The Exalted Fath: Ha-Emunah ha-Ramah Transleted by Solomon Ibn Lavi, Ha-Emunah ha-Nissaʼah Transleted by Samuel Ibn Matut, The Anonymous Commentary to HaEmunah ha-Ramah.

The biblical story on the miracle of the manna in the Sinai Desert aroused many discussions and interpretations over the generations. The current study focuses on Ibn Ezra’s controversy with Hiwi al-Balkhi on the question of whether the manna was a natural or miraculous phenomenon. The article explores the claims of the two sides in light of the historical evidence and the literature describing the phenomenon of ‘falling manna’ in various areas of the Sinai Desert and Eastern countries. According to (...) Hiwi, the manna that rained down on the Israelites is taranjebin, a semi-liquid resinous sweet secretion of insects (honeydew) that exudes onto plants. Ibn Ezra deals with Hiwi’s claims through a series of refutations and arguments. He argues that the characteristics of the taranjebin do not fit the description of the biblical manna. For example, it does not come down in the Sinai Desert, it appears during a limited season, does not melt in the sun and does not rot during the night, and serves as a medicine rather than as food. Contribution: This article contributes to the understanding of Hiwi al-Balkhi’s identification of the biblical manna as honeydew and Ibn Ezra’s claims against his thesis. It expounds the commentators’ interpretations from a multidisciplinary perspective, such as the reality of harvesting the taranjebin in Iran and North Africa and its uses as food and medicine in the medieval culture. (shrink)

"As a recently established field of Jewish thought, Jewish political philosophy has made increasingly frequent appearances in recently edited histories of Jewish philosophy. Following the pioneering efforts of Leo Strauss, Ralph Lerner and Daniel Elazar, among others, Jewish political philosophy gained its proper place alongside ethics and metaphysics in the study of the history of Jewish philosophy. This volume is another manifestation of this welcomed development. Consisting of selected papers published in English over the last thirty years, Wisdom's Little Sister (...) concentrates on the Medieval and Renaissance periods, from Sa'adiah Gaon in the tenth century to Spinoza in the seventeenth century. These were the formative periods in the development of Jewish political philosophy, when Jewish scholars, versed in the canonical Jewish sources (biblical and rabbinic), encountered Greek political philosophy as transmitted by Muslim philosophers such as Alfarabi, Ibn Bajja and Averroes. In combining Greek, Jewish and Muslim thought, these scholars are the originators of what we now know as Jewish political philosophy."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Ibn S¯ına, known to the Latin West as Avicenna, was a medieval Aristotelian— one of the greatest of all medieval Aristotelians. He lived in Persia from 980 to 1037, and wrote mostly in Arabic. Simplicius of Cilicia was a sixth century Neoplatonist; he is known mostly for his commentaries on Aristotle. Both of these men were, broadly speaking, part of the same philosophical tradition: the tradition of Neoplatonic or Neoplatonizing Aristotelianism. There is probably no direct historical connection between them, however, (...) and anyway I will not try to demonstrate one. In this paper I will examine their closely related, but ultimately quite different, accounts of corporeity— of what it is to be a body—and in particular of the essential relationship between corporeity and materiality. (shrink)

Musk, which is produced from the glands of several species of deer, was a well-known perfume throughout the Mediterranean Basin in the Middle Ages. The current article examines the meaning of the gathering operation of myrrh mentioned in Song of Songs 5:1, according to R. Joseph Ibn Aknin and Naḥmanides. The two commentators argue that the phrase ariiti mori can be interpreted as the unique manner of gathering the perfume of the musk deer in its lands of origin in the (...) Far East. They contend that harvesting the perfume refers to gathering the perfume that the deer spreads on the rocks naturally, which is a higher quality product. The two medieval rabbis were exposed to contemporary scholars or oral traditions on the way of gathering the musk. Ibn Aknin took the information from Arabic writings, such as of al-Sirāfī and al-Masʿūdī and Ibn JulJuly With regard to Naḥmanides, his source of information on gathering musk is not clear. Contribution: This article contributes to the understanding of the issue of the sources of knowledge of scholars in medieval times and how the achieved information influenced their commentaries on the Biblical Text. The current study expounds the commentators’ interpretations from a multidisplinary perspective, such as the medieval zoology and perfume industry. (shrink)

