Abstract
The translation of Arabic science and philosophy into the Hebrew language, and the large-scale transmission of Greek wisdom into the European Jewish milieu, began in the second half of the twelfth century and reached its peak in the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth centuries. Aristotelian logic was cultivated among the Arab philosophers, and in view of its status as an organon for science, it was only natural that some of the first Arabic philosophical texts translated into Hebrew dealt with logic. We have the testimony of Moses ibn Tibbon that his grandfather Judah ibn Tibbon, who died around 1190, translated one of Alfarabi’s logical works into Hebrew; and it has recently been suggested that some of the anonymous translations of Alfarabi’s logical writings date from the second half of the twelfth century.1 Others have speculated that Maimonides’ praise of Alfarabi’s logical writings in his letter to his Hebrew translator Samuel ibn Tibbon may have provided the impetus for some of their translations;2 certainly Maimonides valued highly the study of logic, as even a cursory reading of The Guide of the Perplexed will show.
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References
See Mauro Zonta, La filosofia antica nel Medioevo ebraico (Brescia, 1996), 192.
Steven Harvey, “Did Maimonides’ Letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon Determine Which Philosophers Would be Studied by Later Jewish Thinkers?” Jervish Quarterly Review 83 (1992): 51–70, esp. 55–6. Cf. Charles H. Manekin, The Logic of Gersonides (Dordrecht, 1992), 3.
Herbert A. Davidson questions the attribution of the Treatise on the Art of Logic to Maimonides in an article that will appear in the Isadore Twersky memorial volume.
See Zonta, La filosofia antica, 250–3. Of the Najâh, only the sections on physics and metaphysics are extant in Hebrew.
This work is extant in one manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian MS Reggio 43 (Neub. 2047) (Institute for the Microfilming of Hebrew Manuscripts [IMHM] 19332), fols. 74v–103r. See Moritz Steinschneider, Die hebraeischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher (Berlin, 1893), 497–8. Little is known about Judah ben Moses ibn Ḥayyim, and there is no conclusive evidence for fixing the time period in which his work was written.
Fol. 74v.
This translation is extant in three manuscripts: Oxford, Bodleian MS Reggio 48 (Neub. 1393) (IMHM 22417), fols 1–54; Moscow, Russian State Library, MS Günzberg 141 (IMHM 6821), fols. 91–131; and Moscow, Russian State Library, MS Günzberg 383 (IMHM 47710), fols. l-59r.
Oxford, Bodleian MS Opp. 578 (Ol. 1165) (Neub.1333) (IMHM 22147). The work is simply called, Sefer ha-Higgayon, “The Book of Logic” or “Dialectic.” It is noteworthy that the author confuses the fourth figure of the syllogism, in which the minor term is the predicate of the minor premise and the major term the subject of the major premise, with the so-called “false” fourth figure, which is just the first figure with the order of the premises transposed. This is common in Renaissance logic manuals; for another Hebrew example, see Charles Manekin, “Some Aspects of the Syllogism in Medieval Hebrew Logic,” History and Philosophy of Logic 17 (1996): 49–71, esp. 67–8.
For these works see Zonta, La filosofia antica, 178–92, and Manekin, The Logic of Gersonides, esp. 3–7. Inventories of manuscripts appear in the relevant sections of Shalom Rosenberg, “Logic and Ontology in Jewish Philosophy in the Fourteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss. [Hebrew], The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1975).
For this work, see Colette Sirat, “Juda b. Salomon ha-Cohen, philosophe, astronome et peut-être kabbaliste de la première moitié du XIIIe siècle,” Italia 2 (1977): 39–61, and the articles by Resianne Fontaine, Tony Lévy, and Y.Tzvi Langermann in this volume. Fontaine is at present editing sections of the Mid-rash ha-Ḥokmah; I hope to edit the section on logic. For the purposes of this article I used primarily Oxford, Bodleian MS Mich. 551 (Ol. 414) (Neub. 1321) (IMHM 22135), which I checked against Oxford, Bodleian, MS Uri 369 (Neub. 1322) (IMHM 22136), and Oxford, Bodleian MS Hunt. 57 (Neub. 1323) (IMHM 22137). References below to the Midrash ha-Ḥokhmah (MH) are to Mich. MS 551. My thanks to Dr. Fontaine for providing me with a photocopy of this manuscript.
MH, fol 46v.
MH, fols. 8v-9r.
See D.M. Dunlop, “Al-Fârâbî’s Introductory Risâla on Logic,” The Islamic Quarterly 3 (1956–7): 224–35, esp. 227–8 (Arabic text) and 232–3 (English). This work was translated several times into Hebrew; see Steinschneider, Die hebraeischen Übersetzungen, 43–4.
Dunlop, “Al-Fârâbî’s Introductory Risala” 227 (Arabic text), 232 (English).
This Hebrew translation of Alfarabi’s introductory letter on logic is found in New York, JTS MS Mic. 2314 (=Steinschneider, 22; Acc. 29220) (IMHM 28567), fols. 6r–9r.
Sirat, “Juda b. Salomon ha-Cohen,” 246, and Zonta, La filosofia antica, 202–3.
MH, fol. 9r.
MH, fol. 10r.
MH, fol. 12v-13r.
Needless to say, one cannot rule out the possibility that Judah was familiar with other Arabic sources besides those mentioned here, and that his “synthesis” was thus even more complex.
For a recent attempt to make sense of Aristotle’s modal logic, see Richard Patterson, Aristotle’s Modal Logic: Essence and Entailment in the Organon (Cambridge, 1995).
See Talkhîṣ kitâb al-qiyâs, ed. Mahmoud Kassem, Charles E. Butterworth, and Ahmad Haridi (Cairo, 1983). Cf. Jacob Anatoli’s Hebrew translation in New York, JTS MS Mie. 2486 (IMHM 28739).
See Steinschneider, Die hebraeischen Übersetzungen, 96–108, and Rosenberg, “Logic and Ontology,” 1:59–62.
See the Hebrew translation of Jacob ben Makhir, Qol Mekkhet Higgayon (Riva di Trento, 1559), 16a-19b.
Ibid., 17a. Averroes is much more supportive of Aristotle’s rule in the Middle Commentary, and polemicizes against Aristotle’s critics in the Logical Questions.
Kitâb al-madkhal ilâ al-qiyâs, in R. El-Ajam, Al-Mantiq ‘inda al-Fârâbî, 3 vols. (Beirut, 1985–6), 2:11–64. This work was translated into Hebrew twice, both times anonymously. I have used the translation found in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Heb 898, fols. 69–91.
MH, fol. 25v. Can we infer from this that Judah was familiar with the text of Aristotle in Arabic translation?
Maqâṣid al-falâsifah, ed. S. Dunyâ (Cairo, 1961); Spanish trans. Manuel Alonso, Maqâṣid al-Falâsifa o intenciones de los filósóficos (Barcelona, 1963).
For this work, see the Arabic text (based on the Beirut, 1927 edition of Maurice Bouyges, but with modifications) and facing English translation in Al-Ghazâlî, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, trans. Michael E. Marmura (Provo, Utah, 1997).
Maqâṣid, ed. Dunya, 32, 35–7; for the Tahâfut, see Incoherence of the Philosophers, 9–10. See also, Michael E. Marmura, “Ghazali’s Attitude to the Secular Sciences and Logic,” in Essays on Islamic Philosophy and Science, ed. George F. Hourani (Albany, 1957), 100–11. Cf. Steven Harvey, “Averroes’ Use of Examples in his Middle Commentary on the Prior Analytics and Some Remarks on His Role as Commentator,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 7 (1997): 91–113, esp. 103–4.
Of these translations, only the section on logic of the anonymous translation has been edited. See Gershon B. Chertoff, “The Logical Part of Al-Ghazâlî’s Maqâṣid al-Falâsifa in an Anonymous Hebrew Translation with the Hebrew commentary of Moses of Narbonne...” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1952). References to this Hebrew translation, and Moses Narboni’s commentary thereupon, will be to this edition.
Albalag refers to Alghazali’s work as De’ot ha-Filosofim.
See above, n. 2.
For this work, see Ernest Renan, Les écrivains juifs français du XIVe siècle (Paris, 1893; reprint Westmead, England, 1969), 718. Renan inaccurately describes the entire poem as based on the Kavvanot. The section on logic is based on Averroes’ middle commentaries on the first four books of the Organon. See Charles H. Manekin, “When the Jews Learned Logic from the Pope: Three Medieval Hebrew Translations of the Tractatus of Peter of Spain,” Science in Context 10/3 (1997): 395–430.
See Alexander Marx, “Glimpses of the Life of an Italian Rabbi of the Sixteenth Century,” Hebrew Union College Annual 1 (1924): 605–26, esp. 617.
Cited in Joseph Hacker, “The Intellectual Activity of the Jews of the Ottoman Empire during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Jewish Thought in the Seventeenth Century, eds. Isadore Twersky and Bernard Septimus (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 105, n. 20. I was led to this note by the comprehensive article by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, “Jewish Philosophy on the Eve of Modernity,” in History of Jewish Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman (London and New York, 1997), 499–576. For Italy, see Shifra Baruchson, Books and Readers: The Reading Interests of Italian Jews at the Close of the Renaissance (Hebrew) (Ramat-Gan, 1993), 149, where the Kavvanot is the only philosophical encyclopedia listed among the philosophical and theological books found in the libraries of northern Italian Jews of that period.
In the case of the Maqâṣid, there is another reason why Alghazali’s true views were ignored, at least in the Latin West. Most manuscripts of the Latin translation omitted the introduction and other material in which Alghazali’s critical attitude was expressed; hence most of the scholastic philosophers were unaware that the author disagreed with its philosophical contents. See Charles H. Lohr, “Logica Algazelis: Introduction and Critical Text,” Traditio 21 (1965): 223–90, esp. 223–32. Cf. Duncan B. MacDonald, “The Meanings of the Philosophers by al-Ghâzzâlî,” Isis 25 (1936): 9–15; 27 (1937): 9–10. Roger Bacon and Raymund Martini were apparently familiar with the introduction. As we shall see below, the Hebrew translators and commentators interpreted the introduction to suit their own purposes.
See Isaac Albalag, Sefer Tiqqun ha-De’ot, ed. Georges Vajda (Jerusalem 1973), introduction, 4.
Albalag therefore intended Tiqqun ha-De’ot to encompass both his Maqâsid translation and his critical notes, a point already implied by Steinschneider, Die hebraeischen Übersetzungen, 299 (who calls the work Tiqqun ha-Filosofim). Vajda, curiously, took it to refer solely to the notes, which he published separately; cf. Georges Vajda, Isaac Albalag: avérroiste juif, traducteur et annotateur d’Al-Ghâzâli (Paris, 1960), 7.
See Moritz Steinschneider, Die Handschriften-Verzeichnisse der Koeniglichen Bibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin, 1878), Vol. 1, 130–2, where Steinschneider cites most of the introduction, based on Berlin MS Or. Fol. 1056 [Stein.111] and two other manuscripts.
While it is true that there are no extant Hebrew translations of all of Avicenna’s Najâh and Shifâ’, there are partial translations of these works (see above, n. 4), as well as testimonies to knowledge of the works of Avicenna, especially in Spain and Provence. The influence of Avicennism through the translation of works such as the Maqâṣid needs to be explored further.
See Chertoff, “Logical Part of Al-Ghazâlî’s Maqâṣid,” 1 (Hebrew text), 2 (English). Steinschneider, Die hebraeischen Übersetzungen, 338–9, identifies this reference with a work called Kavvanot ha-Kavvanot, found in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MS Héb. 959, which is called elsewhere Ma’amar bi-Teshuvot She’elot.
In Chertoff, “Logical Part of Al-Ghazâlî’s Maqâṣid” 1–2.
The claim that the Maqâṣid is essentially a translation of the Dânesh-nâme-Alai has recently been asserted by Jules Janssens, “Le Dânesh-Nâme d’Ibn Sînâ: un texte a revoir?” Bulletin de philosophie médievale 28 (1986): 163–77. Judging from the section on logic, it seems more likely that there was at least one other text involved; in any event, there is no convincing evidence that one is a direct translation of the other, although many formulations are identical.
Chertoff, “Logical Part of Al-Ghazâlî’s Maqâṣid” 8–14.
