The following volume of collected essays—the result of two international conferences on Obadiah Sforno and his world held in 2017 and 2018 at the University of Hamburg—signals the editors’ desire to give Sforno’s work and legacy the scholarly attention they deserve. Organised by the “Between Two Worlds: The Tractate Light of the Nations of Obadiah Sforno (ca. 1475–1550)” research project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the conferences brought together distinguished senior scholars in Jewish philosophy, junior researchers, and PhD candidates.
The first symposium, “Lost & Found in Translation,” investigated particular aspects of Sforno’s thought as a translator and biblical commentator, with particular attention to his life and environment, while the second, “The Philosophical Canon of Obadiah Sforno and His Contemporaries,” focused primarily on Sforno’s reception in the Latin and Jewish milieus as well as on his philosophical background. The debates and discussions greatly added to the success of the project’s general research goals, illuminating numerous aspects of Sforno’s thought and writings that have up until now received little scholarly attention (without, of course, wanting to discount the important work of Robert Bonfil1).
The conferences on Sforno’s philosophy took place in tandem with the research project’s endeavours to produce an edition and translation of both the Hebrew and Latin versions of his sole philosophical treatise Light of the Nations (Or ʿAmmim/Lumen Gentium). The results of these combined efforts led to a reassessment of Sforno’s treatise, its philosophical sources and methodology, its bilingual and bicultural nature, and its status among his exegetical writings. Giuseppe Veltri’s opening essay “Obadiah Sforno: Between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance” demonstrates that the outstanding figure of Sforno in the history of the Jewish philosophy embodies the basic tenets of Renaissance Humanism and at the same time the classical Scholastic tradition. He represents a bridge between medieval and Renaissance, between philosophy and exegesis, between Christians and Jewish, and thereby between “two worlds.”
The variety of topics and themes discussed in the contributions does not allow this volume to be divided into clear-cut thematic sections. The articles have nevertheless been ordered into four groups according to their relative emphasis on (1) biography, (2) philosophy, (3) exegesis, and (4) environment and reception.
As for Sforno’s biography, some new light has been shed on aspects that draw attention to completely unnoticed facets of his life and work. In “Sforno on Wealth, Work, and Charity,” Andrew Berns explores how Sforno’s profession as a banker may have influenced his interpretations of related biblical contexts and legal decisions. Pivoting between his social context and his exegetical compositions, Obadiah Sforno’s last will and testament2 reveals not only his wealth in landed property, but also his varied social connections.
Saverio Campanini’s article “Roman Holiday: Conjectures on Johann Reuchlin as a Pupil of Obadiah Sforno” investigates the relationship between Johann Reuchlin and Obadiah Sforno, surmising some hypotheses on the possible content of the young Sforno’s teaching. Was it only limited to the Hebrew language, or did it involve—as is most likely—exegetical, theological, and philosophical questions? The possible evidence for this speculative enquiry was collected not only from Reuchlin’s linguistic works, but also from his De arte cabalistica (1517), where one finds a philosophical propaedeutic to kabbalistic studies based on Ruaḥ Ḥen and Maimonides’s Guide. This could be another (uncredited) trace of Sforno’s teaching and his influence on Renaissance thought.
The second group of articles contains contributions dedicated to the philosophical aspects of Sforno’s thought and the Averroean background that contradistinguished his approach to philosophy. Symon Foren’s article “‘A Fourth Kind of Being’: The Legacy of Averroes in Obadiah Sforno’s Theory of the Intellect” examines Sforno’s demonstrations regarding the immortality of the intellective soul in Light of the Nations, focusing on his theory of intellection vis-à-vis Averroan noetics. After offering an overview of the interpretations of Aristotle’s theory of the intellect as presented by Sforno throughout his twelfth quaestio, including Averroes’s doctrine of the unicity of the intellect, he shows how Sforno espouses a peculiar form of monopsychism, which allowed him to maintain the thesis of the intellect’s incorporeality while defending the notion of the individuality of the human soul. He concludes with a discussion of Sforno’s assignment of moral decision-making to the domain of reason, rendering it an essential element in intellectual development and ultimate human felicity.
In “Averroes and Sforno on God’s Knowledge of Particulars,” Steven Harvey offers an insightful discussion of one of the most important topics in medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy. This essay focuses on the difference between divine and human knowledge across the traditional Jewish and Islamic discussions, with particular attention to the sources employed by Sforno in chapter 9 (“On Knowledge”) of Light of the Nations. Sforno’s arguments are primarily based on Averroes’s Incoherence of Incoherence and his Long Commentary on book 12 of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. His use of Averroes—also his source for quotations from Aristotle—shows his great familiarity with Averroes’s writings on the topic and a good understanding of Averroes’s arguments.
Giada Coppola’s essay “The Concept of Time in Sforno” investigates Sforno’s notion of time in Light of the Nations and his commentary on Genesis. The original idea concerns the definition of Creation, which for Sforno is “in the beginning of time,” meaning in the first indivisible instant (regaʿ bilti mitḥaleq). In his view, creation occurs out of absolute nothingness from a Creator who intellects Himself in an indivisible instant without time. As a consequence, the world is created in an atemporal dimension according to God’s will.
In “Sforno on Intellectual imitatio Dei,” Warren Zev Harvey explores Sforno’s writing in relation to the concepts of intellect and imago Dei. Sforno accepts the Aristotelian-Averroean-Maimonidean definition of God as Knower, Known, and Knowledge (e.g., Light of the Nations, chapter 13; Commentary on Numbers 7:89). He also accepts the Maimonidean identification of “the image of God” with the intellect (Commentary on Genesis 1:27). The last part of the article deals with Reuchlin’s concept of the intellect and imago Dei, which show that the Reuchlin was influenced by Sforno.
