Procrastination Device

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http://dailymedieval.blogspot.com/2025/12/learning-lesson.html

Hillel was strictly orthodox in his Judaism, proclaiming his absolute belief in the miracles outlined in the Torah and Talmud, despite some of these stories being considered more symbolic by other scholars. He wrote a book that covers the philosophic works of the time from Arabs, Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

He also translated some of the works of Thomas Aquinas into Hebrew, accepting Aquinas' idea of the soul's immortality. He referred to Aquinas as the "the Maimonides of his age."

Hillel had originally been opposed to Maimonides, but changed after he saw his teacher, Gerondi, change his attitude toward Maimonides. Gerondi had been opposed to Maimonides' rationalist approach to religious questions, and had caused the authorities of Paris to round up copies of Maimonides' works and burn them, specifically the Guide to the Perplexed. Gerondi regretted convincing the Christian leaders to take such a bold action against Jewish literature, especially when years later they burned all the copies they could find of the Talmud. Hillel saw Gerondi's regret, and how he radically hanged his attitude toward Maimonides.

Hillel moved to Forli in northern Italy when he was much older. While there he learned that a Tosafist (someone known for making commentaries on the Talmud), a French Jew named Solomon Petit, was speaking out strongly against Maimonides. Aware of how Gerondi's anti-Maimonidean crusade turned out, Hillel addressed two long letters to his friend Isaac Gajo, explaining what had happened and asking him not to give any support to Petit's complaints.

What was the problem with Maimonides? What was the controversy about? I'll give you a taste of that tomorrow.

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http://dailymedieval.blogspot.com/2025/12/burning-talmud.html

He was part of a faction that was opposed to Maimonides, whose Guide for the Perplexed was very popular. The Guide's logical and philosophical examination of concepts such as whether God was corporeal or whether something could be created from nothing contradicted many earlier scholars.

Gerondi organized a victory over Maimonides' teaching by convincing the authorities in Paris to round up any copies of the Guide for the Perplexed and burn them. Unfortunately for Gerondi, this attack on the works of a fellow Jew inspired anger of local Jews against Gerondi. Some years later, on the same public spot where Maimonides' works had been burned, the authorities burned several wagonloads of the Talmud and other works.

Gerondi felt remorse, blaming himself for originally bringing Christian authorities into the philosophic debate between Jews. In the synagogue at Montpellier in France he proclaimed publicly his shame at fighting against Maimonides.

Vowing to do penance by traveling to Israel and prostrating himself on Maimonides' grave, he left France but was stopped at Barcelona and then in Toledo. He stayed in Toledo and became known as a great Talmudic scholar who also frequently quoted Maimonides. He died suddenly in 1263, some said because he never finished his vow to do penance in Israel.

His attitude toward Maimonides and the shift after the burning of the Talmud is told to us by his student, Hillel ben Samuel. Hillel was not only a Talmudic scholar but also a physician. Tomorrow I'll tell you how he learned his lesson from Gerondi's story.

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http://dailymedieval.blogspot.com/2025/12/abner-of-burgos-converso.html

The Jewish belief in a messiah gave rise to many claims over the centuries that he was imminent. In Avila, in central Spain, a Jew named Nissim ben Abraham actively preached that the messiah would appear in 1295 on the last day of the month of Tammuz (which can fall in late June or early July). Nissim was said to be a simple man who was inspired by an angel and wrote a mystic work, "The Wonder of Wisdom."

Many were convinced by Nissim, and they eagerly awaited the messiah. Like predictions of the Second Coming or of the End of the World, no messiah appeared. What they experienced, however, was a rain of crosses that stuck to their clothing (so they described to Abner). The disappointment and depression that followed among Nissim's adherents was profound.

Abner, a scholar of the Bible and the Talmud as well as a doctor, found himself being turned to by these disappointed people, treating them and trying to assuage their grief. Curiously, his discussions with these people about the lack of a messiah and their report of the appearance of the Christian symbol made him think "outside the box" about Judaism and its promises.