Abraham ibn Ezra's scientific corpus represented an exceptional case: instead of the common Latin model embodied by the scholar coming from the Christian North to the Iberian Peninsula to initiate a translation enterprise, we have in Ibn Ezra the contrary case of an intellectual imbued with the Arabic culture, who abandons al-Andalus, roams around the Christian countries and delivers in his wandering through Italy, France and England, the scientific and cultural cargo that he amassed during his youth in al-Andalus. (...) The main purpose of this article is to provide a picture of Ibn Ezra's scientific corpus as comprehensive and detailed as possible given the present state of research. The paper will fall into two main parts: Ibn Ezra's scientific work will be broken up into three main genres: Mathematics, Astronomy, Scientific Instruments and Tools; The astrological encyclopaedia; Translations from Arabic into Hebrew. In the second part, Ibn Ezra's scientific corpus will be reassembled as a whole in order to provide a global characterization, trying to point out its general organization and shape, and to indicate its main aims and special traits revealing Ibn Ezra personal contribution. (shrink)

Cette finitions de la substance et de l'accident telles qu'elles apparaissent dans le livre d'lbn Daud intitule la Foi exaltee. Acheve en 1160, ce livre fut composcut grbreu (datant l'une et l'autre de la fin du XTVe situde je suggtique du texte arabe sur la base d'une ample comparaison entre, d'une part, des prcesseurs musulmans d'lbn Daud tels qu'Alfarabi, Avicenne et Alghazali et, d'autre part, les traductions en hre apporter plus de lumipendance d'lbn Daud par rapport aux sources non-juives dans (...) sa tentative d'etablir une synthritable signification philosophique incarnfinitions de substance et d'accident. (shrink)

Las últimas tres décadas han sido testigos de un nuevo y vívido interés en Ibn Daud. La bibliografía en la entrada dedicada a este autor en la Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy revela que muchos estudios sobre Abraham Ibn Daud, así como nuevas ediciones de sus escritos, se han publicado entre 1990 y principios de la década de 2020. El objetivo de este artículo es hacer un balance de los resultados de la nueva investigación y revisar cómo se ha avanzado (...) en nuestro conocimiento de este autor multifacético en las últimas décadas y detectar dónde hay todavía lagunas en nuestro conocimiento de su obra. Aunque voy a abordar varios aspectos de la vida de Ibn Daud, sus actividades y la recepción de sus obras, mi enfoque se va a centrar en los estudios de su trabajo filosófico. (shrink)

Abraham Ibn Ezra’s (ca. 1089-ca. 1161) astrological corpus includes the two versions of Sefer ha-ʿOlam (Book of the World), which represent the first Hebrew theoretical work, unique in medieval Jewish science, to discuss the theories and techniques of historical and meteorological astrology that had accumulated from Antiquity to Ibn Ezra’s time. This article surveys the content of the two versions of Sefer ha-ʿOlam and their most important doctrines as he conceived of them. The relevant material is presented chronologically: (a) (...) the ancient period; (b) the Hellenistic period; (c) Indian and Persian contributions; (d) contributions by astrologers working in the Muslim world; and (e) connections with twelfth-century Latin work on world astrology. In addition, this paper examines the contents of three additional texts by Ibn Ezra, directly concerned with word astrology: (a) the tenth chapter of Reshit Ḥokhmah (Beginning of Wisdom), where Ibn Ezra presents a series of cycles related to world astrology; (b) the astrological section of the exegetical excursus in the long commentary on Exodus 33:21, where Ibn Ezra inserts material on world astrology into his biblical commentary; (c) the introduction to Sefer ha-Moladot (Book of Nativities), where Ibn Ezra juxtaposes world astrology and the doctrine of nativities and presents a series of original ideas about world astrology. (shrink)

It examines the question whether current interpretation is correct in assuming that the thesis is primarily concerned with working out a synthesis between ...

