Time, Astronomy, and Calendars in the Jewish Tradition

388 Pages·2013·9.376 MB·English

by  Sacha Stern, Charles Burnett (eds.)

Time, Astronomy, and Calendars
in the Jewish Tradition
Time, Astronomy, and Calendars
Texts and Studies
Editors
Charles Burnett
Sacha Stern
Editorial Board
Dáibhí Ó Cróinín
Benno van Dalen
Gad Freudenthal
Tony Grafton
Leofranc Holford-Strevens
Bernard R. Goldstein
Alexander Jones
Daryn Lehoux
Jörg Rüpke
Julio Samsó
Shlomo Sela
John Steele
VOLUME 3
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/tac
Time, Astronomy, and Calendars
in the Jewish Tradition
Edited by
Sacha Stern and Charles Burnett
LEiDEn • BOSTOn
2014
On the cover: JTS MS 2596, f. 36b, detail of table illustrating the days of the week on which months
and festivals are fixed in various year-patterns, used with permission of the Library of the Jewish
Theological Seminary.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Time, astronomy, and calendars in the Jewish tradition / editors, Sacha Stern and Charles Burnett.
  p. cm. — (Time, astronomy, and calendars, iSSn 2211-632X ; v. 3)
 “The study of time, astronomy, and calendars, has been closely intertwined in the history of
Western culture and, more particularly, Jewish tradition. Jewish interest in astronomy was fostered
by the Jewish calendar, which was based on the courses of the sun and the moon, whist astronomy,
in turn, led to a better understanding of how time should be reckoned. Time, Astronomy, and
Calendars in the Jewish Tradition, edited by Sacha Stern and Charles Burnett, presents a wide
selection of original research in this multi-disciplinary field, ranging from Antiquity to the later
Middle Ages. its variety of approaches and sub-themes reflects the relevance of astronomy and
calendars to many aspects of Jewish, and more generally ancient and medieval, culture and social
history. Contributors include: Jonathan Ben-Dov, Reimund Leicht, Marina Rustow, Francois de
Blois, Raymond Mercier, Philipp nothaft, Josefina Rodriguez Arribas, ilana Wartenberg, israel
Sandman, Justine isserles, Anne C. Kineret Sittig, Katharina Keim, and Sacha Stern”—Summary.
 includes bibliographical references and index.
 iSBn 978-90-04-25965-2 (hardback : alk. paper) — iSBn 978-90-04-25966-9 (e-book : alk.
paper)
1. Jewish calendar—History—To 1500. 2. Jewish astronomy—History— To 1500. 3. Jewish
cosmology—History—To 1500. i. Stern, Sacha. ii. Burnett, Charles.
 CE35.T46 2014
 529’.326—dc23
2013036180
iSSn 2211-632X
iSBn 978-90-04-25965-2 (hardback)
iSBn 978-90-04-25966-9 (e-book)
Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nV, Leiden, The netherlands.
