Joseph ibn Tzaddik

Rabbi Joseph ben Jacob ibn Tzaddik (?-1149) was a Spanish rabbi, poet, and philosopher. A Talmudist of high repute, he was appointed in 1138 dayyan at Cordova, which office he held conjointly with Maimon, father of Maimonides, until his death. Joseph was also a highly gifted poet, as is attested by Alharizi. Several of Joseph's religious poems are found in the Sephardic and African machzorim; and a poem addressed to Judah ha-Levi, on his visit to Cordova en route to Palestine, is included in the latter's diwan.

Joseph's reputation rests, however, not on his rabbinical knowledge or his poetical abilities, but on his activity in the field of religious philosophy. In a short treatise written in Arabic (the title being probably Al-'Alam al-Saghir) and, according to Moritz Steinschneider, translated by Nahum ha-Ma'arabi into Hebrew under the title Olam Katan, he expounds his views on the most important problems of theology. Though not an original thinker (at every point of his system he borrows very largely from Solomon Ibn Gabirol's Fons Vitæ), he shows himself to be thoroughly familiar with the philosophical and scientific literature of the Arabs, and imposes the stamp of his own individuality on the subjects treated. The Olam Katan comprises four main divisions, subdivided into sections. After stating the elementary and primary principles of the knowledge of God, the acquisition of which is the highest duty of man, and explaining how the human soul builds up its conception of things, Joseph treats, in the manner of the Arabic Aristotelians, of matter and form, of substance and accident, and of the composition of the various parts of the world. He concludes the first division with the central idea from which the book is evolved, namely, the comparison between the outer world (macrocosm) and man (microcosm), already hinted at by Plato ("Timæus," 47b), and greatly developed by the Arabian encyclopedists known as "the Brethren of Sincerity," by whom Joseph was greatly influenced.

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