Le Tractatus particulares est un ouvrage en quatre parties attribué à Abraham Ibn Ezra (ca. 1089-ca. 1161), qui nous est parvenu en deux traductions latines. Le présent article montre que, malgré les attestations dans les incipits et les explicits des deux traductions latines, le Tractatus particulares ne peut pas être un ouvrage authentique d’Ibn Ezra, ni un recueil d’écrits de sa plume. L’essentiel du Tractatus particulares est constitué de traductions de l’arabe en hébreu, réalisées bien après la mort d’Ibn (...) Ezra et associées à son nom par la suite. L’article entend aussi montrer que la source hébraïque du Tractatus particulares était sans doute conçue comme un ouvrage astrologique complet, une sorte d’encyclopédie astrologique médiévale. (shrink)

Abraham ibn Ezra d'Espagne (m. 1167) fut l'un des plus importants savants ayant contribué à la transmission de la science arabe à l'Occident. Ses ouvrages en astrologie et en astronomie, rédigés en hébreu puis traduits en latin, étaient considéréd comme faisant autorité par de nombreux savants juifs et Chrétiens. Parmi les ouvrages qu'il a traduits de l'arabe en hébreu, certains sont perdus dans leur langue originale et ses propres ouvrages renferment certaines informations concernant des sources anciennes mal ou pas (...) du tout connues par ailleurs. Ibn Ezra semble être le premier a avoir consigne l'une des sept méthodes pour dresser les maisons astrologiques. Cette méthode avait par la suite été utilisée par Lévi ben Gershom (m. 1344) dans le Midi de la France. (shrink)

Abraham Ibn Daud es conocido como el filósofo que en su _Ha-Emunah ha-Ramah_ (escrito originalmente en árabe ca. 1160) incorporó el aristotelismo de los _falāsifah_ musulmanes al-Farabi y Avicena al ámbito de reflexión judío. Unos 250 años después, Ḥasdai Crescas sometió este sistema a una severa crítica en su _Or Ha-Shem_ (ca. 1410). En su introducción, Crescas clasifica a Ibn Daud como un filósofo aristotélico, pero no se refiere más a él. Basándose en investigaciones previas, el artículo examina la (...) cuestión de hasta qué punto el trabajo de Ibn Daud fue relevante para Crescas. Paralelos literarios exactos que apunten a una clara influencia de Ibn Daud en Crescas con respecto a las doctrinas filosóficas son difíciles de descubrir porque las fuentes filosóficas de Ibn Daud son las mismas que las de Crescas. Además, el pensamiento de Ibn Daud muestra muchas similitudes con el de Maimónides y también con el de Gersónides, cuyas opiniones Crescas critica. La exégesis bíblica aporta más resultados: se puede demostrar que Crescas se basó en el uso de ciertos versículos bíblicos por parte de Ibn Daud. Es probable que la interpretación de Ibn Daud del Salmo 139 en relación con el problema clave del conocimiento de Dios, así como su uso de la metáfora de la luz, hayan llevado a Crescas a reflexionar sobre la relación entre filosofía y religión. (shrink)

Our paper carries out a reading of the Abraham ibn Daud's Book of Tradition, with the purpose of showing the suggestive theological-political intuitions that this singular medieval chronicle contains. Putting the emphasis in diachronic hermeneutics, more that in an archaeology of the ideas, we want to investigate if the historical vicissitudes of the Iberic Jewish communities, their community controversies, as well as their permanent religious and identity self-reflection, can provide relevant elements to an understanding of the present.

En este artículo se ofrece una visión de conjunto de la obra de Ibn Daud con el propósito de reflejar las consecuencias, limitaciones e incongruencias de su peculiar racionalismo filosófico, afanado en la defensa de la tradición religiosa judía. Aceptando la idea de que su filosofía y su historiografía constituyen una unidad, marcada esta por un propósito apologético, analizaremos las relaciones entre la libertad individual, la praxis moral y el devenir de la historia. La indagación sobre la libertad humana y (...) el sentido de la historia es indiscernible, en la obra de Ibn Daud, el primero de los peripatéticos judíos, si no se atiende al papel que el autor confiere a la voluntad divina en la determinación de las mismas y a los límites que establece entre lo fiducial y lo racional. (shrink)

Nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg hat Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich (1921-2007) herausragende israelische Gelehrte in englisch- und deutschsprachigen Veröffentlichungen in Europa und Nordamerika bekannt gemacht. Die zu diesem Zweck von ihm begründete Reihe Studia Judaica bietet heute ein Forum für wissenschaftliche Studien und Editionen aus allen Epochen der jüdischen Religionsgeschichte.

