the most obvious intersection of translating and killing, and Freedland draws in, sometimes tangentially, events such as the suppression of the Cathars, the martyrdom of Jan Hus and the Münster Revolt. Often these involve the interpretation of a translation rather than a translation itself: a persistent concern is the anxiety of authorities over vernacular Bible reading, and the potential for readers to come to their own conclusion about verses like “to the pure all things are pure” or “neither said any of them that ought of the things which possessed was his own; but they had all things common” or “I came not to send peace, but a sword”. One very interesting aside involves the Spanish Inquisition, who suspected converted Jews of using translations of the Old Testament to continue practising Judaism. It led to mass-burnings of the Bible – “a mountain of books” according to one Jesuit – a fact nobody seems to have thought ironic. The earliest sections prove the most fascinating. Freedman, who has written an excellent book on the Talmud, doesn’t just cover the most famous translations: the Septuagint, a Hebrew-Greek version of the Old Testament produced for the Library of Alexandria (and, according to Philo, by sequestered scholars who miraculously came up with identical versions); Origen’s Hexapla, which concurrently featured the Hebrew, Hebrew written in Greek characters, the Septuagint and three translations by Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion; Jerome’s Vulgate, first Greek to Latin and then Hebrew to Latin. He also delves into more esoteric versions, such as the Targum, a version in vernacular Aramaic when Hebrew had become a preserve of the elite, the Syriac Peshitta and the early Arabic translations by the Jewish Saadia ben Yosef and the Muslim Hunayn ibn Ishaq. More perhaps could have been done with the varying canons of the Bible. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church includes the Didascalia; the Armenian Bible has a third epistle to the Corinthians; parts of the Coptic Church also use I and II Clement. What all this shows – and what cannot be repeated often enough – is that the fundamentalists and literalists came to the game very late indeed. There is also in the early sections a quiet optimism about what biblical translation can achieve. Evangelism played a significant role in preserving, and in some cases creating, languages. The Goths had no written script before Ulfilas (whose name means Little Wolf) started his translation. Mesrop Mashtots tried at first to teach Armenians using Aramaic script – and set up a nationwide literacy programme in the fifth century CE – but realised it couldn’t convey the sounds of Armenian properly: thus the Armenian alphabet was born. Saints Cyril and Methodius created the Glagolitic script, from which Modern Cyrillic evolved. The chapters on the King James Version, the Catholic Rheims-Douay and the Geneva Bible show how translation is always ideological. It also highlights how human frailty intervenes at every turn: the first edition of the King James has 351 printing errors. (One in the eye for fogeys as well). The action then turns primarily to America, where the most intriguing is John Eliot’s Bible in Algonquian. Having to invent terms for concepts they did not have meant that the Algonquian Indians rarely understood it. The Bible still raises tempers; as Pastor Luther Hux burning a Revised Standard Version or the outcry over gender neutral Bibles amply shows. The latter sections are markedly and regrettably more Anglophone. It was only after the defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden that James Stuart and Dugald Buchanan started on a Bible in Scots Gaelic (translation often comes on the heels of subjugation). Early Chinese translations were only allowed “into erudite language proper to the literati”; when vernacular versions did appear they had a significant role in the Taiping Rebellion of Hong Xiuquan, who thought he was Jesus’s younger brother. One significant translation doesn’t exist. Although some of the Psalms were translated into metrical Scots, a Bible in Scots was not a priority for John Knox and other Reformers. One wonders how different the standing of Scots would be now had there been an equivalent of the King James version north of the Border.
Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/book-review-the-murderous-history-of-bible-translations-by-harry-freedman-1-4115005
The murderous history of Bible translations
The Bible has been translated far more than any other book. Yet, as Harry Freedman reveals in his new book, the history of Bible translations is not only contentious but bloody, with many who dared translate it being burned at the stake. Here, writing for History Extra, Freedman explores the murderous history of Bible translations…
Thursday 7th July 2016Submitted by: Emma Mason
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In 1427, Pope Martin ordered that John Wycliffe’s bones be exhumed from their grave, burned and cast into the river Swift. Wycliffe had been dead for 40 years, but his offence still rankled.
John Wycliffe (c1330–1384) was 14th-century England’s outstanding thinker. A theologian by profession, he was called in to advise parliament in its negotiations with Rome. This was a world in which the church was all-powerful, and the more contact Wycliffe had with Rome, the more indignant he became. The papacy, he believed, reeked of corruption and self-interest. He was determined to do something about it.
