Translation is a life raft

Claim (verbatim)

Translation is a life raft: the Hebrew translations of Judeo-Arabic philosophy were not diffusion but evacuation across a script frontier. As Arabic competence died out among the Jews of Christian Europe, translation was the only way the tradition could survive there at all, so the two versions' manuscript geographies should be nearly disjoint — Hebrew versions in European hands, Judeo-Arabic originals persisting in the Islamicate world — rather than overlapping as they would if translation merely widened an audience. The record of copies should look like a population fleeing a flooded valley, not a species expanding its range.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

Among catalogued medieval manuscripts of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed and Saadia Gaon's Beliefs and Opinions with recorded provenance or script region. Primary clause: at least 90 percent of European-provenance medieval copies are of the Hebrew versions, while a majority of Oriental-provenance copies before 1500 are Judeo-Arabic; the verdict follows this clause. Secondary clause: no European-provenance Judeo-Arabic copy of the Guide is datable after 1400.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: the Ktiv union catalogue of digitized Hebrew manuscripts (National Library of Israel) together with the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts records it aggregates, filterable by work, language, and provenance.

Novelty / leakage triage

provisional — model-triaged, shepherd review pending

A provisional first pass authored by the model (Opus), not yet confirmed by the shepherd. It carries the same dated-search requirements as an authoritative verdict but is excluded from every headline figure and cannot underwrite a prediction until a shepherd confirms it. Provisional reading: Adjacent (closely related prior work exists).

The evacuation-across-a-script-frontier narrative is the standard account of the Guide's transmission: as Arabic competence died among the Jews of Christian Europe, Samuel ibn Tibbon's Hebrew version (made in Maimonides' lifetime) was the vehicle by which the tradition survived there, while the Judeo-Arabic original persisted in the Islamicate world (the earliest complete Judeo-Arabic copy is Yemen, 1380). Not located: any measured manuscript-geography test of the near-disjointness the item predicts -- >=90% of European-provenance medieval copies Hebrew, a majority of Oriental copies pre-1500 Judeo-Arabic -- against the Ktiv/IMHM catalogue.

• Josef Stern, James T. Robinson & Yonatan Shemesh (eds.), Maimonides' 'Guide of the Perplexed' in Translation (University of Chicago Press, 2019) — The Hebrew translation as the carrier of the tradition into Christian Europe
• Ktiv union catalogue of digitized Hebrew manuscripts (NLI) with the IMHM records it aggregates — The kill dataset, filterable by work, language, and provenance

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.