Gersonides' Afterlife

Studies on the Reception of Levi ben Gerson’s Philosophical, Halakhic and Scientific Oeuvre in the 14th through 20th Centuries. Officina Philosophica Hebraica Volume 2

Series: 

Gersonides’ Afterlife is the first full-scale treatment of the reception of one of the greatest scientific minds of medieval Judaism: Gersonides (1288–1344). An outstanding representative of the Hebrew Jewish culture that then flourished in southern France, Gersonides wrote on mathematics, logic, astronomy, astrology, physical science, metaphysics and theology, and commented on almost the entire bible. His strong-minded attempt to integrate these different areas of study into a unitary system of thought was deeply rooted in the Aristotelian tradition and yet innovative in many respects, and thus elicited diverse and often impassionate reactions. For the first time, the twenty-one papers collected here describe Gersonides’ impact in all fields of his activity and the reactions from his contemporaries up to present-day religious Zionism.
Copyright Year:
2020
E-Book (PDF)
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-42528-6
Publication:
29 Jun 2020
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-42527-9
Publication:
02 Jul 2020
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Front Matter
Copyright Page
Subseries Editor’s Liminary Note: Gersonides’ Afterlife—Towards a Collaborative Working Program
Editors’ Preface
Part 1 The Reception of Gersonides’ Philosophical and Halakhic Oeuvre
Chapter 1 “Composition, Not Commentary”: Gersonides’ Commentary on the Isagoge of Porphyry and Its Afterlife
Chapter 2 The Supercommentaries of Gersonides and His Students on Averroes’s Epitomes of the Physics and the Meteorology
Chapter 3 Crescas’ Relationship to Gersonides
Chapter 4 From Denunciation to Appreciation: Gersonides in the Eyes of Members of the Ibn Shem Ṭov Family
Chapter 5 Gersonides and His Sephardic Critics
Chapter 6 A Fifteenth-Century Reader of Gersonides: Don Isaac Abravanel, Providence, Astral Influences, Active Intellect, and Humanism
Chapter 7 Gersonides’ Philosophy in Fifteenth-Century Byzantium: Shabbetai ben Malkiel ha-Kohen’s Defense of Averroes’s Theory of Material Intellect
Chapter 8 Gersonides’ Reception in the Ashkenazi Tradition
Chapter 9 The Karaite Reception of Gersonides
Chapter 10 Gersonides’ Biblical Commentaries in a Fifteenth-Century Slavic Translation of the Bible
Chapter 11 Gersonides’ Responsa and Their Reception
Part 2 The Reception of Gersonides’ Astronomical and Astrological Oeuvre
Chapter 12 The Lunar Cycle of 11,325 Days
Chapter 13 The Afterlife of Gersonides’ Cross-Staff and of the Poem Dedicated to It
Chapter 14 Violas de Rodez’ Political Prognostication for the Year 1355: Reaction to the Prognostications for 1345–1355?
Part 3 Printing and Reading Histories
Chapter 15 The Reception History of Gersonides’ Writings, according to Their Early Printing History (Fifteenth–Sixteenth Centuries)
Chapter 16 Gersonides Hebraicus atque Latinus: Some Remarks on Levi ben Gershom’s Works and the Reading and Book-Collecting Cultures of the Renaissance
Chapter 17 Censoring/“Improving” Gersonides: The Case of the Toʿalot
Part 4 Gersonides’ Oeuvre in Nineteenth-Century Germany
Chapter 18 Rabbi Abraham Nager and Ludwig Philippson—The Revisor and Sponsor of the Leipzig Edition of Gersonides’ Milḥamot Ha-Shem (1866): The Wissenschaft des Judentums and Orientalistik in Nineteenth-Century Germany (a Case Study)
Chapter 19 The Rediscovery of Gersonides as a Religious Philosopher by the Wissenschaft des Judentums (1860–1890)
Chapter 20 Benzion Kellermann’s German Translation of Gersonides’ Milḥamot ha-Shem (1914–1916): The History of a Scholarly Failure
Part 5 Late Repercussions of Gersonides’ Oeuvre
Chapter 21 Notes on Gersonides’ Place in Religious-Zionist Thought
Back Matter
Indexes
Ofer Elior, Ph.D. (2011), Ben-Gurion University, is Research Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at Ben-Gurion University. He has published a monograph, critical editions and many articles on medieval Jewish philosophy, including a critical edition of Gersonides’ The Wars of the Lord, Treatises I–IV (Tel Aviv, 2018).
Gad Freudenthal, Ph.D. (1981), Université de Paris I, is Senior Research Fellow Emeritus at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris. He has written extensively on the reception of science and philosophy in Jewish cultures, and edited numerous volumes including Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Cambridge, 2011).
David Wirmer, Ph.D. (2010), University of Bonn, is Professor of Arabic and Hebrew Philosophy at the University of Cologne. He has published monographs and articles on Arabic natural philosophy and epistemology, including Vom Denken der Natur zur Natur des Denkens (Berlin, 2014).
"For the first time, the twenty-one papers collected here describe Gersonides’ impact in all fields of his activity and the reactions from his contemporaries up to present-day religious Zionism. (...) Highly recommended for all scholarly academic collections." - David B Levy, Lander College for Women, in Association of Jewish Libraries - New and Reviews December 2021 | January 2022, Volume II, No.6
Subseries Editor’s Liminary Note: Gersonides’ Afterlife—Towards a Collaborative Working Program
Editors’ Preface
List of Figures and Tables

