Resumen de «Sefer ha-Pardes» by Jedaiah ha-Penini: A Critical Edition with English Translation
Jedaiah ben Abraham Bedersi, David Torollo (ed. lit.)
This groundbreaking new work is the first full critical edition and English translation of the Hebrew book «Sefer ha-Pardes» [The Book of the Orchard], written at the end of the thirteenth century by the Provençal Jewish author Jedaiah ha-Penini. It is purportedly an example of «musar»: a compilation of wise epigrams and «meshalim» [parables] that teach moral lessons on different topics, such as the service of God, friendship, the deceitfulness of the world, medicine, logic, music, magic, and poetry. However, it is in reality a compendium of sayings that reveal the author’s personal views and feelings on a variety of religious topics, secular sciences, and their practitioners.
David Torollo presents a fluent and illuminating English-Hebrew parallel text based on four sixteenth-century witnesses: three manuscripts and a printed edition. A rigorous study accompanies and contextualises the Hebrew work, exploring «Sefer ha-Pardes’s» transmission and reception in different places over time; its structure and content; its place in the intellectual environment and literary tradition of Provence; and possible lines of enquiry for future research. This essential new work offers a significant contribution to scholarship in the field of Medieval Hebrew Hispano-Provencal literature.
