Who Are the Animals in SEFER BA'ALE HA-HAYYIM by Qalonymus ben Qalonymus?

• In Event: Inner Dimensions of Medieval Jewish Philosophy

Abstract

Epistle 22 of the RASA'IL IKHWAN AL-SAFA, an encyclopedic work composed in Arabic in tenth-century Basra by a group of Islamic philosophers known as the Brethren of Purity, amounts to an extended animal fable, the so-called "Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn." The fable was translated into Hebrew in the early fourteenth-century by Qalonymus ben Qalonymus. Extant in medieval manuscript (Paris 899), the Hebrew translation was subsequently published in more modern times under the title SEFER IGGERETH BA'ALE HA-HAYYIM. What does the fable mean? Qalonymus offered an interpretation in his introduction, more or less reading the text "kifshuto," arguing that the animals represent actual beasts, both domesticated and wild, insisting that the fable is no allegory and that it explores the philosophic theme of human superiority over the animal kingdom. More recently, in the context of shedding light on Judah Halevi’s theory of prophecy, Shlomo Pines argued that Qalonymus misunderstood the issues and that the fable is an allegory transmitting Shi'ite doctrines, casting the animals as the mass of human beings, the believers, and the humans as the ontologically superior Imam, who is exclusively empowered to issue commands and prohibitions for regulating the masses.
Meant for presentation in the session devoted to "Ecological Themes…including explorations of different aspects of animals," this paper describes the divergent interpretations offered by Qalonymus and Pines, highlights their ideological tendencies, and evaluates their cogency. It will be argued that neither interpretation evades the political theme emphasized throughout the fable: the relationship between master and slave or servant. Appealing to imagination, the fable allows us to eavesdrop on what subordinated classes might say, including the animals, if only they could speak their minds freely. In addition to exploring the classical Aristotelian distinction between theoretical and practical intellect and the vexatious question of animals in medieval Jewish thought, the paper will address comments by Colette Sirat, who claimed that "Kalonymus wrote no philosophical works, except for the letter addressed to Joseph Caspi." The paper will conclude by suggesting that Qalonymus’s translation and introduction constitute an original philosophic text.

Author

• Kalman P. Bland, Duke University