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PHILOSOPHY AND MEDICINE IN JEWISH PROVENCE, ANNO 1199: SAMUEL IBN TIBBON AND DOEG THE EDOMITE TRANSLATING GALEN'S TEGNI

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2016

Gad Freudenthal  and
Resianne Fontaine
Gad Freudenthal*
Affiliation:
Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Laboratoire SPHERE, UMR 7219, CNRS, 5 rue Thomas Mann, Bâtiment Condorcet, Case 7093, F-75205 Paris Cedex 13, France
Resianne Fontaine*
Affiliation:
Dept. of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Amsterdam, P.C. Hoofthuis 328, Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
*
Email: gad.freudenthal@gmail.com
Email: t.a.m.smidtvangelder-fontaine@uva.nl
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Abstract

Galen's Technê iatrikê (Tegni, for short) was translated into Hebrew three times. The first two translations were executed in the Midi, around the year 1199: once from Constantine the African's Latin version, by an anonymous physician who used the pseudonym “Doeg the Edomite”; and a second time from Arabic, by Samuel Ibn Tibbon in Béziers, using as his Vorlage Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq's Arabic version (al-Ṣināʿa al-saġīra), accompanied by ʿAlī Ibn Riḍwān's commentary. (Samuel Ibn Tibbon's authorship of this translation has been called into doubt, but is reestablished in a paper by Gad Freudenthal in this issue of ASP.) A third translation, again from Latin and including Ibn Riḍwān's commentary, was done by Hillel ben Samuel in Rome, in the late thirteenth century, but is not considered in this paper.

We present the Tegni and discuss its history. We then ask why this work was translated into Hebrew twice, at precisely the same time and area. We show that both translators responded to the need of Jewish physicians who read only Hebrew. Doeg's translation was part of his vast project of making the greater part of the Salernitan corpus available in Hebrew. Samuel Ibn Tibbon translated the Tegni with Ibn Riḍwān's commentary both because he was responding to a social need and because he was in the process of switching his profession from physician to translator of philosophic works. Galen's medico-philosophic text was a perfect fit for his intellectual evolution from a philosophically minded physician to a philosopher-scientist.

Résumé

Technê iatrikê de Galien a été traduit en hébreu trois fois. Deux fois dans le midi, autour de l'an 1199: d'abord, à partir de la version latine de Constantine l'Africain, par un médecin anonyme qui utilisait le pseudonyme “Doeg l’Édomite”; et une seconde fois de l'arabe, par Samuel Ibn Tibbon à Béziers, la Vorlage étant maintenant la version arabe de Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq (al-Ṣināʿa al-ṣaġīra), accompagnée par le commentaire de ʿAlī Ibn Riḍwān. (La paternité de Samuel Ibn Tibbon de cette traduction a été contestée, mais elle est établie dans l'article de Gad Freudenthal dans ce numéro d’ASP.) Une troisième traduction, encore une fois du latin et comprenant le commentaire d'Ibn Riḍwān, a été réalisée par Hillel ben Samuel à Rome à la fin du XIIIe siècle, mais elle n'entre pas dans notre sujet.

Nous présentons le Tegni et décrivons son histoire. Puis nous posons la question pourquoi cet ouvrage a été traduit en hébreu deux fois exactement au même moment et dans la même région. Nous montrons que les deux traducteurs ont répondu à un besoin des médecins juifs lisant seulement l'hébreu. Doeg réalise sa traduction dans le cadre de son vaste projet de mise à disposition en traduction hébraïque de la plus grande partie du corpus de l’école de Salerne. Samuel Ibn Tibbon, pour sa part, a traduit le Tegni avec le commentaire d'Ibn Riḍwān parce que, après avoir été médecin, il évoluait graduellement vers la vocation d'un traducteur de l'arabe en hébreu d’œuvres philosophiques et ce texte médico-philosophique était en adéquation avec cette évolution d'un médecin avec des intérêts philosophiques vers un scientifique-philosophe.

Type
Research Article
Information
Arabic Sciences and Philosophy , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 Text editions: C. Galeni Opera omnia, ed. C. G. Kühn, 22 vols. (Leipzig, 1821–1833), vol. 1, pp. 305–412; Galien, Exhortation à l’étude de la médecine; Art médical, ed. and trans. by Véronique Boudon (Paris, 2002), pp. 273–448. In what follows these two editions will be designated K and B, respectively.

2 It is sometimes referred to as Microtegni, too, but this title is more regularly applied to a completely different text, the pseudo-Galenic De spermate. For an explanation of the title, see e.g. Per-Gunnar Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy. A Study of the Commentaries on Galen's Tegni (ca. 1300–1450) (Naples, 1984), p. [13].

3 MS Paris, BNF, héb. 1111/2, fols. 32r–45v.

4 Steinschneider pointed out that a text in what was once MS Fischl 13 (now Moscow, Russian State Library, MS Guenzburg 1122; IMHM: F 48323) contains (fols. 3b–29a) a text that may be a supper-commentary on the Tegni. See Moritz Steinschneider, Die Hebraeischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher (Berlin, 1893; repr. Graz, 1956), § 471, p. 734 (see also p. 178, n. 532b). See also id., Hebräische Bibliographie, vol. 21 (1882), p. 98Google Scholar.

