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Article ID: CBB613216982

David Gans's Magen David: Text and Context (2022)

Pavel Sládek (Author)

Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism
Volume: 22
Issue: 1
Pages: 235-276

URI: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/article/874966

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Primary literature (historical sources) Jewish civilization and culture Geometry Mathematics Cosmology Astronomy 17th century 16th century Gans, David

In 1612, the Jewish polymath David Gans (1541–1613) published a prospectus for his astronomical-cosmological work Magen David in the Prague printing press of Moses ben Joseph Betsalel Katz. The prospectus is preserved as a slightly damaged unicum in the Bodleian Library of Oxford (Opp. 4o 417 [4]). Gans died almost exactly one year after the prospectus was published, before the entire work was printed. A comparison of the list of chapters in the prospectus with the surviving earlier version of the work (MS Hamburg, Cod. hebr. 273) and with the later printed version (Jessnitz 1743 as Neḥmad ve-naʿim) allows us to reconstruct with some exactitude how Gans proceeded with his work on the book in the years before and after the prospectus was published. It appears that during the last year of his life Gans expanded his Magen David with additional chapters. Some of this material is incongruous with the original focus of the work and it likely originated in another of Gans's works, Migdal David on mathematics and geometry, which Gans must have feared would otherwise not be published. The analysis of the position of Magen David among Gans's other known writings, including those that have not survived, suggests that Magen David, together with the historical Ṣemaḥ David (Prague 1592) and Migdal David (now lost), formed the trio of works that Gans valued most highly. This is why he gave them titles that contained an allusion to his own name. The title Neḥmad ve-naʿim, under which Magen David was later printed, is thus most likely not authentic. The text of the prospectus contains an extensive commendation from Yom-Ṭov Lipmann Heller, approbations of three Prague rabbis, and a preface by Gans, which allows us to clarify his attitude towards theoretical astronomy. The publication of a modern complete edition of the prospectus should therefore be a useful contribution to the study of Jewish science at the turn of the seventeenth century.

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