Kierkegaard raises many issues in his account of the near sacri­fice of Isaac by his father. Responding to and critiquing Hegelian and Kantian depictions of Abraham, Kierkegaard moves to elevate Abraham into a position as a knight of faith. The Sunnī perception of the incident in the exegetical tradition is far more ethically unequivocal than that of the Latin philosophical tradi­tion. The ubiquitous Sufi theorist, Ibn ʿArabī, however, in a single act of interpretive ingenuity, managed to extirpate the (...) central root of contention raised by the philosophers when he alleges that Abraham was only ever commanded to sacrifice a ram. Despite his abiding commitment to spiritual unveiling and his insistence on the personal nature of God, Ibn ʿArabī advo­cates the employment of a Kantian criterion of universal ratio­nality to adjudicate between literal and metaphorical dreams. (shrink)

Abraham Ibn Daud critica duramente a Ibn Gabirol en su Fe Exaltada. En este artículo, tengo la intención de demostrar que el objeto genuino de esta crítica es Dominicus Gundissalinus, coautor, junto a Ibn Daud de la traducción de la Shifa’ de Avicena del árabe al latín. Además de su trabajo como traductores, Gundissalinus e Ibn Daud también escribieron obras propias. En este artículo, discuto la definición de materia prima utilizada por Avicena e Ibn Gabirol, adoptada por Ibn Daud (...) y Gundissalinus. Aporto pruebas textuales para demostrar que en la mayoría de los casos en que Ibn Daud critica a Ibn Gabirol, en realidad se está refiriendo a los casos en que Gundissalinus abandona los puntos de vista de Avicena y en su lugar adopta los puntos de vista de Ibn Gabirol. (shrink)

Abraham ibn Daud’s Exalted Faith adapts to rabbinic thought and Jewish tradition the Andalusi Aristotelian model that was the framework for understanding God, man, and man’s purpose in the universe. Ibn Daud defines Jewish belief for the perplexed scholar, arguably providing a genealogy and epistemological justification for the scholarly class—based on acquisition of knowledge of the (Aristotelian) universe and culminating in achieving prophethood. The Aristotelian universe presented in the Exalted Faith offers a version of the elitism Stroumsa argues if (...) at the heart of this Jewish and Muslim scholarly class, one based in Arabic Aristotelian thought. The prevalence of Aristotelian-Farabian (Platonic) philosophy, which held as a central tenet the individual’s ability to know God by developing his intellect through speculation, seemingly offered a religious/societal model in which Jewish traditions and commandments were no longer relevant. Ibn Daud adapts this theory to reassert the necessity for Jewish traditions and to privilege Jewish scholars. to express a vision of individual and social identity for Sephardi scholars in the Diaspora. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The connection between the unity of God and the multiplicity seen in the universe represents the central concern for the Sufi thinker, Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240). It deeply affected the thought of the Southeast Asian mystic, Ḥamza Fanṣūrī (d. 1590?), and his alleged disciple, Shams al-Dīn al-Sumatra’ī (d. 1630). Traces of this idea, through its popularisation in the poems of Fanṣūrī, exert a powerful influence on the Indonesian intellectual topography to this day. This article investigates the concept (...) of unity and multiplicity, of the One expressed as the many in the phenomenal world, in Ibn ‘Arabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (Ringstones of Wisdom). Through a close textual reading of the chapters of Ādam (Adam) and Ibrāhīm (Abraham) and their various commentaries by the most influential followers of Ibn ‘Arabī, it concludes that the representation of ‘oneness of being’ (waḥdat al-wujūd), which was extensively taught by Fanṣūrī in Aceh, as an erasure of the God-Man divide, is untenable. (shrink)

