Levi ben Gershon ("Levi son of Gerson"), better known as Gersonides or the Ralbag (1288-1344), was a famous rabbi, philosopher, mathematician and Talmudic commentator. He was born at Bagnols in Languedoc, France. Events February 22 - Nicholas IV becomes Pope. ... Events English king Edward III introduces three new gold coins, the florin. ... Rabbi (Classical Hebrew רִבִּי ribbī;; modern Ashkenazi and Israeli רַבִּי rabbī) in Judaism, means teacher, or more literally great one. The word Rabbi is derived from the Hebrew root-word RaV, which in biblical Hebrew means great or distinguished,. In the ancient Judean schools the sages were addressed as רִבִּי (Ribbi or Rebbi... A mathematician is a person whose area of study and research is mathematics. ... The first page of the Talmud, in the standard Vilna edition. ... Bagnols-sur-Cèze is a French market town of 18,761 inhabitants in the Gard département in the Languedoc-Roussillon région. ... Coat of arms of the province of Languedoc, now being used as an official flag by the Midi-Pyrénees region as well as by the city of Toulouse Languedoc (Lengadòc in Occitan) is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc...

Biography

As in the case of the other medieval Jewish philosophers little is known of his life. His family had been distinguished for piety and exegetical skill in Talmud, but though he was known in the Jewish community by commentaries on certain books of the Bible, he never seems to have accepted any rabbinical post. Possibly the freedom of his opinions may have put obstacles in the way of his preferment. He is known to have been at Avignon and Orange during his life, and is believed to have died in 1344, though Zacuto asserts that he died at Perpignan in 1370. The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... Philosophy is a discipline or field of study involving the investigation, analysis, and development of ideas at a general, abstract, or fundamental level. ... The holy Jewish scripture: The Torah. ... Coat of arms of Avignon Avignon (pronounced in IPA, Provençal: Avignoun) is a commune in southern France with some 88,300 inhabitants in the city itself and 155,500 in the Greater Avignon area. ... Location within France Perpignan (Catalan Perpinyà) is a commune and the préfecture (administrative capital city) of the Pyrénées-Orientales département in southern France, and was the capital of the former province of Roussillon (French Catalonia). ... Events Beginning of the rule of Poland by Capet-Anjou family. ...

Works

Philosophical and religious works

Part of his writings consist of commentaries on the portions of Aristotle then known, or rather of commentaries on the commentaries of Averroes. Some of these are printed in the early Latin editions of Aristotle’s works. His most important treatise, that by which he has a place in the history of philosophy, is entitled Milhamot Adonai, ("The Wars of God"), and occupied twelve years in composition (1317—1329). A portion of it, containing an elaborate survey of astronomy as known to the Arabs, was translated into Latin in 1342 at the request of Pope Clement VI. Aristotle (sculpture) Aristotle (Greek: Αριστοτέλης AristotelÄ“s; 384 BC – March 7, 322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher. ... Averroes Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (1126 - December 10, 1198) was an Andalusian-Arab philosopher and physician, a master of philosophy and Islamic law, mathematics and medicine. ... Latin is the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Events The Great Famine of 1315-1317. ... Events Antipope Nicholas V is excommunicated by Pope John XXII. Aimone of Savoy becomes Count of Savoy. ... In ancient Greece and other early civilizations, astronomy consisted largely of astrometry, measuring positions of stars and planets in the sky. ... The Arabs (Arabic: عرب Ê»arab) are an originally Arabian ethnicity widespread in the Middle East and North Africa. ... Clement VI, né Pierre Roger (1291 – December 6, 1352), pope (1342-1352), the fourth of the Avignon popes, was elected in May 1342. ...

The Milhamot is throughout modeled after the plan of the great work of Jewish philosophy, the Guide of the Perplexed of Maimonides, and may be regarded as an elaborate criticism from the more philosophical point of view (mainly Averroistic) of the syncretism of Aristotelianism and Jewish orthodoxy as presented in that work. The six books review: Commonly used image indicating one artists conception of Maimonidess appearance Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Hebrew: רבי משה בן מיימון; Arabic: Mussa bin Maimun ibn Abdallah al-Kurtubi al-Israili; March 30, 1135—December 13, 1204), commonly known by his Greek name (Moses) Maimonides, was a Jewish rabbi, physician, and philosopher. ... Syncretism is the attempt to reconcile disparate, even opposing, beliefs and to meld practices of various schools of thought. ... Orthodox Judaism is that stream of Judaism which adheres to a relatively strict interpretation and application of the laws and ethics first canonized in the Talmud (Oral Law) and later codified in the Shulkhan Arukh. ...

