| Description |
1 online resource (xii, 256 pages) |
| Contents |
Supersessionary Translation: Exsanguinating Leviticus in the Old English Heptateuch -- Men as Meat: Jewish Law and Orders of Being in Ælfric's Translations of Maccabees and Job -- The Benedictine Invention of Heterosexuality: Jewish (Law's) Sexual Difference in Time -- Ænlic Wimman: Judith and the Exception -- Like Dogs and Wolves: Wulfstan as Biblical Translator |
| Summary |
"Early English culture depended on a Judaism translated away from Jews. 'Nothing Pure: Jewish Law, Christian Supersession, and Bible Translation in Old English' illuminates the paradoxical process by which the dehumanization and othering of Jews, now recognized as the beginning of European racial thinking, was first articulated in the cultural translation of Jewish literature itself. Prior to the Norman Conquest (1066), Britain had no known Jewish population and was geographically removed from the periodically anti-Jewish ferment of the Continent, but Jewish law nonetheless provided a frame for the construction of sexual, religious/racial, and species difference in Christian England. This book demonstrates the surprisingly central role of Jewish law in translation to Christian identity in late Old English (tenth- and eleventh-century) ecclesiastical and monastic writings, particularly those by the prolific homilist-translator Ælfric, Abbot of Eynsham (ca. 955-1010), and the legal and political thinker Wulfstan, Archbishop of York (d. 1023). Focusing on Ælfric's homilies, saints' lives, and Biblical translations, on Wulfstan's homiletic and legal uses of the Hebrew Bible, and on related prose literature, the author argues that Jewish law paradoxically was both a basis for early English Christian sexual norms and a foil for monastic chastity, that the Old Testament heroine Judith anchored a political theology that undergirded ecclesiastical sovereignty, and that Jewish distinctions between unclean and clean animals structured early English ideas of purity and difference."-- Provided by publisher |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on March 07, 2024) |
| Subject |
Aelfric, Abbot of Eynsham -- Criticism and interpretation
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Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, -1023 -- Criticism and interpretation
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| SUBJECT |
Aelfric, Abbot of Eynsham fast |
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Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, -1023 fast |
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Bible. Old Testament -- Translations into Old English -- History and criticism
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Bible. Old Testament fast |
| Subject |
Jewish law -- History -- To 1500
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Christian literature, English (Old) -- History and criticism
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Christianity and other religions -- Judaism -- History -- To 1500
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Christian literature, English (Old)
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Christianity
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Interfaith relations
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Jewish law
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Judaism
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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History
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| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9781487550707 |
|
1487550707 |
|
9781487550691 |
|
1487550693 |
|
