“The Book of Medicines” of Asaf the Physician: A Case Study of the Transmission and Tradition of Jewish Medicine in the Middle Ages

"The Book of Medicines" of Asaph the Physician is the first known Hebrew medical book. Rather than a book, it might be better described as a compilation of treatises. Amongst these are some of the first Hebrew translations of famed Greek medical treatises: the Hippocratic Aphorisms and Prognosticon, the Materia Medica of Dioscorides and a very Jewish version of the physician`s oath. The authorship and origin of this compilation are widely debated; common opinion in contemporary research is that it was composed during the transition between the Christian Byzantine rule and the early Islamic period. Recent studies have presented evidence of Syriac and perhaps even Persian influences.

Over 30 manuscripts containing the book, or excerpts from it, are known. Their origins are traced to Egypt and the Middle-East, Byzantium, Provence, Italy, Spain, Germany and France, dating from the eleventh century till the seventeenth. Different scholars have quoted it in different times and places, such as R. Eliezer ben Nathan of Mainz, R. David Kimḥi, Nachmanides, R. Eleazar of Worms and much later, the Karaite rabbi, Caleb Afendopolo. The book is very Jewish in a way, and while many claim that there is no such a thing as Jewish medicine, this book, in its many variations and the quotations from it, proves a slight pride within the Jewish scholarly circle of owning perhaps a very Jewish medical book of their own. I propose to speak of this minor yet very extant text in the passage of Jewish thought.