The Teaching of Samuel (Baraita de-Shemu’el)

This Hebrew work was sometimes ascribed to the second-century Samuel the Younger and sometimes to the third-century Samuel of Nehardea, although it was written by neither one. It deals with the overlapping fields of astronomy and astrology: the constellations, the motion of the moon, the equinoxes, the zodiac, and the layout of the heavens. A mention of the year 776 appears to provide the earliest year of its composition, and much of it reflects the late-ninth-century astrological theories adopted in the Islamic world. Still, this work also appears to preserve earlier astrological traditions. No manuscripts of the full version of this text survive, although quotations from it appear in other texts; it was printed in 1861 from a now-lost manuscript.