The Translation of the Psalms by Mohammad al-Sadeq Hussein and Serge de Beaurecueil

In 1961 the Cairo publishing house Dār as-Salām issued an Arabic translation of the Psalms by a Muslim intellectual, Mohammad al-Sadeq Hussein, with the participation of the French Dominican Serge de Beaurecueil. This instance of Islamic-Christian biblical teamwork is rather extraordinary in its kind, as it is the cultural atmosphere in which the project was first conceived. This essay reconstructs the origins of this initiative against the background of the history of the Bible in Arabic, examines the personality of the two translators involved and their linguistic choices, notably in their attempt at echoing the Qur'anic language and style, and concludes by stressing the continuous relevance of this work, as the only translation of a book of the Bible done by a Muslim and at the same time bearing the ecclesiastical imprimatur.