5 Technê iatrikê B I a 5, p. 276; K 307; and B XXXVII.5, pp. 387–8; K p. 407. See also Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy, p. 21; Boudon, “Notice,” in Galien, Art médical, pp. 149–269, on p. 151.

6 B p. 274, 2–6; K p. 305.

7 Owsei Temkin, Galenism. Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy (Ithaca, 1973), p. 102.

8 Temkin, Galenism, p. 103. At the end of the treatise Galen recommends that his logical work On Demonstration be studied before his medical works; see Technê iatrikê B XXXVII.14, p. 392; K p. 411.

9 Danielle Jacquart, “L'enseignement de la médecine: Quelques termes fondamentaux [1990],” in her La science médicale occidentale entre deux renaissances, Variorum Reprints (Aldershot, 1997), Essay XII, pp. 111–16.

10 For an overview see Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy, pp. 98–126.

11 Heinrich von Staden, Herophilus. The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 103–8.

12 B Ib, 1, p. 276; K p. 307. Translation quoted from: Von Staden, Herophilus, p. 103. A less literal translation is: “the knowledge of what is healthy, morbid, and neutral” (Temkin, Galenism, p. 102; Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy, p. 68).

13 B Ib, 2, p. 276; K p. 307.

14 Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy, pp. 69–70; 127–94.

15 B III–XXII, pp. 281–344; K pp. 313–65.

16 Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy, pp. 195–246.

17 B XXIII–XXXVII.5, pp. 344–88; K pp. 365–407. See Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy, pp. 247–80.

18 B XXXVII.6–15, pp. 388–92; K pp. 407–12.

19 Temkin, Galenism, p. 69; Boudon, “Notice,” p. 152.

20 On Agnellus, see Nicoletta Palmieri, Agnellus de Ravenne, Lectures galéniques: le “De pulsibus ad tirones” (Saint-Etienne, 2005), pp. XI–XXXII. On Agnellus' commentary on the Tegni, see ead., “Tempéraments du corps et caractères de l’âme dans le commentaire à l’Ars medica d'Agnellus de Ravenne,” in Nicoletta Palmieri (ed.), L’Ars Medica (Tegni) de Galien: lectures antiques et médiévales (Saint-Etienne, 2008), pp. 31–66.

21 See Centre for Late Antique Religion & Culture (CLARC), Cardiff University, Latin & Syriac Commentary Project, “List of Sergius' Works,” online at: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/share/research/centres/clarc/projects/latinandsyriac/list-of-serguis-works.html (last viewed October 19, 2014). There were also other Syriac translations of the Tegni. For details, see: Rainer Degen, “Galen im Syrischen: Eine Übersicht über die syrische Überlieferung der Werke Galens,” in Vivian Nutton (ed.), Galen: Problems and Prospects (London, 1981), pp. 131–66.

22 Hugonnard-Roche, Henri, “Aux origines de l'exégèse orientale de la logique d'Aristote: Sergius de Reshʿaina († 536), médecin et philosophe,” Journal asiatique, 277 (1989): 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on p. 9; see also p. 15.

23 Boudon, “Notice,” p. 152. On Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq as the translator into Arabic, see Gerhard Fichtner, “Corpus Galenicum. Bibliographie der galenischen und pseudogalenischen Werke (Ausgabe 2012/12),” p. 12 and the literature indicated there; downloaded from http://galen.bbaw.de/online-publikationen/Galen-Bibliographie_2012_08_28.pdf on 2 July 2014. This Arabic version has been found to be faithful to the original; see Wilkie, James S. and Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R., “The Arabic version of Galen's Ars parva,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, 101 (1981): 145–8CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

24 G[otthelf] Bergstrasser (ed. and trans.), Ḥunain ibn Isḥāq, über die syrischen und arabischen Galen-Übersetzungen, Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. 17, no. 2 (Leipzig 1925), Arabic p. 5, German translation p. 4. Summarized in Boudon, “Notice,” p. 151, n. 6.

25 Temkin, Galenism, pp. 105–7. On the complicated history of this text see: Jacquart, Danielle, “À l'aube de la renaissance médicale des XIe–XIIe siècles: l’‘Isagoge Johannitii’ et son traducteur,” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 144 (1986): 209–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ead., “Les antécédents gréco-latins de l’Isagoge Iohannittii,” in Manuel Enrique Vázquez Buján (ed.), Tradición e innovación de la medicina latina de la antigüedad y de la Alta Edad Media. (Cursos y Congresos de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, no. 83.) (Santiago de Compostela, 1994), pp. 77–86 (both reprinted in her La Science médicale occidentale entre deux renaissances, as Essays I and II); Francis Newton, “Constantine the African and Monte Cassino: new elements and the text of the Isagoge,” in Charles Burnett and Danielle Jacquart (eds.), Constantine the African and ‘Alī ibn al-Abbās al Mağūsī: The ‘Pantegni’ and Related Texts (Leiden, 1994), pp. 16–47.

