Isaac Israeli haZaken, haRoffe

Abū Yaʿḳūb Isḥāḳ b. Sulaymān al-Isrā-ʾīlī, abū yaʿḳūb (ca. 243/855 - ca. 343/955), physician, médical writer and philosopher, was born in Egypt and appointed court physician by ʿUbayd Allāh al-Mahdī after his émigration to Ḳayrawān at about the age of fifty. His high reputation among his fellow-Jews is attested by Saʿīd (Seʿadya) al-Fayyūmī’s letters consulting him on philosophical and scientific matters.

His medical works were translated into Latin by Constantine the African (1087) and enjoyed great esteem in the Middle Ages (printed in Omnia opera Ysaac , Lyons 1575). Of his philosophical writings the Kitāb al-Ḥudūd wa ’l-rusūm was popular among the Latin schoolmen, who know it in two versions (edited by J. T. Muckle in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen age , xii-xiii, Paris 1937-38).

Mediaeval Jewish writers were equally familiar with the work. It was twice translated into Hebrew (see A. Altmann, in JSS, ii (1957), 232 ff.). The Kitāb al-Ḏj̲awāhir has survived only in fragments discovered by A. Borisov and edited by S. M. Stem ( Journal of Jewish Studies , vii (1956), 13-29). The most extensive treatise is the Kitāb al-Usṭuḳuṣṣāt , extant in a Latin version (contained in Omnia opera Ysaac) and in two Hebrew ones by Abraham ibn Ḥasday (ed. by S. Fried, 1900) and by Moses ibn Tibbon ( ?) respectively. The “Chapter on the Elements” preserved in a Hebrew Ms ( S̲h̲aʿar hayesodot̲h̲ ) has been shown by A. Altmann, following a suggestion by Gershom G. Scholem, to be another work of al-Isrāʾīlī’s (Journal of Jewish Studies, vii (1956), 31-57).

Al-Isrāʾīlī, the father of Jewish Neoplatonism, is largely influenced by al-Kindī and by a pseudo-Aristotelian neoplatonic source which Altmann discovered in the “Chapter on the Elements” and which Stern has identified as underlying also such works as the Long Version of the Theology of Aristotle (discovered by Borisov) and Ibn Ḥasday’s Prince and Ascetic (see Oriens , xiii-xiv (1961), 58-120).

(A. Altmann)

was an accomplished physician and one of the earliest medieval Jewish philosophers. Dismissed by Maimonides as “merely a physician” whose books were “futile and vain,” he introduced Neoplatonism into Jewish thought and by so doing had an influence on later developments in Jewish philosophy,

Born in Egypt, Israeli relocated to Qayrawan, where he was court physician to the Aghlabid amir and the Fatimid caliph. His books, intended by the childless Israeli as a guarantor of his immortality, include both medical treatises (on such subjects as foodstuffs and drugs, the pulse, fevers, and urine), and philosophical works (on the spirit and the soul, definitions, substances, and the elements). He wrote them in Arabic, but only Hebrew and Latin translations of his writings survive. Israeli’s medical works were studied for centuries in medieval and Renaissance Europe, where he was dubbed the eximius monarcha medicinae (distinguished monarch of medicine). His philosophy followed the Neoplatonism of Plotinus (205–270), relying upon an unknown Neoplatonic work, traces of which are found as well in later Jewish philosophical writings. Israeli was also influenced by Aristotle as mediated by the first Muslim Aristotelian, Yaʿqūb al-Kindī (Alkindus; ca. 800–ca. 873).

As a Neoplatonist Israeli taught that the world is the product of divine emanation, but whether he saw the emanation as eternal and direct from God (the standard Neoplatonic position) or by means of an intermediary stage which God created ex nihilo is a matter of dispute. In any event, it would seem that for Israeli, unlike some other Neoplatonists, emanation was not necessarily a timeless process, nor did it indicate lack of divine volition. Since he saw the One Creator as having both will and power, his view of God was more compatible with Jewish tradition (as compared to Solomon ibn Gabirol, who saw the divine will and power as independent of God). Israeli outlined the subsequent hypostases (levels of existence progressively more distant from the Creator) as first form (wisdom) and first matter (intellect), the rational soul, the animal soul, nature (the spheres or heavenly bodies), and finally the four elements. He described the process of emanation using Neoplatonic imagery that compares it, for instance, to the radiance of the sun from which light is emanated without the sun’s becoming diminished. The farther each stage is from the Creator, the less One-like it is. Thus, although God is neither physical nor multiple, the final stage, the four elements, is both. Emanation is the link between the levels of existence and explains how it was possible for an incorporeal and uniquely one God to produce matter in its manifold forms.

Israeli presents the traditional Jewish view of heaven and hell in Neoplatonic terms. The created soul attempts to return to its source by means of purification and illumination, intending to unite with the supernal light, not with God Himself. The resultant bliss is equivalent to the bliss of paradise. In contrast, the wicked, incapable of transcending their impurity, are destined for torment by heat and fire. Similarly, he understands the mechanics of prophecy in the context of Neoplatonic accounts of the intellect and the soul; the prophet’s role is to direct people toward righteousness. Israeli’s student Dunash ben Tamīm, who most likely held similar views, maintains that there are different levels of prophecy depending on the prophet’s capabilities: created voice; spirit, including vision; and speech, which is the highest light, attained by Moses. Unlike Dunash, Israeli makes few references to traditional Jewish ideas and sources, and that is one of the reasons for his limited appeal to later generations of Jews.

Although Israeli was older than his fellow countryman Saʿadya Gaon, who sent philosophical questions to him, it is Saʿadya who holds pride of place as the first medieval Jewish thinker to try to bridge the perceived gaps between rationalism and the Jewish tradition in works suffused with both theology and multiple references to biblical and rabbinic literature. Maimonides’s criticism of Israeli may also have limited the diffusion of his ideas. Nevertheless, Israeli influenced other Jewish Neoplatonists, like Solomon ibn Gabirol and Joseph ibn Ṣaddiq, as well as Jewish mystics, such as the members of the Gerona school.

Daniel J. Lasker

Bibliography

Altmann, Alexander. “Creation and Emanation in Isaac Israeli: A Reappraisal,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. I. Twersky (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1979), vol. 1, pp. 1–15.

——— and S. M. Stern. Isaac Israeli: A Neoplatonic Philosopher of the Early Tenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958).

Ben-Sasson, Menahem. The Emergence of the Local Jewish Community in the Muslim World: Qayrawan, 800–1057 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996) [Hebrew].

Wolfson, Harry A. “The Meaning of Ex Nihilo in Isaac Israeli,” Jewish Quarterly Review 50 (1959): 1–12; repr. in Wolfson, Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), vol. 1, pp. 222–233.

In addition to the works mentioned in the text: J. Guttmann, Die philosophischen Lehren des Isaak b. Salomon Israeli, Münster 1911

A. Altmann and S. M. Stern, Isaac Israeli, a Neoplatonic philosopher of the early tenth century, Oxford 1958 reviewed by M. Plessner, in Ḳiryat Sefer, xxxv (1960), 457 ff.

J. D. Latham, Isaac Israeli’s Kitāb al-Ḥummayāt and the Latin and Castilian Texts, in JSS, xiv (1969), 80-95.

Altmann, A.. "Isḥāḳ b. Sulaymān al-Isrā-ʾīlī." Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs. Brill Online, 2013. <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-isla...>

Daniel J. Lasker. "Israeli, Isaac ben Solomon." Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Brill Online, 2013. Reference. <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-...>