Exploring Persian Lore in the Hebrew Book of Asaf

The Hebrew medical text referred to as Sefer Refuʾot or Sefer Asaf has long been one of the greatest mysteries of Hebrew science with regards to fundamental questions such as the date and place of its composition and the identity of its author or authors. It has been dated anytime between the third and the eleventh centuries, with its composition located anywhere between Persia and southern Italy. This paper explores some of the Persian lore in Sefer Asaf: the figure of Asaf himself, the similarity with other Persian or Persianinfluenced accounts of the origins of the sciences, the appearance of the Indo-Iranian motif of the trees of medicine, the central importance given to Indic medical knowledge, and the form and use of the Persian months in the text.

Previous important contributions to the study of Sefer Asaf have argued for a Syriac connection; several other studies have linked the text to a Persian cultural milieu. The information presented here links those two and argues for dependence on material deriving from the Church of the East in Persia.