Abū al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā Ibn al-Rāwandī(815–860 or 910), perhaps one of the most controversial figures in early Islamic history, is frequently called the “arch-heretic” (zindīq or mulḥid) of Islam. He was born in Khurasan around 815 CE. but flourished among intellectuals in ninth century in Baghdad. Around the year 854, he left Baghdad to escape political persecution and died either in 860 or in 910, according to some sources. The details of his early life are unknown, and documentation of (...) Ibn al-Rāwandī began to surface once he became an intellectual enemy of his fellow Muʿtazilites, the rationalist thinkers of Islamic thought at the time. Information on Ibn al-Rāwandī is gathered mostly from the writings of his opponents. From these sources, we learn that both Muslims and non-Muslims (especially Jews) wrote polemics against Ibn al-Rāwandī in which they acknowledged the serious threat his work posed not only to Islam, but also to Judaism and all Abrahamic religions. (shrink)

Abraham ibn Ezra, the subject of this Cologne doctoral dissertation, is a lesser-known figure in the history of Jewish philosophy in medieval Spain, his dates placing him roughly after Ibn Gabirol and before Moses Maimonides. The title given to this book calls first for some comment. By "Religionsphilosophie," a term he has seemingly inherited from his scholarly predecessors, Greive does not mean "philosophy of religion," but is referring to a system of reality and of knowledge concerned with a metaphysical (...) ultimate principle and our relation to that principle, and in which no divide is established between "religion" and "philosophy," between "mysticism" and "rational thought"., accommodating his faith to his philosophy.) This system, as it is found in Ibn Ezra, conforms in its general lines to the Neoplatonic-inspired philosophy common in medieval Islamic and Jewish thought. A second comment might be made concerning the scope of Greive’s work. It is not his intent to present a full and systematic account of Ibn Ezra’s philosophy. He wishes rather to provide a careful reconstruction of certain aspects of Ibn Ezra’s thought which will represent an improvement on earlier scholarly accounts and will serve to illuminate Ibn Ezra’s philosophy as a whole. Following a brief review of Ibn Ezra’s Jewish philosophical predecessors, Greive surveys previous scholarly work on Ibn Ezra, finding confusion and misinterpretation of particular theories and a tendency to relate Ibn Ezra to Ibn Gabirol while ignoring Islamic influences. Greive then proceeds to his corrective treatment of aspects of Ibn Ezra’s thought, but not before surveying Ibn Ezra’s life, works and posthumous influence, noting that an account of Ibn Ezra’s philosophical thought must draw from all his literary production, as he did not compose a strictly philosophical work. There is one possible exception, Ibn Ezra’s prose poem Haj ben Meqis, which Greive presents in the latter part of his book in German translation with introduction and notes, and which, for Greive, can serve to demonstrate Ibn Ezra’s dependence vis-à-vis Avicenna. The book ends with a translation of a short poem, the Arugat ha-hokmah, and a very useful bibliography and indices. (shrink)

This article discusses neoplatonic and aristotelian presence in Ibn Gabirol metaphysics. With this aim, Plotinus and Gabirol’s are confronted in some of the main points, where the resemblance had already been pointed: the First Principle, the intermediary between God and the world and the universal matter. Once the differences between the approaches of these authors regarding such questions have been identified, some contributions which may come from the works of Aristotle will be briefly presented, in order to clarify the origin (...) of Gabirol’s ideas. We believe that Gabirol´s metaphysics must be understood in its historical-philosophical context, characterized by a view of Plato and Aristotle´s doctrines not as conflicting but complementary, as well as in its effort of harmonize them with the abrahamic creationism which, in this case, obeys the Judaic primacy of radical separation between God and the creation. KEY WORDS – Ibn Gabirol. Universal Hylemorfism. Aristotle. Substance. Intelligible Matter. (shrink)

Messianism is an integral component of Abrahamic faiths. Yet the emergence of the Messiah is counterbalanced by the Antichrist. Apocalyptic visions of the future in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam...