ISRAELI, ISAAC BEN SOLOMON
(c. 855–955)

Isaac ben Solomon Israeli, the first Jewish Neoplatonist, was one of the most distinguished Jewish physicians of the Middle Ages. He was so renowned for his medical competence, both in theory and in practice, that his works were widely circulated in manuscript, translated into Latin, and printed in the early years of the sixteenth century, as Omnia Opera Ysaac (Lyons, 1515). This printed edition and the manuscripts on which it was based contained some of Israeli's philosophic writings as well as his scientific treatises. As a result, his name became well-known, beyond his philosophic deserts; indeed, his fame among Christian scholars was second only to that of Moses Maimonides. Yet Maimonides held Israeli's philosophy in no great esteem, referring to him as "merely a physician."

Isaac Israeli was a native of Egypt. He left his native land to study medicine in the intellectual center of Kairouan, in north Africa, under the tutelage of Ishaq ibn Imram, a Muslim. Later Israeli served as court physician to Ubaydullah al-Mahdi, founder of the Fatimid dynasty in north Africa.

In addition to the philosophic materials in his "Book of Elements" (a medical work), Israeli has long been known as the writer of a "Book of Definitions." Recent studies have added also a "Book of Substances," a "Book on Spirit and Soul," and, probably, a short "Chapter on the Elements," found in a unique manuscript in the Bibliotheca Communale of Mantua and ascribed to Isaac Israeli by A. Altmann. On the basis of these works, Israeli can be confidently classified as a Neoplatonist whose work is akin to that of other Neoplatonists among the Muslim philosophers of his age.

His surviving works do not include any significant discussion of the existence and nature of God but they do describe God as a perpetually active Creator. God's original creative act is a creation out of nothing; later acts of creativity in nature are not of the same order but are "the passing of corporeal substances from privation to existence" in accordance with God's will. Along with this account, however, Israeli also maintained a doctrine of emanation. Thus, on the one hand God creates because of his goodness, while on the other his creativity is a perpetual overflowing. These two accounts of creation are never reconciled in Israeli's thought.

The process of emanation terminates with the emergence of the visible sphere. From this point, Israeli's explanation of the universe is physical and more closely akin to the views of Aristotle. Retaining the classical Greek theory of the four elements, he accounted for everything in the world of our experience by the combination of the elements earth, air, fire, and water. Once again, however, we are confronted with an uncertainty. In the "Book of Definitions," Israeli asserted that the four elements came into being through the movement of the sphere of heaven, but in the "Book of Elements" they are attributed to the power of God. Except by straining the language, these two views cannot be reconciled.

A similar double view emerges in Israeli's doctrine of the soul. Here he spoke of a cosmic soul, which exists independently of body, appearing in three successive stages of emanation—rational, animal, and vegetable—and also of a divine spark within the individual, striving ever upward toward the cosmic soul. Perhaps in this double account of soul we have a reflection of the Neoplatonic doctrine of man as the microcosm. If so, we can understand the emphasis Israeli put on self-knowledge, the road to the knowledge of the universe. Self-knowledge is knowledge of both body and soul; one who knows himself in both soul and body knows everything, and he alone is worthy of the name of philosopher.

See also Aristotle; Jewish Philosophy; Maimonides; Neoplatonism; Self-Knowledge.

Bibliography

works by israeli

Kitab al-jawahir (Book of Substances), edited by S. M. Stern, "The Fragments of Isaac Israeli's 'Book of Substances.'" Journal of Jewish Studies 7 (1956): 13–29.

Collected Works, edited by A. Altmann and S. M. Stern. Isaac Israeli. A Neoplatonic Philosopher of the Early Tenth Century: His Works Translated with Comments and an Outline of his Philosophy. London: Oxford University Press, 1958.

works on israeli

Altmann, A. "Creation and Emanation in Isaac Israeli: A Reappraisal." In Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, edited by I. Twersky, 1–15. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.

Pessin, S. "Jewish Neoplatonism: Being above Being and Divine Emanation in Solomon ibn Gabirol and Isaac Israeli." In Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, edited by D. Frank and O. Leaman, 91–110. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Samuelson, N. "Medieval Jewish Aristotelianism: An Introduction." In History of Jewish Philosophy, edited by D. Frank and O. Leaman. London: Routledge, 1997.

Wolfson, H. "The Meaning of Ex Nihilo in Isaac Israeli." Jewish Quarterly Review 50 (1959): 1–12.

J. L. Blau (1967)

Bibliography updated by Oliver Leaman (2005)