Teaching on the Zodiacal Signs (Baraita de-mazalot)

This Hebrew work, which draws on the eighth- or ninth-century Teaching of Samuel (Baraita de-Shemu’el), deals with the overlapping fields of astronomy and astrology. Scholars have placed the text’s origins in southern Italy, within the Byzantine Empire, in part because of the Greek terminology it uses (e.g., starigmos, trigon) and in part because it was commented on by the tenth-century Italian Shabbetai Donnolo; some even attribute this work to Donnolo himself. Baraita de-mazalot attracted a good deal of attention among later European Jews, including from the German Pietists and writers who adopted mystical and other speculative attitudes toward astrology. These three chapters consider where the planets were at the moment of creation; relations among various triads of zodiacal signs, called trigons or triplicities; and the order of the planets and their distances from the earth. The author reports opinions from both non-Jewish and Jewish sages. Due to scribal errors, the math does not always add up.