Wycliffe began publishing pamphlets arguing that, rather than pursuing wealth and power, the church should have the poor at heart. In one tract he described the Pope as “the anti-Christ, the proud, worldly priest of Rome, and the most cursed of clippers and cut-purses”.
In 1377 the Bishop of London demanded that Wycliffe appear before his court to explain the “wonderful things which had streamed forth from his mouth”. The hearing was a farce. It began with a violent row over whether or not Wycliffe should sit down. John of Gaunt, the king’s son and an ally of Wycliffe, insisted that the accused remain seated; the bishop demanded that he stand.
When the Pope heard of the fiasco he issued a papal bull [an official papal letter or document] in which he accused Wycliffe of “vomiting out of the filthy dungeon of his heart most wicked and damnable heresies”. Wycliffe was accused of heresy and put under house arrest and was later forced to retire from his position as Master of Balliol College, Oxford.
Wycliffe firmly believed that the Bible should be available to everybody. He saw literacy as the key to the emancipation of the poor. Although parts of the Bible had previously been rendered into English there was still no complete translation. Ordinary people, who neither spoke Latin nor were able to read, could only learn from the clergy. Much of what they thought they knew – ideas like the fires of hell and purgatory – were not even part of Scripture.
With the aid of his assistants, therefore, Wycliffe produced an English Bible [over a period of 13 years from 1382]. A backlash was inevitable: in 1391, before the Bible was completed, a bill was placed before parliament to outlaw the English Bible and to imprison anyone possessing a copy. The bill failed to pass – John of Gaunt saw to that [in parliament] – and the church resumed its persecution of the now-dead Wycliffe [he died in 1384].
Shorn of alternatives, the best they could do was to burn his bones [in 1427], just to make sure his resting place was not venerated. The Archbishop of Canterbury explained that Wycliffe had been “that pestilent wretch, of damnable memory, yea, the forerunner and disciple of antichrist who, as the complement of his wickedness, invented a new translation of the scriptures into his mother-tongue”.
A page from John Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible into English, c1400. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)
Jan Hus
In 1402, the newly ordained Czech priest Jan Hus was appointed to a pulpit in Prague to minister in the church. Inspired by Wycliffe’s writings, which were now circulating in Europe, Hus used his pulpit to campaign for clerical reform and against church corruption.
Like Wycliffe, Hus believed that social reform could only be achieved through literacy. Giving the people a Bible written in the Czech language, instead of Latin, was an imperative. Hus assembled a team of scholars; in 1416 the first Czech Bible appeared. It was a direct challenge to those he called “the disciples of antichrist” and the consequence was predictable: Hus was arrested for heresy.
Jan Hus’s trial, which took place in the city of Constance, has gone down as one of the most spectacular in history. It was more like a carnival – nearly every bigwig in Europe was there. One archbishop arrived with 600 horses; 700 prostitutes offered their services; 500 people drowned in the lake; and the Pope fell off his carriage into a snowdrift. The atmosphere was so exhilarating that Hus’s eventual conviction and barbaric execution must have seemed an anti-climax. But slaughtered he was, burnt at the stake. His death galvanised his supporters into revolt. Priests and churches were attacked, the authorities retaliated. Within a few short years Bohemia had erupted into civil war. All because Jan Hus had the gall to translate the Bible.
The capture of Jan Hus. Miniature of the 'Chronicle' of Ulrich of Richental. Prague, national library of the University. (Photo by Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images)
William Tyndale
As far as the English Bible is concerned, the most high profile translator to be murdered was William Tyndale. It was now the 16th century and Henry VIII was on the throne. Wycliffe’s translation was still banned, and although manuscript copies were available on the black market, they were hard to find and expensive to procure. Most people still had no inkling of what the Bible really said.
But printing was becoming commonplace, and Tyndale believed the time was right for an accessible, up-to-date translation. He knew he could create one; all he needed was the funding, and the blessing of the church. It didn’t take him long to realise that nobody in London was prepared to help him. Not even his friend, the bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall. Church politics made sure of that.
The religious climate appeared less oppressive in Germany. Luther had already translated the Bible into German; the Protestant Reformation was gathering pace and Tyndale believed he would have a better chance of realising his project there. So he travelled to Cologne and began printing.
This, it transpired, was a mistake. Cologne was still under the control of an archbishop loyal to Rome. He was halfway through printing the book of Matthew when he heard that the print shop was about to raided. He bundled up his papers and fled. It was a story that would be repeated several times over the next few years. Tyndale spent the next few years dodging English spies and Roman agents. But he managed to complete his Bible and copies were soon flooding into England – illegally, of course. The project was complete but Tyndale was a marked man.
