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Aristotle in Jewish Literature Ark of the Covenant

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

gression of causes is unthinkable, proves the existence of a "primus motor," the existence of God therefore. He further contradicts Aristotle's view that God's happiness consists in the recognition of Himself, for knowledge has only value when it is

preceded by ignorance, and where there never has been ignorance there can be nothing pleasurable. Crescas, though independent herein, was still only a continuator of those early attempts which were undertaken by Judah ha-Levi in the " Cuzari, " to secure full recognition for Judaism. In the age following Hasdai Crescas all traces of Aristotelianism gradually disappeared from Jewish philosophical

and in the cabalistic movement, which little by little assumed dominance, the characteristics of Platonism came more and more into prominence. literature;

The

"

Ethics " of Aristotle occupies an important place in the history of Jewish literature, although attention was directed to it comparatively late. The Jews possessed in their own religAristotle's ious writings an abundance of practi" Ethics." cal rules which rendered Aristotle's " Ethics " superfluous. Only when his system came to be studied as a whole was any attention paid to the "Ethics." The " Mcomachean Ethics," which alone of all Aristotle's ethical writings was known to the Middle Ages, was translated into Hebrew from a Latin version in the beginning of the fifteenth century. The translator, Don Mei'r Alguadez, expresses the opinion in his preface that Aristotle's ethical writings contain an explanation of certain precepts of the Torah. A commentary upon this translation was written in 1584 by Moses Almosnino. But Aristotle was by no means unknown to the Jews of much earlier ages as an ethical writer. An "Ethical Letter," found among the ethical epistles of the physician Ali ibn Rodhwan (contained in Al-Harizi's translation, in " Debarim Attikim, " edited by Benjacob), was ascribed to him. Shem-Tob Palquera also reproduces the " Letter of Aristotle " in his " Ha-Mebakesh. " The Stagirite's name is frequently met elsewhere in Jewish ethical literature. The ethical aphorisms quoted by Honein ibn Ishak in his work already mentioned found their way into many specimens of popular '

Aristotle's relations with Alexander the Great are frequently mentioned in this literature as exemplary in their way, and Jews eagerly accepted the legendary accounts of the conversion of Aristotle literature.

to the true faith, and of the repudiation by him of his theory of Creation. But Immanuel ben Solomon

(about 1320), in his imitation of the " Divina Cornmedia," nevertheless locates Aristotle in the infernal regions, because he taught the existence of the world from eternity. Gedaliah ibn Yahyah (sixteenth century) claimed to have found a book in which Aristotle recanted all his errors. People were easily persuaded to believe that " the wisest of the wise " had given in his allegiance to the doctrines of the Torah that Simon the Just, whose acquaintance he is said to have made upon the occasion of Alexander's visit (See to Jerusalem, had convinced him of his errors. Aristotle in Jewish Legend.) Prayers said to have been written by Aristotle have frequently been printed in devotional works of recent centuries as, for instance, one handed down by Honein ibn Ishftk (see

Lowenthal,

102 Sinnspruehe

"Honein's

der Philoso-

pher!," p. 112).'

Aristotle was almost universally held in esteem by the Jews; at one time for his intelligence and mental power, at another as a penitent sinner. Apprecia- The following is Maimonides' verdict

tion of Aristotle.

concerning him Aristotle's

figurative





"

The words

of Plato,

teacher, are obscure and they are superfluous to the

man of intelligence, inasmuch as Aristotle supplanted The thorough understanding predecessors. of Aristotle is the highest achievement to which man all his

can attain, with the sole exception of the understanding of the Prophets. " Shem-Tob ben Isaac of Tortosa (1261) styles Aristotle " the master of all phiElijah b. Eliezer of Candia, who edited the " Logic " about the end of the fourteenth century, calls Aristotle "the divine," because, having been endowed by nature with a sacredly superior intellect, he could understand of himself what others could receive only from the instruction of their teachers. losophers. "

See Akistotle in Jewish Legend, th.

A. L6.

ARITHMETIC The art of reckoning. This must have been familiar to the ancient Hebrews. The sacred books mention large amounts, showing

that the people were acquainted with the art of computation. Expressions are found even for fractions (see Gesenius, " Lehrgebaude, " 704). The Hebrews, like the Greeks and other people of antiquity, made use of the letters of the alphabet

According to their alphabetical order, the letters were made to express the units, tens, and hundreds, as high as 400. In a later period, probably after contact with the Arabs, the final letters "] v f) | D were added, so as to furnish numerals up to 900 mention of this fact is made in many cabalistic writings, but seemingly they were not generally used. The question arises whether, in computations with these letters, the ancient Hebrews had any fixed system taught in the schools, or whether each calculator was left to his own manipulation of them. The probabilities are in favor of the former hypothesis, in view of the high degree of mathematical knowledge found here and there in the Mishnah and Gemara. Nothing of such a system has, however, come down to us from the Talmudic times. Skilful Jewish arithmeticians are first mentioned in the eighth century. Sahl Rabban al-Tabari, the teacher of the physician Razi's father, was known as an excellent arithmetician (Wustenfeld, " Aerzte," p. 20). About 997 the Jewish mathematician Bisher ben for figures.



Pinhas ben Shubeib wrote an arithmetical treatise. At the same epoch lived Josephus Hispanus, or Sapiens, from whom Gerbert (Pope Sylvester II.) borrowed his system of multiplication and division (see Cajori, "History of Elementary Mathematics," p. 179), and who is believed to have been the introducer of the so-called Arabic numerals into Europe (see Weissenborn, "Einfiihrung der Jetzigen Ziffern in Europa," pp. 74 et seg.). In the beginning of the eleventh century there flourished Abraham ben Hiyya, who wrote an encyclopedia of mathematical sciences he used Arabic numerals, but knew nothing