Chapter Ten. Body And Soul In Spanish Hebrew Poetry Against The Background Of Muslim-Arabic Culture

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the discussion in a wider framework of interrelationship of body and soul in medieval Hebrew poetry. The question of the relationship between Body and Soul is raised clearly in the verse of Iraqi and Spanish poets of the 11th and 11th centuries, as an obvious result of the second encounter of Jewish scholarship with Greek wisdom. Consequently, the dual structure of man became one of the most important principles through- out Jewish thought and literature. Naturally, the Neo-Platonic concept regarding the soul's supremacy over the body became firmly planted in religious Spanish poetry, especially the type of liturgy called resut which Ibn Gabirol invented, and which most of the Spanish Jewish liturgists followed.Keywords: Greek wisdom; Ibn Gabirol; Spanish Hebrew poetry