ABSTRACT
The underlying motivation was to fashion a distinctive Biblical style in Arabic, free from Islamic influences, even at the expense of deviating from idiomatic expressions, and sometimes grammar. The underlying motivation was (sometime explicitly, as in the Protestant Translation) to fashion a distinctive Biblical style in Arabic, free from Islamic influences, even at the expense of deviating from idiomatic expressions, and sometimes grammar. So much so that some Arabic litterateurs have objected to these versions from a purely aesthetic perspective. As Samih Hanna explains, “the mechanisms of ‘sacred Biblical knowledge’ production and the identity construction of the receivers through translation cannot be understood except against the background of the Qur‘anic text as the central sacred text in Arabic-Islamic culture”.
