Project MUSE®: Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/283
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2001) through current issueLatest Articles: Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and JudaismTWOProject MUSE®Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism1553-39561565-1525Latest articles in Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism. Feed provided by Project MUSE®The Earliest Version of Sefer Yeṣirah: Text, Format, Structure, and Genre
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/930445
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First documented in tenth-century manuscripts and commentaries, Sefer Yeṣirah (The Book of Formation) was known throughout the Middle Ages in three primary versions. Two of these versions are similar in terms of their internal order and are distinguished from one another in their relative lengths—these are known to scholarship as the "short recension" and "long recension." The third version differs in its internal ordering from the other two versions and is known to scholarship as "Saadia's recension," as this version is embedded in Saadia Gaon's tenth-century commentary to the work. Compared with the short and long recensions, this third version has had relatively little impact on the reception history of Sefer
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/283/image/coversmallThe Earliest Version of Sefer Yeṣirah: Text, Format, Structure, and Genre2024-06-26text/htmlen-USThe Earliest Version of Sefer Yeṣirah: Text, Format, Structure, and Genre2024-06-262024TWOProject MUSE®1660422026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002024-06-26The Medieval Hebrew Witnesses of Pseudo-Palladius's Commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/930446
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MS New York City, Jewish Theological Seminary, ms 2720 (abbreviation: J) and ms Vatican City, Vatican Library, ebr. 567 (abbreviation: V) both contain Hebrew translations of an Arabic commentary on Hippocrates's Aphorisms, said to be written by a physician called Palladius (Aflidus).1 This Arabic commentary is preserved in a single manuscript, ms Ḥaddād (abbreviation: P), which is owned by Farīd Sāmī Ḥaddād and currently held in the private Sami I. Haddad Memorial Library in Phoenix, Arizona.2 After its discovery in 1972 by Hinrich Biesterfeldt,3 classicists and Arabists initially thought that the commentary had indeed been composed by the Alexandrian iatrosophist Palladius.4 However, Peter Pormann et al. have
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/283/image/coversmallThe Medieval Hebrew Witnesses of Pseudo-Palladius's Commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms2024-06-26text/htmlen-USThe Medieval Hebrew Witnesses of Pseudo-Palladius's Commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms2024-06-262024TWOProject MUSE®2397412026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002024-06-26Asher Anschel Worms (1695–1769): An Early Harbinger of the Haskalah in Western Germany
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/930447
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Medical studies seem to have served as the jumping-off point for the progress towards the Haskalah."The fox," wrote the Greek poet Archilocus of Paros in the seventh century BCE, "knows many things; but the hedgehog knows one big thing." In 1953, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin based an article on this lovely metaphor, which has since become common parlance. The present article was written through the eyes of the hedgehog: chiefly for methodological reasons, which will become clear later on, especially towards the end, but also because of the author's hedgehog nature. Naturally, I also availed myself of studies by undoubted foxes.2Rabbi Joseph Eschelbacher (1848–1916) was the first to identify the physician Asher
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/283/image/coversmallAsher Anschel Worms (1695–1769): An Early Harbinger of the Haskalah in Western Germany2024-06-26text/htmlen-USAsher Anschel Worms (1695–1769): An Early Harbinger of the Haskalah in Western Germany2024-06-262024TWOProject MUSE®4045262026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002024-06-26Sefer ha-Kolel: A Thirteenth-Century Compendium of Astronomical and Astrological Knowledge
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/930448
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Sefer ha-Kolel (The Comprehensive Book) is an eclectic Hebrew compendium devoted exclusively to astronomical and astrological knowledge. This work was compiled by an anonymous scholar in the mid-thirteenth century, probably in the Midi or northern Italy. Sefer ha-Kolel originally consisted of five sections (ḥalaqim) with a total of forty chapters (šeʿarim); of these, only the last nine (Chapters 32–40) are still extant today.1 The surviving chapters are comprised of lengthy passages taken directly from astronomical and astrological works that were available to Hebrew readers at the time. These excerpts, quoted verbatim from their sources, are accompanied by the author's own remarks. The compiler's skillful
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/283/image/coversmallSefer ha-Kolel: A Thirteenth-Century Compendium of Astronomical and Astrological Knowledge2024-06-26text/htmlen-USSefer ha-Kolel: A Thirteenth-Century Compendium of Astronomical and Astrological Knowledge2024-06-262024TWOProject MUSE®1687562026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002024-06-26A Newly Identified Manuscript on Astrolabes by Jacob Ibn Isaac al-Corsuno: Another Possible Witness of Scientific Curricula in Sephardic Yeshivot?
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/930449
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Jacob Israeli ibn Abu Ibrahim Isaac al-Corsuno (fl. 1376–1381) was one of the two Jewish astronomers (the other was Jacob ben David ben Yom Tov) working at the court of Peter IV the Ceremonious, King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona (1336–1387).1 In Barcelona he worked as an astronomer and translator of astronomical works. He is the author of the Tables of Barcelona (1381) and two versions of a treatise on the construction of astrolabes, the first in Arabic (Seville 1376) and the second in Hebrew (Barcelona 1378), the latter being a translation of the former. He also translated Jacob al-Ṣaffār's eleventh-century Arabic treatise on the uses of astrolabes into Hebrew and wrote a commentary on it. After 1381 there is
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/283/image/coversmallA Newly Identified Manuscript on Astrolabes by Jacob Ibn Isaac al-Corsuno: Another Possible Witness of Scientific Curricula in Sephardic Yeshivot?2024-06-26text/htmlen-USA Newly Identified Manuscript on Astrolabes by Jacob Ibn Isaac al-Corsuno: Another Possible Witness of Scientific Curricula in Sephardic Yeshivot?2024-06-262024TWOProject MUSE®2454652026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002024-06-26A Twilight Table in Hebrew from Nineteenth-Century Baghdad
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/930450
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Tzvi Langermann brought to my attention a table that yields the duration of morning twilight preserved in a fragment included in a nineteenth-century Hebrew codex from Baghdad, and this is the earliest such table in Hebrew of which I am aware. Although there were many discussions of twilight in earlier Hebrew texts because of its importance for determining the times of various rituals, I have not found any tables that address "rabbinic" twilight before 1885—except for the new text from Baghdad discussed below. Medieval sets of astronomical tables in both Latin and Hebrew were dependent for the most part on the zijes by al-Khwārizmī (d. c. 840) and al-Battānī (d. 929), neither of which contained any tables for the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/283/image/coversmallA Twilight Table in Hebrew from Nineteenth-Century Baghdad2024-06-26text/htmlen-USA Twilight Table in Hebrew from Nineteenth-Century Baghdad2024-06-262024TWOProject MUSE®1093592026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002024-06-26