Arabic Thought: Chapter X. The Jewish Transmittors
We have already seen that the Jews took a prominent part in bringing a knowledge of philosophical research from Asia to Spain, and Ibn Jabirul (Avencebrol) takes his place in the line of transmission by which Spanish Islam was brought into contact with these studies. This did not end the participation of the Jews in philosophical work, but their subsequent writers do not form part of the regular series of Aristotelian students influencing the Muslim world, but are rather confined to Jewish circles. Yet they are of an importance wider than merely sectarian interests, for it was by means of Jewish disciples of Ibn Rushd that he was raised to a position of much greater importance than he has ever enjoyed in the Muslim world. Amongst the Jews, indeed, there arose a strong Averroist school, which later on was the chief means of introducing Ibn Rushd's theories to Latin scholasticism. As we shall see later the transmission of philosophy from Arabic to Latin surroundings falls into two stages: in the earlier the Arabic material passes directly, and the works used are those which had attained a leading importance in Islam, but in the later stage the Jews were the His chief work is known as Dalalat al-Ha’irin, "the Guide of the Perplexed," which, like all his other books, was produced in Arabic; about the time of his death this work was translated into Hebrew by Maimonides’ teaching reproduces the substance of that already associated with al-Farabi and Ibn Sina put into a Jewish form. God is the Intellect, the ens intelligens, and the intelligibile: He is the necessary First Cause and the permanent source. He is essentially and necessarily one, and attributes cannot be so used as to imply plurality: only those attributes which describe activity are admissible, not those which imply relations between God and the creature. Like Ibn Rushd he disapproves of the Mutakallimin, whom he regards as mere opportunists in their philosophy and without any staple principles, besides which their method of compromise does not face fairly the law of causality. The Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of matter cannot, however, be admitted; creation must have been from nothing, as follows from the law of causality; that such was the case cannot be proved, hut every contrary supposition is untenable. All the properties of The Muwahhid persecution scattered many of the Spanish Jews to Africa and to Provence and Languedoc. Those who took refuge in Africa, like Maimonides, retained the use of the Arabic language, but Arabic quickly became obsolete amongst those who had fled north. No doubt the refugees in Provence found it necessary to use the Provencal dialect for communication with their Christian neighbours, but that dialect had never yet been used for scientific or philosophical purposes; in Western Christendom Latin was invariably used for all educational and scholarly purposes, but the refugee Jews did not feel disposed to adopt a language which had no traditional associations for them and was altogether a foreign tongue never as yet employed for Jewish purposes. Under these circumstances the Jewish leaders deliberately copied the actual condition prevailing amongst their Jewish neighbours where the ancient Latin was in use as a learned language, whilst its derived dialects were the speech in everyday use, and so they revived the use of Hebrew as The thirteenth century A.D. shows us a continuous series of Hebrew scholars either preparing compilations and abridgments or actually translating the full text of the leading Arabic philosophers, and especially of Ibn Rushd. About 1247 Jehuda ben Salomo Cohen, of Toledo, published his Hebrew "Search for Wisdom," an encyclopædia of Aristotelian doctrines mainly based upon the teachings of Ibn Rushd. A little later Shem-Tov b. Yusuf b. Falaquera also reproduced the doctrines of Ibn Rushd in his essays, and later again in the 13th century Gerson b. Salomo compiled "The Door of Heaven," which shows the same influence. About 1257 Solomon b. Yusuf b. Aiyub, a refugee who had come from Granada to Bèziers, translated the text of Ibn Rushd's commentary on the de coelo and de mundo, and in the latter part of this century complete translations begin to take the place of abridgments and collections of extracts. About Early in the 14th century Kalonymos b. Kalonymos b. Meir translated Ibn Rushd's commentaries on the Topica, Sophistica, and analytica Posteriora (completed 1314); then his commentaries on the Physica, Metaphysics, de coelo and de mundo, de generatione and de corruptione, and the Meteora (completed 1317), and followed these by a translation of the Destruction of the Destruction. An independent Hebrew translation of this latter work was made about the same time by Kalonymos b. David b. Todros. About 1321 Rabbi Samuel ben Jehuda ben Meshullam at Marseilles prepared Hebrew versions of Ibn Rushd's commentaries on the Nicomachæan Ethics and his paraphrase of the Republic of Plato, which was regarded by the Arabic writers as part of the Aristotelian canon. It is rather interesting to note that somewhere about the same time Juda ben Moses ben Daniel of Rome prepared a Hebrew translation of de substantia THE JEWISH TRANSMITTORS
// More from Texts of Islam
[8 texts]See all >
