Translating Greek into Arabic and Syriac: Remarks on a New Contribution to the Field

Abstract

John C. Lamoreaux’s Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq on His Galen Translations (= HGT) is a valuable edition and translation of the record that Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (d. 873) kept of the works by Galen that he found and translated into Syriac and Arabic over the span of his prolific career. The edition does not quite aim to supercede Gotthelf Bergsträsser’s 1925 edition and the corrections and collation of the text published in 1932.1 As L. observes, a full collation of the two direct witnesses of the Letter “would have been longer than a complete edition of the text” (HGT, xx). Bergsträsser’s edition and later corrections and emendations evince greater concern for philological and text critical detail, and thus will remain important to scholarship in the future. Lamoreaux’s book, on the other hand, makes it easier for historians to understand, navigate, and consult one of Ḥunayn’smost importantworks. Published in theEasternChristianTexts Series