Religion & Pluralism in the Medieval Mediterranean Working Group: Bruce McCuskey, "The Latin Translations of Sefer Yeṣirah Commentaries in Vat.ebr.191: New Kabbalistic Sources for Giovanni Pico della Mirandola"

Please join us for the second meeting this semester of the Religion & Pluralism in the Medieval Mediterranean working group. Bruce McCuskey (MI, University of Notre Dame) will give a talk titled "The Latin Translations of Sefer Yeṣirah Commentaries in Vat.ebr.191: New Kabbalistic Sources for Giovanni Pico della Mirandola."

Abstract: The fifteenth-century philosopher, theologian, and humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola is famous for, among other things, learning Hebrew, studying Kabbalah, and incorporating Jewish thought into writings. As a
result, scholars have long striven to identify which Kabbalistic sources Pico read and how they influenced him. In this paper I will present the preliminary results of my recent research into Pico's Kabbalistic sources based on Vat.ebr.191. This manuscript contains a collection of Kabbalistic works translated into Latin for Pico in 1485-1486. Some translations in this work, notably the translation of the Bahir, have received extensive scholarly attention. What has hitherto been neglected are translations of three commentaries on the Sefer Yeṣirah found at the beginning of the codex. My research shows that Pico read and used at least two of these commentaries, the one ascribed to Nahmanides and the one ascribed to Abraham Abulafia. In the first part of the paper I will note several philological features of the translations, specifically how Mithridates's translations use standard philosophical vocabulary. In the second part of
the paper I will establish that Pico read and used these commentaries by identifying previously unknown citations of them in his works. As a result, Pico's account of creation will be shown to have been influenced by these commentaries on the Sefer Yeṣirah.

Bruce McCuskey is a second-year PhD student whose research focuses on the history of late ancient and medieval philosophy and theology. He is especially interested in NeoPlatonism and Jewish philosophy.

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