{{Short description|Rabbinical writer}} {{Use dmy dates|date=December 2022}} {{Use Indian English|date=December 2022}}
'''Ezekiel Rahabi''' (1694–1771) was the chief Jewish merchant of the Dutch East India Company in Cochin, India for almost 50 years.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Fischel |first=Walter J. |date=1962 |title=Cochin in Jewish History: Prolegomena to a History of the Jews in India |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3622533 |journal=Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research |volume=30 |pages=37–59 |doi=10.2307/3622533 |jstor=3622533 |issn=0065-6798|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Rabbi ''Rahabi Ezekiel'',<ref>Hebrew in the church: the foundations of Jewish-Christian dialogue Pinchas Lapide - 1984 "appears as kbwd m'lt hrb rby rhby yhzql nwhw 'dn "Honored to the degree of the great Rabbi Rahabi Ezekiel, may he rest in peace."</ref> (or ''Ezekiel Rahabi'') was from Aleppo, in modern Syria.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Fischel |first=Walter J. |date=1967 |title=The Rotenburg Family in Dutch Cochin of the Eighteenth Century |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41480994 |journal=Studia Rosenthaliana |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=32–44 |jstor=41480994 |issn=0039-3347}}</ref> A rabbinical writer known only through his polemical Hebrew translation of the New Testament - ''The Book of the Gospel Belonging to the Followers of Jesus'' (c.1750).
The translation contains all the books of the New Testament and was translated between 1741 and 1756<ref name=":0">Commissioner, purpose, translators, copyist and age of the Hebrew New Testament of Cochin and the Quran of the Library of Congress, Mascha van Dort, professor Meir Bar-Ilan, July 2021, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20148.58242</ref> by a certain Ezekiel Rahabi (not R'dkibi, pace Franz Delitzsch p.108) in "an uneven and faulty Hebrew with a strong anti-Christian bias."<ref>Hebrew in the Church: The Foundations of Jewish-Christian Dialogue 1984 p76 Pinchas E. Lapide, Helmut Gollwitzer - 1984</ref> Oo 1:32 reads: "Heaven is my witness that I have not translated this, God forfend, to believe it, but to understand it and know how to answer the heretics . . . that our true Messiah will come. Amen." The 1756 edition appears to be the work of two different translators - a less educated Sephardi writer (Matthew-John), Ezekiel Rahabi himself, and a more educated German rabbi (Acts-Revelation) Leopold Immanuel Jacob van Dort.<ref name=":0" />
==References== {{reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ezekiel, Rahabi}} Category:Translators of the New Testament into Hebrew Category:18th-century rabbis Category:Jewish translators of the Bible Category:Cochin Jews Category:Syrian Jews Category:Indian rabbis Category:18th-century Indian translators Category:Indian critics of Christianity Category:Dutch East India Company people Category:Writers from Aleppo Category:1694 births Category:1771 deaths Category:Clergy from Kochi