Maimonides' "Guide of the Perplexed" in Translation

A History from the Thirteenth Century to the Twentieth

Josef Stern, James T. Robinson, Yonatan Shemesh, Josef Stern, James T. Robinson, Yonatan Shemesh

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780226627878
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Moses Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed is the greatest philosophical text in the history of Jewish thought and a major work of the Middle Ages. For almost all of its history, however, the Guide has been read and commented upon in translation—in Hebrew, Latin, Spanish, French, English, and other modern languages—rather than in its original Judeo-Arabic. This volume is the first to tell the story of the translations and translators of Maimonides' Guide and its impact in translation on philosophy from the Middle Ages to the present day.A collection of essays by scholars from a range of disciplines, the book unfolds in two parts. The first traces the history of the translations of the Guide, from medieval to modern renditions. The second surveys its influence in translation on Latin scholastic, early modern, and contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, as well as its impact in translation on current scholarship. Interdisciplinary in approach, this book will be essential reading for philosophers, historians, and religious studies scholars alike.

PART I

The History of Translations of the Guide

1

Moreh ha-nevukhim

The First Hebrew Translation of the Guide of the Perplexed

JAMES T. ROBINSON

The Hebrew translation of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed is the best-documented translation we have from the Jewish Middle Ages. Documents survive relating to the first request made of Samuel Ibn Tibbon to translate it from Arabic into Hebrew in the 1190s. Two letters are extant from a larger correspondence between Ibn Tibbon and Maimonides regarding the proper method of translation and the contradictions in Maimonides’ treatment of providence. A first version of the translation was completed in 1204 and a revised version—revised in response to al-Ḥarizi’s rival translation—in 1213. The 1213 version circulated with Ibn Tibbon’s Perush ha-millot ha-zarot along with Ibn Tibbon’s marginal annotations and, beginning from the later thirteenth century, commentaries, glosses, and other reference tools.1

We have all of this—a substantial amount of data—along with impressive scholarship on the translation itself and its reception. This includes the linguistic studies by Moshe Goshen-Gottstein,2 Zev Harvey’s article and Carlos Fraenkel’s monograph on the marginal notes,3 the articles by Steven Harvey and Sarah Stroumsa on the letter from Maimonides to Ibn Tibbon on translation,4 and Yair Shiffman’s work comparing Ibn Tibbon’s rendering with that of his two rival translators, Judah al-Ḥarizi and Shem Tov Falaquera.5 And yet, despite the documentary evidence and despite the excellent scholarship on it, we are in many ways only at the beginning of research on Ibn Tibbon’s translation and its methods. There is, for instance, still no reliable edition of the Hebrew translation that sorts out and makes sense of the variations in the some 130 manuscripts that survive; this means that any research is by nature provisional.6 Nor has the translation been explored from literary and cultural perspectives, focusing on the language used, the rules governing language use, and the implication of choosing one term over another.

The goal of this chapter is to take a few steps forward in focusing on the literary and cultural dimensions of Ibn Tibbon’s translation of the Guide, with emphasis on his use of biblical and rabbinic language in the translation, the possible sources of and influences on his translation, the translation’s literalistic and nonliteralistic tendencies, the mechanical process that often applied in his transferring of a word from one linguistic-cultural context to another, and the impact of his translation choice on reception. Following a few remarks about Ibn Tibbon and his life and writings in general, the chapter will explore examples that fit into these categories: the use of biblical language mediated by Saadia Gaon’s Tafsīr, that is, his translation of the Bible from Hebrew into Arabic; the original use of biblical language unrelated to Saadia’s Tafsīr and often with exegetical significance; the use of rabbinic language and its repercussions; the literalistic and nonliteralistic tendencies of the translation, focusing on technical and nontechnical terms and on the rendering of proper names; and, finally, one of my favorite examples from Ibn Tibbon’s later commentary on Qohelet, which shows Ibn Tibbon at work as a translator, giving a clear description of how he translates a term by calque.

One final introductory note: throughout I rely on the earliest dated manuscripts of the Hebrew Guide: 1273 and 1283.7 Both are of Italian provenance and represent, as far as we can tell, a version of the revised translation of 1213.