1. the doctrine of the soul, in which Gersonides defends the theory of impersonal reason as mediating between God and man, and explains the formation of the higher reason (or acquired intellect, as it was called) in humanity — his view being thoroughly realist and resembling that of Avicebron;

2. prophecy; 3. and 4. God's knowledge of facts and providence, in which is advanced the curious theory that God does not know individual facts, and that, while there is general providence for all, special providence only extends to those whose reason has been enlightened; The term God is capitalized in the English language as a proper noun when used to refer to a specific monotheistic concept of a Supreme Being. ... Solomon Ibn Gabriol, also Solomon ben Judah, is a Spanish Jewish poet and philosopher. ...

5. celestial substances, treating of the strange spiritual hierarchy which the Jewish philosophers of the middle ages accepted from the Neoplatonists and the pseudo-Dionysius, and also giving, along with astronomical details, much of astrological theory; and

6. creation and miracles, in respect to which Gersonides deviates widely from the position of Maimonides.

Gersonides was also the author of a commentary on the Pentateuch and other exegetical and scientific works. Torah, (תורה) is a Hebrew word meaning teaching, instruction, or especially Law. ...

Views on God and omnipotence

In contrast to the theology held by Orthodox Judaism, Gersonides held with those who denied God's omnipotence. "Gersonides, bothered by the old question of how God's foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom, holds that what God knows beforehand is all the choices open to each individual. God does not know, however, which choice the individual, in his freedom, will make." (Louis Jacobs, God, Torah, Israel: Traditionalism without Fundamentalism) Theology is reasoned discourse concerning God (Greek θεος, theos, God, + λογος, logos, word or reason). It also refers to the study of other religious topics. ... Orthodox Judaism is that stream of Judaism which adheres to a relatively strict interpretation and application of the laws and ethics first canonized in the Talmud (Oral Law) and later codified in the Shulkhan Arukh. ... The term God is capitalized in the English language as a proper noun when used to refer to a specific monotheistic concept of a Supreme Being. ... Omnipotence (literally, all power) is power with no limits or inexhaustible, in other words, unlimited power. ... This article refers to the topic of prophecy as the purported telling of future events or supernatural revelations. ...

Another classical Jewish proponent of limited theism was Abraham ibn Daud. "Whereas the earlier Jewish philosophers extended the omniscience of God to include the free acts of man, and had argued that human freedom of decision was not affected by God's foreknowledge of its results, Ibn Daud, evidently following Alexander of Aphrodisias, excludes human action from divine foreknowledge. God, he holds, limited his omniscience even as He limited His omnipotence in regard to human acts". (Philosophies of Judaism, Julius Guttman, JPS, 1964. P.150, 151) Theism is the belief in one or more gods or goddesses. ... Abraham ben David was a Jewish, French commentator on the Talmud. ... Omniscience is the capacity to know everything, or at least everything that can be known about a character/s including thoughts, feelings, etc. ... Alexander of Aphrodisias, pupil of Aristocles of Messene, the most celebrated of the Greek commentators on the writings of Aristotle, and styled, by way of pre-eminence, o exegetes (the expositor), was a native of Aphrodisias in Caria. ...

"The view that God does not have foreknowledge of moral decisions which was advanced by ibn Daud and Gersonides (Levi ben Gershom) is not quite as isolated as Rabbi Bleich indicates, and it enjoys the support of two highly respected Ahronim, Rabbi Yeshayahu Horowitz (Shelah haKadosh) and Rabbi Chaim ibn Atar (Or haHayim haKadosh). The former takes the views that God cannot know which moral choices people will make, but this does not impair His perfection. The latter considers that God could know the future if He wished, but deliberately refrains from using this ability in order to avoid the conflict with free will." (Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, Vol. 31, No.2, Winter 1997, From Divine Omniscience and Free Will, Cyril Domb, p.90-91)

See further discussion in Free will In Jewish thought. Isaiah Horowitz (c. ... Free will is the philosophical doctrine that holds that our choices are ultimately up to ourselves. ...