Florian Dunklau’s “Between Two Versions: A Hebrew Manuscript and an Argument for Latin Priority” investigates the chronological composition of Light of the Nations. Obadiah Sforno’s philosophical treatise was first printed in a Hebrew edition (1537) and was followed by a Latin version over a decade later (1548). The chronology of the publication of the two texts seems an undeniable reason to assert that the translation was made from Hebrew into Latin. Yet small hints in both versions and in an autograph manuscript version give rise to the assumption that there had been a Latin draft of the work, possibly prepared as a result of a series of Latin lectures given by Sforno on the invitation of Giulio da Milano, a lecturer in philosophy and theology at the monastery of Augustinian friars of San Giacomo in Bologna in the early 1530s. The Latin version’s dependency on the Hebrew has never been a matter of doubt, although the alternative—Latin into Hebrew—is not impossible.
The third group of articles is dedicated to Sforno’s exegesis. The intersection of exegesis and philosophy is a phenomenon that can be observed as if under a magnifying glass in Sforno, who combines philosophical speculation with biblical explanation. Or ʿAmmim is also not an isolated off-the-road effort from this acclaimed exegete; quite the contrary, philosophical interpretations and adherence to a rational creed that every word of God comes with a demonstrative proof are fundamental features throughout all of his writings. Besides Sforno’s Torah commentary, his exegesis of the book of Job, for example, is a remarkable example of the coherence of his thought. In “Job et les fins de la providence: Exégèse, théologie systématique et cohérence de l’œuvre de R. Obadia Sforno,” Jean-Pierre Rothschild offers an incisive analysis of Sforno’s interpretation of Job. The book of Job played a crucial role in medieval Scholastic debates. Sforno’s approach shows evidence of the influence of Maimonidean intellectualism on the exegetical commentaries. His rationalistic attitude, which is represented by the biblical figure of Job, aims to demonstrate the ultimate goal of humankind: imitatio Dei. The human free choice can be understood as an expression of the “image of God,” since God is the paradigmatic free Chooser. The physical and metaphysical order of creation, human free choice, Divine providence and justice, and the perfection of man as an intellectual perfection are the very same topics addressed in the garb of a biblical commentary here, which forms a counterpart to the philosophical summa in the treatise Or ʿAmmim.
Moshe Kravetz, in “The Footprints and Influence of Or ʿAmmim in Sforno’s Exegetical Works,” analyses the importance and influence of Sforno’s philosophical treatise on his biblical exegesis. The starting point of this contribution is based on Sforno’s oral lessons, which were recorded by his students in Bologna. One of them documented his teachings in the margins of a print edition of Gersonides’s commentary on the Bible (Mantua, 1476). A careful study of all the available editorial stages of Sforno’s Torah commentary, from those notes from his oral lessons, via an autograph manuscript draft of the commentary (MS St. Petersburg, IOM B 169 Y), towards the final printed version (Venice, 1567), illuminate its development. In several places throughout the earliest stages, Sforno recommends reading some passages of Or ʿAmmim, which suggests that the compilation of Or ʿAmmim preceded the composition of the biblical commentaries, as Ephraim Finkel already suggested at the end of the nineteenth century.
The final two contributions to the volume concern aspects of Sforno’s environment and reception. Guido Bartolucci analyses the fortune of Aristotelian translations from Hebrew into Latin in the first half of the sixteenth century. His article aims to study the lives of two translators, Elijah of Nola and Moses Finzi, who participated in the translation of Themistius’s paraphrases of two of Aristotle’s works, On the Heavens and book 12 of Metaphysics respectively. Both Jews received their degree in medicine from the University of Bologna in the 1540s, just when Obadiah Sforno had finished composing his Or ʿAmmim. The discovery of Elijah’s diploma and new hypotheses on Moshe Finzi’s life are the basis of his attempt to analyse the possible relationship between the Jewish physicians, the Aristotelianism at the University of Bologna, and the translations of Themistius’s paraphrases, thus contributing to the reconstruction of the milieu in which Obadiah Sforno thought and wrote.
Yael Sela’s article “The Philosophical Syntax of Obadiah Sforno’s Psalms Commentary” explores the philosophical exegesis in Sforno’s sixteenth-century Psalms commentary and its reception in Berlin during the late eighteenth century. Obadiah Sforno’s commentary on the book of Psalms was first printed in Venice in 1586, and it also appeared in a commentated edition of the Psalms with Moses Mendelssohn’s German translation that was published in Berlin between 1785 and 1791 as Sefer Zemirot Yisraʾel. Sefer Zemirot Yisraʾel is preceded by a prefatory volume containing three original Hebrew introductions to the Psalms written by Joel Bril. Even though the two commentators diverge in their respective notions of salvation, it is nonetheless easy to see how Sforno served Bril to buttress a defence of the holiness of Hebrew Scripture and the concept of “eternity,” in Jewish terms, and places Mendelssohn’s philosophical and political-theological project into a historical continuum of Humanist Jewish exegesis.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the authors who took part in the conference and enthusiastically contributed to the publication of the current book, especially Prof. Warren Zev Harvey, who has been a longtime supporter of the project and its members. This is also the appropriate place to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) for their generous financial support.
We are also very thankful to Karolin Berends and Sophia Hernandez Santana for their help with the organisation of the conferences. A special thanks to Katharine Handel her outstanding support in the process of copyediting. Last but not least, we thank Yoav Meyrav and Sarah Wobick-Segev for their continuous advisory support during all stages of the publication. We would like to remember Prof. Mauro Zonta (1968–2017), who, despite his illness, contributed to the success of our first conference (January 2017) by sending us his invaluable lecture.
Giuseppe Veltri, Giada Coppola, and Florian Dunklau
Hamburg, 2023