In a post-conversion work by Abner, Moreh tsedeḳ ("Teacher of righteousness"), he described how some 25 years after Avila he had a dream/revelation of a man who told him to become a "teacher of righteousness." About three years later he had the same dream, but this time noticed that the man had crosses on his clothes. This was his tipping point: he chose to embrace Christianity. He became a Neo-Platonic Christian and wrote treatises against Judaism. He believed that his version of Christianity was superior to others' and to Judaism. He preached that conversion to Christianity was the only way for Jews to get out of their perpetual Exile.

He was appointed sacristan of the collegiate church of Valladolid. This made some Jews accuse him of converting for material gain. What they did not understand, however, was that a sacristan was far from a lucrative position. He wrote extensive works (not all extant, or available in English) supporting conversion of Jews. He also debated rabbis. His arguments to King Alfonso XI of Castile that a Jewish prayer, the Birkat haMinim, blasphemed the Christian God and cursed Christians, led to the prayers being declared forbidden as off February 1336. The Birkat declares a curse on all heretics (so he had an ironic point, I guess).

We have his works, but no record of his death. 1347 was the last known record of him publishing. It is possible that he was a victim of the Black Death.

There were a few claims of a Jewish Messiah in the Middle Ages (and earlier and later). We'll look at some of them tomorrow.

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http://dailymedieval.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-christian-kabbalah.html

Ramon Llull (c.1232–1316), who also wrote of worldly affairs like knighthood, was one of the first known Christians to look at Kabbalah, although his study of it was mostly to develop ways to debate Jews and influence conversion to Christianity. His interest got him in trouble because the concepts he was talking about attracted the attention of the Inquisition.

The conversion of Spanish Jews did bring Kabbalistic concepts to Christian theology, especially in Spain prior to 1492. One prominent converso was Abner of Burgos (c.1270 – c.1347), a Bible and Talmud scholar who had a dream of crosses after he developed religious doubts because of a failed Messianic movement in 1295. He embraced and used Jewish sources to try to prove the validity of Christianity.

Another converso was Pablo/Paulus de Heredia (c.1405), who wrote an "Epistle of Secrets" which is considered the first true work of Christian Kabbalah. Not the scholar that Abner was, Pablo's work misquotes Kabbalah sources and "quotes" sources that are non-existent.

A Christian who adopted Kabbalistic ideas was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), a student of Marsilius Ficino. (The illustration shows Pico in the center with Ficino in red next to him.) Kabbalah was introduced to him by another tutor, Rabbi Johanan Alemanno, whose idea was that the study of magic was the ultimate goal and expression of intellectual and spiritual mastery. Pico became convinced that the Kabbalah was necessary to understand the world and the divine, and had a Jewish convert translate the entire body of kabbalistic literature into Latin for him (now being published in its entirety). Pico's "900 Theses" became a foundation of Western esotericism.

So how exactly does a lifelong Jew decide to convert to Christianity (I mean, when not being forced)? Let's examine Abner of Burgos' personal journey tomorrow, and whether he did it for financial gain.

http://dailymedieval.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-christian-kabbalah.html

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http://dailymedieval.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-sefer-yetzirah.html

While there are older Jewish mystical traditions, Sefer Yetzirah is the first book of what might be called proto-Kabbalah, the school of Jewish mysticism that emerged in the 13th century. Sefer Yetzirah has its own sacred structures and ways of understanding the world that differ in significant ways from the kabbalistic understanding, but many of its concepts significantly influenced later Jewish mystical tradition and practice. [source]

It primarily seems to be a linguistic work, because it claims the Hebrew alphabet is the key to understanding how the universe was created. It even distinguishes how letters and words are formed by the mouth:

In contrast to the Jewish grammarians, who assumed a special mode of articulation for each of the five groups of sounds, the "Sefer Yeẓirah" says that no sound can be produced without the tongue, to which the other organs of speech merely lend assistance. Hence the formation of the letters is described as follows:  with the tip of the tongue and the throat;  between the lips and the tip of the tongue;  in the middle ([?]) of the tongue;  by the tip of the tongue; and by the tongue, which lies flat and stretched, and by the teeth (ii. 3). The letters are distinguished, moreover, by the intensity of the sound necessary to produce them, and are accordingly divided ... [Jewish Encyclopedia]

The illustration above (a poster available here) shows each of the letters and explains its importance according to the Sefer. 

