Talk:Alba Bible

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An entry from Alba Bible appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on October 26, 2006.

The mainpage says this is the 'first translation of the Old Testament into a Romance language'. What about the Vulgate? Latin is a Roman(ce) language!

I have reported this at Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors. We'll see what happens. Thanks! --Keeves 14:58, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The article on Romance languages states "The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. " By this definition, Latin is not a Romance language, since it does not descend from itself. 71.249.235.23 16:44, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I do believe that Latin, the Roman language, would fall within the category of Romance languages. While I am a supporter of Wikipedia and all that it stands for, I would not trust an encyclopedia such as this for such precise semantics as is found in the aforementioned article on Romance languages. Therefore, from my viewpoint, the Vulgate would be the first true translation of the Hebrew Bible into a Roman language; though there are numerous [[1]] (generally from Greek to Latin) that should also be considered. --20:56, 26 October 2006 (UTC)Thisisbossi

I relied on the Spanish language article for that information. If it isn't true it isn't true and should be removed, which seems to be the case.--Fuhghettaboutit 21:47, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

If you truly believe that "Latin, the Roman language, would fall within the category of Romance languages", then you should take that up at the talk page for the Romance language article, not here. However, since WP is not about personal beliefs, you will need to provide sources to show that the "Romance language" category as actually used by linguists, scholars, and the general public does include both (Vulgar) Latin and its descendants. 151.204.105.10 20:33, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Until Thisisbossi provides evidence that "Romance languages" includes Latin (a question that should first be resolved at Romance language), we should leave the article as it stands, with the Alba Bible as the first known such OT translation (a citiation would be nice — although this is a separate issue).

I don't think the notion that Latin is a Romance language has a leg to stand on. Dictionary.com give the definition as "the group of languages derived from Latin" which on its face excludes Latin. However, that's not the reason I removed the material. It was an earlier edit which referenced this. What I'm not sure of is exactly what is referred to by "bible." The Alba Bible is a translation of the Hebrew Bible--do those earlier versions refer to this? Not sure. Which is why I removed it. It may be that it is correct that it is the earliest translation of the Tanakh, or the earliest illuminated translation and so on. Some clarity would be nice but the apparent reference from the Spanish Language Wikipedia which provided this reference is in Ladino which I don't read and machine translation using Spanish doesn't translate well enough for me to check. Until there's a definitive answer, the article shouldn't claim something that may or may not be true without reference.--Fuhghettaboutit 03:13, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The Alba bible is clearly not one of the earliest known translations of the OT into a Romance Language, for there are many other previous translations, such as those carried out by Alfonse the Wise (Alfonso X, el Sabio) in Spain from the Latin Vulgate into Spanish in the second half of the 13th century (while the manuscripts conserved are incomplete, it seems that the translators did complete a translation of the entire bible (OT and NT). That translation is not even one of the earliest, for about 80% of the Fazienda de Ultramar (Overseas Deeds) from the 12th-13th century is a translation of the Bible. (All this is to say nothing of Catalan or Occitan translations). It might be more correct to say that the Alba bible was the first complete and intact surviving OT translation into Spanish from the Hebrew and was an important translation since it was unified (i.e. done by only one translator, although Dominican and Franciscan friars were enlisted to ensure the product's orthodoxy).

Cf. Moshé Lazar, ‘La plus ancienne adaptation castillane de la bible’, Sefarad 22 (1962), pp. 251-95; also see the revision presented by Pedro Sánchez Prieto Borja, ‘Fazienda de Ultramar’, in C. Alvar and J. M. Lucía, Diccionario filológico de literatura medieval española, Madrid: Castalia, 2002, pp. 493-97. Apparently the Ajuda bible contains the oldest romance translation of 1-2 Maccabees--cf. G. Avenoza, ‘Versiones medievales de los Macabeos: San Jerónimo, Josefo y la Megil·lat Antiochus’, in M. Freixas et al (eds.), Actas del VIII Congreso Internacional de la AHLM (Santander, 1999), Santander: Gobierno de Cantabria – AHLM, 2000, vol. 1, pp. 253-55 and G. Avenoza (ed. and st.), La Biblia de Ajuda y la "Megil·lat Antiochus" en romance, Madrid: CSIC, 2001, pp. 132-34. I'm happy to help correct or amplify this article if there's interest. Bewtros 14:51, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I should also like to add that the article on Arragel in the most recent (2007) Encyclopaedia Judaica states that Arragel followed the Vulgate unless it conflicted with the original Hebrew, so it would probably be misleading to say that he translated the entire OT from Hebrew. Bewtros 17:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Artist's vocation prohibited to Jews of the epoch

I had translated from the Spanish article that the artwork was done wholly by Franciscans, and the reason was that Jews were prohibited fromm the vocation. An anonymous editor claimed that this prohibition is untrue, so I removed it. Some clarity on that issue would be nice as well.--Fuhghettaboutit 03:16, 28 October 2006 (UTC)