The French Mémoire of The Hebrew Translations of the Middle Ages. Foreword

Abstract

This chapter provides an English translation of Steinschneider’s preface to Die hebraeischen Uebersetzungen des Mittelalters. The author informs us that over a half-century earlier, when preparing an article for the Ersch und Gruber encyclopedia (subsequently translated into English as Jewish Literature from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Century), he realized how little the mutual impact of Jewish and Arabic learning had been studied. He also learned for the first time of the profound influence of Christian literature on the Jews in the fields of philosophy, medicine, mathematics, and popular literature. While he had been aware of the importance of Jews as cultural intermediaries in the transmission of Greek culture from the Muslim to Christian worlds, the impact and extent of Arabic and Latin literature had not been investigated. For the next several decades he collected material on the Hebrew translations and Jewish translators of the Middle Ages, only leaving out material that dealt with law and scripture.