Jacob Ibn Isaac al-Corsuno wrote a treatise on the construction of astrolabes in Arabic (Seville 1376, non-extant) which has survived in a later Hebrew version produced by Jacob al-Corsuno himself (Barcelona 1378). Having published in 2018 a scientific edition of the Hebrew version based on the only manuscript known by then (M & uuml;nchen BSB heb. 261), I have recently identified a new manuscript containing part of the Hebrew version (Paris BnF h & eacute;br. 1030) which differs significantly from the BSB witness. This article uses this discovery (a) to conduct an in-depth study of the two manuscripts of Jacob al-Corsuno's text, focusing in particular on their codicological, textual, and paratextual features and what they can tell us about the scribes, users, and their corresponding contexts; (b) to publish a critical edition of Jacob al-Corsuno's text based on both manuscripts (together with the edition of two short manuscript texts related to al-Corsuno's treatise); and (c) to update/correct the edition and translation previously published.
Asher Anschel Worms (1695-1769) of Frankfurt am Main was a towering Jewish intellectual, but has been almost totally neglected by historians. By profession he was a physician who cared for the sick of the community, but his interests and competence were universal. He wrote a Hebrew "encyclopedia" covering all domains of modern knowledge, with the aim of introducing his fellow Jews to contemporary science: this is what makes him into an early maskil. . Worms wrote eighteen volumes of this planned encyclopedia: on mathematics, the Masorah, grammar, practical philosophy, natural science, and more. Alas, only two of them were published and have survived: Miftah 'algebrah hadasah (Key to the New Algebra; 1722) and Seyag la-Torah (A Fence for the Torah; 1766); all the others (listed here) are lost. This article explores Worms's biography and asks what made him the comprehensive intellectual that he was. The answer is that his post-yeshiva studies in the Frankfurt kloyz put him on the track to study Latin, opening his route to "general culture." The kloyz was then led by two eminent scholars (Samuel Schotten Katz, 1644-1719; Moses Kann, d. 1761), who were related to the circles of the court Jews, abreast of "gentile" culture, and personally connected to German intellectuals. Worms acknowledged that they (particularly Kann) directed him to study Latin and medicine, leading him to take courses at three German universities (Marburg, Heidelberg, and Halle) and ultimately submitting his doctoral dissertation in medicine to the University of Giessen in 1740. Worms's intellectual trajectory is typical for young Jews of that age who wished to broaden their horizons by studying medicine: above all by learning Latin, the gate to modern knowledge. Jewish medical practitioners, who in principle were restricted to Jewish patients (Juden-Arzt), were sternly criticized for their ignorance of Latin and consequent lack of university education. The study of Latin was the sine qua non for the emergence of maskilim. . In addition, the philo-Jewish atmosphere at several universities, part of the prevailing Pietism, eased the admission of Jewish students and in particular facilitated their graduation with a degree comparable to "Dr. med." Dr. Asher Anschel Worms was an outstanding intellectual, but the circumstances of his life were such that he regrettably left only a slight mark on the incipient Haskalah. Nonetheless, his life trajectory reveals most of the components that, taken in combination, went into the making of an early maskil: : the beginning of acculturation in the majority culture, notably by learning Latin and studying (mostly medicine) at a university, often in one with a Pietist ambiance; a favorable Jewish subculture, often connected to the milieu of the court Jews; and an economic independence that made it possible to publish the fruits of his intellectual labors.
This paper addresses the background and the content of a newly discovered fragment of a table for twilight in a nineteenthcentury Hebrew manuscript from Baghdad: MS 1202, Jerusalem, Mossad ha-Rav Kook, fol. 30a-b. This fragment contains the earliest known example in Hebrew of a table that yields twilight: in Table I, the times of sunrise and daybreak (counted from the previous sunset) are listed for each day of the four months that are preserved, where the difference between corresponding entries is the duration of morning twilight. For background, the conditions for the beginning of morning twilight (and the end of evening twilight), and tables based on them, are explored in scientific sources (up to 1916) as well as in some sources that concern twilight for purposes of Jewish ritual, with a focus on tables (up to 1905). In an appendix, two tables on another page in the same manuscript are described (fol. 29b). Table II.1 lists the dates of entry of the Sun into successive zodiacal signs in the course of a year and the corresponding length of day and night, where "day" refers to the time from daybreak to nightfall and "night" from nightfall to daybreak. Table II.2 lists the times of evening prayer and of daybreak for the same dates as in Table II.1. In addition, it is noted that the numerical notation on this page is unusual.
Sefer Yesirah ( The Book of Formation) ) was known throughout the Middle Ages in three primary versions: two similar in their internal arrangement-the "short recension" and the "long recension"; and the third, which differed in its internal arrangement from the other two, and is known as "Saadia's recension," which scholarly consensus has determined to be the product of late redaction and artificial arrangement. This study aims to establish the opposite chronology, that the version known as "Saadia's recension" reflects the oldest form of Sefer Yesirah. . In the first part of the article, I outline the general contours the history of scholarship on the so-called "Saadia's recension," which I suggest should instead be called "the earliest Genizahattested version," following the discovery of early attestations to this version among the fragments of the Cairo Genizah. (A more detailed account of the reception history of this version from the Cairo Genizah to its copying in the early modern period is offered in the appendix). In the second part, I discuss the unique structure of this earliest version and present a novel structural division of the treatise into four chapters, each of which is further divided into several sections. As I propose, each of the four chapters is organized around the same fixed series of lemmata, which in principle flow from the opening section of the treatise. While the sections of the chapters function as commentaries on these fixed lemmata, each chapter is distinguished by its focus on a different topos. In the third and final part of the article, I address the chronological relationship that emerges between the three primary versions of Sefer Yesirah, , basing my reassessment on the analyses of the earliest textual witnesses. I argue that the earliest version served as the basic material from which the treatise was later recast into a new format-that of the "long recension," which was later shortened to the "short recension." This rewriting consisted mainly of rearranging the sections of the treatise into new divisions based on formal and technical criteria. The change in the format of the treatise can still be traced in the earliest variants of all versions of the work, in particular an early corruption of its logical flow, which is reflected in all subsequent versions of the treatise known today.
Sefer ha-Kolel ("The Comprehensive Book") is a forty-chapter compendium, composed by an anonymous scholar in the mid-thirteenth century. It is devoted exclusively to astronomical and astrological knowledge and appears to be the earliest Hebrew work to cover all the branches of medieval astrology in a single composition. Its surviving chapters (Chapters 32-40) are comprised of long quotations borrowed from astronomical and astrological literature already available to Hebrew readers in the mid-thirteenth century. The present study offers an in-depth examination of the last five chapters of the work, which have never before been the subject of academic scholarship. It addresses the contents of these chapters, traces all literary sources used by the author, and indicates the author's original remarks. It also reports on a number of intriguing phenomena, such as the author's adjustment of crossreferences originally found in one of his sources so as to point at other sections of Sefer ha-Kolel. . In addition, the article asks two fundamental questions: Why should historians and sociologists of science be interested in compilations of already available texts, and what may we learn from the appearance of Sefer ha-Kolel?