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
COnTEnTS
notes on the Contributors  ........................................................................... vii
Preface  ................................................................................................................ xiii
1. A Jewish Parapegma? Reading 1 Enoch 82 in Roman Egypt  ...... 1
Jonathan Ben-Dov
2. Observing the Moon: Astronomical and Cosmological Aspects
in the Rabbinic new Moon Procedure  ............................................... 27
Reimund Leicht
3. Cosmology as Science or Cosmology as Theology? Reflections
on the Astronomical Chapters of Pirke DeRabbi Eliezer  ............. 41
Katharina Keim
4. Some Early islamic and Christian Sources Regarding the Jewish
Calendar (9th–11th centuries)  ............................................................... 65
François de Blois
5. The Jewish Calendar Controversy of 921–22: Reconstructing
the Manuscripts and their Transmission History  ........................... 79
Marina Rustow and Sacha Stern
6. The Hebrew Calendrical Bookshelf of the Early Twelfth Century:
The Cases of Abraham bar Ḥiyya and Jacob bar Samson  ............ 97
Ilana Wartenberg
7. Scribal Prerogative in Modifying Calendrical Tables  ..................... 113
Israel M. Sandman
8. Astronomical Tables of Abraham bar Ḥiyya  .................................... 155
Raymond Mercier
9. The Sabbath Epistle by Abraham ibn Ezra: its Purpose and
novelty  ......................................................................................................... 209
Anne C. Kineret Sittig
vi contents
10. Medieval Jews and Medieval Astrolabes: Where, Why, How,
and What For?  ......................................................................................... 221
Josefina Rodríguez Arribas
11. Some Hygiene and Dietary Calendars in Hebrew Manuscripts
from Medieval Ashkenaz  ..................................................................... 273
Justine Isserles
12. Me pudet audire Iudeum talia scire: A Late Medieval Latin
School Text on the Jewish Calendar  ................................................ 327
C. Philipp E. Nothaft
nOTES On THE COnTRiBUTORS
Jonathan Ben-Dov
Dr. Jonathan Ben-Dov (Ph.D. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005), is
senior lecturer at the Department of Bible, University of Haifa. He studies
the Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism with other ancient literature, mainly
from ancient Mesopotamia and the Hellenistic world. Alongside general
studies on biblical historiography and prophecy, he is an expert on time
reckoning and astronomy in the ancient world, as expressed in Jewish
apocalyptic literature and in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ben-Dov is co-author
(with Shemaryahu Talmon and Uwe Glessmer) of the official publication
of the calendrical scrolls from Qumran (Oxford University Press, 2001).
His book Head of All Years appeared in 2008. An edited volume Living
the Lunar Calendar (with John Steele and Wayne Horowitz) appeared in
Oxbow Press, 2012. A volume on Ancient Jewish Sciences and the History of
Knowledge in Second Temple Literature (with Seth Sanders) is due in new
York University Press. Ben-Dov was granted the Michael Bruno Memorial
Prize for 2010 (given by the Rothschild Fund in israel), and has been a fel-
low at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in new York Univer-
sity (2010/11). He is director of an inter-university research and graduate
group on Jewish Culture in the Ancient World.
François de Blois
François de Blois is a specialist in Semitic and iranian languages and lit-
eratures who has worked extensively on the history of calendars and
chronological systems in the near East and Central Asia. His relevant
publications include: ‘The Persian calendar’, Iran XXXiV, 1996, pp. 39–54;
‘Ta’rīkh, i/1, (dates and eras in the islamic world)’, Encyclopaedia of Islam,
second edition; ‘The Bactrian calendar’ (with nicholas Sims-Williams),
Bulletin of the Asia Institute, new series, X, 1996 [published 1998] (Fest-
schrift V.A. Livshits), pp. 149–165; ‘The reform of the Zoroastrian calen-
dar in the year 375 of Yazdgird’, Jamshid Soroush Soroushian Memorial
Volume, ii, Bloomington 2003, pp. 139–145; ‘The Bactrian calendar: new
material and new suggestions’ (with nicholas Sims-Williams), Languages
of Iran: past and present. Iranian studies in memoriam David Neil MacKen-
zie, Wiesbaden 2005 [published: 2006], pp. 185–196; ‘Lunisolar calendars
in ancient iran’, Proceedings of the 5th congress of the Societas Iranologica
viii notes on the contributors
Europaea, ed. A. Panaino and A. Piras, i, Milan 2006 (published 2007),
pp. 39–52; ‘Du nouveau sur la chronologie bactrienne post-hellénistique:
l’ère de 223 ap. J.-C.’, Académie des inscriptions & belles-lettres: Comptes
rendus, 2006/ii (published 2008), pp. 991–997; Arabic, Persian and Guja-
rati manuscripts: The Hamdani Collection in the Library of the Institute of
Ismaili Studies, London and new York 2011. Currently he is working on a
new edition and translation of al-Bīrūnī’s Chronology as part of the ERC
research project ‘Calendars in antiquity and the Middle Ages’ at Univer-
sity College London.
