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REVIEW OF "AL-HIDAJA ILA FARAID AL-QULUB DES BACHJA IBN JOSEF IBN PAQUDA, AUS ANDALUSIEN, IM ARABISCHEN URTEXT ZUM ERSTEN MALE NACH DER OXFORDER UND PARISER HANDSCHRIFT, SOWIE DER PETERSBURGER FRAGMENTEN", HERAUSGEGEBEN VON DR. A. S. YAHUDA

RABBI ISRAEL BETTAN

As described on the title page, this is the original Arabic text of Bachya's philosophical work, edited in its complete form for the first time with critical introduction by Dr. A. S. Yahuda. Whether Bachya is to be put in the foremost rank of the Jewish philosophers of the middle ages or not, may be a fit and proper subject for critical study and discussion, but that to his Chovoth Halevovoth, because of the widespread, salutary influence it has exerted on the spiritual life of our people, must be accorded a place of great prominence, admits of no contradiction nor doubt. For these many centuries this philosophical treatise in Judah Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew translation (1160 A. D.) has been to the Jews of Eastern Europe particularly a source of religious inspiration, a call and stimulus to a higher spiritual life. Indeed, not so much as a philosophical tractate, demonstrating logically and convincingly the all-important truths upon which Judaism rests, has it made its appeal to the popular mind, but rather as a manual for devotion and religious exaltation. The lofty ideals, the pure and intense piety of the author, his frequent appeal to the emotions, his fervor and eloquence-faults, no doubt, in a mere logician-have won for this work a place among the best known, most admired and loved literary productions of the Jewish

Arabic philosophers; and in its repeated emphasis on the essence of Judaism, its vital principles and spiritual elements, assigning to ancient custom, traditional observance, and external practice a position of unquestionable inferiority, of minor importance and significance as compared with the "duties of the heart", it stands by its very content and spirit nearer to our own time and touches our own religious life at a greater number of points than any other work that has come down to us from that classic period. The publication of the original text, therefore, edited and critically analyzed by so able a student in the field of Arabic philosophy as Dr. Yahuda is as timely in its interest as it is valuable for the new light it throws on many a difficulty.

The term, original text, if left unmodified, may prove misleading, for the editor had to deal not with one single text, but with two complete manuscripts and a variety of fragments and variants, all of which had to be closely examined, compared and sifted before this original text could be produced. The Oxford manuscript, being the most complete, and bearing evidence of being the earliest as well as the most in agreement with Tibbon's Hebrew translation, deviating from it in only a few sporadic cases, forms the basis of this edition. The Paris manuscript, next to it in completeness, presents marked textual differences, especially in the introduction to the first portal and the opening part of the second. These divergencies discovered in P. Yahuda characterizes as spurious, exhibiting a deliberate and bold attempt on the part of some scribe to bring Bachya in closer harmony with the teachings of Arabic philosophy. Thus, the first portal dealing with the question of unity is found to contain most of these changes. The fragments of the Petersburgh collection, such as contain the parts in question, seem to lend their support to this thesis, agreeing as they do on those points with the Oxford version. These fragments, incomplete in themselves, abounding in omissions of various sorts, serve only as means of corroboration and verification of the editor's choice when confronted with textual difficulties; they are seldom incorporated in the text. In all cases of wide divergence such as the variants present, the Oxford version is preferred, especially when it is found to harmonize with Tibbon's translation.

As all the manuscripts are written in Hebrew characters, it is clearly evident, as the editor willingly admits, that such was Bachya's mode of writing Arabic; the original copy, therefore, must have been written in the same manner. Yahuda, however, at a cost of much time and labor, chooses to transcribe the whole work, excepting the numerous quotations cited by the author from Biblical and Talmudic sources, into Arabic characters. It is difficult to see why so much energy had to be spent on such a thankless task, which is entirely unnecessary and can not but detract from the general value of the editor's efforts. Yahuda discovers that Bachya, in rendering the original Arabic into Hebrew characters, has made grammatical errors, unavoidable because of natural differences in the respective orthographies. But surely such inadequacies could have been pointed out without having to submit the text to such a violent change of form. The further claim that this change was made necessary by the fact that there are many Jewish students in the Orient who can not read an Arabic work in Hebrew characters, is hardly sufficient. As analogy the editor cites the case of Mendelssohn's translation of the Pentateuch, which, though originally written in Hebrew characters, must now be printed in German type if it is to be generally understood among German Jews. Whether these two cases are quite analogous only one acquainted with Jewish conditions in the East can judge, but it does not seem likely that the number of Oriental Jews who read the Arabic but are unfamiliar with the Hebrew language is very great. Yahuda also assumes that in its altered form Bachya's work will champion the cause of Judaism, its thought and ethics, among Mohammedan scholars who still seem to harbor the erroneous impression that polytheistic and anthropomorphic notions abound in the religion of the Jew and that Islam alone of all religions is based on pure monotheism-an impression which they received from Samaritans and Karaites, and especially from Jewish converts—in assuming this Yahuda is prone to exaggerate the value and effectiveness of this form of propaganda. Judaism has been before the world long enough, and if proof is all they wanted our detractors and calumniators could have been convinced long ago. On the whole, it is open to question whether an editor of

