The attribution of the Ibn Ezra supercommentary Avvat Nefesh to Asher ben Abraham Crescas reconsidered
Nowhere in the philosophical medieval supercommentary on Abraham ibn Ezra's Pentateuch commentary called Avvat Nefesh ("The Desire of the Soul") does the author explicitly give his name. Old French words and ignorance of Arabic indicate French provenance, with Provence the most likely...
| Published in: | Hebrew Union College annual / Jewish Institute of Religion |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
College
1995
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| In: |
Hebrew Union College annual / Jewish Institute of Religion
|
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Judaism
/ Exegesis
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| RelBib Classification: | BH Judaism HB Old Testament |
| Further subjects: | B
Ezra
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| Summary: | Nowhere in the philosophical medieval supercommentary on Abraham ibn Ezra's Pentateuch commentary called Avvat Nefesh ("The Desire of the Soul") does the author explicitly give his name. Old French words and ignorance of Arabic indicate French provenance, with Provence the most likely region because of the known interest there in philosophy, beginning with the twelfth century. The earliest dated manuscript of Avvat Nefesh (Vatican Ebr. MS 104) is dated 1399 CE. Manuscripts of the work attribute it variously to Jedaiah (ha-Penini) Bedersi (c. 1270—1340), to Levi ben Gershom (1288-1344), or to Asher ben Abraham Crescas (first half of 15th century). Scholarship has followed the opinion of the nineteenth-century bibliographer Moritz Steinschneider that the author was the Asher ben Abraham (Bonan) Crescas whose commentary on Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed has been printed with the Guide since the 1553 Sabionetta edition. This article traces the history of scholarship on the authorship of Avvat Nefesh, attempts to call into question the attribution of Avvat Nefesh to Asher ben Abraham Crescas, and suggests we may never know the real author. The article suggests that the three Avvat Nefesh manuscripts with the Crescas attribution may all be later than the Sabionetta edition, when Crescas was certainly more widely known than Jedaiah Bedersi and possibly than Levi ben Gershom. Bodleian MS Mich. 132 is clearly dated 1736, and the other two manuscripts may also be after 1553. The Guide commentary by Asher ben Abraham Bonan Crescas (on 2.30) cites a long passage found in Avvat Nefesh (in the excursus on Maimonides' view of creation [2v.17-4r.4 in Vatican Ebr. 107]). This may be what led Steinschneider (and Wolf, Zunz, and Dukes before him) to posit a common author. But the Guide commentary attributes the passage to Jedaiah Bedersi. It may be that Crescas quoted from a manuscript of Avvat Nefesh which like Vatican Ebr. 104 had an attribution to Jedaiah. Dissimilarities between Avvat Nefesh and the Crescas Guide commentary argue against a common author. Perhaps it is best to say that Avvat Nefesh was probably not written by any of the people it is attributed to in the manuscripts and that we do not know who its author was, though we place it generally in the mid-fourteenth century. |
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| ISSN: | 0360-9049 |
| Contains: | In: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Hebrew Union College annual / Jewish Institute of Religion
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