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INTRODUCTION
19

fections, comprehend what is the knowledge or life of God any more than he can grasp what God Himself is. Thus, Maimonides reconciles the two beliefs that man is free to choose, and that God is yet all-knowing.

C. SAMUEL IBN TIBBON AS A TRANSLATOR — HIS TRANSLATION OF THE SHEMONAH PERAḲIM

Samuel ibn Tibbon,[1] the most famous of an illustrious family of translators, by his translation of Maimonides' Moreh Nebukim, performed an inestimable service for Jewish philosophy. Written originally in Arabic, the Moreh would have remained a sealed book to the majority of Jews, had not Ibn Tibbon rendered it accessible. Had he not translated it, no doubt some one sooner or later would have accomplished that task, but it was very fortunate that one who was a contemporary of Maimonides, who had his entire confidence, and who could correspond with the author in regard to obscure passages, and receive valuable instructions from him, should have done the work. From the correspondence between Maimonides and the men of Lünel, Ibn Tibbon's birthplace, we note that Maimonides had a high regard for Samuel's ability as a translator, and honored him as a man of erudition.[2] It seems that the scholars of Lünel wrote to Maimonides asking him to translate the Moreh into Hebrew, but the answer came that Ibn Tibbon was already at work on it, and that Maimonides had faith in the translator.[3] He considered Ibn Tibbon a capable and skilled translator, and wondered at his knowledge of Arabic, although he did not live in an Arabic-speaking country.

Shortly after Ibn Tibbon translated the Moreh, Jehudah al-Ḥarizi, the poet, was asked by a number of scholars to do the same work. This, of course, implied that Ibn Tibbon's rendering was not satisfactory to them. They wished al-Ḥarizi to

  1. ↑ Born 1160, died 1230. See Renan-Neubauer, Les Rabbins Français, p. 573 ff.; also Les Ecrivains Français; Grätz, VI3, 205; Winter and Wünsche, Die Jud. Litteratur, II, 330, 385; M. Schloessinger, in JE., vol. VI, p. 548; Geiger, Judaism and its History (New York, 1911), pp. 375–376.
  2. ↑ On Maimonides' correspondence with the men of Lünel, see HUb., pp. 415–416.
  3. ↑ Grätz, VI3, p. 324; HUb., p. 417.
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