Al-Constantini, Enoch ben Solomon

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AL-CONSTANTINI, ENOCH BEN SOLOMON

AL-CONSTANTINI, ENOCH BEN SOLOMON (c. 1370), physician and philosopher. His work Mar'ot Elohim ("Divine Visions") is extant in almost 30 manuscripts (described in the edition by C. Sirat in Eshel Be'er-Sheva (1976), 120–99).

The book is divided into three chapters, preceded by an introduction. The first chapter interprets Isaiah 1:1–6; the second Ezekiel 1:1–20; the third, Zechariah 10. The exegesis is entirely philosophical and deals with the separate intelligences, the spheres, and the human intellect. Al-Constantini was influenced by Maimonides, Al-Fārābī, Avicenna, Averroes, Samuel ibn Tibbon, Moses of Narbonne, Levi b. Abraham, and Solomon ibn Gabirol (in the abridged version of Gabirol's Mekor Ḥayyim, the Likkutim by Shem Tov ibn Falquera). A Bodleian manuscript (Opp. 585) of Al-Constantini's work contains glosses by Menahem Kara.

bibliography:

L. Gruenhut, in: Festschrift … A. Harkavy (1908), 403–430; C. Sirat, in: rej, 121 (1962), 247–354.

[Colette Sirat (2nd ed.)]

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