an ancient manuscript, whose duty it is faithfully to reproduce the author's work, can institute any changes therein, even such as affect only its outward form, for the convenience of the reading public, without endangering his position as a scientific investigator.

These strictures, however, are in no way meant to minimize the significance of Yahuda's work or lessen the usefulness of the service which it renders to the student of Bachya, even though he still depend, as most of us do, for his knowledge of Bachya, upon Tibbon's Hebrew translation. With the aid of the original text Yahuda has supplied us with a considerable number of corrections and supplements to the Hebrew translation, in which many an error made by the translator is rectified and a number of omissions, caused either by the translator himself through oversight, or by the interference of some censor, are restored. The list, the editor informs us, is by no means complete, comprising only the most important corrections, as to include them all a new translation were necessary, but those given cast much light on many an obscure passage, the snare and despair of most commentators, and constitute an indispensable guide for the reader of the book in its translated form. That the Hebrew text should prove inadequate and in parts even unintelligible to the general reader is not at all surprising. As pointed out by Yahuda, Ibn Tibbon, because of his constant preoccupation with Arabic thought and style, employs in his translation a terminology which can be well understood only by those acquainted with the original or, like himself, conversant with Arabic philosophy and its style. In many cases he transfers the Arabic idiom into Hebrew, regardless of the difficulty thus created. Certain rhetorical passages in which the book abounds he translates so literally that they become almost meaningless. In some instances it is evident that the translator either had a corrupt text or misread some words or misunderstood them. Oftentimes the Hebrew equivalent but inadequately expresses the thought of the original. It is not seldom that, intent upon rendering Bachya's thought in Midrashic terms, he deliberately makes such changes as will suit his purpose. Occasionally he even omits whole sentences because in his opinion the thought therein expressed is

in direct contradiction to the custom and usage of the Judaism of the time. Add to all this his tendency to Hebraize Arabic words, and it is easy to see how such a translation must be inexact, incomplete and often hardly comprehensible. So long, therefore, as Ibn Tibbon's is the only translation accessible to most students, Yahuda's corrections and supplements will be of immeasurable value for the assistance they thus offer toward a better and fuller understanding of that historically important work.

But the chief importance of the reproduction of the original text lies, in the opinion of the editor, in the opportunity it thus affords of tracing the sources upon which Bachya drew. Bachya frequently quotes from the sayings and parables of the "wise" and the "pious" of other faiths, a practice which he deems necessary to defend. "I have cited", states Bachya in the introduction to his book, "not only the words of the prophets and the ancient teachers of Judaism, but also the utterances of pious. and learned men of other religious professions in the hope that these illustrations may impress the reader more readily." These sayings Bachya leaves anonymous, for the probable reason that he wrote his book, as he claims, for his own private use, and only later decided to give it to the public (Y. 23-24). Yahuda sets himself the task of trying to determine the authorship of those sayings and illustrations, of tracing those quotations to their original sources. He finds that some of them ascribed by the author to the "pious" and the "wise" were taken from the Gospels after they had found their way into Mohammedan writings; some were derived from the Koran; some from the writings of the Monaquib, in which the associates of Mohammed, particularly the first caliphs, are held up as patterns of virtue and piety; some from the pseudo-ali-literature, and some from the writings of the Sufists. Yahuda gives an excellent survey of these sources, disclosing an extensive acquaintance with Arabic literature.

But there can be no doubt that Yahuda makes a grave error when on the basis of these discoveries he asserts Bachya's absolute dependence on Arabic philosophy. That Bachya was greatly influenced by Arabic philosophy, that there was a close and intimate relation between Jewish and Mohammedan thought of