Samuel Ibn Tibbon: Translator, Exegete, Philosopher, Maimonidean Enthusiast

Samuel Ibn Tibbon was born around 1165 in Lunel, which was a small but very active rabbinic center in southern France.8 At the time Lunel was home to the most important yeshivah in the region. Under the direction of Rabbi Meshullam ben Jacob, his sons, and successors, it attracted many of the brightest Jewish students and scholars in Europe. Rabbi Abraham ben David (Rabad) and Rabbi Zerahyah ha-Levi (Razah), for example, both studied in Lunel, where they knew each other and began their famous legal disputations. It was in Lunel, moreover, and in the surrounding regions, that kabbalah emerged, and a Hebrew tradition of philosophy, based on a corpus of texts translated from Arabic and Judeo-Arabic into Hebrew, began to develop, grow, and expand its influence.9

Lunel’s emergence as the center of Jewish philosophy and translation was due in large measure to Samuel’s father, Judah Ibn Tibbon. A refugee from the Almohad persecutions in Islamic Spain, Judah settled in Lunel in the 1150s, where he established himself as a physician, merchant, and, under the patronage of Meshullam and others, translator of Judeo-Arabic works into Hebrew. Over the course of twenty-five years, Judah produced Hebrew translations of several works of grammar, lexicography, philosophy, theology, and apologetics, including Jonah Ibn Janah’s Sefer ha-shorashim and Sefer ha-riqmah, Saadia Gaon’s Book of Beliefs and Opinions, Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s Choice of Pearls and Improvement of the Moral Qualities, Bahya Ibn Paquda’s Duties of the Heart, and Judah Halevi’s Kuzari. By rendering these works into Hebrew, Judah laid the foundations of a Hebrew philosophical library. He also created a technical scientific terminology that would continue to serve translators and original authors throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern period.10

On account of his translation work, Judah Ibn Tibbon earned the title “father of translators.” But while in Lunel, he fathered not only a corpus of Hebrew translations but a dynasty of Hebrew translators, which began with his son Samuel, whom he tried to make in his own image, after his likeness. Using local resources, but also bringing in tutors and books from abroad, Judah made every effort to educate his son according to the traditions of Islamic Spain. Samuel was instructed in Hebrew and Aramaic, Bible and Talmud, as well as Arabic, medicine, philosophy, and science. Through a variety of literary exercises described by his father in his famous ethical will—such as copying manuscripts and criticizing poems and epistles—Samuel was also introduced to the poetic and rhetorical traditions of Andalusia. But perhaps the most important aspect of his education was the weekly reading of the Bible together with Saadia Gaon’s Arabic translation, in order to sharpen his language skills and improve his translation technique. It seems that Judah’s emphasis on translation, more than any of his other efforts, would influence his son and direct his future projects and investigations.11

Judah’s son Samuel (henceforth referred to simply as Ibn Tibbon) began to work as a translator in his own right only after his father’s death. His first project, however, the translation of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, would be sufficient to provide him with a lifetime of inspiration. The project of translating the Guide into Hebrew began in the 1190s and continued, in one way or another, throughout his lifetime.12 He completed a first edition in 1204, a revised version with glossary (Perush ha-millot ha-zarot) in 1213, and seems to have worked on it later as well, adding marginal glosses, additional explications, and study tools, including a short treatise entitled “The Reason for the Table, Showbread, Menorah, and Sweet Savor,” which attempted to identify the reason for a commandment that Maimonides could not provide.13 Ibn Tibbon also translated other works by Maimonides, including his commentary on the Mishnah, Avot; the preface to his commentary on the Mishnah, Avot (“Eight Chapters”); the “Letter on Resurrection”; the “Letter to Yemen”; a letter from Maimonides on translation; and possibly the preface to the commentary on the Mishnah, Sanhedrin, Chapter 10 (“Heleq”).14 He also produced the first Hebrew versions of Aristotle and Averroes, translating the Meteorology in 1210 and, sometime later, three treatises on conjunction with the active intellect by Averroes and Averroes’ son ʿAbdallah.15 Other translations attributed to him, such as that of ʿAlī ibn Riḍwān’s commentary on Galen’s Ars parva, are, in my opinion, not his work.16

According to a manuscript colophon, the 1204 translation of the Guide was completed not in Lunel but in Arles. If this report is to be relied upon, then it would seem to mark the beginning of a period of extended travel in Ibn Tibbon’s life. He was in Barcelona and Toledo before 1210, and visited Alexandria twice, returning in 1210 and 1213.17 It seems that by 1211, moreover, he had already established his primary domicile in Marseille,18 where he would later teach his most famous pupil, Jacob Anatoli, and where he seems to have died, in 1232.19 These later years in Ibn Tibbon’s life, after 1213 in particular, were devoted more to exegesis and philosophy than to translation: it was then that he produced his two most important original works, his commentary on Ecclesiastes and Maʾamar yiqqawu ha-mayim.20 He also began, and perhaps partially completed, an esoteric explanation of Genesis, entitled Ner ha-ḥofeś;21 and planned, but apparently never began, a commentary on the internal meanings of the book of Proverbs.22

These later writings of philosophy and philosophical exegesis were instrumental in spreading the influence of Maimonides in Hebrew and creating the foundation for a Maimonidean tradition. They earned him a special place in the writings of later authors in Provence, Italy, the Byzantine world, and elsewhere, where he is cited as a philosophical-exegetical authority second only to the Master himself. The foundation of everything, however, was the translation of the Guide. In fact, one can argue that it was this translation—even m...