Overview

This innovative study compares nineteenth-century Arabic translations of the Bible to determine how it emerged as a foundational text of Arab modernity. Bible translation gained global traction through the work of Anglophone Christian missionaries, who made an attempt at synchronising translated Bibles in world languages by laying down strict guidelines and supervising the processes of translation and dissemination. By engaging with the intellectual beginnings of two local translators, Butrus al-Bustani (1819 1883) and Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (1804 1887), as well as their subsequent contributions to Arabic language and literature, this book questions to what extent they complied with the missionaries' strategy in practice. Based on documents from the archives of Bible societies that tell the story of two key nahda versions of the text, we come to understand how colonial pressure was secondary to the process of incorporating the Bible into the nahda project of rethinking Arabic.

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9781474467155

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In this account of Arabic Bible translations in the nineteenth century, Rana Issa tells a fascinating story of intersectarian competition and religious fervor, in a re-appraisal of the narratives about their impact beyond the immediate realm of language and literature that highlights the role of translators like al-Bustani and Shidyaq. --Kees Versteegh, Emeritus Professor of Arabic and Islam, University of Nijmegen

Author Information

Rana Issa, Assistant Professor of Translation Studies, the American University of Beirut.

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