Gersonides’ Astrology and Abraham Ibn Ezra PDF

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Gersonides' Astrology and Abraham Ibn Ezra Shlomo Sela Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism, Volume 17, Number 2, 2017, pp. 250-323 (Article) Published by Indiana University Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/669423 Access provided by Bar...

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Gersonides' Astrology and Abraham Ibn Ezra Shlomo Sela Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism, Volume 17, Number 2, 2017, pp. 250-323 (Article) Published by Indiana University Press

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/669423

Access provided by Bar-Ilan University (20 Sep 2017 06:36 GMT)

Shlomo Sela Gersonides’ Astrology and Abraham Ibn Ezra This paper investigates Gersonides’ use of the astrology prevalent in his day, namely, horoscopic astrology. It shows that for Gersonides, Abraham Ibn Ezra was a central source and point of reference on which he relied wherever he drew on astrology. The paper is divided into three parts. The first examines the extent of Gersonides’ acquaintance with astrological literature, as reflected in his private library and writings. The second part looks at several instances in his biblical commentaries, plus one from a philosophical work, in which Gersonides draws on astrology. The third part considers the extent to which Gersonides followed or went beyond Abraham Ibn Ezra and compares their respective attitudes towards key astrological issues. An appendix contains a critical edition and English translation of a section of an unpublished commentary on a selection of astrological passages from Ibn Ezra’s works, which has been tentatively attributed to Gersonides, and discusses its authorship. Finally, a postscript offers a preliminary inspection of Ḥug šamayim (Circuit of heavens), the name Gersonides gave to an armillary sphere of his own design and also the name of a treatise, composed in 1325, in which he described this astronomical instrument and its uses. Ḥug šamayim is examined from the narrow angle of its bearing on Gersonides’ astrology and Gersonides’ reliance on Ibn Ezra’s work. Shlomo Sela is professor emeritus in the department of Jewish Thought at Bar-Ilan University. His research focuses on Jewish attitudes towards the sciences, with special interest in the history of astrology in the Middle Ages. He has recently published Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Introductions to Astrology, A Parallel Hebrew-English Critical Edition of the Book of the Beginning of Wisdom and the Book of the Judgments of the Zodiacal Signs (Leiden, 2017), part of his ongoing edition of Ibn Ezra’s complete works on astrology. Email: [email protected]

Shlomo Sela

Gersonides’ Astrology and Abraham Ibn Ezra Introduction The impact of the heavenly bodies upon the sublunar world—human and natural—plays a cardinal role in Gersonides’ thought. It is therefore not surprising that modern scholarship has been fairly busy with his views of astrology.1 Nonetheless, defining the limits of “Gersonides’ astrology” is

1

Charles Touati, La pensée philosophique et théologique de Gersonide (Paris: Minuit, 1973), pp. 304–307, 364–365; Daniel Lasker, “Gersonides on Dreams, Divination and Astrology,” Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division C (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 47–52; Gad Freudenthal, “Épistémologie, astronomie et astrologie chez Gersonide,” Revue des études juives 146 (1987): 357–365, esp. pp. 360–365; Y. Tzvi Langermann, “Gersonides on the Magnet and the Sun’s Heat,” in Studies on Gersonides, a Fourteenth-Century Jewish Philosopher-Scientist, ed. Gad Freudenthal (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 267–284; Charles H. Manekin, “Freedom Within Reason? Gersonides on Human Choice,” in Freedom and Moral Responsibility, ed. Charles H. Manekin (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 1997), pp. 165–204, esp. pp. 196–204; Gad Freudenthal, “Levi ben Gershom as a Scientist: Physics, Astrology and Eschatology [1990],” in his Science in the Medieval Hebrew and Arabic Traditions (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), Essay VI, pp. 65–72; Bernard R. Goldstein, “Levi ben Gerson’s Astrology in Historical Perspective,” in Gersonide en son temps, ed. Gilbert Dahan (Paris, 1991), pp. 287–300; Y. Tzvi Langermann, “Gersonides on Astrology,” in

