Synopses & Reviews
In this monumental work, Raphael Patai opens up an entirely new field of cultural history by tracing Jewish alchemy from antiquity to the nineteenth century. Until now there has been little attention given to the significant role that Jews played in the field of alchemy. Here, drawing on an enormous range of previously unexplored sources, Patai reveals that Jews were major players in what was for centuries one of humanity's most compelling intellectual obsessions.
Originally published in 1994.
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Review
Winner of the 1994 National Jewish Honor Book in Scholarship
Review
"Raphael Patai seeks to break what he sees as the code of silence surrounding the history of Jewish alchemy, and his book represents the findings of years of intense research in this little-known subject. . . . To the author's great credit he has marshaled a vast array of sources in an effort to reaffirm that which was proclaimed by both Jewish and especially non-Jewish alchemists until the rise of the 19th-century Jewish scholarship--namely, that the Jews played a seminal role in the history of alchemy."--John Efron, Forward
Review
"Groundbreaking and highly original treatise. . . . Before Patai's monumental study, the exact knowledge of the Jewish input into alchemy was minimal. . . . [Raphael Patai] has brought the searching light of his extraordinary excavation skills into the unearthing of a dusty but now glimmering vein of the Jewish experience."--Arnold Ages, Midstream
Table of Contents
| Illustrations | |
| Acknowledgments | |
| Abbreviations | |
Pt. 1 | Prelude | |
Ch. 1 | Introduction | 3 |
Ch. 2 | Biblical Figures as Alchemists | 18 |
Ch. 3 | Alchemy in Bible and Talmud? | 41 |
Pt. 2 | The Hellenistic Age | |
Ch. 4 | Jews in Hellenistic Alchemy | 50 |
Ch. 5 | Maria the Jewess | 60 |
Ch. 6 | Zosimus on Maria the Jewess | 81 |
Pt. 3 | The Early Arab World | |
Ch. 7 | Abufalah's Alchemy | 98 |
Ch. 8 | A Hebrew Version of the Book of Alums and Salts | 119 |
Ch. 9 | Pseudo-Khalid ibn Yazid | 125 |
Pt. 4 | The Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries | |
Ch. 10 | Artephius | 141 |
Ch. 11 | The Great Jewish Philosophers | 144 |
Ch. 12 | Kabbalah and Alchemy: A Reconsideration | 152 |
Pt. 5 | The Fourteenth Century | |
Ch. 13 | Raymund de Tarrega: Marrano, Heretic, Alchemist | 175 |
Ch. 14 | The Quinta Essentia in Hebrew | 204 |
Ch. 15 | Flamel's Jewish Masters | 218 |
Ch. 16 | Two Spanish Jewish Court Alchemists | 234 |
Ch. 17 | Abraham Eleazar | 238 |
Ch. 18 | Themo Judaei | 258 |
Pt. 6 | The Fifteenth Century | |
Ch. 19 | Simeon ben Semah Duran | 264 |
Ch. 20 | Solomon Trismosin and His Jewish Master | 268 |
Ch. 21 | Abraham ben Simeon's Cabala Mystica | 271 |
Ch. 22 | Isaac Hollandus and His Son John Isaac | 289 |
Ch. 23 | Johanan Alemanno and Joseph Albo | 293 |
Ch. 24 | Pseudo-Maimonides | 300 |
Ch. 25 | Three Kuzari Commentators | 314 |
Pt. 7 | The Sixteenth Century | |
Ch. 26 | Esh Msaref: A Kabbalistic-Alchemical Treatise | 322 |
Ch. 27 | Taitazak and Provencali | 336 |
Ch. 28 | Hayyim Vital, Alchemist | 340 |
Ch. 29 | An Alchemical Miscellany | 365 |
Ch. 30 | Labi, Hamawi, and Portaleone | 376 |
Ch. 31 | The Manchester (John Rylands) Manuscript | 381 |
Pt. 8 | The Seventeenth Century | |
Ch. 32 | Leone Modena, Delmedigo, and Zerah | 399 |
Ch. 33 | Four Seventeenth-Century Manuscripts | 407 |
Ch. 34 | Benjamin Mussafia | 437 |
Ch. 35 | Benjamin Jesse | 447 |
Pt. 9 | The Eighteenth Century | |
Ch. 36 | Hayyim Shmuel Falck | 455 |
Ch. 37 | The Comte de Saint-Germain | 463 |
Ch. 38 | Jacob Emden; de Bar Ilan Manuscript | 480 |
Pt. 10 | The Nineteenth Century | |
Ch. 39 | An Alchemical Manuscript from Jerba | 492 |
Ch. 40 | Mordecai Abi Serour | 514 |
| Conclusion: A Profile of Jewish Alchemy | 517 |
| Appendix: An Alchemical Vocabulary from Jerba | 525 |
| Notes | 543 |
| Index | 589 |