26 See Monica Green, “Reconstructing Constantine the African's life and œuvre,” paper presented at the conference ‘Texts and contexts: A manuscript conference,’ Ohio State University, sponsored by The Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies, October 7–8, 2011, # 19. Similarly but with more details on the extant MSS: ead., “The circulation of the medical works of Constantine the African in the long twelfth century concordance,” forthcoming, # 19. We are very grateful to Professor Green for having put her unpublished articles at our disposal.

27 Cornelius O'Boyle, The Art of Medicine: Medical Teaching at the University of Paris, 1250–1400 (Leiden, 1998), pp. 82–127 on the gradual formation of the Ars medicinae and its introduction to medical teaching; pp. 189–231 on teaching it (pp. 206–8 on the Tegni). See also Faith Wallis, “Twelfth-century commentaries on the Tegni: Bartholomaeus of Salerno and others,” in Palmieri (ed.), L’Ars Medica (Tegni) de Galien, pp. 127–68, on pp. 127–30 (rich bibliography on p. 128, n. 1). Although the Tegni was translated at the same time as the other components of the Ars medicinae, it is missing in some of the earliest copies of the collection, perhaps on account of its length.

28 Temkin, Galenism, p. 101.

29 On the gradual circulation of the ‘Salerno corpus’ see Monica H. Green, “Rethinking the manuscript basis of Salvatore De Renzi's Collectio Salernitana: the corpus of medical writings in the ‘long’ twelfth century,” in Danielle Jacquart and Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (eds.), La ‘Collectio Salernitana’ di Salvatore De Renzi (Florence, 2008), pp. 15–60; see Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy, p. 33, on the inclusion of the Tegni in the curriculum of studies at the University of Paris, c. 1190.

30 See the articles collected in Charles Burnett, Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages. The Translators and their Intellectual and Social Context, Variorum (Ashgate, 2009); Dag N. Hasse, “The social conditions of the Arabic (Hebrew-) Latin translation movement in Medieval Spain and in the Renaissance,” in Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener (eds.), Wissen über Grenzen, arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter (Berlin, 2006), pp. 68–86.

31 These are the so-called ‘Ars commentata’ (O'Boyle). The four works are: (1) Hippocrates' Aphorisms with Galen's commentary (trans. by Constantine the African); (2) Prognostics with Galen's commentary (trans. Gerard of Cremona); (3) Hippocrates' Regimen in Acute Diseases with Galen's commentary (trans. Gerard); and (4) the Tegni with Ibn Riḍwān's commentary (trans. Gerard). See Burnett, Charles, “The coherence of the Arabic-Latin translation program in Toledo in the twelfth century,” Science in Context, 14 (2001): 249–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar [reprinted in his: Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages, Article VII], p. 266 on Gerard's medical translations. The translation of the Tegni with Ibn Riḍwān's commentary is no. 64 on the list of Gerard's translations (ibid., p. 280).

32 Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy, p. 169, and O'Boyle, The Art of Medicine, pp. 93–4, remark that the Translatio arabica is not a literal translation of Galen's original text but a paraphrase with some clarifying interpolations. Since Gerard was in the habit of translating literally, it is assumed that Gerard's Vorlage was already paraphrastic; since Ḥunayn's translation was literal, the paraphrasing must have been contributed by another scholar along the line of transmission.

33 Luis Garcia-Ballester, “The New Galen: a challenge to Latin Galenism in thirteenth-century Montpellier,” in Klaus-Dietrich Fischer, Diethard Nickel, and Paul Potter (eds.), Text and Tradition: Studies in Ancient Medicine and Its Transmission. Presented to Jutta Kollesch (Leiden, 1998), pp. 55–83 [reprinted in his: Galen and Galenism (Aldershot, 2002), Essay V]; O'Boyle, The Art of Medicine, p. 268.

34 This work, too, was translated into Arabic by Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq; see: Peter Bachmann (ed. and trans.), Galens Abhandlung darüber, dass der vorzügliche Arzt Philosoph sein muss (= Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen. I. Philologisch-historische Klasse, 1965,1) (Göttingen, 1966). The “excellent doctor” is called “al-ṭabīb al-fāḍil” (p. 14).

35 Jonathan Barnes, “Galen on logic and therapy,” in Friedolf Kudlien and Richard J. Durling (eds.), Galen's Method of Healing (Leiden, 1991), pp. 50–102, on p. 50.

36 See e.g. Pier Luigi Donini, “Galeno e la filosofia,” in Wofgang Haase (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, Part II: Principat, vol. 36, part 5: Philosophie (Berlin, 1992), pp. 3484–504; R. James Hankinson, “Galen's philosophical eclecticism,” in ibid., pp. 3505–22.