He wasn’t the only one. In England, Cardinal Wolsey was conducting a campaign against Tyndale’s Bible. No one with a connection to Tyndale or his translation was safe. Thomas Hitton, a priest who had met Tyndale in Europe, confessed to smuggling two copies of the Bible into the country. He was charged with heresy and burnt alive.
Thomas Bilney, a lawyer whose connection to Tyndale was tangential at the most, was also thrown into the flames. First prosecuted by the bishop of London, Bilney recanted and was eventually released in 1529. But when he withdrew his recantation in 1531 he was re-arrested and prosecuted by Thomas Pelles, chancellor of Norwich diocese, and burnt by the secular authorities just outside the city of Norwich.
Meanwhile Richard Bayfield, a monk who had been one of Tyndale’s early supporters, was tortured incessantly before being tied to the stake. And a group of students in Oxford were left to rot in a dungeon that was used for storing salt fish.
Tyndale’s end was no less tragic. He was betrayed in 1535 by Henry Phillips, a dissolute young aristocrat who had stolen his [Phillips’] father’s money and gambled it away. Tyndale was hiding out in Antwerp, under the quasi–diplomatic protection of the English merchant community. Phillips, who was as charming as he was disreputable, befriended Tyndale and invited him out for dinner. As they left the English merchant house together, Phillips beckoned to a couple of thugs loitering in a doorway. They seized Tyndale. It was the last free moment of his life. Tyndale was charged with heresy in August 1536 and burnt at the stake a few weeks later.
William Tyndale being tied to a stake before being strangled and burned to death. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
England was not the only country to murder Bible translators. In Antwerp, the city where Tyndale thought he was safe, Jacob van Liesveldt produced a Dutch Bible. Like so many 16th-century translations, his act was political as well as religious. His Bible was illustrated with woodcuts – in the fifth edition he depicted Satan in the guise of a Catholic monk, with goat’s feet and a rosary. It was a step too far. Van Liesveldt was arrested, charged with heresy and put to death.
A murderous age
The 16th century was by far the most murderous age for Bible translators. But Bible translations have always generated strong emotions, and continue to do so even today. In 1960 the United States Air Force Reserve warned recruits against using the recently published Revised Standard Version because, they claimed, 30 people on its translation committee had been “affiliated with communist fronts”. TS Eliot, meanwhile, railed against the 1961 New English Bible, writing that it “astonishes in its combination of the vulgar, the trivial, and the pedantic”.
And Bible translators are still being murdered. Not necessarily for the act of translating the Bible, but because rendering the Bible into local dialects is one of the things Christian missionaries do. In 1993 Edmund Fabian was murdered in Papua New Guinea, killed by a local man who had been helping him translate the Bible. In March 2016, four Bible translators working for an American evangelical organisation were killed by militants in an undisclosed location in the Middle East.
Bible translations, then, may appear to be a harmless activity. History shows it is anything but.
Harry Freedman is author of The Murderous History of Bible Translations (Bloomsbury, 2016).
The Talmud: A Biography
Harry Freedman
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Bloomsbury 2014
243 Pages $26.99
ISBN: 978-1472905949
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Review by Wallace Greene
The Talmud is the primary Jewish text after the Bible itself, and its devoted study has been the linchpin of Jewish survival. Dilettantes may dabble in it and cite a few passages here and there. Mature scholars devote their lives to understanding the underpinnings of Jewish legal theory and its application to current life. Historians must first master the complex text and then analyze it from various inter-disciplinary perspectives.
Its importance is axiomatic. Attempting to describe the Talmud in the abstract is quite a challenge. However, Freedman is on the right track. It is precisely because of its importance in Judaism that the Talmud has been banned, censored, and burned. Those who pioneered in this field were great scholars. A few of the classics are cited, however, a work which purports to show not only the world’s treatment of the Talmud but why Judaism and Jews view it with such reverence cannot omit the conclusions of Agus, Albeck, Chajes, Lieberman, Twersky, Weiss, and others of similar rank. Not citing Grayzel’s work on papal edicts nor Finkelstein’s book on Jewish communal ordinances is an equally egregious omission.
Extracts and anthologies do not fully explain why the Talmud is so important. It is as ancient as many of the world’s classics, lengthier than possibly any other, complex in its composition, frequently profound in its content and it has had a far more tumultuous story than most.
The book does, however, reflect turbulent events in Jewish history, and present pieces of Jewish history and the history of anti-semitism as reflected in controversies over its central text.