Views of the afterlife

Gersonides posits that people's souls are composed of two parts: a material, or human, intellect; and an acquired, or agent, intellect.. The material intellect is inherent in every person, and gives people the capacity to understand and learn. This material intellect is mortal, and dies with the body. However, he also posits that the soul also has an acquired intellect. This survives death, and can contain the accumulated knowledge that the person acquired during their lifetime. For Gersonides, Seymour Feldman points out, "Man is immortal insofar as he attains the intellectual perfection that is open to him. This means that man becomes immortal only if and to the extent that he acquires knowledge of what he can in principle know, e.g. mathematics and the natural sciences. This knowledge survives his bodily death and constitutes his immortality." (Gersonides, Trans. Seymour Feldman Wars of the Lord, Book 1, p. 81, JPS, 1984)

Works in mathematics and astronomy

Gersonides wrote Book of Numbers in 1321 dealing with arithmetical operations, including extraction of roots. Also, in 1342, he wrote On Sines, Chords and Arcs, which examined trigonometry, in particular proving the sine theorem for plane triangles and giving five figure sine tables. 1321 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... In mathematics, a root (or a zero) of a function f is an element x in the domain of f such that f(x) = 0. ... Events May - Pope Clement VI elected John III Comnenus becomes emperor of Trebizond Louis becomes king of Sicily and duke of Athens Constantine IV becomes king of Armenia Patriarch of Antioch transferred to Damascus under Ignatius II Kitzbühel becomes part of Tyrol Louis I becomes king of Hungary Births... In mathematics, the trigonometric functions are functions of an angle, important when studying triangles and modeling periodic phenomena. ... A chord of a curve is a geometric line segment whose endpoints both lie on the curve. ... In Euclidean geometry, a circle is the set of all points in a plane at a fixed distance, called the radius, from a fixed point, called the centre. ... Trigonometry (from the Greek trigonon = three angles and metro = measure) is a branch of mathematics dealing with angles, triangles and trigonometric functions such as sine, cosine and tangent. ... In mathematics, the trigonometric functions are functions of an angle, important when studying triangles and modeling periodic phenomena. ...

One year later, at the request of the bishop of Meaux, he wrote The Harmony of Numbers which is a commentary on the first five books of Euclid. Meaux is a town in the Seine-et-Marne département of France, near the Marne River. ... Euclid of Alexandria (Greek: ) (ca. ...

He also invented Jacob's staff, an instrument to measure the angular distance between celestial objects. It is described as consisting For the the plant known as the ocotillo, sometimes called the Jacobs staff, see ocotillo. ...

... of a staff of 4.5 feet (1.4 m) long and about one inch (2.5 cm) wide, with six or seven perforated tablets which could slide along the staff, each tablet being an integral fraction of the staff length to facilitate calculation, used to measure the distance between stars or planets, and the altitudes and diameters of the Sun, Moon and stars.

Levi observed a solar eclipse in 1337. After he had observed this event he proposed a new theory of the sun which he proceeded to test by further observations. Another eclipse observed by Levi was the eclipse of the Moon on 3 October 1335. He described a geometrical model for the motion of the Moon and made other astronomical observations of the Moon, Sun and planets using a camera obscura. The metre, or meter, is the basic unit of length in the International System of Units (SI: Système International dUnités). ... A centimetre (American spelling: centimeter, symbol: cm) is an SI unit of length. ... Photo taken by John Walker during the Zambia 2001 eclipse A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes in front of the Sun and obscures it totally or partially. ... This page concerns 1337, the year. ... October 3 is the 276th day of the year (277th in Leap years). ... Events Abu Said dies and the Ilkhan khanate ends Slavery abolished in Sweden Charles I of Hungary allies with Poland against the Hapsburgs and Bohemians Carinthia and Carniola come under Habsburg rule. ... The camera obscura (Lat. ...

Some of his beliefs were well wide of the truth, such as his belief that the Milky Way was on the sphere of the fixed stars and shines by the reflected light of the Sun. The Milky Way (a translation of the Latin Via Lactea, in turn derived from the Greek Galaxia Kuklos; or simply the Galaxy) is a barred spiral galaxy which forms part of the Local Group. ...

Bibliography

• "Gersonides". The Encyclopaedia Judaica. Keter Publishing.
• Eisen, Robert (1995). Gersonides on Providence, Covenant, and the Chosen People: A Study in Medieval Jewish Philosophy and Biblical Commentary. State University of New York.
• Guttman, Julius (1964). Philosophies of Judaism, p.214/215. JPS.
• Feldman, Seymour. The Wars of the Lord (3 volumes). Jewish Publication Society.

External links

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Milhamot Adonai Fulltext (PDF)
• Biography at the MacTutor archive
• Detailed bibliography of works on and by Gersonides