Twenty-Nine Hebrew Glosses on Averroes' Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics

Jewish engagement with Aristotle's Metaphysics in Hebrew began in the thirteenth century when the text was presented in Hebrew encyclopedias; it continued with a number of translations in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The study of Hebrew philosophical texts often resulted in supercommentaries on them. In this study I present a hitherto unnoticed work, preserved in a unique Oxford manuscript, that bears witness to the study of the Metaphysics. Consisting of twenty-nine short comments or glosses on key passages of Averroes' Middle Commentary on books Alpha minor and Beta, as well as two passages from the Middle Commentary on book Theta, it can be described as a kind of supercommentary on Averroes. The glosses as preserved in the manuscript were apparently collected by an unknown redactor from works of two or more authors, whom I try to identify. One of them may be R. Gershon, the father of Levi ben Gershon (1288–1344). An edition of the 29 glosses and, for comparison, several glosses on logic by R. Gershon, are also presented.