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not a trivial task. Perhaps one reason is that the definition of astrology itself is blurred: originally a system for predicting future events by means of the scrutiny of celestial configurations, it is at times taken to refer to any allusion to the influence of the heavenly bodies on the human and natural world. This is part of a medieval cultural phenomenon: whereas some thinkers dismissed the “art” of making predictions about individuals as superstition, all medieval thinkers (including staunch opponents of astrology such as Maimonides) accepted the Aristotelian view that key sublunar phenomena, notably generation and corruption, are caused by the motions of the heavenly bodies.2 In this paper I will study Gersonides’ use of the astrology of his day, namely, the set of doctrines formulated in books by astrologers, which essentially teach the science of casting and analyzing horoscopes in order to make predictions. Gersonides himself makes this sense crystal clear: in the overwhelming majority of cases where he deals with an astrological topic, he alerts readers that the information he is applying derives, for example, from baʿalei ḥoḵmat mišpeṭei ha-koḵavim be-sifrehem (the books of the experts in the judgments of the stars), or uses similar expressions whose common denominator is the use of the Hebrew term mišpaṭim (judgments) in the plural or the singular.3 This recurrent and distinctive usage, as we shall see in the following historical sketch, places Gersonides in the tradition of Hebrew astrology as it emerged after the twelfth century. Horoscopic astrology was invented in Babylonia and imported to Hellenistic Egypt in the late second or early first century BCE.4 This discipline aimed at producing predictions about humans and nature, based on a variety of astronomical-mathematical techniques for casting horoscopes and on a complicated system of doctrines for analyzing the contents of the horoscope.5 In the next centuries, this art was systematized in Greek science, notably in Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos (second century CE); it was subsequently transferred to the Arabic civilization, where it was gradually elaborated and refined. At the end of this process 252

of transmission and elaboration, a large corpus of astrological literature had been created, which gave astrology a precise doctrinal content.6

The Wars of the Lord, trans. Seymour Feldman (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1999), vol. 3, pp. 506–519; Gad Freudenthal, “Cosmology: The Heavenly Bodies,” in The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century, ed. Steven Nadler and Tamar Rudavsky (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 348–350; Seymour Feldman, Gersonides: Judaism within the Limits of Reason (Oxford­and Portland: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), esp. pp. 108–111; Sara Klein-Braslavy, “Determinism, Contingency, Free Choice, and Foreknowledge in Gersonides,” in her Without any Doubt: Gersonides on Method and Knowledge (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011), pp. 221–296; and Ruth Glasner, Gersonides. A Portrait of a Fourteenth-Century Philosopher-Scientist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 81-98, esp. pp. 84-85. 2

See, regarding Gersonides’ astrology, Gad Freudenthal, “Épistémologie, astronomie et astrologie chez Gersonide,” pp. 360–365; on Maimonides’ thought, see Gad Freudenthal, “Maimonides’ Stance on Astrology in Context: Cosmology, Physics, Medicine, and Providence,” in Moses Maimonides, Physician, Scientist, and Philosopher, ed. Fred Rosner and Samuel Kottek (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1993), pp. 77–90. See also Lynn Thorndike, “The True Place of Astrology in the History of Science,” Isis 46 (1955): 273–278.

3

For a list of these references, see below, Appendix B, esp. §5, on p. 322.

4

Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 10, 98–120.

5

David Pingree, “Astrology,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas (New York: Scribner, 1973), 1: 123–125.

6

For a survey of astrological literature in the first centuries of Islamic civilization, see David Pingree, “Astrology,” in Religion, Learning and Science in the ʿAbbasid Period, ed. M.J.L. Young, John D. Latham, and Robert B. Serjean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 290–300.

