The Reception of Aristotle'sMeteorologyin Hebrew Scientific Writings of the Thirteenth Century

Abstract

The reception history of Aristotle's Meteorology in Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew translation of the Arabic version of the Aristotelian text and in the Hebrew encyclopedias of science and philosophy written during the thirteenth century is studied. Gershom ben Solomon's Shaʾar ha-Shamayim used Ibn Tibbon's translation as its major source, whereas Judah ben Solomon ha-Cohen's Midrash ha-Ḥoḵmah and Shemtov Ibn Falaquera's Deʾot ha-Filosofim relied on Ibn Rushd's two commentaries on Aristotle's Meteorology . Because the text that underlies Ibn Tibbon's translation and Ibn Rushd's commentaries, namely the Arabic paraphrase of Ibn al-Biṭrīq, presents Aristotle's views in a very unreliable fashion, Ibn Tibbon and Ibn Rushd both compared this version to Alexander's Commentary (in Arabic translation) on the Greek text and commented on the differences. The extent to which the Hebrew encyclopedists incorporated these observations in their own surveys is discussed.