JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

ible
until the mid-20th century. Three early modern Dutch Bibles
are the versions of A. van den Schuur and H. van Rhijn (2 vols.,
1732); I. van Hamelsveld (1802–03), based on the original languages;
and J.H. van den Palm (2 vols., 1818–19). A. *Kuenen’s
(with I. Hooykaas, W.H. Kosters, and H. Oort) “Leidsche Vertaling,”
translation and interpretation of the Bible, appeared
in Leiden in 1899–1901. A Catholic Bible was published in
1936–37 by the Petrus Canisius Society and a Bible published
by the new Katholieke Bijbelstichting St. Willibrord was finished
in 1995. An entirely new Protestant Old Testament was
published in 1951 by the Dutch Bible Society (NBG). Beginning
in 1967, the NBG, together with the Flanders Bible Society,
the Flemish Bible Foundation, and the Catholic Bible Society,
initiated a new ecumenical translation which was completed
in 2004. It has thus far attracted some criticism as being “too
modern.” In contrast, a group of scholars which had founded
the Societas Hebraica Amstelodamensis in 1961 has sought
for some years to create a translation which they describe as
“concordant” or “idiolectical,” grounded in the rhetoric of the
Hebrew text after the model of Buber-Rosenzweig. Since 1974,
the group has published single books of the Bible under the
rubric “A Translation to be Read Aloud,” including Ruth, Jonah,
Judges, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, the Song of Songs, Genesis,
and Ecclesiastes (some of these works have subsequently
been revised). Dutch Jews have translated selected Psalms
(by M. Levie, 1966) and most of the Old Testament (1826–38,
etc.). A new translation of the Pentateuch by I. Dasberg was
published in 1970.
See also *Dutch Literature.
Finnish
Because of the linguistic separation of Finland from the rest
of Scandinavia, Finnish biblical translation has had an independent
history. In 1551 Bishop Michael Agricola published a
revised Lutheran version of Psalms, but it was not until 1642
(Stockholm) that a complete Finnish Bible, translated from
the original texts, made its appearance. This has since undergone
various revisions. A new Finnish Bible translation (Pyhz
Raamatta) was published in 1938, and another in 1992.
French and Provençal
FRENCH. Although there were two early French (Anglo-Norman)
versions of Psalms (c. 1100) and a 12th-century version of
Samuel and Kings, the first to possess a complete and accurate
translation of the Old Testament in spoken French – and to
make regular use of this in teaching and worship – were the
Jews. Religious scruples may have prevented the Jews from
setting down their whole text in writing, but it did not preclude
their compiling explanatory glossaries in the vernacular
(la’azim). A few of those which have survived, in whole or
part, contain fairly long Hebrew commentaries. The glossaries
were an aid to teachers instructing children in the Bible
according to the traditional word for word method; they also
served as an aid to scholarly commentators (poterim) working
at a higher level, who debated the meaning of a text and,
relying upon the glossaries, proposed more subtly phrased
translations. Lastly, these glossaries were used by translators
officiating in the synagogue.
By contrast, the Church always looked askance at unsupervised
reading of the Bible. Herman de Valenciennes’ metrical
version of the Bible (c. 1190) was followed in 1199 by Pope
Innocent III’s edict prohibiting any reference to the suspect
French Bible. Although the Church declared its opposition to
the translation of the Bible into any vernacular at the Council
of Toulouse (1229), Louis IX commissioned a French version
of the complete Bible (c. 1230), and in the 14th century it was
revised by order of John II and Charles V. Nevertheless, the
biblical text was submerged, during the later Middle Ages, under
a mass of scholastic glosses and amplifications.
The most famous medieval French version was the late
13th-century Biblehistoriale of Guiard des Moulins, a paraphrase
based on the scholastic compilation of Pierre Comestor.
This Bible, much revised and often versified, was one of the
earliest French printed books (1478). Only the Psalms inspired
fairly accurate translations.
The first Bible translation of the 16th century, which returned
to the original Latin – suppressing accumulated glosses
and interpolations – was that of Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples
(1528). It was rightly suspected by Rome, Lefèvre’s earlier
Psalter (1509) having influenced Martin Luther. In its revised
form (Louvain, 1550), Lefèvre’s Bible ran to more than 200
editions. However, the Louvain Bible, too, contained borrowings
from the first Protestant version by Pierre Rovert
Olivétan (Neuchâtel, 1535; rev. 1724), which was based on the
original Hebrew and Greek texts. Olivétan’s version (known
from its place of publication as the Serrières Bible) was the
outcome of the religious fervor which the Bible had roused
among the Waldenses. The Bible of Sebastian Castellio (Châteillon,
d. 1555), the tolerant French humanist and theologian
who opposed the severity of Calvin, appeared at Basle in 1555.
This was written in a style uniquely designed to convey the
original meaning of the Hebrew.
In the 17th century the Protestant translation of G. Diodati
(Geneva, 1644) is known to have inspired more than one
passage in the Jansenist Port-Royal version (Paris, 1672–95),
which was mainly the work of Louis Isaac Le Maistre, known
as de Sacy. Unfortunately, however, the Bible de Sacy, no less
than the many versions subsequently based on it, was no more
than a paraphrase, overburdened with notes and commentaries.
Among the versions of individual biblical books produced
at this time was J.B. Bossuet’s French edition of Song
of Songs (1695).
It was only during the second half of the 19th century that
French lay scholars began to devote their attention to the Bible:
Ernest Renan published editions of Job (1859), Song of Songs
(1862), and Ecclesiastes (1882), and F. Lenormant produced a
translation of Genesis (1883). The 19th-century Catholic Bibles
of Genoude, J.J.B. Bourassé (illustrated by Doré), Jean Baptiste
Glaire, and others possessed little elegance or accuracy
and were eventually displaced by better versions: the Bible de
Maredsous (1949), the J.T. Crampon Bible (1894–1904; 1960),
628 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3