Jacob ben Simeon

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JACOB BEN SIMEON

JACOB BEN SIMEON (second half of 11th century), Karaite translator in Byzantine Greece. Jacob, who was a pupil of *Jeshua b. Judah, translated his teacher's classical Arabic treatise on the Karaite law of incest into Hebrew under the title Sefer ha-Yashar. His very poor Hebrew, heavily salted with Arabic and Greek constructions and loanwords, is almost unintelligible at times. Nevertheless, he and other Byzantine Karaite translators helped to make the classical Karaite literature accessible to the later European Karaites who knew no Arabic.

bibliography::

Mann, Texts, 2 (1935), index; Z. Ankori, Karaites in Byzantium (1959), 188f., 199 n.446; L. Nemoy, Karaite Anthology (1952), 124.

[Leon Nemoy]

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Jacob ben Simeon

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