Gersonides' Afterlife

Ofer Elior, Ph.D. (2011), Ben-Gurion University, is Research Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at Ben-Gurion University. He has published a monograph, critical editions and many articles on medieval Jewish philosophy, including a critical edition of Gersonides’ The Wars of the Lord, Treatises I–IV (Tel Aviv, 2018). Gad Freudenthal, Ph.D. (1981), Université de Paris I, is Senior Research Fellow Emeritus at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris. He has written extensively on the reception of science and philosophy in Jewish cultures, and edited numerous volumes including Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Cambridge, 2011). David Wirmer, Ph.D. (2010), University of Bonn, is Professor of Arabic and Hebrew Philosophy at the University of Cologne. He has published monographs and articles on Arabic natural philosophy and epistemology, including Vom Denken der Natur zur Natur des Denkens (Berlin, 2014).

Subseries Editor’s Liminary Note: Gersonides’ Afterlife—Towards a Collaborative Working Program

Editors’ Preface

List of Figures and Tables

Part 1 The Reception of Gersonides’ Philosophical and Halakhic Oeuvre



1 “Composition, Not Commentary”: Gersonides’ Commentary on the Isagoge of Porphyry and Its Afterlife

 Charles H. Manekin



2 The Supercommentaries of Gersonides and His Students on Averroes’s Epitomes of the Physics and the Meteorology

 Steven Harvey and Resianne Fontaine



3 Crescas’ Relationship to Gersonides

 Warren Zev Harvey



4 From Denunciation to Appreciation: Gersonides in the Eyes of Members of the Ibn Shem Ṭov Family

 Doron Forte



5 Gersonides and His Sephardic Critics

 Seymour Feldman



6 A Fifteenth-Century Reader of Gersonides: Don Isaac Abravanel, Providence, Astral Influences, Active Intellect, and Humanism

 Cedric Cohen Skalli and Oded Horezky



7 Gersonides’ Philosophy in Fifteenth-Century Byzantium: Shabbetai ben Malkiel ha-Kohen’s Defense of Averroes’s Theory of Material Intellect

 Ofer Elior



8 Gersonides’ Reception in the Ashkenazi Tradition

 Tamás Visi



9 The Karaite Reception of Gersonides

 Daniel J. Lasker



10 Gersonides’ Biblical Commentaries in a Fifteenth-Century Slavic Translation of the Bible

 Moshe Taube



11 Gersonides’ Responsa and Their Reception

 Pinchas Roth



Part 2 The Reception of Gersonides’ Astronomical and Astrological Oeuvre



12 The Lunar Cycle of 11,325 Days

 José Chabás and Bernard R. Goldstein



13 The Afterlife of Gersonides’ Cross-Staff and of the Poem Dedicated to It

 Gad Freudenthal



14 Violas de Rodez’ Political Prognostication for the Year 1355: Reaction to the Prognostications for 1345–1355?

 Hagar Kahana-Smilansky



Part 3 Printing and Reading Histories



15 The Reception History of Gersonides’ Writings, according to Their Early Printing History (Fifteenth–Sixteenth Centuries)

 Zeev Gries



16 Gersonides Hebraicus atque Latinus: Some Remarks on Levi ben Gershom’s Works and the Reading and Book-Collecting Cultures of the Renaissance

 Michela Andreatta



17 Censoring/“Improving” Gersonides: The Case of the Toʿalot

 Menachem Kellner



Part 4 Gersonides’ Oeuvre in Nineteenth-Century Germany



18 Rabbi Abraham Nager and Ludwig Philippson—The Revisor and Sponsor of the Leipzig Edition of Gersonides’ Milḥamot Ha-Shem (1866): The Wissenschaft des Judentums and Orientalistik in Nineteenth-Century Germany (a Case Study)

 Gad Freudenthal



19 The Rediscovery of Gersonides as a Religious Philosopher by the Wissenschaft des Judentums (1860–1890)

 George Y. Kohler



20 Benzion Kellermann’s German Translation of Gersonides’ Milḥamot ha-Shem (1914–1916): The History of a Scholarly Failure

 Torsten Lattki



Part 5 Late Repercussions of Gersonides’ Oeuvre



21 Notes on Gersonides’ Place in Religious-Zionist Thought

 Dov Schwartz



Index