%0 Book
%T «Sefer ha-Pardes» by Jedaiah ha-Penini: A Critical Edition with English Translation
publisher Open Book Publishers
%D 2022
%@ 978-1-80064-725-1 (Paperback)
%@ 978-1-80064-726-8 (Hardback)
%@ 978-1-80064-727-5 (PDF)
%U https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/95684
%X This groundbreaking new work is the first full critical edition and English translation of the Hebrew book «Sefer ha-Pardes» [The Book of the Orchard], written at the end of the thirteenth century by the Provençal Jewish author Jedaiah ha-Penini. It is purportedly an example of «musar»: a compilation of wise epigrams and «meshalim» [parables] that teach moral lessons on different topics, such as the service of God, friendship, the deceitfulness of the world, medicine, logic, music, magic, and poetry. However, it is in reality a compendium of sayings that reveal the author’s personal views and feelings on a variety of religious topics, secular sciences, and their practitioners.David Torollo presents a fluent and illuminating English-Hebrew parallel text based on four sixteenth-century witnesses: three manuscripts and a printed edition. A rigorous study accompanies and contextualises the Hebrew work, exploring «Sefer ha-Pardes’s» transmission and reception in different places over time; its structure and content; its place in the intellectual environment and literary tradition of Provence; and possible lines of enquiry for future research. This essential new work offers a significant contribution to scholarship in the field of Medieval Hebrew Hispano-Provencal literature.
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