Beyond Religious Borders: Interaction and Intellectual Exchange in the Medieval Islamic World

Chapter 9: Arabic into Hebrew: The Emergence of the Translation Movement in Twelfth-Century Provence and Jewish-Christian Polemic

c h A p t e r 9 Arabic into Hebrew The Emergence of the Translation Movement in Twelfth-Century Provence and Jewish-Christian Polemic gAd fr eudenthAl The Problems I would like to invite you to join me in approaching my topic as a follower of the philosopher of science Karl R. Popper. By this I mean that our look at the historical facts should be informed by questions and problems. “Facts without theory are blind,” Kant famously said, and a problem at the back of our minds can similarly function as a searchlight that guides us through the thicket of the historical raw material. Rather than simply describe yet again the facts of the Arabic-into-Hebrew cultural transmission, I will sketch what I identify as problems calling for explanation. Following this, I will try to make a first step toward offering answers to the questions raised. Let me formulate the problem as follows: In the year 1140, the Jewish communities north of the Pyrenees, those whose cultural tongue was Hebrew, were still immersed in exclusively traditional Jewish studies. This holds equally for all the centers of learning: northern Italy, the Midi, Tsarfat, Ashkenaz, and England . In the numerous yeshivoth young men studied the Talmud under respected masters and interpreted midrashim.1 Less than half a century later, the scene in Provence had changed radically. Although talmudic and midrashic studies continued to flourish, a considerable number of Hebrew books Arabic into Hebrew 125 of formerly unknown kinds had found their place on the Jewish bookshelf and were now studied by numerous scholars and laymen. These were Hebrew works drawing on Arabic learning or works translated from Arabic into Hebrew.2 “Probably the most remarkable fact about the development of Jewish culture in Provence,” the late Isadore Twersky wrote, “is the manner in which a Torahcentered community, widely respected throughout Jewish Europe for its wideranging rabbinic scholarship and deep-rooted piety, whose sages were constantly beseeched for scholarly advice and learned guidance, turned with remarkable zest and gusto to the cultivation of philosophy and other extra-Talmudic disciplines .”3 The question is: What produced the Provençal “zest and gusto” for the cultivation of science and philosophy? This question is the Popperian searchlight that will illuminate our path in what follows. Like all cultural changes, the cultural transformation that took place in the Midi during the second half of the twelfth century must not be taken for granted as the result of some teleological process leading toward enlightenment. It is a truism that cultural contacts between Sefarad and Provence, and in particular the emigration from Sefarad to Provence, played a decisive role in this historical process. In the early decades of the twelfth century, Abraham bar Ḥiyya composed a series of scientific and philosophical books in Hebrew for the Jews in the Midi. In 1140, Abraham Ibn Ezra began his peregrinations, which brought him to Italy, Provence, northern France, and England. A few years later, in the mid-1150s, the Almohad persecutions brought to Provence families of scholars, notably the Tibbonids, who settled in Lunel, and the Qimḥis, who settled in Narbonne. These scholars were deeply immersed in Arabic letters, particularly in Judeo-Arabic learning, and they quickly became agents of cultural transmission. As so often is the case, immigration played a decisive role in bringing about cultural change. This is certainly an essential part of the picture, but it falls short of providing a full answer to our question. For while the arrival in Provence of scholars immersed in Judeo-Arabic culture was obviously a necessary condition for the inception of the cultural transfer, it was hardly a sufficient condition. The fact that émigré scholars from Sefarad had something to offer their hosts does not itself account for the willingness with which the latter embraced this initially alien culture. Considered from a sociological perspective, we can even venture to say that the odds were against this acculturation. The traditional intellectual activity in premodern Jewish cultures gravitated around the study of the Jewish canonical texts, sanctified and legitimized through its own tradition. In Judaism’s self-understanding, an unbroken line of 126 gAd fr eudenthAl transmission and reception (qabbalah) was assumed to link the present to the Revelation received at Sinai: it legitimized traditional knowledge and, concomitantly , fended off competing bodies of belief. In this scheme, the appeal to any “alien [or: external] wisdom” means to...