Extractiones de Talmud

Translations are fascinating in their own right, especially hostile translations. In that light, let's look at the mid-13th century AD Extractiones de Talmud, in Latin of course. The Extractiones were, I think, used for King Louis' trial against the text, AD 1240.

The base text - Isaac Lamperlanés tells us - translated some basics, laying them out in the order of the Talmud itself. Around this time - AD 1239 - one Nicholas Donin was compiling his 35 articles, attacking the great book theme-by-theme. So the Extractiones got rearranged to bolster Donin's case; with additional material added in. That thematic edition, all agree, followed the trial. I am less sure about the original.

The thematic edition, in turn, got epitomised. Two copies of that survive, one from the middle 1300s AD on parchment (expensive!) the other on paper. The copyists, Isaac Lamperlanés must report, did a rotten job and the original wasn't all that great either.

In an irony, it appears that very little of any Latin version made an impact on later Christian / Jewish disputation. Lamperlanés notes that most Catholics who went against the Talmud did so by retranslating the relevant parts of existent Hebrew Talmuds extant in Italy and the Rheinland. Lamperlanés will allow Thibaud de Sézanne as the only exception, here using the thematic full Latin edition. The new "Latin Talmud" publishers would add the Barcelona Disputation of AD 1263. Nobody used the epitome.

Those publishers aren't restraining themselves to the Extractiones. They promise, also, to use Ramon Martí. He may have used the "official" Latin but he mainly based himself on the Aramaic - which he reproduces - along with his own translations.

In another irony, it may well be that "the Latin Talmud" in all its forms is of more use to Jews these days. It is a very early witness to the Talmud text among mediaeval European Jewry.