Abraham ibn Daud and the Midrash ha-Hokhmah a Mini-Discovery

Abstract

The first of the three thirteenth-century Hebrew encyclopaedias of science and philosophy, Midrash ha-Hokhmah (‘The Exposition of Science’; hereafter: MH),1 did not have the impact on Jewish readers that its author, Judah ben Solomon ha-Cohen of Toledo, may have intended. When composing his fairly extensive survey of contemporary science and philosophy in Arabic (presumably in the 1230s) Judah’s proclaimed intention was to disseminate scientific knowledge among his fellow-Jews in order to rebut the claim made by non-Jewish opponents that ‘there is no wisdom in Israel’. To this end his MH provided a survey of Aristotelian logic, natural philosophy and metaphysics, as well as of Euclid’s Elements and Ptolemy’s astronomy and astrology. Around 1247 he began to translate this encyclopaedia into Hebrew for the benefit of Italian Jews who had requested such an undertaking. One may thus be led to expect that Jewish intellectuals of the mid-thirteenth century, thirsty as they were for secular knowledge, would welcome the MH with enthusiasm and study it eagerly. After all, this audience had no access to the Arabic sources Judah surveyed in his book and only a few of them were available in Hebrew translation by the time he composed his Hebrew version. However, the writings of contemporary or later authors have revealed no traces of the MH having had any philosophical or scientific influence.