The The transformation of Averroes’s Epitome of the Organon from the Arabic into the Hebrew world

The Example of the Example

Abstract

Averroes’s epitome of the Organon, originally composed c.1157, had a complex reception in the Hebrew world, comprising an early translation by Jacob ben Makhir in 1289, a subsequent revision by unnamed ‘Scholars’, a self-professed new translation by Samuel ben Judah of Marseilles in 1329, and a soft revision found in a manuscript copied by Ezra Gatigno in 1356. This article looks into the stability of this transmission through a micro-analysis of the ‘argument by example’ in the Rhetoric. The discussion centers on the material challenges posed by the Arabic language (both in Arabic and in Hebrew characters), demonstrating how the graphical interchangeability of similar terms precipitated a series of interventions and decisions, from the preservation of lacunae to conjectural emendation. Beyond lexical variance, the analysis highlights how the translators’ differing grasp of the syntactic functions of Arabic particles led to divergent logical segmentations of the argument. Two appendices extend this inquiry: the first reevaluates Gatigno’s intellectual profile by assessing his knowledge of Arabic, while the second employs Abraham de Balmes’s sixteenth-century Latin translation as an aide to better understand the textual history of Samuel ben Judah’s version.