Overview

This interdisciplinary volume focuses on the translations, transformations, and adaptations of religious texts across cultural and linguistic boundaries in the early modern world. From Europe to Asia to the Americas to Africa, this book casts a wide net. Avoiding Eurocentric models centered around nation states and national languages it brings different languages, cultures, and religions into dialogue with one another by focusing on the practical goals, strategies, and uses of translation. This approach demonstrates how translations contained the cultural and religious influences of the translators themselves and were used for a variety of purposes. This juxtaposition of polycentric sites of engagement reveals unexpected commonalities, with similar patterns unfolding in very different contexts. Prominent international scholars contribute chapters investigating not only theological texts, but also alchemical books, songs, and even visual images that were deployed in translations. Religious Translation in the Early Modern Global World is essential reading for students and researchers of early modern history, cultural history, and the history of texts and print.

Full Product Details

Author:   Lucinda Martin
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.790kg
ISBN:  

9781032256054

ISBN 10:   1032256052
Pages:   322
Publication Date:   16 March 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Part I Theoretical Considerations; 1. The Problems and Promises of Studying Global Religious Translation - Lucinda Martin; 2. Cultural Translation in Theory and Practice - Peter Burke; Part II High and Low; 3. An Oriental Tale: Qurʾan Translations in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France - Alastair Hamilton; 4. Kabbalistic Translations between Learned and Vernacular Knowledge Cultures in Early Modern Central and Eastern Europe - Agata Paluch; 5. Open Knowledge: The Vernacular Translation Strategy of the Socinians - Sascha Salatowsky; 6. Sinitic and Varieties of Religious Translation in Early Modern Japan: Buddhist and Confucian Traditions - Rebekah Clements; Part III Belief and Knowledge; 7. ""Come back to Earth!"" Human and sacred bodies in Zapotec Christian songs from Colonial Mexico - David Tavárez; 8. Alchemical Medicine, Spirituality, and the Language of Nature: Translational Perspectives in Oswald Croll’s Basilica Chymica - Stefan Laube; 9. The Arabic-Latin Gospels and the Context of their Translation, or “Eleven Reasons for Learning Arabic” - Caren Reimann; Part IV Surface and Subterfuge; 10. The Latin of the Babylonian Talmud: Assessing Boundaries between Judaism and Christianity in the 13th Century - Federico Dal Bo; 11. “Do not our Englyshe Protestantes [do] so lykewyse?” Translation, Power and the Elizabethan Religious Controversies - Elisabeth Natour; 12. Translating Christianity in Late Imperial China: Giulio Aleni’s Adaptation of Jeronimo Nadal - R. Po-chia Hsia; 13. Vernacular Translation as Subtext: The Missing Slave in Jacobus Capitein’s Fante Primer (1744) - Joseph Fosu-Ankrah and Martha Frederiks; Part V Administration and Utopia; 14. Translation, the Untranslatable and Resistance: Syrian Christians of South India - Bivitha Easo; 15. Lost in Translation: Evaluating the Ambonese Embassy to the United Provinces (1620-1631) between Success and Failure - Leigh T.I. Penman; Index

Reviews

""This is a landmark book. Translation is such an important subject, and Lucinda Martin has assembled here a most impressive cast of experts for what is a compendious global sequence of fascinating case studies. This book will be indispensable to anyone interested in the history of communication."" - Andrew Pettegree, Professor of Modern History, University of St Andrews ""We all need translation—across languages, cultures, and religions. This rich volume shows how strategies of translation have shaped our world since the late Middle Ages. The expert contributions reveal striking instances of cultural and religious interaction across the globe. I learned something on every page."" - Volker Leppin, Yale Divinity School ""This volume compellingly demonstrates that religion and translation were deeply intertwined in the Early Modern period. A group of renowned intellectual historians traces these entanglements across a wide geographic range—from Japan to Mexico, from the Islamic world to China—making the book as enlightening as it is enjoyable."" - Martin Mulsow, Gotha Research Centre, University of Erfurt

Author Information

Lucinda Martin is a researcher at the Gotha Research Centre of the University of Erfurt in Germany. Her publications focus on early modern religion, lay theology, religious translation, the religious roots of modern human rights, and art as a medium of nonconformist religion. She has also curated numerous international exhibitions on early modern books and the mystical philosopher Jacob Böhme.

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