Doug
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Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 18:43:28 -0400 (EDT) X-Sender: dbakan at postoffice.yorku.ca Mime-Version: 1.0 To: winslow at yorku.ca, dhenwood at panix.com From: David Bakan <dbakan at yorku.ca> Subject: Re: God and the N-word
>>Frances Bolton (PHI) wrote:
>>
>>>You are indeed thinking of Gore Vidal's review of the Thern book. I don't
>>>have the review in front of me, but Vidal was talking about the problems
>>>encountered when translating the Talmud in the late nineteenth/early
>>>twentieth century. The translators did not want to use the racial epiphet
>>>(sp?) in the text, I think they substituted the word "kushite."
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Cushite is hardly such an epithet word like "n-word".. According to the
Scriptural text Moses married a Cushite woman, Numbers 12:1. Cush is simply
an ancient word for Ethiopia. DB
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>>
>>Here's the excerpt; the article is available on the Nation's web site
>>(www.thenation.com):
>>
>>>As one reads this curiously insistent racist tract, one begins to sense
>>>that there is some sort of demonic spirit on the scene, unacknowledged
>>>but ever-present, as the Therns make their endless case. Reading
>>>Thern-prose, somewhat more demure than Abbey's table-rant, I was put in
>>>uneasy mind of kindly old Dr. Maimonides. In Book III, chapter 51 of his
>>>Guide for the Perplexed (copyright 1190 C.E.), the revered codifier of
>>>the Talmud lists those who cannot begin to acknowledge, much less
>>>worship, the true God.
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This segment does not appear to distinguish between the Talmud, and
Maimonides' work on that, on the one hand, and The Guide of the Perplexed,
on the other. It could be important in pursuing this issue because in
Maimonides' work on the Talmud he is not always talking in his own voice.
He is presenting the "law" as it is, as it were. In this sense he is a
text-book writer, and one has to be careful before saying "Maimonides
says...." I do not think thatthis is the problem here, however. DB
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Among those nonhumans are "some of the Turks [he
>>>means Mongols] and the nomads in the North and the Blacks and the nomads
>>>in the South, and those who resemble them in our climates. And their
>>>nature is like the nature of mute animals, and according to my opinion
>>>they are not on the level of human beings, and their level among
>>>existing things is below that of a man and above that of a monkey,
>>>because they have the image and the resemblance of a man more than a
>>>monkey does." When this celebrated book was translated into English
>>>early this century, the translators
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It was translated into English in the 19th century by Friedlaender. I do
not recognise this translation at all. DB
_____________________________________
were embarrassed, as well they
>>>should have been, by the racism. So instead of using the word "black" or
>>>"Negro," they went back to the Hebrew word for blacks--Kushim, which
>>>they transliterated as Kushites--
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The Hebrew translation is irrelevant. Maimonides wrote The Guide of the
Perplexed in Arabic DB.
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a previously unknown and unidentifiable
>>>tribe for Anglophones and so easily despised
------------------------------------------------------------ By taking this out of context, the whole point is missed. It is chapter in which Maimonides is precisely interested in showing differences among human beings in accordance with their education. The point here is that even though there are some people who are completely uneducated they are still human beings because they still possess "the faculty of discernment that is superior to that of the apes".[Pines translation, University of Chicago Press, p. 619] ----------------------------------------------------