And the letters show how they connect to the creation of the universe:

The linguistic theories of the author of the "Sefer Yeẓirah" are an integral component of his philosophy, its other parts being astrological and Gnostic cosmogony. The three letters are not only the three "mothers" from which the other letters of the alphabet are formed, but they are also symbolical figures for the three primordial elements, the substances which underlie all existence. The mute מ is the symbol of the water in which the mute fish live; the hissing ש corresponds to the hissing fire; and the airy א represents the air; while as the air occupies a middle position between the fire which reaches upward and the water which tends downward, so the א is placed between the mute מ and the hissing ש. [Jewish Encyclopedia]

The "32 paths of wisdom" that the Sefer Yetzirah claims God used to create the universe are the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the ten sefirot, later referred to as ten emanations or attributes of God. These sefirot are crucial to later Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism. Let's next take a look at how Jewish mysticism developed.

http://dailymedieval.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-sefer-yetzirah.html

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http://dailymedieval.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-book-of-formation.html

Not only is its origin a topic for debate, so is its purpose. It has been considered to be a mystical work about the Kabbalah, an explanation of how the universe came to be, and a work about linguistic theory. Each of these theories can be supported by its opening statement:

By thirty-two mysterious paths of wisdom Yah has engraved [all things], [who is] the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, the living God, the Almighty God, He that is uplifted and exalted, He that Dwells forever, and whose Name is holy; having created His world by three [derivatives] of [the Hebrew root-word] sefar : namely, sefer (a book), sefor (a count) and sippur (a story), along with ten calibrations of empty space and twenty-two letters [of the Hebrew alphabet], [of which] three are principal [letters] (i.e. א מ ש‎), seven are double-sounding [consonants] (i.e. בג"ד כפר"ת‎) and twelve are ordinary [letters] (i.e. ה ו ז ח ט י ל נ ס ע צ ק‎).

(This idea, that the Hebrew alphabet is the guide to God and the universe, found new life in the Modern Era in something called the Bible Code.)

There are different versions of it extant that have been annotated by different scholars. One shorter version annotated by Dunash ibn Tamim, a pupil of Isaac Judaeus, argues that Hebrew was the original universal language and Arabic is derived from it. He states:

If God assists me and prolongs my life, I shall complete the work in which I have stated that Hebrew is the original tongue of mankind and older than the Arabic; furthermore, the book will show the relationship of the two languages, and that every pure word in the Arabic can be found in the Hebrew; that the Hebrew is a purified Arabic; and that the names of certain things are identical in both languages.

A bold claim. The Sefer Yetzirah is the subject of almost as much speculation and annotation as the Bible. We'll continue our exploration of it tomorrow.

http://dailymedieval.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-book-of-formation.html

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http://dailymedieval.blogspot.com/2025/12/isaac-judaeus.html

He was born in Cairo and became known as an oculist (we've talked about medieval eye treatment before).  About 904 he became the court physician to Prince Abu Mudhar Ziyadat Allah III in Kairouan, capital of Tunisia. He studied general medicine while there.

After the death of Ziyadat in 909, Isaac became doctor to Caliph 'Ubaid Allah al-Mahdi, the founder of the Fatimid dynasty. The caliph enjoyed the witty repartee of his Jewish physician. Isaac began lecturing on medicine, and many people came to hear him speak as his fame spread. He continued to learn, studying astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and natural history.

He wrote medical manuals in Arabic which, in the Arabic-speaking world, were considered gems, but were unknown in Western Europe. The 12th century saw translators in Toledo striving to make many works available to a wider audience. Gerard of Cremona translated Isaac's Liber de Definitionibus (Book of Definitions) and Liber Elementorum (Book on the Elements) into Latin. Christian scholars started noticing his work, such as Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Nicholas of Cusa, and Vincent de Beauvais.

One of his works dealt with the urinary tract, which I covered a few years ago.

The years of his life are given as different dates according to the source. Encyclopedia Britannica says born 832/855, Egypt—died 932/955) and that he lived more than 100 years. His death has been declared as 932, 940, 942, 950, and 955.

One of his pupils, Dunash ibn Tamim, wrote a commentary on a work of Jewish mysticism that quotes Isaac so extensively that later scholars thought it was written by Isaac himself. Dunash and this work, the Sefer Yetzirah, will be our next line of topics.

http://dailymedieval.blogspot.com/2025/12/isaac-judaeus.html