Stories of Joseph: Narrative Migrations between Judaism and Islam (review)

Hebrew Studies 48 (2007) 403 Reviews This otherwise fussy list of translation problems combines to ill effect with a list of typographical errors in the Hebrew text, found on pp. 5, 7, 9, 19, 115, 154, 171, 208, 249, 335. Added to these misspellings are the many quirks of the Epstein-Melamed manuscripts which are noted in that edition, but which are not noted in the Nelson text, leaving the reader with an even greater impression of typos and other errors. Epstein and Melamed provide a listing of Greek loan-words, which Nelson nowhere notes in his translation, which denies readers a window into the Hellenistic environment of the work’s composition. Nelson improves on the Epstein-Melamed edition by the addition of sections and sub-sections. This is very useful, especially when correlating the Hebrew text with the English translation. Yet the use of diamond markers to set off thoughts is not only forced (why not use English punctuation?), but sometimes misleading, as on pp. 25 and 337. One attempt to use English punctuation (in the form of quotation marks) went seriously awry on pp. 205–206. I offer these comments in the faint hope that they might be corrected in a second edition of the text. But one is hard pressed to imagine under what circumstances there might be a second edition. To begin with, the readership for such an obscure text’s English translation must be extremely limited, even for a first publication. Scholars who wish to work with the Mekhilta De-Rabbi Shimon do not require an English translation. Non-scholars do not require the Mekhilta De-Rabbi Shimon. But were we to imagine a demand for such, readers would be far better served by waiting until the new Kahana edition appears, and hope that Dr. Nelson would turn his talents to producing a much more accurate Mekhilta translation. Burton L. Visotzky Jewish Theological Seminary New York, NY 10027 Buvisotzky@jtsa.edu STORIES OF JOSEPH: NARRATIVE MIGRATIONS BETWEEN JUDAISM AND ISLAM. By Marc S. Bernstein. Pp. xix + 315. Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 2006. Cloth, $69.95. In Jews and Arabs (Schocken, 1955), his most popular and accessible work, S. D. Goitein strove to summarize Jewish-Muslim social and cultural relations over the last fourteen hundred years. Although he rejected the model of an “interfaith utopia,” Goitein saw significant affinities and even continuities between Jewish and Islamic culture which were the product of Hebrew Studies 48 (2007) 404 Reviews an historical process. In its infancy in the seventh century, Islam turned to Jewish texts and tradition; while at the zenith of Islamic culture in the high middle ages, it was Jewish culture which took a chapter from the book of Islam. Thus, in grammar and philosophy, mysticism and poetry, Jewish culture owes a defining influence to Arabic and Islamic culture. The historical process envisioned by Goitein provided a necessary corrective to the field of Jewish and Islamic studies, which had focused almost exclusively on Jewish influence upon Islamic culture ever since Abraham Geiger’s 1832 study “Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen ?” Although Jews and Arabs was first published more than a halfcentury ago, its echoes are still perceptible in the field today, as important and detailed works such as Gideon Libson’s recent contribution Jewish and Islamic Law (Harvard, 2003) describe channels of Jewish influence during the formative period of Islamic law and a reversal of this flow in later periods. In Stories of Joseph: Narrative Migrations between Judaism and Islam, Marc S. Bernstein rejects the search for “ultimate sources” but instead paints a picture of complex intertextuality across the denominational lines of Judaism and Islam. Here, he draws on the Polysystem Theory of Itamar Even-Zohar to see cultural borrowing not as a simple by-product of proximity of cultures against the backdrop of their relative ascendancy and power, but as a manifestation of competition and conflict within borrowing communities . By exploring the literary response of Jewish and Islamic culture to a shared narrative, Bernstein brings to light the underlying concerns of these two cultures and reveals a rich dialogue in their readings of this narrative, the story of Joseph. He chooses...