"It is in the Danger that I am Interested": The Presence of Abraham Ibn Ezra in Early Modern England

Chanita Goodblatt

This intriguing statement opening the title is cited from D.C. Allen's 1949 book, The Legend of Noah. He refers here specifically to the literal sense of the Hebrew Bible so important to early modern England, particularly in its eventual fostering of the development of a rational explanation of biblical events (such as the Flood), which in due course stimulated the development of "sciences of great modern value." Of particular significance to this development of both biblical exegesis and scientific thought in this period is Abraham Ibn Ezra, 12th-century Spanish-Jewish exegete, poet, philosopher, and scientist. Whether it is his literal, grammatically-oriented biblical commentaries or his various medical-astrological tracts, Ibn Ezra comprised a significant resource for 16th and 17th-century English scholars and scientists.

This significance is accessible through a discussion of that beleaguered term Renaissance. Applied to both these historical periods, this term distinguishes their Janus-like quality; facing both ways, like the Roman god of portals and beginnings, it designates a time of "conspicuous cultural progress in relation to the previous, adjacent period...[and] a conscious relation to ancient sources which are perceived as classic" (Elazar Touito). What is more, Leah Marcus's deliberation on the alternative term early modern is also of central importance. For as she writes, "to look at the Renaissance through a lens called early modern is to see the concern of modernism and postmodernism in embryo... [among other things] an emphasis on textual indeterminacy as opposed to textual closure and stability, and an interest in intertextuality instead of filiation." In terms of Ibn Ezra's biblical commentaries - known primarily from 13-century Latin translations - this enables a delineation of a shared strategy for reading the Hebrew Bible, one that employs an innovative - and often overwhelming - use of grammar, syntax, logic, and semantic juxtaposition, as well as a reliance on intertextual sources. In terms of Ibn Ezra's astrological-medical tract The Book of Lights - printed in English by the physician and astrologer Nicholas Culpeper in his 1651 Semiotica Uranica, or an Astrological Judgement of Diseases - it also highlights tensions within the field of 17th-century medicine concerning authority and the dispersion of scientific knowledge. This paper will investigate the circuitous routes of transmission by which English scholars and scientists gained access to Ibn Ezra's works, as well as the often subversive function of these works within both the religious and scientific cultures.