The Aura of an Alphabet: Interpreting the Hebrew Gospels in Ramon Martí’s Dagger of Faith (1278)
The writing of the Catalan Dominican Ramon Martí (d. after 1284), well-known for its use of non-Christian sources, is one of the most striking examples of the medieval Dominican interest in the study of Arabic and Hebrew as a means of reading and exploiting Jewish and Muslim scriptures. This paper f...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2014
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| In: |
Numen
Year: 2014, Volume: 61, Issue: 4, Pages: 334-363 |
| Further subjects: | B
Hebrew New Testament
Jewish-Christian polemics
Medieval Dominicans
Ramon Martí
Pugio fidei
Dagger of Faith
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | The writing of the Catalan Dominican Ramon Martí (d. after 1284), well-known for its use of non-Christian sources, is one of the most striking examples of the medieval Dominican interest in the study of Arabic and Hebrew as a means of reading and exploiting Jewish and Muslim scriptures. This paper focuses on one aspect of Martí’s writing that bears directly on his concept of “foreign” scriptures and their place in polemical argument: his citation of New Testament passages in Hebrew translation in his final work, the Dagger of Faith (Pugio fidei, from 1278). Rather than relying on faulty seventeenth-century printed editions of the Dagger, as previous scholars have done, I will bring forth new examples from the manuscript tradition to consider Martí’s use of language and script. I will argue that he did not draw his citations from some previous Hebrew Gospels translation, but rather that he chose deliberately to translate his New Testament citations into Hebrew for polemical purposes. His translations reflect an important aspect of his overall polemical strategy, namely, his use of “foreign” scripts as markers of both textual authority and scriptural authenticity. |
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| ISSN: | 1568-5276 |
| Contains: | In: Numen
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15685276-12341328 |