Greek homilies on Creation translated into Arabic by an 11th-century Christian scholar in Syria

What is it about?

The Homilies on the Six Days of Creation by the 4th-century church father St. Basil of Caesarea were very popular in the middle ages, not only in the original Greek, but also in a series of translations into Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Arabic, Georgian, and so on. This article considers three surviving Arabic translations, focusing on the on by the Christian scholar Abdallah ibn al-Fadl of Antioch. It shows that this translation was based on both an older, anonymous Arabic translation and the Greek original.

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Why is it important?

We often think about a translation as just a transparent way of making a foreign text available in our own language, or vice versa. But sometimes a translation could itself be a work of art that re-interpreted and re-appropriated the original text for a new cultural context. When a translator re-translates a text already available in the target language, it is an opportunity to ask why.