Hello- Prof. Daniel Schwartz (Hebrew University) asked me to post the following message. Please respond directly to his email address below. Thanks. -Donald Altschiller
I have been working on a bibliographical puzzle and hope that perhaps someone will be able to help me with it. The puzzle pertains to the four volumes entitled Bibliothek der griechischen und römischen Schriftsteller über Judenthum und Juden.(4 vols.; Leipzig: Leiner, 1865-1872). The Library of Congress' online catalog gives their control number as 41032682 and the LCCN Permalink as: http://lccn.loc.gov/41-32682. These volumes offer translations, from the original Greek into German, of various works by Josephus and Philo, and I would like to know who translated them. Strangely, the volumes themselves say only that the works were translated by "M.J.". Many reference works state that the translator was Isaak Markus Jost (1793-1860),[1] but there are, on the one hand, several reasons to doubt that, including: Jost's first name was Isaak so M.J. are not complete initials; Jost died in 1860, and nothing in these volumes even hints that the translator was dead; various publications about Jost fail to mention these works and, while they do note that he translated works from other languages, they say nothing about translations of anything in Greek; etc. I have corresponded with several libraries whose catalogs attribute the translations to Jost (see my footnote), and they have all reported that they do not know on what the attribution is based. On the other hand, Manuel Joel (1826-1890), who wrote much on Greek topics, was alive and well at the time and working on Philo, so I wonder whether he wasn't the translator. If anyone has any advice as to how to pin this down, or has access to any of these volumes and can check them for any personal notices that might be useful, I would be very interested and grateful. Daniel R. Schwartz -- Prof. of Jewish History, the Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem [email protected] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] So, for example, A. Freimann (ed.), Katalog der Judaica und Hebraica - Stadtbibliothek Frankfurt am Main, I (1932; reprinted Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1968) 4; H. Schreckenberg, Bibliographie zu Flavius Josephus (Leiden: Brill, 1968) 86; Dictionary Catalog of the Jewish Collection of the New York Public Library Reference Department (Boston: Hall, 1960) 2:1245 and 6:4881; Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, Dictionary Catalog of the Klau Library, Cincinnati (Boston: Hall, 1964) 4:379-380; H. L. Goodhart and E. R. Goodenough, "A General Bibliography of Philo Judaeus," in: E. Goodenough, The Politics of Philo Judaeus (New Haven: Yale, 1938) 205. The earliest work that I have found (with the help of Prof. Adam Kamesar) that identifies M.J. as Jost is: M. Freudenthal, Die Erkenntnislehre Philos von Alexandria (Berlin: Cavalry, 1891) 5. Note, in contrast, that in Hebraeische Bibliographie 8 (1865) 51 the listing for the first volume of the Bibliothek completes the translator's name as follows: "M. J. (Philippsohn?)". I have not been able to discover evidence for any such individual, and suspect that Moritz Steinschneider, or whoever wrote this entry, was thinking of Martin Philippson (sic) - who, as a son of Ludwig Philippson, who was one of the heads of the Institut zur Förderung der israelitischen Literatur, might well have been mobilized for the project. However: Martin, born in 1846, who was later to be an important historian, was probably too young to produce the volumes in question; he worked in modern history; and his middle name, Emanuel, didn't begin with a J. --- Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: [email protected] SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html History: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/history.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