Part 1 The Reception of Gersonides’ Philosophical and Halakhic Oeuvre



1 “Composition, Not Commentary”: Gersonides’ Commentary on the Isagoge of Porphyry and Its Afterlife
 Charles H. Manekin

2 The Supercommentaries of Gersonides and His Students on Averroes’s Epitomes of the Physics and the Meteorology
 Steven Harvey and Resianne Fontaine

3 Crescas’ Relationship to Gersonides
 Warren Zev Harvey

4 From Denunciation to Appreciation: Gersonides in the Eyes of Members of the Ibn Shem Ṭov Family
 Doron Forte

5 Gersonides and His Sephardic Critics
 Seymour Feldman

6 A Fifteenth-Century Reader of Gersonides: Don Isaac Abravanel, Providence, Astral Influences, Active Intellect, and Humanism
 Cedric Cohen Skalli and Oded Horezky

7 Gersonides’ Philosophy in Fifteenth-Century Byzantium: Shabbetai ben Malkiel ha-Kohen’s Defense of Averroes’s Theory of Material Intellect
 Ofer Elior

8 Gersonides’ Reception in the Ashkenazi Tradition
 Tamás Visi

9 The Karaite Reception of Gersonides
 Daniel J. Lasker

10 Gersonides’ Biblical Commentaries in a Fifteenth-Century Slavic Translation of the Bible
 Moshe Taube

11 Gersonides’ Responsa and Their Reception
 Pinchas Roth

Part 2 The Reception of Gersonides’ Astronomical and Astrological Oeuvre



12 The Lunar Cycle of 11,325 Days
 José Chabás and Bernard R. Goldstein

13 The Afterlife of Gersonides’ Cross-Staff and of the Poem Dedicated to It
 Gad Freudenthal

14 Violas de Rodez’ Political Prognostication for the Year 1355: Reaction to the Prognostications for 1345–1355?
 Hagar Kahana-Smilansky

Part 3 Printing and Reading Histories



15 The Reception History of Gersonides’ Writings, according to Their Early Printing History (Fifteenth–Sixteenth Centuries)
 Zeev Gries

16 Gersonides Hebraicus atque Latinus: Some Remarks on Levi ben Gershom’s Works and the Reading and Book-Collecting Cultures of the Renaissance
 Michela Andreatta

17 Censoring/“Improving” Gersonides: The Case of the Toʿalot
 Menachem Kellner

Part 4 Gersonides’ Oeuvre in Nineteenth-Century Germany



18 Rabbi Abraham Nager and Ludwig Philippson—The Revisor and Sponsor of the Leipzig Edition of Gersonides’ Milḥamot Ha-Shem (1866): The Wissenschaft des Judentums and Orientalistik in Nineteenth-Century Germany (a Case Study)
 Gad Freudenthal

19 The Rediscovery of Gersonides as a Religious Philosopher by the Wissenschaft des Judentums (1860–1890)
 George Y. Kohler

20 Benzion Kellermann’s German Translation of Gersonides’ Milḥamot ha-Shem (1914–1916): The History of a Scholarly Failure
 Torsten Lattki

Part 5 Late Repercussions of Gersonides’ Oeuvre



21 Notes on Gersonides’ Place in Religious-Zionist Thought
 Dov Schwartz

Index
All interested in medieval philosophy and science, the cultural history of the Jews between the fourteenth and twentieth centuries, and Jewish-Christian cultural contact in early Modernity.
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