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Although Jews were acquainted with horoscopic-predictive astrology in talmudic times and in the transitional period between Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and participated as individuals in its development in Arabic culture, the systematic engagement with this discipline by a few scholars began in the twelfth century, as part of the reception of Greco-Arabic science, which included the transition from Arabic to Hebrew as the language of science and philosophy. A key figure in the reception of astrology in Hebrew is Abraham Ibn Ezra (ca. 1089–ca. 1167), who composed a comprehensive Hebrew corpus of original astrological treatises, covering all branches of Greco-Arabic horoscopic astrology.7 This body of knowledge was already circulating in Provence in Hebrew in the last decades of the twelfth century;8 by the mid-thirteenth century, Jewish intellectuals in southern France were using them to compile astrological encyclopedias.9 The considerable number of extant manuscripts of these texts from the fourteenth century on testifies to their popularity.10 It is in this historical setting that we have to place the usage of the term mišpaṭim to denote astrology. “Judgments” or “laws” tout court was the original meaning of the biblical word mišpaṭim. From the twelfth century, mišpaṭim served in a variety of expressions (such as mišpeṭei ha-mazzalot [judgments of the zodiacal signs] or mišpeṭei ha-koḵavim [judgments of the stars]) to denote both what the stars are thought to “determine” and the astrologer’s prediction of “determinations” by the heavenly bodies. More broadly, the term also refers to the system of rules by which astrologers, through casting and analyzing horoscopes, can make predictions about diverse areas of human life. These Hebrew expressions are simply calques of the corresponding Arabic ʾaḥkām an-nuǧūm, literally “judgments/dictates of the stars,” which was in broad use in medieval Arabic astrological literature to denote astrology.11 The new astrological sense of mišpaṭim was a coinage by Abraham 254

Ibn Ezra, who used it in his astrological writings, biblical commentaries, and monographs.12 By contrast, Abraham Bar Ḥiyya (ca. 1065–ca.

7

Ibn Ezra apparently wrote at least nineteen separate astrological treatises in Hebrew. For an updated list, see Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Introductions to Astrology, A Parallel Hebrew-English Critical Edition of the Book of the Beginning of Wisdom and the Book of the Judgments of the Zodiacal Signs, ed., trans., and annot. Shlomo Sela (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 2–6. This edition will be used for all quotations from or references to Rešit ḥoḵmah and Mišhpeṭei ha-Mazzalot, in the format Rešit ḥoḵmah (ed. Sela), §2.10:7, pp. 116–117, and Mišhpeṭei ha-mazzalot (ed. Sela), §25:1, pp. 508–509.

8

Shlomo Sela, “Queries on Astrology Sent from Southern France to Maimonides, Critical Edition of the Hebrew Text, Translation and Commentary,” Aleph 4 (2004): 89–190.

9

See Shlomo Sela, “The Astrological-Astronomical Encyclopedia in MS Paris 1058,” Aleph 14.1 (2014):189–241.

10 See, for example, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS héb (henceforth MS Paris) 1055 (IMHM: F [henceforth F] 14658), fols. 1–52 (dated 1314); MS Paris 1044 (F 33995), fols. 132–249, 196–201; MS Paris 1045 (F 33996), fols. 89–177, 196–201; MS Paris 1058 (F 14642), fols. 1–39; MS Bodleian Mich. 39 (F 19308), fols. 1–83 (from a manuscript copied in 1330). For this sketch, see also Reimund Leicht, “Towards a History of Hebrew Astrological Literature,” in Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures, ed. Gad Freudenthal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 262–281; Shlomo Sela, “Astrology in Medieval Jewish Thought,” ibid., pp. 292–300. 11 This expression features in the titles of prominent Arabic introductions to astrology. See, for example, Abū Maʿšar’s Great Introduction to Astrology, ed. Richard Lemay (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1996), vol. II [Arabic text], title page: Kitāb al-mudḥal al-kabīr ilā ʿilm ʾaḥkām an-nuǧūm. 12 See Shlomo Sela, Abraham Ibn Ezra and the Rise of Medieval Hebrew Science (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2003), pp. 116–123. See below, nn. 17 and 18.

