Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Peruš ha-Millot ha-Zarot and al-Fārābī's Eisagoge and Categories

Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Peruš ha-Millot ha-Zarot was one of the most popular and widely used Jewish philosophical reference works during the Middle Ages and survives in more than 50 manuscripts. It was read both as a glossary to his Hebrew translation of the Guide of the Perplexed and as a general introduction to philosophy. The definitions that Ibn Tibbon provides, which range over the full curriculum of medieval philosophy and science, were not always original. On the contrary, he borrowed freely from Arabic philosophical and scientific texts. Ibn Tibbon's use of al-Fārābī's Eisagoge and Categories, which he often translates word for word, is identified and explained. Drawing on this dependence, it is shown that Ibn Tibbon's text survives in four distinct recensions, each of which represents a different stage in the writing and transmission of this seminal lexicon of Hebrew philosophy and science.