Rendering Euphemistic ‘Bless’ in the Translation of Job in the Vilnius Florilegium 262

Summary: 

The paper deals with the choices made by the late fifteenth-century Jewish translator of the Book of Job into Ruthenian in rendering the euphemistic instances of the verb ‘bless’ when the opposite ‘curse’ is intended. The examples from the sixteenth-century copy of the Vilnius Florilegium F-19 262 are compared with the Hebrew original, the 1492 Gennadij Bible and, when available, with the Old Slavonic Prophetologium. The choices appear to follow from the Jewish exegetical tradition.

Moshe Taube (Jerusalem, Israel)

References: 

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