Letter to Maimonides: On Astrology

These queries posed to Maimonides, surviving in a single manuscript, display the astrological interests and knowledge of a group of leading Provençal rabbis in the twelfth century. They turned to Maimonides in an aim to clarify the truth about astrology. Their initial problem arose in the interpretation of the talmudic statement (b. Shabbat 156a) that “There is no constellation [mazal] for Israel.” This apparent denial of the significance of astrology—at least for Jews—contravened widely accepted beliefs about the cosmos in the Middle Ages, as the authors explain. The elaboration of astrological beliefs and the attempt to interpret Jewish tradition according to the tenets of medieval astronomy is particularly pronounced in the work of Abraham Ibn Ezra. Although his name does not appear in this text, Ibn Ezra’s ideas circulated in twelfth-century Provence and likely influenced this letter. The language in the letter is ornamented with biblical verses and allusions; nearly every sentence has a biblical source.