Obadiah Sforno and the Individual Human Soul

Abstract

The philosophical activity of Obadiah Sforno, who is primarily known for his exegetical interpretations of the Holy Scriptures, has received little scholarly attention. Nonetheless, the few scholars interested in Light of the Nations—Sforno’s (uniquely) philosophical work—were particularly critical of the author’s position in this exposition, showing a sceptical attitude towards the uniqueness of the work. Obadiah Sforno’s philosophical treatise reproduces the classical schema of the medieval quaestio disputata (“disputed question”), in which there was no place for a “new” or “innovative” analysis characterising some of the most original interpreters of the Renaissance period. He published the Hebrew version of Light of the Nations, entitled Or ʿAmmim, in Bologna in 1537. In 1548, also in Bologna, he published the Latin version, with the title Lumen Gentium. The fact that Sforno himself translated his own work from Hebrew into Latin makes him particularly exceptional.2 The Hebrew and Latin versions do not appear to offer significant differences in their overall view. The order of the questions and the general approaches to each argument are identical (with very few exceptions), but nonetheless, we find several changes concerning the style and the breadth of topics, as will be clear from reading the passages presented in this paper. Although the structure of Light of the Nations reproduces the medieval format of the disputed question, it seems that Sforno exercises a sceptical approach towards introducing the quaestio and establishing the solution. In Lumen Gentium, every question is preceded by dubitatur utrum (“it is questionable”), and in the last part —namely, the solution—of both versions, we read: