Chapter Eight. Solomon, Aristoteles Judaicus, and the Invention of a Pseudo- Solomonic Library

Abstract

As the thirteenth century saw the rise of Aristotle as a new contender for the role of “the wisest, most learned man of all times, the very personification of all knowledge”, Jewish scholars were faced with a new challenge: how to grapple with Aristotelian rationalist philosophy. One option was to declare it irrelevant, and present Judaism and Aristotelian philosophy as diametrically opposed; another option was to co-opt Aristotelian philosophy by depicting Aristotle as Solomon’s pupil. The result of this latter approach was the emergence of a legendary tradition whose purpose was to legitimize Jews’ study of philosophy, in general, and the influence of Aristotle, in particular. What developed was in many ways a continuation of traditions dating from the Hellenistic and Roman periods. But Jewish-Hellenistic writers,895 and later the Church Fathers, were concerned with the influence of the Jewish patriarchs, Moses, and the biblical prophets on the development of Egyptian and Greek wisdom—particularly that of Plato and Pythagoras. The new legendary tradition that emerged in medieval Jewish apologetics, on the margins of existing polemics between “Aristotelians” and “anti-Aristotelians”, claimed in contrast that Jewish “wisdom”, or Jewish “philosophy”, had been appropriated specifically by Aristotle. Not only was Solomon, then, the wisest of all ancients, a teacher to kings who arrived from all four corners of the earth to hear him; he was also a teacher to that “greatest of all philosophers,” Aristotle, whose teachings, in turn, informed the Christian scholastics.896 Seen through this lens, Aristotelian philosophy was no “Greek wisdom” extrinsic to Judaism, but rather a continuation of Jewish wisdom whose original form had been lost in the throes of history, only to be preserved in Greek garb. Its renewed reception into the bosom of Jewish culture was thus the restoration of what was lost to its former glory and rightful owner. Solomon was chosen for the role of Aristotle’s teacher since no ancient figure in Jewish history more famous than he could better represent lost wisdom. And since Aristotle dealt not only in philosophy but in all spheres of