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Religion and Science in Abraham Ibn Ezra's Sefer Ha-Olam

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RELIGION AND SCIENCE IN ABRAHAM IBN EZRA'S SEFER HA-OLAM (INCLUDING AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE HEBREW TEXT) Uskontotieteen pro gradu tutkielma Humanistinen tiedekunta Nadja Johansson 18.3.2009 1 CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 3 1.1 Abraham Ibn Ezra and Sefer ha-Olam ........................................................................ 3 1.2 Previous research ......................................................................................................... 5 1.3 The purpose of this study ............................................................................................. 8 2 SOURCE, METHOD AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ....................................... 10 2.1 Primary source: Sefer ha-Olam (the Book of the World) ........................................... 10 2.1.1 Edition, manuscripts, versions and date .............................................................. 10 2.1.2 Textual context: the astrological encyclopedia .................................................... 12 2.1.3 Motivation: technical handbook .......................................................................... 14 2.2 Method ....................................................................................................................... 16 2.2.1 Translation and historical analysis ...................................................................... 16 2.2.2 Systematic analysis .............................................................................................. 17 2.3 Theoretical framework: religion and science in history ............................................. 19 2.3.1 The conflict thesis ................................................................................................ 19 2.3.2 Reactions to the conflict thesis ............................................................................ 20 2.3.3 The complexity thesis and renouncing ethnocentrism ........................................ 21 2.3.4 Four different types of interaction ...................................................................... 22 2.4 Definitions: “science” and “religion” as medieval categories .................................... 26 2.4.1 Science ................................................................................................................. 26 2.4.2 Religion ............................................................................................................... 28 3 ABRAHAM IBN EZRA: LIFE, WORKS, VISION AND SOURCES ............................. 30 3.1 Ibn Ezra's life and works ........................................................................................... 30 3.1.1 Fifty years in Spain ............................................................................................ 30 3.1.2 Reasons for departure ......................................................................................... 32 3.1.3 Ibn Ezra in Latin Europe ..................................................................................... 33 3.1.4 The role of science and religion in Ibn Ezra’s life .............................................. 36 3.2 Religion, astronomy and astrology in Ibn Ezra's time and thought ........................... 38 2 3.2.1 The intellectual climate of medieval Spain ........................................................ 38 3.2.2 Religion and astronomy ....................................................................................... 40 3.2.3 Astrology and Astronomy .................................................................................... 43 3.2.4 Astrology and religion ......................................................................................... 46 3.3 Ibn Ezra and the sources of Sefer ha-Olam ................................................................ 50 3.3.1 Abu Ma'shar ......................................................................................................... 50 3.3.2 Claudius Ptolemy ................................................................................................ 53 3.3.3 Sefer Yetsirah ...................................................................................................... 55 3.3.4 The three Enochs ................................................................................................. 56 3.4 Religion and science in Ibn Ezra's life, thought and sources ..................................... 57 4 RELIGIOUS THEMES IN SEFER HA-OLAM ............................................................... 60 4.1 Three themes with religious background ................................................................... 60 4.2 Ruled by Saturn but saved by God - the astrological status of the Jews .................... 61 4.2.1 Astrological history ............................................................................................. 61 4.2.2 The Jews and the exemption from astrological rule ............................................ 63 4.3 When science fails - the problem of the length of the solar year ............................... 65 4.3.1 The solar year and mundane astrology ................................................................ 65 4.3.2 The calendaric controversy ................................................................................. 66 4.3.3 When science fails, turn to tradition .................................................................... 68 4.4 Divine symmetry - the 120 conjunctions ................................................................... 69 4.4.1 A combinatorial puzzle ....................................................................................... 69 4.4.2 The conjunctions and the Name of God .............................................................. 70 4.4.3 The Name of God and the great conjunction ...................................................... 71 4.5 Science and religion in Sefer ha-Olam ....................................................................... 73 4.5.1 Religious meaning in a scientific text .................................................................. 73 4.5.2 Types of interaction in Sefer ha-Olam ................................................................. 73 5 CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................... 75 5.1 The results of this study .............................................................................................. 75 5.2 Suggestions for further research ................................................................................. 77 APPENDIX 1. ASTROLOGY…………………………………………………………….82 a. Basic astrological concepts .…………………………………………………...………. 82 b. Medieval mundane astrology………..………………………..…………………………..… 87 APPENDIX 2. SEFER HA-OLAM, AN ANNOTATED TRANSLATION……..………89 a. Some preliminary notes on Ibn Ezra’s scientific terminology ...……………….………89 b. Translation of Sefer ha-Olam from the Fleischer edition (1937) with explanatory notes ….………………………………………………………………………………….. 90 SOURCES BY ABRAHAM IBN EZRA………………………………..………………112 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………….112 3 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Abraham Ibn Ezra and Sefer ha-Olam Abraham Ibn Ezra (ca 1096 – ca 1164) was a medieval Jewish polymath: a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, Biblical commentator, poet and grammarian. He was born in Tudela in northern Muslim Spain and received his education in the great centers of learning in Cordóba, Christian Toledo and Saragossa. When he was in his forties, he traveled to Rome, which was to be the first stop on a twenty-five year journey through Christian lands, taking him to France and England. During his travels, he made a living out of writing scientific and religious books for the Jewish communities in Christian countries, who did not have access to the Arabic texts that Ibn Ezra had studied. Whether or not he was aware of it at the time, Ibn Ezra played a prominent role in the transmission of Arabic science to the Latin West by translating Arabic texts into Hebrew and by composing his own texts in Hebrew on various subjects that he had learned in Spain. Although he was highly educated in the sciences, he did not make new and original discoveries in these fields, but his greatest achievements are his success in transmitting several vital pieces of information to the West and transmitting the general scientific world-view of medieval Arabic civilization. He is, for example, credited with being the first to introduce the numerical zero into the West. Because of his achievements in transmitting astronomical data (tables and translations as well as original texts), a crater on the moon is named after him: crater A Ben Ezra (O'Connor and Robertson 1999). In Jewish rabbinic tradition, Abraham Ibn Ezra holds a prominent place mainly because of his very popular Biblical commentaries. These commentaries achieved immediate renown, and more than a dozen “supercommentaries”, which commented on the commentaries, emerged in the 14th century. Today, Abraham Ibn Ezra's commentaries are included in the standard study Bibles, the Miqraot Gedolot, of rabbinic Judaism. Because of his extensive wanderings and his poverty, Ibn Ezra has also become something of a folk-hero, the subject of many strange and fantastic tales. In these folk-tales he is presented as the poor wandering sage, who appears suddenly where he is needed and saves a Jewish community, only to disappear again. Usually he is mocked for his poverty and ragged clothes,
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