The Arabic work which served as the basis of the Hebrew translation is not known to be in existence, nor is it noticed by the Arabic bibliographers, although reference is made to it in the encyclopedic work Ikhwān ul-Ṣafā.[1] The Persian translation, however, which is here printed for the first time from a Bodleian MS.[2] will probably make up for the loss, and will show that the Hebrew translation is a very unfaithful abridgment, in which the original purpose of “The Book of the Apple” is entirely obscured.
That the Persian is more faithful than the Hebrew is proved by the fact that a quotation made from the Arabic by an author of the thirteenth century, and discovered by Steinschneider,[3] corresponds exactly with a passage in the Persian, but has nothing corresponding to it in the Hebrew.[4]
The passage runs as follows in the Arabic :
لا سمع اذا علم المتعلم الا من قبل الفلاسفة ولا بصر ناظر الامن قبل المصباح وقال لا تقبل النفس الفلسفة الا بصحة من طبيعته ولا ينفذ بصر البصير الا بضوء المصباح فاذا اجتمع نفذ
In the Persian as follows (l. 182 sqq.) :
پس آموزنده الا از جهت حکمت نتواند آموخت ونݣرنده الا ازچراغ نتواند نݣرید ارسطو ݣفت نفس پذیای حکمت نشود الا بدرستی که طبع او بود وبینش بیننده ݣذر نیابد الا بچراغ چون اینهمه بهم آید بݣذرد
- ↑ Dieterici, Die Philosophie der Araber, i. 106, cited by Steinschneider, l.c. This quotation is rather vague.
- ↑ MS. Ouseley, 95, viii. The dialogue is written on the margin of an analysis of the de anima of Aristotle.
- ↑ Catalogus Bibl. Hebr. quæ in Biblioth. Bodleiana asservantur, p. 674, from MS. Uri, f. 19b.
- ↑ The definition of “injustice” in Tebrizi's notes on the Ḥamasa, p. 7 (ed. Freytag), قیل هو وضع الشی فی غیر موغعه corresponds closely with the definition given here, I. 272.
