Inspiration in a Bottle: On Seven Different Translations of the Arabic Term ilhām in Themistius Hebraicus

In a difficult passage of his paraphrase of Aristotle`s Metaphysics XII, the Greek philosopher Themistius (317–c.390 CE) briefly remarks on a causal connection of sorts between natural formal principles, whose function is unclear, and a certain "soul in the earth", which is also an obscure concept. With Themistius` original Greek lost, the 9th century Arabic translation of his paraphrase – most likely by Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn – names this connection as ilhām (roughly: "inspiration"), the underlying Greek of which can only be conjectured. The passage in question was translated from Arabic into Hebrew twice – once as part of Moshe ibn Tibbon`s translation of the entire Themistian text, completed in 1255, and the other from its quotation in Ibn Rushd`s Long Commentary on Aristotle`s Metaphysics, which was rendered into Hebrew perhaps as early as the 13th century by an unknown translator. Both Hebrew translations underwent subsequent revisions and editorial procedures, the nature of which has been clarified by recent scholarship. The term ilhām, which is theologically charged from an Islamic point of view, left all of the participants in the Hebrew transmission process perplexed, resulting in no less than seven different options for translating it. After presenting the context and fortuna of Themistius` passage, The paper will explore the different options for ilhām from three perspectives: (1) the understanding of Themistius` argument that they reflect; (2) the terminological innovation they express; and (3) the light they shed on the history of the editorial procedures with respect to Themistius` text.