Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy : Proceedings of the Bar-Ilan University Conference

In January 1998 leading scholars from Europe, the United States, and Israel in the fields of medieval encyclopedias (Arabic, Latin and Hebrew) and medieval Jewish philosophy and science gathered together at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel, for an international conference on medieval Hebrew encyclopedias of science and philosophy. The primary purpose of the conference was to explore and define the structure, sources, nature, and characteristics of the medieval Hebrew encyclopedias of science and philosophy. This book, the first to devote itself to the medieval Hebrew encyclopedias of science and philosophy, contains revised versions of the papers that were prepared for this conference. This volume also includes an annotated translation of Moritz Steinschneider's groundbreaking discussion of this subject in his Die hebraeischen Übersetzungen.
The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy will be of particular interest to students of medieval philosophy and science, Jewish intellectual history, the history of ideas, and pre-modern Western encyclopedias.

From the reviews:

`...the present volume...contribute[s] greatly to our knowledge of a special genre of medieval Hebrew literature. The authors themselves demonstrate almost encyclopedic knowledge of their subjects, and they write with authoritative voices. The editor is to be commended for his judicious choice of experts and his distribution of topics for them to discuss. The present book is a pioneering study and major contribution to the scholarly discourse concerning the medieval Hebrew encyclopedias, and it deserves wide distribution.'
The Jewish Quarterly Review, 2003:3-4

"The volume offers a comprehensive and sustained examination of a particularly literary genre – the encyclopedia of science and philosophy – as developed in medieval Hebrew literature. It contains articles by some twenty authors, but an obvious preparatory and editorial effort has turned them into a joint work. True to the requirements of its topic, this volume is duly provided with ... an index of books, and indices of names (classical, medieval, and modern) and of contemporary authors." (Sarah Stroumsa, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 123 (2), 2003)