In discussing the development and impact of the Talmud, Freedman first considers the Talmud as a developing text, exploring its origins in the Roman Empire after the destruction of the Second Temple. He also provides a fascinating investigation into cross-fertilization between Jewish and early Islamic scholars and its impact on the ideas and development of the Talmud. Some of his conclusions are questionable and others are simply inaccurate. His claims that before the Temple was destroyed, the lulav was only used there, his dating of the first Jewish printing presses, and claiming that the rabbis of the Sanhedrin were Sadducees are erroneous. Equally imprecise is his claim that there were 19,000 documents in the Geniza, when in fact there are hundreds of thousands. When discussing Jewish flight from the Holocaust, the community of Shanghai is mentioned, but omitted is any discussion of the transplanted Yeshiva of Mir and the famous “Shanghai Talmud.”
Mastery of the Talmudic text requires years of concentrated study. Historical analysis of it requires a knowledge of many languages, different legal systems, literary styles, and the breadth of Jewish history. Freedman has read widely and relies heavily on secondary sources, many of which are not listed in the Bibliography, yet are cited in the notes. The field of Talmudic historiography is not for the faint of heart nor for those lacking a rigorous grounding in Talmud. Haym Soloveitchik’s withering critique of Talya Fishman is totally omitted as is his new theory about a third center of Talmud study which influenced the scholars of early medieval Ashkenaz.
Freedman comprehensively covers the uglier burnings and bans, why and how the Talmud survived, how it became a central study text, the influence of printing on its dissemination, its encounters with Christian scholarship, science and enlightenment thought, and its role today. It’s a broad, ambitious work, which succeeds as an outline for further study.
A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn’t suppress DECEMBER 23, 2014, 10:15 AM
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Professor Shai Secunda of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem astutely noted in his book The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context that the Babylonian Talmud is “a complex literary artifact with a multi-vocal textual architecture that frequently confounds attempts to read for consistency”. The very nature of its composition precludes many from any attempt to study it.
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While the Talmud itself may be impenetrable for many, in The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn’t suppress, author Harry Freedman has written an engaging account of the book itself. For those who may be fascinated by the Talmud and at the same time intimidated by it, the book is a great resource that profiles what the Talmud is.
Freedman wrote the book not to tell you the text of the book or to delve into its myriad contents and subjects; rather to show the reader how instrumental it has been to the Jews and world history, in addition to other cultures and religions.
Freedman details where the Talmud came from, its creation almost 2,000 years ago; to its development and use in current times. He provides an interesting, albeit brief overview of its development, copyediting, printing, burning and banning.
For those looking for a detailed and much more technical introduction to the Talmud, The Essential Talmud by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz provides a superb overview. What Freedman provides is a much higher overview of the topic, and details what the Talmud is, but does not get into its lower level abstractions, which can be so frustrating to the beginner.
Freedman writes that for all its complex composition, the Talmud appears to the reader to be a seamless work. He writes that although it was written in Babylon (modern day Iraq), it can quote the opinions of people who lived their entire lives elsewhere; yet make it read as though they were in the same study hall in Babylon. Also, a characteristic Talmudic discussion contains the opinions of people who may have lived centuries apart, and is woven together to sound as if they are having an actual conversation.
The book does an excellent job of showing the genius of the Talmud and its creators. That specific genius of the Talmud lies in taking the detailed case law of the Mishnah, defining the principles and concepts the underlie it and advancing arguments that can be used to underpin a subsequent legal ruling.
Freedman details the myriad instances where the study, print or possession of the Talmud was banned. And even with all that, he notes that the Talmud’s capacity for survival is boundless; as it’s currently studied by more people than at any time in its history.
Freedman shows how the Talmud has survived every catastrophe that it has been put through. It has not only survived, it has in fact thrived within the challenges of modernity. The haskalah movement that tried to extinguish the Talmud, has in fact itself been extinguished, while the Talmud thrives.
As 234 pages, Freedman provides a very brief overview, but an interesting one at that. The only issue with the book is that its brevity may not give the reader a feeling for the inherent complexities of the Talmud itself. Nothing in the Talmud is taken for granted; yet Freedman at times presents a subject or problem in an overly simplified form. Part of that is due to the fact that Freedman is an Aramaic scholar, not an academic Talmudist. Nonetheless, the book is of great value for the audience it is written for.
After the Bible, the Talmud is the defining document in Jewish life. In The Talmud – A Biography, Freedman provides an excellent overview on how an eternal book is seminal to an eternal people.
