The Myth that Isaac Israeli was a Disciple of the Rosh, and its Origins

Previously, I spoke about the pedagogic motivation in Isaac Israeli’s Yesod Olam (which I am critically editing, as part of a research team at University College London). From passages early in the work, I showed that, in the context of challenge engendered by Rosh`s Ashkenazic influence in Sepharad, one of Israeli’s major motives was to preserve Sephardic scientific-rationalistic theology. Now I shall demonstrate – based on the above and later passages, and engaging with points raised in articles by Judah Galinsky – that Isaac Israeli was not a disciple of Rosh, and was, in fact, adverse to Rosh’s intellectual gestalt. Although living contemporaneously in Toledo, Israeli had no direct access to or relation with Rosh: Isaac heard only second-hand, posto-facto, of Rosh’s request for a tract explaining Jewish calendrical science; and Isaac lists his brother Israel as a disciple of Rosh, making it obvious that Isaac himself was not a disciple. Furthermore, at the work’s beginning, as well as in some manuscript versions of 4:18, Israeli states that he hopes, via his writing, to teach Rosh (rather than to learn from him), for Rosh was innocent of scientific knowledge. It was the work’s 18^th & 19^th century Maskilic publishers who, despite the internal evidence adduced above, misapplied textual data, including modifications in late manuscripts (I shall illustrate all this), to create and perpetuate the myth of discipleship – presumably in an attempt to legitimate this author and his work. Soon, this Maskilic myth entered the canons of common knowledge.