Two Notes on the Identification of Two Anonymous Hebrew Commentaries on the Physics

In the following notes I wish to tell the stories of two anonymous Hebrew commentaries on the Physics, which were wrongly identified by Steinschneider. I maintain that both commentaries were written in Spain in the second half of the fifteenth century and that Steinschneider's earlier dating obscured the picture of the development of Hebrew scholarship in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.¹ The first text has not been studied before; the second was studied several times, but its confusing structure kept its story from being understood properly.

The Commentary attributed by Steinschneider to Moshe Narboni

MS Paris BNF héb. 967/1 (IMHM 30339). 108 large densely written folios, Spanish cursive script.²

Moshe Narboni, the well-known fourteenth-century Jewish scholar, wrote several philosophical commentaries, including several in the natural sciences. We know that he composed a commentary on the Physics. In the introduction to his commentary on the Questions in Physics (דרושים טבעיים) he says that he wrote it after completing his commentary on the Physics.³ Steinschneider identified Narboni's commentary as the anonymous commentary on the Physics listed above.⁴ The cursive hand is difficult to make out; this may be why no one read the text and the attribution to Narboni went unchallenged.

The form and content of the commentary are interesting. The author follows the Qalonymos ben Qalonymos translation of the Middle Commentary, but also had a copy of the Long Commentary to hand and quotes it on occasion.⁵ The style of the commentary is much more "Scholastic" than the style employed by fourteenth-century commentators, including Narboni. Most notable are the lists of queries and answers concatenated by the formula "one should put another query,"⁶ and the lists of numbered questions, doubts, or queries introduced by the formulas "this chapter raises questions,"⁷ "the doubts in this chapter are numerous,"⁸ "there are queries about this chapter," "we should posit queries here."⁹ The list of numbered answers is usually introduced by the phrase "and we say in the resolution of these doubts," or similar formulas.

Were this commentary indeed by Narboni, it would totally alter our understanding of fourteenth-century philosophical and scientific writing in Provence.¹⁰ This prompted me to re-examine the evidence. My conclusion is that there is not a single valid argument for attributing this commentary to Narboni and there are several strong arguments against doing so:

• • At the beginning of Book VII there are three passages that begin "Moshe said" (אמר משה).¹¹ These led Steinschneider to ascribe the commentary to Narboni; but a close reading points in the opposite conclusion. All three passages are quotations from Narboni's commentary on Ibn Rushd's Natural Questions.¹² The second and third passages¹³ form a continuous text that ends "up to this point are the words of Moshe Narboni" (ע”כ לשון משה הנרבוני). This is a common formula to mark the end of a quotation, not of an authorial digression.¹⁴ There are other references to Narboni's commentary on the Natural Questions in addition to the ʾamar Moshe passages.¹⁵

• • Narboni himself testifies that he wrote the commentary on the Natural Questions after the commentary on the Physics. It is unlikely that he quotes the later text in the earlier one.

• • In chapter VIII.4.4 we find "and Rabbi Moshe Narboni answered this doubt" (והר”מ נרבוני השיב על זה הספק). This reference to Narboni in the third person supports my impression that the author is not Narboni but a later author who consulted Narboni.

• • MS 967 includes a note by the person who purchased it in 1573. He writes that the author of the first text is unknown and that the others are by Shem Ṭov ben Shem Ṭov,¹⁶ who wrote in Spain in the second half of the fifteenth century.

• • A computerized stylistic comparison of the commentaries on the Natural Questions and on the Physics confirms that they were not written by the same author.¹⁷

I conclude that there is no reason to ascribe the commentary preserved in MS Paris 967/1 to Narboni. Relying on considerations of...