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For the Dossier of Abraham Ibn Daud. Some Observations on an Anonymous Commentary on Ha-Emunah Ha-Ramah*

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For the Dossier of Abraham Ibn Daud. Some Observations on an Anonymous Commentary on Ha-Emunah Ha-Ramah* FOR THE DOSSIER OF ABRAHAM IBN DAUD. SOME OBSERVATIONS ON AN ANONYMOUS COMMENTARY ON HA-EMUNAH HA-RAMAH* Resianne Fontaine University of Amsterdam Until a few decades ago it was commonly assumed that the first sys- tematic Aristotelian treatise in Jewish thought, ha-Emunah ha-Ramah (hereafter: ER), composed ca. 1160 by the Andalusian philosopher Abraham Ibn Daud, was quickly forgotten after Maimonides wrote his masterpiece Moreh Nevukhim, a work that has much in common with Ibn Daud’s book. While it remains undisputed that Maimonides treated the issues discussed by Ibn Daud in a more thorough and profound manner, modern research continues to provide indications that Ibn Daud had more impact on later medieval Jewish thought than was previously assumed. To begin with, Mauro Zonta has suggested that the production of two Hebrew translations of Ibn Daud’s Arabic original text in the last decades of the fourteenth century was occasioned by a renewed interest in his thought. In the second half of that century, Zonta argues, Jewish thinkers were searching for alternatives to Ibn Rushd’s Aristotelianism, which is why they turned to the Avicennian version of Aristotelianism as presented by Ibn Daud.1 Moreover, Dror Ehrlich has pointed to parallels between Ibn Daud’s work and Hasdai Crescas’ student, Joseph Albo, while Yossi Essudri has drawn attention to quotations from and parallels to ER in Shaar ha-Kavod by Efraim al-Naqawah (ca. 1355–1442) and Meqor Hayyim by Samuel Zarza (sec- ond half of the fourteenth century).2 In a previous volume of the * This zuta is dedicated to the memory of Yossi Essudri. 1 M. Zonta, ‘The Role of Avicenna and of Islamic “Avicennism” in the 14th-Century Jewish Debate around Philosophy and Religion,’ Oriente Moderno 19 (2000) 647–660; idem, ‘Avicenna in Medieval Jewish Philosophy’, in J. Janssens and D. de Smet, eds, Avicenna and his Heritage (Leuven 2002) 267–280. 2 D. Ehrlich, ‘Le-hashpa{ato shel ha-Emunah ha-Ramah le-R. Abraham Ibn Daud {al Sefer ha-Iqqarim le-R. Yosef Albo,x Alei Sefer 21 (2010) 35–46; Y. Essudri, ‘R. Abraham Ibn Daud, R. Efraim al-Naqawah we-Sefer al-Aqīdah al-rafīahx (forthcoming). Dr Essudri was so kind as to send me a draft of his unpublished article. As pointed out already by H. Wolfson, Crescas himself in his Or ha-Shem lists Ibn Daud as one of the phi- losophers, who, after Aristotle, ‘discussed in detail the question of God’s existence from © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 ZUTOT 7.1 Also available online – brill.nl/zuto 36 resianne fontaine present yearbook, I mentioned the use of ER in a manuscript of the 13th-century encyclopedia Midrash ha-Hokhmah.3 Furthermore, the marginal annotations in several of the seventeen extant manuscripts of ER indicate that the text was in fact studied, perhaps even by a group of students.4 We can therefore conclude that Ibn Daud’s thought was all but ignored by Jews in the late Middle Ages. Further evidence for the use of ER is provided by what constitutes the subject of the present contribution: an anonymous commentary on ER which is preserved in two of the manuscripts. The earliest surviving manuscript containing this commentary is MS Montefiori 274, which can be dated to the end of the fifteenth century (see below). This MS was copied for Rabbi Samuel Ghirondi of Padua in 1826.5 The Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem holds another copy of the commentary, which belonged to the library of Julius Guttmann.6 It was copied in 1872/1873, presumably for (or by?) Jacob Guttmann, who published a series of studies on Ibn Daud’s thought in the 1870s.7 Guttmann mentions the commentary, but evaluates it rather negatively, saying that it is silent about passages where elucidation would really be helpful.8 Perhaps this comment has discour- aged scholars from studying it. My brief and preliminary observations on the commentary here will be based on the text as found in MS Montefiore 274. This MS contains three texts: the text of ER itself, the commentary (entitled: Beur the point of view of speculative reason,’ see H.A. Wolfson, Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle (Cambridge, MA 1929) 130–131. 3 R. Fontaine, ‘R. Abraham Ibn Daud and the Midrash ha-Hokhmah: a Mini-Discovery’, Zutot 2002, 156–163. The manuscript dates from the end of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century, ibid. p. 161, n. 6. 4 A renewed investigation of all the manuscript material was carried out by Amira Eran, Yossi Essudri and myself. For a first overview of the findings, see A. Eran and R. Fontaine, ‘A new perspective on Abraham Ibn Daud’s Emunah Ramah (in Hebrew), forthcoming in Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference of the Society for Judaeo- Arabic Studies, Jerusalem/Tel Aviv 9–13 Aug. 2009. Amira Eran is currently preparing a new edition of ER. 5 MS Oxford, Bodleian 57 (IMHM 22041). This MS forms the basis for the edition and translation of ER by G. Weiss and N.M. Samuelson, The Exalted Faith. Abraham Ibn Daud (Rutherford/London 1986) editor’s foreword, 17–18. 6 MS JNUL 3433 (IMHM B 520). 7 See Monatsschrift für die Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums 1877 and 1878. 8 Monatsschrift 26 (1877) 468–469, n. 1, quoted by M. Steinschneider in Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher (Graz 1956, repr. of Berlin 1893) 371..
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