Justine Isserles
Justine isserles (PhD, 2012, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris and
University of Geneva) is currently an associate researcher, EPHE-SAPRAT
(Paris) and a Leverhulme Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Depart-
ment of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London, as part
of a research project on ‘Medieval Jewish and Christian Calendar Texts in
England and Franco-Germany’, directed by Prof. Sacha Stern. Her areas of
interest include codicology, palaeography, medieval Jewish calendar texts,
liturgical-legal compendia from Ashkenaz and the cultural and intellectual
history of medieval Jewry in Franco-Germany. She is author of a forthcom-
ing book entitled Mahzor Vitry: étude d’un corpus de manuscrits réglant la
vie liturgique et légale des juifs en France et en Ashkenaz entre le XIIe et le
XIVe siècle (doctoral dissertation).
Katharina Keim
Katharina Keim is a doctoral research student at the University of Man-
chester. She is currently completing her thesis on Pirke deRabbi Eliezer,
supervised by Prof. Philip Alexander and Dr. Renate Smithuis. Her
research interests include the transmission and development of Jewish
tradition from Second Temple times through to Late Antiquity and the
early Middle Ages.
Reimund Leicht
Reimund Leicht is senior lecturer in the Department for Jewish Thought
and in the Program for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science
at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He has published extensively on the
history of philosophy and science in Jewish culture in late antiquity and
the Middle Ages, with a special focus on astrology and cosmology (see
his Astrologumena Judaica. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der astrologi-
notes on the contributors ix
schen Literatur der Juden, 2006). He is co-editor of the Complete Works
of the Christian Hebraist and Kabbalist Johannes Reuchlin and of Studies
on Steinschneider. Moritz Steinschneider and the Emergence of the Science
of Judaism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (2012).
Raymond Mercier
Dr Raymond Mercier was formerly a lecturer in theoretical physics and
mathematics and also the history of science and mathematics, lastly in
Southampton University; after retirement, Affiliated Research Scholar
in History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University. Researches
are in the history of mathematical astronomy, mainly in the Arabic, San-
skrit and Greek sources in the medieval period but include also the work of
English orientalists in the 17th century and the work of Jai Singh in the 18th.
The latest publication, with Anne Tihon, is Ptolemaiou Procheiroi Kanones.
Ptolemy’s Handy Tables, Vol.1, Peeters 2012. www.raymondm.co.uk
C. Philipp E. Nothaft
C. Philipp E. nothaft is a research associate at the Department of Hebrew &
Jewish Studies, UCL, where he has been working in the Leverhulme
Trust-funded project “Medieval Christian and Jewish Calendar Texts”
(2011–2013). Among his contributions to the project will be a volume of
studies, editions, and translations of Medieval Latin Texts on the Jewish
Calendar, which is currently being prepared for publication in this series.
His previous publications include the monograph Dating the Passion: The
Life of Jesus and the Emergence of Scientific Chronology (200–1600), TAC 1
(Leiden: Brill, 2012) as well as articles on various aspects of medieval and
early modern intellectual history, with a particular focus on chronological
topics.
Josefina Rodríguez Arribas
Josefina Rodríguez Arribas is Researcher at the Warburg institute (Univer-
sity of London). She is currently working on a project funded by the AHRC
about the different values and roles associated with the astrolabe in Jew-
ish culture (11th–16th centuries) and finishing a book on the emergence
and constitution of the astronomical terminology in medieval Hebrew
(11th–12th centuries). Her interest focuses on medieval astronomy and
astrology, technical terminology in Hebrew, medieval science in religious
contexts, and the Greek and Latin legacies in medieval Judaism. She has
published a book (El cielo de Sefarad: los judíos y los astros, 2011) and