37 We may note parenthetically that the question whether or not Galen should be considered part of the philosophical tradition remains controversial. See e.g. Michael Frede, “On Galen's epistemology,” in his Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Minneapolis, 1978), pp. 279–98, 370–1.

38 Fazzo, Silvia, “Alexandre d'Aphrodise contre Galien: La naissance d'une légende,” Philosophie antique, 2 (2002): 109–44Google Scholar.

39 For what follows see Friedrich W. Zimmermann, “Al-Farabi und die philosophische Kritik an Galen von Alexander zu Averroes,” Akten des VII. Kongresses für Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft (=Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, Dritte Folge, Nr. 98) (Göttingen, 1976), pp. 401–14. Al-Fārābī famously “regularly puts Galen in his place by pointedly and scornfully referring to him as ‘the doctor Galen’ and putting medicine, as a practical science concerned with humble possibilities, on a par with agriculture.” See: Fritz W. Zimmermann, “Introduction,” in his Al-Farabi's Commentary and Short Treatise on Aristotle's ‘De interpretatione’ (Oxford, 1981), p. lxxxi with the references. See also: Gotthard Strohmaier, “Al-Fārābī über die verschollene Aristotelesschrift ‘Über Gesundheit und Krankheit’ und über die Stellung der Medizin im System der Wissenschaften [1983],” in his Von Demokrit bis Dante. Die Bewahrung antiken Erbes in der arabischen Kultur (Hildesheim, 1996), pp. 34–7.

40 An. post. 2.1, 89b. Cf. Lutz Richter-Bernburg, “Medicina Ancilla Philosophiae: Ibn Ṭufayl's Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān,” in Lawrence I. Conrad (ed.), The World of Ibn Ṭufayl (Leiden, 1996), pp. 90–113, on pp. 92–7.

41 Zimmermann, “Al-Farabi und die philosophische Kritik an Galen,” p. 407. Zimmermann remarks that this argument needs to be read in the context of the Greek-into-Arabic translation movement, one of whose major vectors was medicine.

42 Stroumsa, Sarah, “Al-Farabi and Maimonides on medicine as science,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 3 (1993): 235–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Strohmaier, “Al-Fārābī über die verschollene Aristoteles-schrift,” p. 37; Dimitri Gutas, “Medical theory and scientific method in the age of Avicenna,” in: David C. Reisman (ed.), Before and After Avicenna (Leiden, 2003), pp. 145–62.

43 E.g. Maimonides: “The book in metaphysics [lit. divine science] that al-Rāzī composed is by him [i.e. is not pseudo-epigraphic, as the books listed before] but is useless, for al-Rāzī was merely a physician. By the same token, the Book of Definitions and the Book of Elements that were composed by Isaac Israeli are also entirely hallucinations and nonsense, for Isaac Israeli was also merely a physician.” Maimonides, “Letter to R. Shmuel Ibn Tibbon,” in Marx, Alexander, “Texts by and about Maimonides,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 25 (1934–1935): 371–428CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on p. 378; the full text of one of the Hebrew translations (with the extant fragments of the Arabic original) is also in Letters and Essays of Moses Maimonides (Hebrew), ed. Isaac Shailat (Ma‘aleh Adumim, 5748 [1988]), vol. 2, pp. 511–54, on p. 552.

44 At issue were notably the questions of which is/are the ruling organs of the animal body (Aristotle: the heart; Galen: the brain, the heart, and the liver) and of the respective roles of the female and the male in sexual generation. See e.g. Fontaine, Resianne, “The facts of life: the nature of the female contribution to generation according to Judah ha-Cohen's Midrash ha-Ḥokma and contemporary texts,” Medizinhistorisches Journal, 29 (1994): 333–62Google ScholarPubMed.

45 J. Christoph Bürgel, Averroes “contra Galenum”: das Kapitel von der Atmung im Colliget des Averroes als ein Zeugnis mittelalterlich-islamischer Kritik an Galen, Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen. Philologisch-historische Klasse; Jg. 1967, Nr. 9 (Göttingen, 1968), pp. 263–340, on p. 284, distinguishes between these two traditions of Galen criticism – a philosophical and a medical. On Rāzī's ‘doubts’ see: Shlomo Pines, “Rāzī critique de Galien,” Actes du VIIe congrès international d'histoire des sciences (Paris, 1953), reprinted in The Collected Works of Shlomo Pines, vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1986), pp. 256–63. The entire Arabic text has been edited by Mehdi Mohaghegh, Kitāb al-Šukūk ʿalā Ğālīnūs (Teheran/Kuala Lumpur, 1993).

