Abstract
This essay is composed of three parts. In the first section we address the question of the Hebrew tradition in astronomy. Is there such a thing? What is it? What different approaches do we find in the Hebrew sources? In our search for answers to these questions, we shall survey literature that was written over some two thousand years. However, the most important Hebrew texts by far were produced during the medieval period, and the remaining two sections offer detailed investigations into the two chief genres of medieval astronomy, based on representative unpublished manuscript sources. Descriptive cosmographies, which supply many details but skip over computational methods, form the first of these genres; we analyse at some length a hitherto unstudied Hebrew treatise preserved in a manuscript at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The second genre is computational astronomy, including astronomical tables. We discuss the comments of the celebrated astrologer and savant, Abraham ibn Ezra, to the tables prepared by Abraham bar Hiyya. Here too we have recourse to materials preserved in a single manuscript, from which we publish a star list.
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Langermann, Y.T. (2000). Hebrew Astronomy: Deep Soundings from a Rich Tradition. In: Selin, H., Xiaochun, S. (eds) Astronomy Across Cultures. Science Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Science, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4179-6_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4179-6_19
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