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 M. FRIEDL.ENDEE, THE GUIDE, ETC., OF MAIMONIDES. 99 himself entirely to teaching. He advises his friend to retain his business, while at the same time employing his leisure in the study of medicine and of the law. " One drachm," writes Maimo- nides, " gained by weaving, tailoring, or carpentry is to my mind more agreeable than the whole revenue of the Prince of the Captivity." Dr. Friedlaender's is not the first attempt to translate Maimo- nides into English. Parts of the Strong Hand, the Book of Pre- cepts, the Eight Cliapters on Ethics, and of the Guide itself have been so rendered ; but these are mostly the non-philosophical por- tions of his extensive works. The first translations of the Guide were the Hebrew versions of Charizi and Ibn Tibbon, the latter of which was executed to a certain extent under the author's super- vision, while the former is free and (according to the author's son) inaccurate. Later translations were Buxtorf's in Latin, and the German version of Fiirstenthal and Scheyer. Both of these suffer in intelligibility, inasmuch as they are based upon Ibn Tibbon's version, which, while excessively literal, is written in a difficult and crabbed style. The cause of this may be found in the want of a true Hebrew philosophical nomenclature. The cumbrous phraseology of Hebrew philosophers is a hybrid Greek and neo-Hebrew, the interpretation of which presents difficulties even to professed students of Hebrew. Munk's French translation was the first, in any living language, which deserves the name. His superiority is due chiefly to his employment of the original Arabic text, which in fact he reconstructed and published for the first time. In his zeal, however, he went to the other extreme, and erred in frequently neglecting the guidance of the Hebrew versions where the Arabic was defective or ambiguous. Dr. Friedlaender, on the other hand, systematically compares his ver- sion with both Ibn Tibbon's and Charizi's, and thus has the ad- vantage of translating from three independent texts. Occasionally Dr. Friedlaender's amendments of Munk are doubtful improve- ments, 1 but, speaking generally, the English version is an immense advance upon Munk's. It is clear, intelligible, and fluent, and at the same time a very faithful reproduction of the abstruse original. It is chiefly in the very difficult Part ii., espe- cially in the Introduction, that Dr. Friedlaender's superiority mani- fests itself ; but Part iii. is marvellously well done, the English being flowing and elegant. With the aid of the notes, which enable him to contrast the rendering of Munk in most disputed passages, the reader may be quite confident that in the present edition he has before him as accurate an exposition of Maimonides as a translation can hope to afford. The introductions and notes contain a valuable mass of information which, it is to be hoped, Dr. Friedlaender will soon supplement by an essay on the exact relations between Maimonides and European Philosophy. 1 E.g., i., 189, 341, though these points are very unimportant