Abstract: The medieval Hebrew tradition of Euclid's Elements is composed of a primary transmission comprising several different translations, and a secondary transmission (epitomes, commentaries, etc.).1 In recent years, while studying texts of both transmissions, focusing on Book I, I discovered an interesting addition to the first proposition: instructions for constructing an isosceles triangle. Following a brief discussion of this problem and its solutions in the Greek, Arabic, and Latin traditions, I will examine the constructions in the Hebrew texts and their peculiarities.There is no answer to this question in the first three books of Euclid's Elements. We do find the following definition of isosceles triangle—"that ... Read More Keywords: Euclid; Comtino, Mordecai ben Eliezer,; Cities and towns; Geographical positions; Auroras; Astronomy; Judaism and science PubDate: 2019-04-11T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Scientific literature in Hebrew, and notably its mathematical branch, originated at the start of the twelfth century1 and continued through the sixteenth century, in very different places, eras, and cultural contexts.2 In this paper we will present a rather late and highly interesting link in this tradition: Rabbi Mordekhai Komtino in fifteenth-century Constantinople.Mordekhai ben Eliezer Komtino, also spelled Komtiano or Komatiano3 (1402–1482), is one link in the line of Jewish polymaths who, in addition to their commentaries on canonical texts, also wrote on the sciences;4 in his case, astronomy and mathematics. We should also underscore the frequent references to the sciences in his exegetical works, including ... Read More Keywords: Euclid; Comtino, Mordecai ben Eliezer,; Cities and towns; Geographical positions; Auroras; Astronomy; Judaism and science PubDate: 2019-04-11T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: There are not many lists of the coordinates of cities in medieval Hebrew.1 In 2017, José Chabás and I described a geographical list included among the tables of Isaac Israeli and showed that the longitudes of the cities listed in it were counted from the "meridian of water," assumed to be 90° west of Arin, a city in India, which was identified as the center of the inhabited world.2 This meridian, in the Atlantic Ocean, lies 17;30° west of the "standard" prime meridian, the Canary Islands (also called the Fortunate Islands). The convention of taking the Canary Islands as the prime meridian goes back to Ptolemy's Geography.3 We noted several other geographical lists in Hebrew based on the meridian of water. I can ... Read More Keywords: Euclid; Comtino, Mordecai ben Eliezer,; Cities and towns; Geographical positions; Auroras; Astronomy; Judaism and science PubDate: 2019-04-11T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, MS 2601, fol. 165b, contains a brief report of an unusually bright object in the sky observed in August 1473 in Lecce (Apulia), Italy. The text immediately preceding it is Pseudo-Ptolemy's Centiloquium, but the report of this observation has no strong connection to it other than the general context of astrology and planetary conjunctions.1 According to a private communication from F. Richard Stephenson, a physicist who has written about similar observations, the phenomenon described in this report was probably an auroral display (despite the relatively southern location of Lecce, ca. 40° N). However, there was no technical term for "aurora" in the Middle Ages, and ... Read More Keywords: Euclid; Comtino, Mordecai ben Eliezer,; Cities and towns; Geographical positions; Auroras; Astronomy; Judaism and science PubDate: 2019-04-11T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Eurocentric history has been criticized for several decades, and a "global" approach to the writing of history is now widely encouraged. Victor Katz's first sourcebook The Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam (Princeton, 2007) contributed much to the global history of mathematics. The present volume adopts the same approach, but the scope of the book is defined geographically: it offers a comprehensive history of mathematics in medieval Europe that includes mathematical texts written in Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic. The interaction between Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Europe during the Middle Age promoted the advancement of the sciences, so it is reasonable to present their achievements ... Read More Keywords: Euclid; Comtino, Mordecai ben Eliezer,; Cities and towns; Geographical positions; Auroras; Astronomy; Judaism and science PubDate: 2019-04-11T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This book is a gem: small, highly dense, and precious. It visibly is the fruit of many years of studying Gersonides' works and, more important, of thinking about them. Ruth Glasner mostly examines Gersonides' work in science and identifies the evolution of his thought. Gersonides straddled two disciplines: natural philosophy and astronomy. Committed to a realist epistemological stance, Gersonides sought to create a "unified theory" of both. Glasner describes the fruit of his efforts to do so.Chapter 1 delineates the incompatibility between the normative Aristotelian theory and mathematical astronomy. This sets the stage for Gersonides' scientific endeavor. Next, in Chapter 2, comes an "outline" of Gersonides' ... Read More Keywords: Euclid; Comtino, Mordecai ben Eliezer,; Cities and towns; Geographical positions; Auroras; Astronomy; Judaism and science PubDate: 2019-04-11T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This impressive tome is a considerable scholarly achievement. In it Ram Ben-Shalom, who for many years was associated with the Open University of Israel and is now a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, surveys the history of the Jews in the Midi (Provence and Languedoc) in great detail. The book has two parts. Part I (7 chapters) describes the early history of the Jews in the Midi; their institutions; the place of women in the community; the ups and downs in the relationships between the Jews and the Church, including the religious polemics; and, finally, the last expulsion of the Jews from Provence (1498). Part II (11 chapters) is devoted to intellectual history, or, as Ben-Shalom puts it, "the ... Read More Keywords: Euclid; Comtino, Mordecai ben Eliezer,; Cities and towns; Geographical positions; Auroras; Astronomy; Judaism and science PubDate: 2019-04-11T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This impressive tome contains critical editions and English translations of a number of late–fifteenth-century Eastern Slavic versions of medieval Hebrew works, such as the Hebrew version of al-Ghazālī's Intentions of the Philosophers, and [pseudo-]Maimonides' Millot higgayon. To understand how these unlikely translations came to be one has to hark back to the medieval history of the territories that today cover Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Lithuania.By the mid-thirteenth century, almost all the Rus'ian principalities, founded some three hundred years earlier by Swedish (and Finnish') Vikings along the rivers route between the Baltic Sea, Lake Ladoga, the Valdai Hills, and southwards to Kyiv, had been overrun ... Read More Keywords: Euclid; Comtino, Mordecai ben Eliezer,; Cities and towns; Geographical positions; Auroras; Astronomy; Judaism and science PubDate: 2019-04-11T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Editor's note: For books published in Hebrew, the English title is given in parentheses as found in the book itself, or (if none is given) in our translation. Authors ' names are given according to their common English spelling, usually as indicated by the publisher. The reviews are by the Editor, unless otherwise indicated.Abraham Ibn Ezra's Introductions to Astrology. A Parallel Hebrew-English Critical Edition of the Book of the Beginning of Wisdom and the Book of the Judgments of the Zodiacal Signs. Abraham Ibn Ezra's Astrological Writings, Volume 5. Edited, translated, and annotated by Shlomo Sela. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017. 822 pp. Glossaries, indexes, bibliography.Abraham Ibn Ezra was fortunate to find in ... Read More Keywords: Euclid; Comtino, Mordecai ben Eliezer,; Cities and towns; Geographical positions; Auroras; Astronomy; Judaism and science PubDate: 2019-04-11T00:00:00-05:00 Issue No:Vol. 5. (2019)
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