See Ibrahim Madkour, L’Organon d’Aristote dans le monde arabe, second ed. (Paris, 1969), 79–83.
Chertoff, “Logical Part of Al-Ghazâlî’s Maqâṣid” 26–40.
Ibid, 40–54.
“Mediniyyim” and “medabberim” according to the anonymous translation. The Karaite scholar Abraham ben Jacob Bali (c. 1510), in his commentary on the Kavvanot, explains mediniyyim as a sect of Islamic thinkers hailing from the city of Medinah! Why they would be more susceptible to using analogy he does not explain. See St. Petersburg, Russian National Library, MS Evr. I 695, fol. 96v. In the Dânesh-nâme, use of the analogical syllogism is attributed to “Sophists.” See Farhang Zabeeh, Avicenna s Treatise on Logic: Part One of Danesh-Name Alai (The Hague, 1971), 38–9.
Chertoff, “Logical Part of Al-Ghazâlî’s Maqâṣid,” 78. In this comment Narboni remarks that Alghazali phrases a particular syllogism with the major premise first, “and this is the custom of the Romans (=Christians) in their disputations” (u-minhag ha-Romiyim be-vikkuḥeihem kakhah). For other cases of Jewish familiarity with the scholastic formulation of the syllogism, see below, some of which is based on C. H. Manekin, “Some Aspects of the Assertoric Syllogism,” History and Philosophy of Logic 17 (1996): 49–71, esp. 65.
Chertoff, “Logical Part of Al-Ghazâlî’s Maqâṣid” 81–100.
See Steinschneider, Die hebraeischen Übersetzungen, 47. An edition of the Arabic text and Turkish translation was published by M. [Küyel-] Türker in “Fârâbî’nin Serâ it ul-yakîni’” Arastirma 1 (1963): 151–228.
Chertoff, “Logical Part of Al-Ghazâlî’s Maqâṣid” 100–10.
Zvi Ankori conjectures that the Kavvanot was regularly studied by Karaite students in Turkey in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He notes that the work is mentioned by the great Karaite codifier Elijah Bashyazi several times and was recommended in his shortened study-program. Abraham Bali lived only a generation after Bashyazi. See Zvi Ankori, Karaites in Byzantium (New York, 1959), 236–7, esp. n. 68 (Bali and Bashyazi were probably familiar with the anonymous translation and not the translation of Judah Nathan, pace Ankori).
See C. Roth, The House of Nasi: The Duke of Naxos (Philadelphia, 1948), 165 ff. The manuscript of Migdal ‘Oz that I examined was Madrid, Real Academy de La Historia MS Hebr. 6 (IMHM 31653), which is described in Francisco Cantera, “Nueva serie de manuscritos hebreos de Madrid,” Sefarad 19 (1969): 3–9.
For more details, see Manekin, “When the Jews Learned Logic,”420–2.
This gloss has been translated in its entirety as an appendix in Manekin, “Aspects of the Assertoric Syllogism,” 68–71; cf. 57–58.
See Peter of Spain, Tractatus, ed. Lambertus M. de Rijk (Assen, 1972), 52.
Ḥesheq Shelomo, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek MS Or. 832, fols. 235–6. Alemanno recommended the study of the Kavvanot with the commentaries of Narboni and Albalag “for those who have set their hearts on the investigation of religion.” It is followed in the curriculum by Alghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers and Averroes’ Incoherence of the Incoherence. See Moshe Idel, “The Study Program of R. Yohanan Alemanno” (Hebrew), Tarbiẓ 48 (1979): 303–31.
For the employment of Aristotelian logic by talmudists, see Daniel Boyarin, Sephardi Speculation: A Study in Methods of Talmudic Interpretation (Hebrew) (Jerusalem, 1989), 37–42; by Spanish preachers, see Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching, 1200–1800 (New Haven, 1989), 82–3; and by kabbalists, see Manekin, “When the Jews Learned Logic,” 420.
For some practical uses of the study of logic, see Manekin, “When the Jews Learned Logic,” 421, 426–7.
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Manekin, C.H. (2000). The Logic of the Hebrew Encyclopedias. In: Harvey, S. (eds) The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy. Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9389-2_13
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