46 In addition to the studies already mentioned, see: Manfred Ullmann, Die Medizin im Islam (Leiden, 1970), pp. 67–8; Stroumsa, “Al-Farabi and Maimonides on medicine as science,” pp. 247–9 (on al-Amīrī); Schacht, Joseph and Meyerhof, Max, “Maimonides against Galen on philosophy and cosmogony,” Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts, University of Egypt 5 (1937): 52–88Google Scholar (reprinted in: Max Meyerhof, Studies in Medieval Arabic Medicine. Theory and Practice, ed. Penelope Johnstone, Variorum Reprints [London, 1984], Essay IX); Herbert A. Davidson, Moses Maimonides. The Man and his Works (Oxford, 2005), pp. 451–2; Richter-Bernburg, “Medicina Ancilla Philosophiae,” pp. 92–7 (on Ibn Ṭufayl).

47 Writers who offered “solutions” to the “doubts” raised against Galen are listed in Bürgel, Averroes “contra Galenum,” p. 285.

48 On Ibn Riḍwān's biography see: Ullmann, Die Medizin im Islam, pp. 158–9; Roger Arnaldez, “Ibn Riḍwān,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. C. C. Gillispie (New York, 1970–1980), vol. 11, pp. 444–5; Gabrieli, Giuseppe, “Medici e scienziati Arabi: ‘Alī ibn Riḍwān,” Isis, 6 (1924): 500–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joseph Schacht and Max Meyerhof, The Medico-Philosophical Controversy between Ibn Buṭlān of Baghdad and Ibn Riḍwān of Cairo, A Contribution to the History of Greek Learning among the Arabs, The Egyptian University, Faculty of Arts [Publication no. 13] (Cairo, 1937), pp. 33–51; Michael W. Dols, Medieval Islamic Medicine. Ibn Riḍwān's Treatise “On the Prevention of Bodily Ills in Egypt” (Berkeley, 1984), pp. 54–66.

49 Schacht and Meyerhof, The Medico-Philosophical Controversy.

50 See the list of Ibn Riḍwān's 102 works given by Ibn Uṣaybi‘a in Schacht and Meyerhof, The Medico-Philosophical Controversy, Arabic part, pp. 9–14, English part, pp. 41–9 (including n. 68); Dols, Medieval Islamic Medicine, p. 59. On his work in logic, see Aouad, Maroun, “La doctrine rhétorique d'Ibn Riḍwān et la Didascalia in Rhetoricam Aristotelis ex glosa Alpharabii,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 7 (1997): 163–245CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 8 (1998): 131–60.

51 Moritz Steinschneider, Alfarabi (Alpharabius), des arabischen Philosophen, Leben und Schriften (= Mémoires de l'Académie impériale des sciences de Saint-Pétersbourg. VIIe série, T. XIII, n° 4), p. 62. See ‘Alī ibn Riḍwān, Über den Weg zur Glückseligkeit durch den ärztlichen Beruf. Arabischer Text nebst kommentierter deutscher Übersetzung, ed. and trans. by Albert Dietrich (= Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, 3. Folge, Nr. 129) (Göttingen, 1982).

52 See Schacht and Meyerhof, The Medico-Philosophical Controversy, p. 112; see also supra, n. 34.

53 Schacht and Meyerhof, The Medico-Philosophical Controversy, pp. 77, 112–13.

54 Schacht and Meyerhof, The Medico-Philosophical Controversy, pp. 43, 110. In the Hebrew translation of the Tegni this work is referred to as Sefer ha-Memuṣa‘ [also: Miṣu‘a] beyn Aristo we-Galenus (e.g. MS Paris, BNF, héb. 1115, fols. 19r, 20v).

55 Schacht and Meyerhof, The Medico-Philosophical Controversy, e.g. p. 110. In his commentary on the Tegni (apropos of B V.1–2, pp. 286–7; K p. 319), Ibn Riḍwān mentions the controversy between the two authorities about the ruling parts of the body and adds that he will not go into it inasmuch as the difference of opinions does not have damaging consequences for medical practice (MS Paris, BNF, héb. 1115, fol. 19r). Elsewhere Ibn Riḍwān says that Aristotle and Galen have divergent opinions on the question why the brain should be cold and moist, but what the physician should know is merely the fact that the brain in its natural state is cold and moist more than warm and dry (fol. 27r).

56 Schacht and Meyerhof, The Medico-Philosophical Controversy, p. 24. In his commentary on the Tegni, Ibn Riḍwān devotes a long discussion to what was often understood as an internal contradiction in Galen, namely whether patients whose bodies are hot require a hotter regimen, those with cold bodies a colder one, etc. (cf. B XXV.4, p. 353; K p. 373). Ibn Riḍwān argues that in fact no contradiction is involved here (MS Paris, BNF, héb. 1115, fols. 92v–93v).

57 Schacht and Meyerhof, The Medico-Philosophical Controversy, pp. 27–8. E.g. in the commentary on the Tegni (MS Paris, BNF, héb. 1115, fols. 71v–72r), Ibn Riḍwān argues that when Rāzī claimed that Galen failed to mention the indications of a number of diseases he in fact misunderstood Galen.

58 Greek: οὐσιώδη (B Ia.4, K p. 306); Arabic: ǧawhariyyan (MS Escorial ár 883, fol. 7v); Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew: geder aṣmiyyi (הגדר אשר קראוהו אנשים עצמיי; MS Paris, BNF, héb. 1115, fol. 4r).

