This volume is part of a wider project aiming at mapping the technical medical terminology as it features in medieval Hebrew medical works. The volume covers Hebrew translations of Hippocrates' Medical Aphorisms, one of the most popular medical works in the ancient and medieval world.

In Novel Medical and General Hebrew Terminology from the Middle Ages, Volume 6 Gerrit Bos offers more terms not featuring in existing dictionaries as addition to his Concise Dictionary of Novel Medical and General Hebrew Terminology from the Middle Ages.

This volume is part of a wider project aiming at mapping the technical medical terminology as it features in medieval Hebrew medical works, especially those terms that do not feature in the current dictionaries at all, or insufficiently.

The terminology in medieval Hebrew medical literature (original works and translations) has been sorely neglected by modern research. Medical terminology is virtually missing from the standard dictionaries of the Hebrew language, including Ha-Millon he-ḥadash, composed by Abraham Even-Shoshan. Ben-Yehuda’s dictionary is the only one that contains a significant number of medical terms. Unfortunately, Ben-Yehuda’s use of the medieval medical texts listed in the dictionary’s introduction is inconsistent at best. The only dictionary exclusively devoted to medical terms, both medieval and modern, is that by A.M. Masie, entitled Dictionary of Medicine and Allied Sciences. However, like the dictionary by Ben-Yehuda, it only makes occasional use of the sources registered in the introduction and only rarely differentiates between the various medieval translators. Further, since Masie’s work is alphabetized according to the Latin or English term, it cannot be consulted for Hebrew terms. The Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew Language, which is currently being created by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, has not been taken into account consistently as it is not a dictionary in the proper sense of the word. Moreover, consultation of this resource suggests that it is generally deficient in medieval medical terminology. The Bar Ilan Responsa Project has also been excluded as a source, despite the fact that it contains a larger number of medieval medical terms than the Historical Dictionary. The present dictionary has two major objectives: 1) to map the medical terminology featured in medieval Hebrew medical works, in order to facilitate study of medical terms, especially those terms that do not appear in the existing dictionaries, and terms that are inadequately represented. 2) to identify the medical terminology used by specific authors and translators, to enable the identification of anonymous medical material.

The Sefer Almansur contains a pharmacopeia of about 250 medicinal ingredients with their Arabic names (in Hebrew characters), their Romance (Old Occitan) and occasionally Hebrew equivalents. The pharmacopeia, which describes the properties and therapeutical uses of simple drugs featured at the end of Book Three of the Sefer Almansur. This work was translated into Hebrew from the Arabic Kitāb al-Manṣūrī (written by al-Rāzī) by Shem Tov ben Isaac of Tortosa, who worked in Marseille in the 13th century. Gerrit Bos, Guido Mensching and Julia Zwink supply a critical edition of the Hebrew text, an English translation and an analysis of the Romance and Latin terminology in Hebrew transcription. The authors show the pharmaceutical terminological innovation of Hebrew and of the vernacular, and give us proof of the important role of medieval Jews in preserving and transferring medical knowledge.

The new critical edition of Maimonides’ Commentary on Hippocrates’ Aphorisms by Gerrit Bos is the first with an English translation based on the Arabic text. It also contains three medieval Hebrew translations.

This volume contains studies based on papers delivered at the international conference of the PESHAT in Context project entitled “Themes, Terminology, and Translation Procedures in Twelfth-Century Jewish Philosophy.” The central figure in this book is Judah Ibn Tibbon. He sired the Ibn Tibbon family of translators, which influenced philosophical and scientific Hebrew writing for centuries. More broadly, the study of this early phase of the Hebrew translation movement also reveals that the formation of a standardized Hebrew terminology was a long process that was never fully completed. Terminological shifts are frequent even within the Tibbonide family, to say nothing of the fascinating terminological diversity displayed by other authors and translators discussed in this book.

Gerrit Bos (Ph.D. 1989) is Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at the University of Cologne. He has published extensively in the fields of Jewish studies, Islamic studies, and medieval science and medicine in Arabic and Hebrew texts. In July 2023, he celebrated his 75th birthday. On this occasion, his colleagues and students presented him with a Festschrift containing over twenty original papers. They deal with various topics belonging to his wider fields of interest ranging from the Ancient Orient, Jewish and Islamic theology and philosophy, medicine and natural sciences in medieval Islamicate and European countries, to Romance philology and linguistics.

The Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural Scientists is the first comprehensive English language work to provide a survey of all ancient natural science, from its beginnings through the end of Late Antiquity. A team of over 100 of the world’s experts in the field have compiled this Encyclopedia, including entries which are not mentioned in any other reference work – resulting in a unique and hugely ambitious resource which will prove indispensable for anyone seeking the details of the history of ancient science. Additional features include a Glossary, Gazetteer, and Time-Line. The Glossary explains many Greek (or Latin) terms difficult to translate, whilst the Gazetteer describes the many locales from which scientists came. The Time-Line shows the rapid rise in the practice of science in the 5th century BCE and rapid decline after Hadrian, due to the centralization of Roman power, with consequent loss of a context within which science could flourish.

This volume is both a continuation of the four already published titles in the series (2011-19) and an addition to the Concise Dictionary of Novel Medical and General Hebrew Terminology from the Middle Ages. It continues mapping the medical terminology featured in medieval Hebrew medical works in order to facilitate study of medical terms that do not appear in the existing dictionaries, as well as identifying the medical terminology used by specific authors and translators in order to identify anonymous medical material. The terminology discussed in this volume has been derived from fourteen different sources, including translations of Ibn al-Jazzār's Zād al-musāfir by Moses ibn Tibbon (Sefer Ṣedat ha-Derakhim) and the otherwise unknown Abraham ben Isaac (Sefer Ṣedah la-Oreḥim), as well as the translation of Constantine the Africanʼs Latin version (Viaticum) prepared by Do'eg ha-Edomi (Sefer Yaʾir Netiv).