Thank you to Ezra Brand for proofreading this review.
The Gospels' Veiled Agenda (Review)
The Gospels' Veiled Agenda - Revolution, Priesthood and The Holy Grail by Harry Freedman
Review by Wendy Stokes
the gospels veiled agenda
Dr Freedman here examines the life of Jesus and what we can learn about his mission by looking at parallels, connections and shadowing from the time of the Old Testament. For instance, Isaac carrying the wood for his own death on the pyre and Jesus carrying his cross to his crucifixion; a decree for all boy children to be put to death finds Moses saved in the bull-rushes and a similar decree finds Jesus taken to Egypt for safety. Moses fasted 40 days and nights, as did Jesus. Many incidents in the lives of Adam, Noah, David, Joseph, Isaac, Elijah and others are born out in the New Testament.
We all know Jesus as a teacher and healer but there is far more to the story. Did he think he was the 'messiah' who was predicted by the prophets or did he think he was 'the son of God'? Did he intend to start a new religion? Did he have a political aspirations? Was he a true King of the line of David and how did this affect his ministry?
As Joseph was sold by his brothers who drew lots for his coat, so Jesus was sold by Judas. Tthe seemless garment worn by Jesus and described in John's Gospel, was gambled by the soldiers at the base of the cross as Joseph's brothers gambled for his coat many generations before.
The ancient tradition of the scapegoat is one of the themes throughout the book. One spotless lamb chosen for sacrifice, the other to be cast into the desert to die bearing the sins of the community upon it. Only someone steeped in ancient Jewish understanding, as this author is, can fully explain the transfiguration and its deep and hidden meaning.
This is a new understanding on the life of Jesus, a very scholarly one, impressive with its new revelations and its attention to detail.
I didn't find the information within the book challenged my own beliefs about Christianity, though it might challenge some. I found these new perspectives broadened and deepened my connection and I enjoyed gazing back into early Jewish thinking. Most of all, I was fascinated by the author's discovery of the authentic Holy Grail which was tracked from its most early beginnings in the Old Testament to the time of Jesus and beyond, into pre-Christian Rome.
Get ready for a treat!
The Gospels' Veiled Agenda - Revolution, Priesthood and The Holy Grail by Harry Freedman, published by O Books, paperback 182 pages £11.99 ISBN: 978 1 84694 260 0 http://www.harryfreedmanbooks.com/
The author lives in London and has a varied background in running a wholefood restaurant in Devon, in property and construction, healthcare, the voluntary sector and more recently, in career coaching.
Simon Rocker
June 3, 2010
The Gospels' Veiled Agenda – Revolution, Priesthood and the Holy Grail
At the Limmud conference a couple of years ago, one of the bestselling books was an introduction to the New Testament written by a rabbi.
Harry Freedman
O Books, £11.99
At the Limmud conference a couple of years ago, one of the bestselling books was an introduction to the New Testament written by a rabbi. It indicated the growing trend of Jewish curiosity about the origins of Christianity, whose sacred texts would once have simply been shunned as antisemitic heresy.
The Gospels' Veiled Agenda is an addition, by the former director of the Assembly of Masorti Synagogues, to the expanding literature on Jesus the Jew. But what will prick popular interest in particular is that it offers a Jewish explanation to an enduring legend, that of the Holy Grail.
Freedman presents Jesus not as the Messiah of Christian lore but as a religious revolutionary who wanted to replace the clerical establishment of his day - a corrupt priesthood propped up through collaboration with the Roman occupiers of ancient Israel.
The priests already faced opposition from the Pharisees, the rabbis who provided alternative leadership through intellectual meritocracy based on knowledge of Torah.
Freedman argues that Jesus chose a different path: he sought to instal a new body of priests worthier to be the spiritual leaders of the Jewish people. This posed a threat not only to the existing priesthood but to the Romans who would be suspicious of a more independently-minded Jewish leadership in the Temple, the centre of national feeling.
The holder of a doctorate in Aramaic translation of the Torah, Freedman deploys his knowledge of midrash with ingenuity, using the techniques of rabbinic interpretation to connect Hebrew sources with material in the Gospels. While his speculations rest on scholarship, he wears it lightly, leading the reader in an easy style to his conclusions about the Grail.
As for that elusive artefact, I am not going to pre-empt anyone's pleasure by revealing the detail of his theory. Only to say that he believes it not to be a chalice but a different kind of sacred object linked to priestly ceremony and critical to Jesus's aspirations.