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1140), who wrote on astrology in Hebrew slightly before Ibn Ezra and exerted substantial influence on subsequent generations, denoted the same field by the terms gezerot ha-koḵavim (“decrees of the stars”), gezerot mahalaḵot ha-koḵavim (“decrees of the motions of the stars”), or simply gezerot (“decrees”), and never used mišpaṭim or related expressions.13 The new astrological meaning of mišpaṭim gained currency in the coming generations.14 Gersonides systematically employed various derivatives of mišpaṭim to designate astrology, a fact immediately suggesting that he was acquainted with Ibn Ezra’s astrology. Gersonides’ familiarity with Ibn Ezra’s astrology has indeed been demonstrated by Bernard R. Goldstein, on the basis of an analysis of Gersonides’ only known astrological prediction, the prognostication for the conjunction of 1345.15 The main purpose of the present paper is to show that for Gersonides, Ibn Ezra’s astrology was a central source and point of reference on which he relied wherever he drew on astrology. The paper is divided into three parts. The first examines the extent of Gersonides’ acquaintance with astrological literature, as reflected in his private library and writings. The second part studies a number of instances in which Gersonides draws on astrology; they are drawn mainly from his biblical commentaries, followed by one instance from his philosophical oeuvre. These discussions reveal which astrological ideas Gersonides chose to integrate into his oeuvre and raise the question whether he considered them to be true. The third part examines the extent to which Gersonides followed or went beyond Abraham Ibn Ezra and compares their respective attitudes towards central issues of astrology. Finally, this paper will examine an unpublished commentary on a selection of astrological passages from Ibn Ezra’s works, which has been tentatively attributed to Gersonides, and will discuss the question of its authorship. Appendix A provides a critical edition of a section of this commentary, accompanied by an English translation and brief notes. 256

Part I: Astrological Literature in Gersonides’ Private Library and in his Writings Three items in the catalogue of Gersonides’ private library, in the category of “scientific books,” are clearly astrological: .‫ משפטי המזלות לאבן עזרא עם ספרים אחרים‬.‫יא‬ .‫ ספר גורלות ומשפטי המזלות‬.‫יד‬ 16.‫ מבוא מבטלמיוס וקצת ספרים ממשפטי המזלות‬.‫יו‬

13 See Zechariah Schwarz, ed., “Abraham bar Ḥiyya, ʾIggeret R. Abraham b. Ḥiyya ha-Nasi še-katav le-R. Yehudah b. R. Barzillai,” in Festschrift Adolf Schwarz zum siebzigsten Geburtstag, ed. S. Kraus (Berlin and Vienna: R. R. Löwit, 1917), Heb. section, p. V, lines 15, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34; p. VIII, lines 2, 5, 19, 20, 23, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 37 et passim; Sefer Megillat ha-Megalle von Abraham bar Chija, published by Adolf Poznanski with introduction and notes by Julius Guttman (Berlin: H. Itzkowski, 1924), p. 121 line 29, p. 154 line 20. 14 One example will do. Maimonides, in the Guide of the Perplexed II:12, uses the Arabic expression ʾaḥkām an-nuǧūm (‫ )לאחכאם אלנגום‬to denote the concept of astrology (Dalālat al- ḥāiʾrīn, ed. Salomon Munk and I. Joel [Jerusalem: Sifriah Philosophit, 1929), p. 195 line 22]. This is the only explicit reference to astrology in the entire Guide. When, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, Samuel Ibn Tibbon translated the Guide into Hebrew, he rendered this Arabic expression as mišpeṭei ha-koḵavim, probably following Ibn Ezra. See Moreh ha-nevukim II:12; Heb. trans. Samuel Ibn Tibbon, ed. Y. Even-Shemuel (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1958), vol. III, p. 173. 15 See Bernard R. Goldstein and David Pingree, “Levi ben Gerson’s Prognostication for the Conjunction of 1345,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 80:6 (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1990), pp. 46–50; Goldstein, “Levi ben Gerson’s Astrology in Historical Perspective,” p. 295; Goldstein, “Astronomy and Astrology in the Works of Abraham Ibn Ezra,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 6 (1996): 17–18. See also Leicht, “Towards a History of Hebrew Astrological Literature,” p. 271. 16 Gérard E. Weil, La bibliothèque de Gersonide (Louvain and Paris: E. Peeters, 1991), p. 46.

