Aristotle, the jewish sages and Solomon in an unpublished collection of sayings, Palabras breves: dichos de sabios

Abstract

This article presents an edition of an unpublished collection of sayings, of Jewish origin, to be found in Manuscript 5644 of the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, on folios 78_V (lxxx_v) to 84_V (lxxxvi_v). The contents are to be found in the Libro de los buenos proverbios (translated from Arabic into Spanish and Hebrew in the 13th century); in the Pirqué Abot, the only wisdom tractate in the Mishnah; and in the Proverbs of Solomon, part of the Tanakh, i.e. the Hebrew bible. The compilation of the work involved selecting and reorganising materials from various sources, following the editor’s tastes and interests, and giving rise to a new literary product which is a perfect example of the process and techniques involved in the assimilation and transmission of the Jewish wisdom legacy to the Castilian Middle Ages.