From Maimonides to Samuel Ibn Tibbon: Interpreting Judaism As a Philosophical Religion1

FROM MAIMONIDES TO SAMUEL IBN TIBBON: INTERPRETING JUDAISM AS A PHILOSOPHICAL RELIGION1 Carlos Fraenkel In several respects, The Guide of the Perplexed stood at the center of Samuel ibn Tibbon’s philosophical work. Although he is best known as the Guide’s translator, the translation was only one aspect of his comprehensive effort to disseminate Maimonides’ thought. Ibn Tibbon’s role in this process is best described as that of a mediator between cultures who paved the way for the reception of Maimonides’ writings in the Jewish communities of Christian Europe, that is, in a cultural setting very different from the Judeo-Arabic context in which they had been composed.2 We can perhaps better appreciate the scope of Ibn Tib- bon’s contribution if we imagine a contemporary Israeli thinker who sets out to introduce the work of Emanuel Levinas to yeshiva students in Jerusalem’s ultra-orthodox neighborhood, Meah Shearim. Were he merely to translate Levinas into Hebrew or Yiddish, he would most certainly fail to achieve his objective. In addition to the translation, he would have to clarify Levinas’ philosophical terminology, explain what phenomenology means in the work of Husserl and Heidegger which 1 For a more comprehensive treatment of the issues discussed in this article, see my Hebrew book, From Maimonides to Samuel Ibn Tibbon: The Transformation of the Dalālat al-āirīn into the Moreh ha-Nevukhim, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2007. On Ibn Tibbon, see also also J. Robinson’s recent comprehensive study, Philosophy and Exegesis in Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes, doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 2002. A. Ravitzky laid the groundwork for research on Ibn Tibbon in his doctoral dissertation, The Teachings of R. Zerahyah b. Isaac b. Shealtiel Hen and Maimonidean-Tibbonian Philosophy in the Thirteenth Century, Jerusalem, 1978 [Hebrew], and in a number of more recent articles, of which the most important for my pres- ent purpose is “R. Samuel Ibn Tibbon and the Esoteric Character of the Guide of the Perplexed,” Daat 10 (1983), pp. 19–46 [Hebrew]. Quotations from the Guide of the Perplexed will normally follow S. Pines’ Eng. trans. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1963) which I will sometimes modify on the basis of the Arabic (Dalālat al-āirīn, ed. S. Munk and Y. Yoel, Jerusalem, 1931) or on the basis of Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew trans. (Moreh ha-Nevukhim, ed. Y. Even Shmuel, Jerusalem, 1987). 2 Cf. also Y. Tzvi Langermann, “A New Source for Samuel ibn Tibbon’s Translation of the Guide of the Perplexed and his Glosses on it,” Peamim 72 (1997), p. 51 [Hebrew]. 178 carlos fraenkel served as the point of departure for Levinas’ thought, and interpret his ideas in light of the intellectual debates in France in which he took part. In other words, the mediator must create the conditions allowing for Levinas’ work to be understood in a cultural context that has few things in common with the one in which it took shape. In a similar way one can describe Ibn Tibbon’s task at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The challenge he faced was to render intelligible a book, deeply rooted in the tradition of Greco-Arabic philosophy, to the sages of southern France, who represented an audience by and large unfamiliar with the notions and sources of this tradition.3 Ibn Tibbon alludes to this situation in the preface to his translation of the Guide, describing it as a work that “encompasses many sublime sciences, hidden from the eyes of most, if not all, of our people in this part of the world, for they do not devote themselves [to their study], and [these sciences] are not found amongst them” (118). Similar comments appear in the preface to Perush ha-Millim ha-Zarot [Explanation of Unusual Terms], where Ibn Tibbon explains that he composed the philosophical-scientiﬁc glossary for the Guide because of “the shortcomings of our language and the absence of works on the demonstrative sciences among our people,” a situation in which he fears “most readers [. .] will not understand” his translation.4 It is not surprising, therefore, that Ibn Tibbon, in addition to translating the Guide, also explained its technical terminology, interpreted it, and became its ﬁrst teacher. In doing so, he laid the basis for the reception of the Guide as the foundational work of Jewish philosophy from the beginning of the thirteenth century to Spinoza, who in important ways was indebted to the medieval Maimonidean tradition, but also criticized some of its fundamental presuppositions.5 3 See the account of Maimonides’ sources in S. Pines’ introduction to his English translation of the Guide (above, no. 1), pp. lvii–cxxxiv. 4 Ed. by Y. Even Shmuel in his edition of the Guide mentioned above (no. 1), p. 11 [henceforth: PMZ ]. Compare already the comments of Ibn Tibbon’s father, Judah, in his “Preface” to the Heb. trans. of Bahya ibn Paquda’s Duties of the Heart, ed. A. Zifroni, Jerusalem, 1927–28, p. 2. Ibn Tibbon’s situation was similar to that of other translators who found themselves in between two cultures, such as Cicero, Isāq b. unayn, or Gerard of Cremona. See, for example, the remarks of Cicero, like Ibn Tibbon a philosopher, translator, and cultural mediator, in De Natura Deorum I, 4 and De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum I, 2–4. 5 Spinoza studied the Guide in the Venice edition (1551) of Ibn Tibbon’s translation that included the traditional medieval commentaries. See the description of that edition in J.I. Dienstag, “Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed: A Bibliography of Editions and Translations,” in R. Dan ed., Occident and Orient, Budapest and Leiden, 1988,.

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