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11. Judgments of the zodiacal signs (Mišpeṭei ha-mazzalot) by Ibn Ezra, with other books. 14. Book of Lots and Judgments of the Zodiacal Signs (mišpeṭei ha-mazzalot). 16. Introduction by Ptolemy and a number of books on the judgments of the zodiacal signs (mišpeṭei ha-mazzalot).

17 See Mišhpeṭei ha-mazzalot (ed. Sela), §2:1, pp. 488–489; §12:5, pp. 498–499; §13:4, pp. 498–499; §38:3, pp. 520–521; §70:2, 550–551. See also, Abraham Ibn Ezra on Nativities and Continuous Horoscopy, A Parallel Hebrew English Critical Edition of the Book of Nativities and the Book of Revolution, ed., trans. and annot. Shlomo Sela (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 84–85. This edition will be used for all quotations from or references to Sefer ha-Moladot in the format: Moladot (ed. Sela), I 1, 1, pp. 84–85. See also The Sabbath Epistle of Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra, ‘Iggeret haShabbat, trans.

All three titles include the term mišpeṭei ha-mazzalot (judgments of the zodiacal signs), introduced by Ibn Ezra to denote astrology or astrologers.17 It even appears in the title of one of his works: Sefer Mišpeṭei ha-mazzalot (Book of the Judgments of the Zodiacal Signs).18 As far as we know, Ibn Ezra is the only author to have written a book with this title. Gersonides was obviously aware that mišpeṭei ha-mazzalot was by Abraham Ibn Ezra and when he himself used the term19 he was certainly aware that it is connected to Ibn Ezra. Indeed, as will be seen below, in his commentary on 1 Kings 18:27 Gersonides employs an astrological expression coined and used by Ibn Ezra exclusively in Sefer Mišpetei ha-mazzalot (see below, p. 285). As may be learnt from the manuscript tradition, Ibn Ezra’s astrological treatises were not transmitted as isolated items but usually circulated as components of astrological collections, presumably reflecting the preferences of the copyist or of the patron who commissioned the manuscript. Thus, not only item 11, but also parts of codices 12 and 13, whose descriptions include the term mišpeṭei ha-mazzalot, seem to have incorporated astrological works by Abraham Ibn Ezra.20 Gersonides thus owned three codices that included astrological texts by Ibn Ezra, although only in one case— Sefer Mišpetei ha-mazzalot—did he specify the title of the book. Items §27, §28, and §29 in the category of “biblical books” in Gersonides’ private library are codices with various sections of Ibn Ezra’s commentary on the Pentateuch.21 Gersonides, in his own commentaries on the Pentateuch, frequently mentions Ibn Ezra by 258

and annot. Mordechai S. Goodman (Jerusalem: Ktav, 2009), p. 12 line 4 (Hebrew text); Sefer Haʿibbur, A Treatise on the Calendar by Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra, trans. and annot. Mordechai S. Goodman (Jerusalem: Ktav, 2011), p. 45 line 4 (Hebrew text); Abraham Ibn Ezra on Elections, Interrogations and Medical Astrology, ed., trans., and annot. Shlomo Sela (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 348–349. This edition will be used for all quotations from or references to the two version o...