59 Arabic: ṣifa (MS Escorial ár 883, fol. 7v); Hebrew: to'ar; ḥoq (MS Paris, BNF, héb. 1115, fol. 4r).

60 Arabic: aʿrāḍ (MS Escorial ár 883, fol. 7v); Hebrew: miqrim (MS Paris, BNF, héb. 1115, fol. 4r).

61 Arabic: MS Escorial ár 883, fol. 7v; Hebrew: MS Paris, BNF, héb. 1115, fol. 4r. On the Hebrew terminology, see Freudenthal, Gad, ”Samuel Ibn Tibbon as the author of Melaḵah qeṭanah, the Hebrew translation from Arabic of Galen's Tegni,” in this issue of ASP, 26 (2016): 27–43, on pp. 38–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 See supra, n. 12.

63 Arabic: MS Escorial ár 883, fol. 8v; Hebrew: MS Paris, BNF, héb. 1115, fol. 5r.

64 “In the commentary on the Tegni he [Ibn Riḍwān] defines medicine by its genus and differentia. Medicine belongs to the genus of all arts, which derive their principles from natural science, such as agriculture, veterinarian art, and animal husbandry. [… Both Ibn Riḍwān and al-Fārābī] adhere to the Aristotelian idea of what qualifies as a scientific art, namely that it is derived from scientific principles. The differentia of medicine is that it is concerned with what is healthy, morbid or neutral” (Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy, p. 71). See also Ibn Riḍwān's classification of medicine in his ethics, studied in Y. Tzvi Langermann, “One ethic for three faiths,” in Y. Tzvi Langermann (ed.), Monotheism and Ethics: Historical and Contemporary Intersections between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Studies on the Children of Abraham, vol. 2 (Leiden, 2011), pp. 197–218, esp. p. 212.

65 Arabic: burhān limā, burhān an (MS Escorial ár 883, fol. 6v); Hebrew: mofet lamah; mofet ha-ʾot, MS Paris, BNF, héb. 1115, fol. 3r).

66 Danielle Jacquart and Françoise Micheau, La médecine arabe et l'occident médiéval (Paris, 1990), pp. 151, 232–3.

67 Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy; O'Boyle, The Art of Medicine.

68 Temkin, Galenism, p. 101.

69 On Doeg, see Gad Freudenthal, “The father of the Latin-into-Hebrew translations: ‘Doeg the Edomite,’ the twelfth-century repentant convert,” in Resianne Fontaine and Gad Freudenthal (eds.), Latin-into-Hebrew – Studies and Texts. Volume 1: Studies (Leiden, 2013), pp. 105–20.

70 Steinschneider, Moritz, “Zur hebräischen Abtheilung,” Magazin für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, 15 (1888): 197Google Scholar and “Haqdamat ha-maʿatiq,” in ibid., Hebrew section, pp. 6–14.

71 As Steinschneider noticed, this is a corruption of “Johannitius.”

72 The phrase is taken from Numbers 10:25, where it means “the rearguard of the camps.”

73 O'Boyle, The Art of Medicine, p. 93, notes that the Translatio arabica was in circulation only from the mid-thirteenth century.

74 Constantine did not abbreviate the translated texts owing to carelessness; rather, he did so intentionally and with a precise ideology. See Danielle Jacquart, “Principales étapes dans la transmission des textes de médecine (XIe–XIVe siècles),” in Jacqueline Hamesse and Marta Fattori (eds.), Rencontre de cultures dans la philosophie médiévale (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1990), pp. 251–71, on pp. 259–60; ead., “Le sens donné par Constantin l'Africain à son œuvre: les chapitres introductifs en arabe et en latin,” in Danielle Jacquart and Charles Burnett (eds.), Constantine the African and ‘Alī Ibn al-‘Abbās al-Mağūsī: the Pantegni and related texts (Leiden, 1994), pp. 71–89 (reprinted in her La science médicale occidentale entre deux renaissances, Essay IV). See also Burnett, Charles, “The legend of Constantine the African,” Micrologus. Nature, Sciences and Medieval Societies, 21 (2013): 277–94Google Scholar.

75 Text in: Steinschneider, Moritz, “Ibn al-Djezzar's Viaticum, hebr. צידת דרכים . a) Vorrede des Moses ibn Tibbon, nach ms. Netter (Schönblum 1869), Uri 413, München 19,” MGWJ 38 (= NF 1) (4) (1894): 180–1Google Scholar. Paraphrased in Ernest Renan [A. Neubauer], Les Rabbins français du commencement du quatorzième siècle (= Histoire littéraire de la France, tome XXVII) (Paris, 1877), p. 595.

76 Moses Ibn Tibbon's critique of Constantine (which he carefully distinguishes from the misgivings about Doeg's translation) is noteworthy: in order to justly appreciate the quality of Doeg's work as a translator, Moses apparently compared it not only to the Arabic original, but also to Constantine's text. As he did not know Latin, he presumably did so with the help of a Christian doctor or a Jewish doctor who could read Latin.

