On Gersonides' Knowledge of Languages

Ruth Glasner On Gersonides' Knowledge of Languages It is well known that the Jews who lived in Muslim Spain studied the sciences from Arabic sources and wrote Arabic themselves. Starting in the twelfth century, many philosophical and scientific books were translated from Arabic into Hebrew; about the same time, Jews began writing book and commentaries in Hebrew.1 In theJewish communities of southern France, interest in "Greek wisdom" was rising from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, even as knowledge of Arabic was gradually declining. In the early fourteenth century, before starting his important translating project, Kalonimus ben Kalonimus went from Aries to Barcelona to polish his Arabic. For Freudenthal, this event illustrates the cultural change among erudite Provençal Jews during the thirteenth century: in families who migrated from Spain to southern France the On this subject, see M. Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und dieJuden als Dolmetscher (Berlin, 1893; repr. 1956); G. Freudenthal, "Les sciences dans les communautés juives médiévales de Provence: leur appropriation, leur rôle," REJ 152 (1993): 29-136; M. Zonta, La filosofia antica nel medioevo ebraico (Brescia, 1996). Aleph 2 (2002)235 knowledge of Arabic, transmitted from father to son, declined after a few generations but was not completely lost.2 Thus the degree of their mastery of Arabic is a frequent question with regard to fourteenth-century Provençal scholars. Another, no less important question is the extent to which these scholars were aware of the intellectual life of their Christian neighbors and whether they knew Latin.3 These questions were naturally raised with respect to Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides), the great fourteenth-century Provençal scientist and philosopher. In 1973, Charles Touati wrote that Gersonides "ignorait le latin" but "possédait quelques rudiments de la langue arabe."4 Touati doubts that Gersonides could read Arabic: "In fact, we do not believe that he could read a work written in Arabic on his own, because of all the scientific and philosophical Arabic literature Gersonides knew only books that were translated into Hebrew by the time that he was writing" (emphasis in original).5 Touati assembled important evidence about Gersonides' knowledge of Arabic but, in my opinion, underestimated its significance.6 Some additional evidence has been assembled since the publication of Touati's book.7 Below I look at several examples taken from Gersonides' logical and scientific commentaries8 and suggest (1) that Gersonides could read Arabic and "possédait quelques rudiments" of Latin; (2) that he was interested in linguistic questions and the structure of languages; and (3) that though most of his sources were Hebrew, we cannot rule out the possibility that he consulted some Arabic texts that had not been translated into Hebrew. 236 Ruth Glasner Gersonides' Use of Arabie Sources Euclid's Elements Tony Levy found that Gersonides consulted a book in Arabic while writing his commentary on Euclid's Elements? The Commentary on the Posterior Analytics As Touati noted, Gersonides consulted an Arabic manuscript of the Prior and Posterior Analytics when writing his supercommentaries on them.10 In his commentary on Averroes' Middle Commentary on the Posterior Analytics II.8,11 Gersonides remarks: "And on this we found another version . . . and this [second version] is the proper one in our Freudenthal, "Les sciences," p. 71. See S. Pines, "Scholasticism after Thomas Aquinas and the Teaching of Hasdai Crescas and his Predecessors," The Collected Works ofShlomo Pines 5:489-589, on p. 490; C. Sirat and S. Klein-Braslavy eds., Les méthodes de travail de Gersonide (Paris, forthcoming ), Introduction. C. Touati, La pensée philosophique et théologique de Gersonide (Paris, 1973), p. 39 Ibid., p. 42. Ibid., p. 39, nn. 43-46. Mainly by C. Manekin and T. Levy. See below. I have not found examples in The Wars of the Lord. Chapter VI.1.15 deals with language in general, but does not offer specific examples. For examples from the biblical commentaries, see Touati, La pensée philosophique, p. 39, nn. 43-45. T. Levy, "Gersonide, commentateur d'Euclide," in G. Freudenthal, ed., Studies on Gersonides:A Fourteenth-CenturyJewish Philosopher-Scientist (Leiden, 1992), pp. 83147 , on pp. 87-88. Touati, La pensée...