Gotowa bibliografia na temat „Translations from Babylonian”

Targums are a kind of ancient Jewish translation literature that may have played an important role in synagogues, private devotion, and education. The reason scholars adduce such widespread use for the targums is because they translate the Hebrew Bible from Hebrew into Aramaic, another ancient Semitic language widely used by Palestinian and Babylonian Jews. Despite their supposed popularity, there are no sustained discussions in ancient Jewish literature concerning how to produce a targum, or what makes a quality targum. This is in direct contrast to some of the early theoretical discussions that informed ancient Christian translations of the Bible. Similarly, internal evidence from the targums suggests they underwent extended diachronic growth, thus eliminating the possibility of a single author, translator, or—as conventionally designated—targumist. As a result, theorizing the situation of a targumist is extremely difficult, in that to do so modern scholars must rely exclusively on the evidence presented by the targums themselves. Furthermore, the targumist must remain at the level of a hypothetical composite in order to reflect the historical realities of targumic production and development. Nevertheless, in this paper I will examine three issues that might give some insight into the situation of the Pentateuch Targums (targums to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible): 1) the targumic “shadow” of the Hebrew Bible; 2) the basic unit of meaning in the targums; and 3) the possible translational role of the targumic narrative expansion—extended portions of text that add new material to the Hebrew Bible narrative. By examining these issues I hope to tease out some of the translational dynamics and cross-cultural issues that likely influenced the production of the targums. And although the targumist must remain a hypothetical construct, the consistency of translational dynamics within the Pentateuch Targums probably reflects a tacit consensus of approach among the targums’ producers. As a result, it becomes possible to theorize in the absence of a theory.

The article is devoted to the use of the logogram LÚ(.MEŠ)MAŠ.EN.KAK in Hittite texts. This logogram was borrowed from Mesopotamian cuneiform, in which it rendered the Akkadian word muškēnum (lit. ‘the one who bows down, performs proskynesis’). In 1950 E. Laroche showed that the logogram should be read as ašiwant- ‘poor’ in Hittite. However, subsequently several scholars have pointed out that this meaning did not fit well into many contexts. Therefore it was suggested that LÚ(.MEŠ)MAŠ.EN.KAK was rather a social term referring to a certain group of Hittite population dependent of the state (‘palace’) (V. Souček, I. M. Diakonoff). Such renderings of the logogram as ‘semi-free, dependent, serfs, servants’ which are widely used in the literature conform with this interpretation. But there seem to be insufficient evidence in the sources to substantiate these translations. The article analyses two texts from ancient Tapikka (HKM 8, 105) which were not yet known in the 1960s when the main study on the Hittite LÚ(.MEŠ)MAŠ.EN.KAK appeared. It is suggested that the solution should be sought in the Mesopotamian tradition of the Old Babylonian time in which the Akkadian equivalent of the logogram, the noun muškēnum, denoted commoners, ordinary citizens economically independent of the palace.

This article presents a few issues in the making of our film A Long History of Madness that pertain to the ‘Babylonic’. Spoken in 12 languages, ranging across six centuries, and shot in five countries, the film possesses an inherent Babylonism. It makes a case for a multilingual mode of communicating. Yet, beyond the obvious need for verbal communication, for which subtitles are necessary but insufficient, the film presents other reasons for extending the concept of translation. The knot of potential confusion and the need for ‘translation’ are the ontological uncertainties surrounding ‘madness’ itself. The key questions are: are people mad? Do they perform madness, or do others perceive them as mad because they are too dissimilar from them to be accepted as ‘normal’? This fundamental uncertainty affects all forms of alterity. Translation becomes, then, a tool to negotiate alterity under the terms of the acceptance of this ontological uncertainty.

Writing in 1931, Eckhard Unger observed that published Neo-Babylonian texts written at or referring to Dilbat and dated by the Neo-Babylonian kings were scarce; those dated by the early Achaemenid kings, up to the end of the reign of Darius I, were more numerous; the latest unequivocally dated text from Dilbat was VAS 6, 331, dated by Bēl-šimânni, one of the Babylonian rebels against Xerxes; Seleucid and Parthian texts from Dilbat were unknown. In 1976 these observations still held, and Joachim Oelsner contemplated the possibility that the dearth of later texts from Dilbat was connected with Xerxes' suppression of the Babylonian revolts in the early years of his reign.Oppert-Menant, Doc. jur. 276 ff. No. VI was problematic. Its publication in 1877 did not include a facsimile of the cuneiform text, but relied on a transliteration that is now antiquated and partly incomprehensible, accompanied by a largely unsuccessful effort at translation. It was plainly written at Dilbat on 7/IX/14 Darius, called “Kings of Lands”. Oppert ascribed it to Darius I, but the omission of “King of Babylon” from the royal title (or at least from the transliteration of the title) suggests to a modern reader that Darius II was intended. Oelsner judged properly that as long as the cuneiform text was not available there was no way to assign the text confidently to the reign of one Darius or the other.