77 The “tongue of the Gentiles” in fact is “Latin words, modified slightly to correspond to the morphophonemic scheme of Occitan, or genuine Occitan words”; see Cyril Aslanov, “From Latin into Hebrew through the romance vernaculars: The creation of an interlanguage written in Hebrew characters,” in Fontaine and Freudenthal (eds.), Studies, pp. 69–84, on p. 70. Ironically, his father's translation of the Tegni and “Explanation of unfamiliar terms” accompanying the translation of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed include a healthy number of vernacular terms. Vernacular glosses (in Hebrew characters) are to be found in numerous medical translations and in medical glossaries; some of them have been studied over the last years. See: Gerrit Bos, Novel Medical and General Hebrew Terminology from the 13th Century (Oxford, 2011); id., Novel Medical and General Hebrew Terminology from the 13th Century, vol. 2 (Oxford, 2013); Bos and Mensching, Guido, “Arabic-romance medico-botanical glossaries in Hebrew manuscripts from the Iberian Peninsula and Italy,” Aleph, 15.1 (2015): 9–61Google Scholar, and the literature cited there at n. 4.

78 See Freudenthal, “Samuel Ibn Tibbon as the author of Melaḵah qeṭanah,” n. 1 for details.

79 See Freudenthal, “Samuel Ibn Tibbon as the author of Melaḵah qeṭanah,” p. 32.

80 “Das wäre also die erste bekannte direkte Übersetzung eines Werkes eines Muhammedaners ins Hebräische”; Steinschneider, Die Hebraeischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters, § 471, p. 734.

81 See references in Freudenthal, “Samuel Ibn Tibbon as the author of Melaḵah qeṭanah,” n. 2.

82 This does not imply that Samuel Ibn Tibbon did not write one. In the case of his translation of Ibn al-Biṭriq's Arabic version of Aristotle's Meteorology, called Otot ha-Shamayim, some manuscripts contain a preface whereas others do not. At times, scribes (unkindly) omitted authors' prefaces. See Otot ha-Shamayim. Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew Version of Aristotle's Meteorology, ed. and trans. Resianne Fontaine (Leiden, 1995), p. xxi.

83 See text to note 84 below.

84 Judah Ibn Tibbon's “Admonition” to his son in Israel Abrahams, Hebrew Ethical Wills (Philadelphia, 1926; 1976), pp. 50–92, on p. 80; new annotated edition by Pinḥas Qoraḥ (Modi‘in Ilit, 2007), p. 59 (Heb.).

85 See “Admonition,” ed. Abrahams, on pp. 61, 67–8, 76, 80; ed. Qoraḥ, pp. 38, 45, 53–4, 59. See also Carlos Fraenkel, From Maimonides to Samuel Ibn Tibbon: The Transformation of the Dalālat al-Ḥāʾirīn into the Moreh ha-Nevukhim (Jerusalem, 2007) (Heb.), pp. 55–6 (n. 48), and the detailed discussion in Rivka Kneller, “Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Ma'amar Yiqqawu ha-Mayim, a philosophical and exegetical treatise” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Tel-Aviv University 2011), vol. 1, pp. 7–8 (n. 33).

86 “ושלחתי לחכם המובהק ר' שמואל אבן תיבון הרופא” (= I wrote to the distinguished scholar, R. Samuel Ibn Tibbon the physician). The letter is reproduced in Menachem ha-Me'iri, Qiryat sefer, ed. Moshe Hershler (Jerusalem, 1956), p. 46. First pointed out by Joseph Qafaḥ in “Devarim aḥadim,” preface to his Hebrew translation of Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed (Jerusalem, 1972), vol. 1, pp. 9–22, on p. 16, and followed by James T. Robinson, “Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Commentary on Ecclesiastes” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2002; available from UMI, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Publication Number AAT 3067459), p. 16; similarly in id., “The Ibn Tibbon family: a dynasty of translators in medieval Provence,” in Jay M. Harris (ed.), Be'erot Yitzhak: Studies in Memory of Isadore Twersky (Cambridge, MA, 2005), pp. 193–224, on p. 206, n. 47.

87 MS London, British Library, Add. 18689, fol. 104v; see Freudenthal, “Samuel Ibn Tibbon as the author of Melaḵah qeṭanah,” pp. 32–33.

88 Text in Robinson, “Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Commentary on Ecclesiastes,” pp. 16–17, n. 50.

89 Qafaḥ, “Devarim aḥadim,” pp. 16–17. We are grateful to Y. Tzvi Langermann for calling our attention to R. Qafaḥ's remark.

90 Robinson, “The Ibn Tibbon family,” on p. 206, n. 48.

91 This is also the conclusion in Robinson, “The Ibn Tibbon family,” pp. 205–6.

92 Data on Samuel Ibn Tibbon's writings in Robinson, “Samuel Ibn Tibbon,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/tibbon/> (viewed 10 July 2014); see also Aviezer Ravitzky, “The thought of R. Zerahiah b. Isaac Shealtiel Hen and the Maimonidean-Tibbonian philosophy,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Hebrew University, 1978, pp. 5–21 (in Hebrew).

