Tuesday, January 26, 2010

A blessing for Ibn Ezra.



Willard Fiske, The Chess Monthly 3, August 1859 (although the clip above was from a book printed in 1912, chosen for its superior typographical beauty).

4 comments:

  1. If you hunt for it online, you can find the ibn Ezra's poem about chess. In English.
    Phil

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  2. Thanks. The poem, in English, was right before the little excerpt I clipped and posted above. :)

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  3. :)

    This is a bit off topic, but seing "astronomical" listed as one of his areas of erudition and in light of your other post on belief in Kabbalah...

    Ibn Ezra wrote several books of pure astrology and he seems to grant that field and a central place in his overall intellectual framework and understanding of Judaism.

    It seems like for a brief period between Maimonides and Kabbalah, there was this interlude when astrological material filled out the role of a "secret" or "inner" interpretation of the Torah-- for ibn Ezra, I think, and for Moshe Narboni, and probably others.

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  4. It seems like I forgot to come to a point in my post.

    I guess I'm just interested in whether there's been any scholarly work on this area or if it merits any.

    The texts I've seen (in dusty old library volumes) are replete with astrological and aristotelian jargon, in very difficult medieval hebrew. It seems like at least a glossary of this genre would be useful--along the lines of Efros's glossary of philosophical terms used by ibn Tibbon. Then there's the hinting/hiding used by the authors in regard to their ultimate positions. It requires decoding along the lines of what academics seem to love to do with Maimonides.

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