93 Fraenkel, From Maimonides to Samuel Ibn Tibbon, pp. 108–24.

94 Otot ha-Shamayim, ed. and trans. Fontaine; Freudenthal, Gad, “Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Avicennian theory of an eternal world,” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism, 8 (2008): 41–129CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95 Judah Ibn Tibbon, “Admonition to his son,” in Abrahams, Hebrew Ethical Wills, on p. 66; ed. Pinḥas Qoraḥ, p. 43.

96 Stern, Samuel M., “Maimonides' Correspondence with the scholars of Provence,” Zion, 16 (1–2) (1951): 18–29Google Scholar (Heb.); Iggerot ha-Rambam, ed. Shailat, 2, p. 492.

97 Translated from Salomon Aaron Wertheimer, “Letter of R. Jonathan of Lunel to Maimonides,” in his Sefer Ginzey Yerushalayim (Jerusalem, 1906), 1, pp. 33–5, on p. 34 (Heb.). See also discussion and corrections in Stern, “Maimonides' Correspondence,” and Shailat, Iggerot, 2, p. 511. The last sentence alludes to b Qiddushin 72b. “This teaches that a righteous man does not depart from the world until [another] righteous man like himself is created, as it is said: ‘the sun riseth and the sun goeth down’ (Ecc. I, 5): before Eli's sun was extinguished, the sun of Samuel of Ramoth rose, as it is said: ‘and the lamp of God was not yet gone out, and Samuel was laid down [etc.]’ (I Sam. 3:3.).” See also b Yoma 38b.

98 Shailat, Iggerot, 2, p. 513. This letter also contains Maimonides' recommendations concerning appropriate and inappropriate philosophical readings; see Maimonides, “Letter to R. Shmuel Ibn Tibbon,” in A. Marx, “Texts by and about Maimonides,” p. 378; Shailat, Iggerot, 2, pp. 552–4. These comments are limited to philosophical literature and Galen is not mentioned at all. The possibility that Maimonides had anything to do with Samuel's decision to translate the Tegni with Ibn Riḍwān's commentary can thus be ruled out; in any event, the letter was written after the translation of the Tegni was already completed.

99 Fraenkel, From Maimonides to Samuel Ibn Tibbon, passim.

100 See the classic Aviezer Ravitzky, “Aristotle's Meteorologica and the Maimonidean exegesis of creation” (Heb.), in: Shlomo Pines Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, Part II (= Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, vol. IX) (Jerusalem, 1990), pp. 225–50; English translation by Schramm, Lenn: “Aristotle's Meteorology and the Maimonidean modes of interpreting the account of creation,” Aleph, 8 (2008): 361–400Google Scholar.

101 Judah Ibn Tibbon, “Admonition to his son,” in Abrahams, Hebrew Ethical Wills, on p. 57, 78; ed. Qoraḥ, p. 33, 57.

102 Freudenthal, “The father of the Latin-into-Hebrew translations.”

103 Judah Ibn Tibbon, “Admonition to his son,” ed. Abrahams, p. 81; ed. Qoraḥ, p 60.

104 Dimitri Gutas has convincingly argued that the selection of Arabic works for translation into Latin largely depended on the value attributed to them by the local Andalusian intellectuals; see his “What was there in Arabic for the Latins to receive? Remarks on the modalities of the twelfth-century translation movement in Spain,” in Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener (eds.), Wissen über Grenzen, Arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter (Berlin, 2006), pp. 3–21.

105 On the close contacts between physicians of the two faiths in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see: Green, Monica H. and Smail, Daniel Lord, “The trial of Floreta d'Ays (1403): Jews, Christians, and obstetrics in later medieval Marseille,” Journal of Medieval History, 34 (2008): 185–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coulet, Noël, “Frontières incertaines: les juifs de Provence au Moyen-Âge,” Provence Historique, 35 (1985): 371–6 (on p. 374)Google Scholar.

106 Fraenkel, From Maimonides to Samuel Ibn Tibbon, pp. 133–9, with the references given there.

107 Particularly interesting is the case of the distinctively Galenic notion of the “analysis of the definition” (see supra, p. 13; in Samuel's translation: התכת ההגדרה), which entered Hebrew thought via the Hebrew translation of the Tegni. It found some reception in philosophical literature, as e.g. in a small tractate by Abraham ben Salomon of Lunel in the mid-fourteenth century. See Freudenthal, Gad, “The study of mathematics as a ‘Great Religious Secret’: The commentary on the beginning of Euclid's Elements by Abraham ben Shlomo of Lunel. A commented critical edition,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought, 14 (1998)Google Scholar (= Y. Sermonetta Memorial Volume, ed. Aviezer Ravitzky), pp. 129–58 (Hebrew).